The Fastest Path to SUCCESS | Learn These Key Skills Today

You're stuck because you're avoiding the skills that scare you. But 5 years from now, you could be stuck watching other people win. Warren Buffett was terrified of public speaking until he forced himself to master it, then said, "If you improve your communication skills, I will guarantee you that you'll earn 50% more money over your lifetime." I know what it feels like to work hard and still feel behind, like you're busy but not moving forward. If you don't focus on the skills that actually matter, you'll wake up stuck, frustrated, and no closer to where you want to be. In the next 3 hours, you'll learn exactly which skills change everything, how to build them quickly, and how to stop wasting time starting today. 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.

Believe.

Your ability to learn faster than everyone else will make or break your success. If you're not deliberately training yourself to learn quicker every day, you're falling behind. Most people coast on outdated study habits and it's costing them opportunities. If you don't fix how you learn, you'll keep forgetting critical lessons, repeating mistakes, and watching hungrier competitors speed past you. There's a famous story. Two lumberjacks have a contest to chop down trees. One hacks away nonstop, sweating buckets. The other stops every so often to sharpen his ax. By the day's end, the one who sharpened his blade easily outcuts the other. The lesson: sharpen your tools, sharpen your mind, and multiply your results. Even Abraham Lincoln supposedly said, give me 6 hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first 4 sharpening the ax. Learning smarter is how you sharpen your ax as an entrepreneur. For me, this lesson hit early. I was a kid hiding under his desk in school because I couldn't understand what was going on. I had an undiagnosed hearing problem. I literally couldn't hear the teacher, but I thought I was a problem. I thought I was stupid. My grades were terrible next to my straight-A sisters. My parents even sent me to a child psychologist at age 8. Eventually, doctors discovered I had fluid in my ears. They put tubes in and suddenly I could hear clearly. And in my final year of high school, with the encouragement of an amazing French teacher who finally made me believe in myself, I transformed. I went from Bs and Cs to graduating with straight A pluses. Sometimes it really is just one little change, one mentor, one strategy that makes all the difference. I wasn't dumb. I just needed the right fix and someone to show me what was possible. Now you might be thinking, this sounds great, Evan, but I'm running a business here. I don't have time to play around with fancy learning techniques. I just get things done. Or maybe you're thinking, I've never been a good learner. I'm too old to change now. Or this stuff might work for students, but not for me. And I hear you and you're wrong. If you don't have time to learn how to learn, then you're guaranteed to waste 10 times more time down the road fixing avoidable mistakes and struggling to keep up. As an entrepreneur, you can't afford not to sharpen your axe, and you absolutely can become a better, faster learner. Your brain is not fixed. It's a muscle that grows with practice. So we're going to lose the excuses, at least for this video. I'm going to show you exactly how to revolutionize your learning, and by the end of this video, you won't just be learning faster, you'll start seeing yourself as a learning machine. So let's do it. Today I'm going to break down the 7 science-backed strategies that will help you learn faster and retain more, starting now. Strategy number 1: Test yourself. Don't just reread. The first strategy is this: active recall. So test yourself instead of passively rereading or listening. This one change will skyrocket how fast you learn. Here's some science behind it. When researchers compared passive review to active recall, the difference was staggering. Students who quiz themselves on materials remembered about 57% of it, while those who just reread and highlighted remembered only 29%. That's almost double the retention by testing yourself. Active recall can literally boost your performance by around 20% or more. So that's not some tiny tweak. It's a huge leap. Most people feel busy when they're just reading notes or watching videos, but feeling busy is not learning. Highlighting the page or nodding along to a podcast gives you the illusion of knowledge without the actual substance, right? You've done this. You've read something 3 times and think, "Sure, I've got this." Then a day later, you barely recall a thing. It's because recognition feels like understanding, but it's not. Your brain only truly learns when it has to retrieve information with no hints. So think of your memory like a muscle. Reading is watching someone else lift, but active recall is you lifting the weights. It hurts more, it's harder, and that's exactly why it works. So every time you struggle to remember something, you're strengthening that neural connection. So how do you do it practically? After you consume any learning material, a book, an article, a course, YouTube video, pause and close it. Quiz yourself. What were the key points? How would I explain this to a friend? Write down everything you remember from memory. That struggle you feel trying to recall is real learning happening. You can use techniques like the blurting method. You just jot down all you can remember on a blank page, or the Feynman technique where you explain the idea as if teaching a total newbie. When I prepare a speech or video, I don't just read my notes silently. I practice out loud and test myself. I'll literally recite key ideas in the shower or quiz myself during a walk. And if I stumble, that's good. It shows me what I haven't learned yet when the stakes are low. You need to embrace the stumbles during practice so you don't stumble when it counts. And remember, input is not the same as output. If you can't output the knowledge by recalling it or teaching it, you haven't really learned it. So start testing yourself and you'll cut your learning time because you'll know exactly what you know and what you still need to work on. No more fooling yourself by saying, yeah, I read that chapter, I'm good. Prove it to yourself. It might be humbling at first, but it will make you learn way faster. Strategy number 2: space out your learning. No more cramming. The second strategy is to space out your learning. So don't cram all at once. Spread it over multiple sessions or days. This is called spaced repetition, and it's one of the most powerful learning phenomenon ever discovered. Here's why it works. When you first learn something, your brain starts forgetting it almost immediately. In fact, almost 100 years ago, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped out the forgetting curve. It shows that memory of new information drops off steeply in the first 20 minutes and continues falling within hours. That sounds depressing, but here's the key. Every time you review or practice that information again, especially after some time has passed, you interrupt the forgetting and reinforce the memory. Repeated spaced exposure essentially bends that forgetting curve so you retain far more over the long term. So think of it like you're planting seeds. If you dump a gallon of water on a plant and then ignore it, it'll drown and then dry out. But if you water it a little bit every day, it grows strong. Your memory works basically the same way. In one example, a learning expert noted that in just 4 months practicing 30 minutes a day with spaced repetition, you could learn and retain 3,600 flashcards worth of content with 90 to 95% 99% accuracy. That's an insane amount of knowledge locked in, and it's because of consistent spaced practice. Meanwhile, cramming might give you a short-term rush, but a week later, poof, it's all gone. And we've all crammed for a test and then forgotten everything. Spaced learning might not have that all-nighter adrenaline vibe, but the results last a lifetime. Now, as an entrepreneur, spaced repetition can be your secret weapon. You need to remember what you learned from your books and your courses, your own experiences, even your mistakes, the YouTube videos you watch. So build a simple system to revisit knowledge. This could mean reviewing your notes weekly, using a flashcard app for key concepts, or deliberately scheduling practice of a skill throughout the month. When I learn something, say a new strategy for social media or a speaking technique, I'll circle back to it regularly. I don't just use it once and then forget it. I'll revisit that lesson next week, next month, and each time I find I understand it deeper and it sticks even more. So let me give you a quick story. A few years ago, my wife Nina and her friends invited me on a snowboarding trip. I had never snowboarded. I was a decent skier as a kid, but snowboarding was totally new to me. The first time down the the hill.

I was terrible.

I was embarrassed. I kept falling. I couldn't carve. My legs were burning from the effort of just not tumbling over. I felt like I was holding everyone back. Now, I could have done what most people do and spend one exhausting day on the slopes, maybe take a lesson, and then give up until the next trip months later. And predictably, I would suck again. Instead, I decided to apply spaced practice. After that humiliating day, I went home, and for the next several weeks, I practiced every morning on a tiny local hill near my house. No big crowds, no pressure, just me and this one other older guy who was there every morning, both of us quietly doing our thing. I fell 30 times a run trying to get the turns right, but each day I fell a little less. I trained my muscle memory day by day. After weeks of daily practice, I went back to the mountain with my wife, and this time I could keep up with them. They were shocked at how much I'd improved. That's the power of spacing your practice and persistence. So whatever you're trying to learn, whether it's mastering sales calls, you're learning coding, you're trying to speak a new language, Don't binge once and drop it. Schedule it in chunks. Even 15 to 30 minutes a day of focused learning will crush a 7-hour cram session in effectiveness. Trust the science on this. Your brain will thank you and you'll actually remember what you learn. Strategy number 3: Prioritize sleep. Seriously, sleep on it. This one might surprise the hustle culture crowd, but sleep is non-negotiable for learning. If you want to learn faster and remember more, you must prioritize sleep as part of your strategy. Think of sleep as the time when your brain hits save on what you learned. Pulling all-nighters or burning the candle at both ends doesn't make you a hero. It makes you slower. Neuroscience is super clear on this. When you learn something new, your brain needs sleep to properly encode and retain that information. Dr. Matthew Walker, he's a leading sleep scientist, says sleep after learning is essential to help save and cement that new information into the brain. Without sleep, those new memories are like wet concrete that never gets to set. They remain fragile and easily wiped away. In fact, if you try to learn on no sleep, your ability to absorb new information can drop by up to 40%. Imagine losing almost half your learning potential just because you skimped on sleep. That's huge. You can't brute force your way through that. So no amount of willpower or coffee can overcome a 40% deficit in brainpower. As Dr. Walker bluntly puts it, you can't pull an all-nighter and still learn effectively. And it's not just about memory. Sleep helps you make creative connections and find solutions too. You ever heard the phrase sleep on it? It's real. While you're snoozing, your brain is busy replaying and organizing the day's information, linking new ideas to existing knowledge, and even improving skills that you practiced. Studies show that your performance on tasks like playing a melody on piano can actually improve after sleep without further practice. Skip sleep and you skip that whole process. Now, I know as an entrepreneur, it's tempting to cut sleep when you have a million things to do each day. And early in my career, I tried that grind of late nights and early mornings thinking I was getting ahead. What I got was foggy brain and a habit of forgetting important details. Now I guard my sleep like my life depends on it because my business brain definitely does. I aim for 7 to 8 hours sleep. I'll choose sleep over answering a few extra emails at midnight because I know tomorrow my brain will operate at 100%. Instead of 60%, and I get more done in less time because I'm well-rested. So action item: treat sleep as a part of your learning protocol. Schedule your learning or practice sessions around a good night's sleep. So for example, if you want to retain something, study in the evening and then get to bed on time. You'll remember it far better in the morning. Likewise, if you have a big day of learning ahead, make sure you slept well the night before. This isn't being lazy, it's actually being smart. The science says that memory consolidation— that's the process of solidifying what actually happened happens during deep sleep. And if you consistently cheat yourself on sleep, you're consistently shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to growing yourself and your business. And one more thing on sleep. Lack of sleep doesn't just hurt new learning. It can also erase what you thought you knew. Have you ever felt brain dead in a meeting after too little sleep? It's real. You literally can't access some of the knowledge in your brain when you're exhausted. So do not wear sleep deprivation as a badge of honor. High performers in any field— sports, business, creative work— they know the value of recovery. Your brain is your number one asset. Give it the rest it needs to perform. Strategy number 4: Do one thing at a time. Kill multitasking. So here we want to laser focus on one thing at a time. If you're trying to learn while multitasking, you're checking emails, you're bouncing between tasks, you're letting notifications interrupt you. You are sabotaging your learning. And I know entrepreneurs, we love to think we can juggle 12 things at once, but science is crystal clear on this. Multitasking is a myth and doing it makes you dumber and less effective. So this is a slap in the face statistic. Rapidly switching between tasks, what most people call multitasking, can cost you up to 40% of your productive time. Imagine 40% of your day, poof, gone, wasted because you kept context switching. Even crazier, in tests, this kind of behavior temporarily dropped people's IQ by 10 10 points. That's more than the cognitive knock you take from smoking some marijuana. So if you pride yourself on being a great multitasker, I hate to break it to you, you're really priding yourself on being 40% less effective than you could be. And when it comes to learning, the toll is even worse. One expert in cognitive psychology, Dr. Tomas Čamoro-Premužić, noted that one of the biggest pitfalls of multitasking is lower retention of knowledge. Of course it is, because if your attention is split Nothing fully sinks in. Your brain needs focus to transfer information from short-term memory into long-term memory. Distractions reset that process. So if you ever read a page of a book while also half listening to a conversation, then realize you had no idea what you just read, that's what we're talking about. You were physically looking at the words, but your brain wasn't encoding any of it because it was toggling between different inputs. I had to learn this the hard way too. In my early days of building my business, I would try to learn new skills or work on important problems while also keeping my email open constantly. My phone was buzzing, 20 browser tabs open. I felt like I was being productive. After all, I was doing a lot, but I was doing everything poorly. I read the same paragraphs over and over because I wasn't fully there. I'd watch a tutorial video while also answering messages and later wonder why I couldn't remember the steps from that video. Now I've adopted what I call monotasking. So if I'm learning or working on something critical, everything else is off. Phone is on Do not disturb, emails are closed. Team knows not to interrupt me during my learning block unless the building is on fire. I literally schedule deep focus time on my calendar. And you know what? In 1 hour of true focused work or study, I accomplish what used to take me 3 hours of scatterbrain multitasking. So here's what you can do. Create a distraction-free zone for your learning, even if it's just 20 minutes of reading or practicing a skill. Make it 20 minutes of pure focus.

That's it.

Put your phone in another room or use an app to block social media. Close all your unrelated tabs. If you're at home, tell your family or roommates, hey, I'm offline for the next half hour. It might feel weird at first because you're so used to being constantly available to everyone, but guard that focus time fiercely. It is sacred time for your brain. In that focused state, you'll enter a flow and actually absorb the material or master the skill much faster. Researchers say that even a brief interruption like a text ping can derail your train of thought enough so that it takes several minutes to get back on track. So imagine what constantly glancing at your phone is doing. Don't do that to yourself. Single-tasking, monotasking. It's a superpower in a world of constant distraction. If you do this, not only will you learn faster, you'll also produce higher quality work. And bonus, you'll feel less mentally exhausted because switching tasks drains your energy. When you focus on one thing, you actually end the day less tired with more accomplished. Quality over quantity. Focus over frenzy. It's a game changer. Strategy number 5: Embrace the suck. Adopt a growth mindset. So let's talk mindset quickly. To accelerate your learning, you need to embrace the suck and see yourself as a work in progress. So you adopt a growth mindset, the belief that you can improve through effort, mistakes, and feedback. This isn't meant to be a motivational talk. It's backed by decades of research. Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford proved that mindset about learning literally affects how much you learn. If you think your abilities are fixed, like, I'm just not good at X, you'll avoid challenges, you'll give up easily and basically stay bad. But if you believe you can grow, you will embrace new challenges. You will persist longer and ultimately achieve much, much, much more. It sounds almost obvious, but so many of us secretly carry limiting beliefs about our own potential. Every master was once a disaster, right? The people who learn the fastest are usually the ones who are willing to look stupid for a while. They're okay with being the worst in the room because they know that's the price of admission for growth.

I try to live this.

In fact, one of my personal mottos is expect to suck at the start. So when I try something new, I assume I'll be terrible in the beginning, and that's okay. It frees me to actually focus on learning instead of protecting my ego. So personal story that I hope drives this home for you. When I started my YouTube channel, I was not a natural on camera, far from it. I was an introvert who didn't even like being on camera, and here I was trying to make videos to help entrepreneurs. My early videos, let's just say they sucked. I could barely watch them without cringing. In the interview I did, I talked about this, that it took me 350 videos until I wasn't completely embarrassed for myself, and 700 videos until I inspired myself. That's not a typo, right? 350 videos before I felt felt even halfway okay about my skills. And by the time I hit 700, I finally made something I thought, hey, that was actually pretty good. Most people would quit after 5 videos that got no views, or 50 videos that felt awkward. Like, I felt like quitting plenty of times. I used to beat myself up in those early days. I wanted to be great out of the gate. I thought I could be a B-minus level YouTuber immediately, but reality was I was F level at the start. And because I expected to be at least B-minus, every video that turned out F made me question myself. At one point, I mentally quit thinking I'll never be good on camera. But then I realized, no, this is just part of the process. I decided to expect to suck. I literally told myself, okay, you're terrible right now.

So what?

That just means you have a big opportunity to improve. Let's keep going. I stopped demanding perfection from myself and started demanding persistence. So if 40 people watched a video, I told myself maybe one person's life was changed by that video. So it was worth it. And I'll get better next time. This mindset saved my YouTube career and allowed me to eventually reach millions of people. It will save you in whatever you're trying to learn too. When you catch yourself saying, I'm just not good at this, add one word: yet. I'm not good at this yet. Replace I can't do this with I can't do this yet. It sounds like a small tweak, but it changes everything. Suddenly your brain goes from a brick wall to now it's a door. It's open. We can go through it. Neuroscience backs this up. When you believe effort will make you better, you actually engage more deeply and learn more each attempt. So when you think you're just innately bad, you don't even try as hard. Like, why bother? You just suck at it and you learn less. It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. So break the cycle. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. Seek out challenges that make you feel clumsy or dumb. Those are the ones that will actually create the most growth for you. So quick example, I once took a hot yoga class with my wife. I was the worst student in the room. I was falling over. I could barely do the poses. While these yoga veterans around me are like graceful swans. I don't know how they're doing what they're doing. And I loved it. I'd rather be the absolute worst in a class of experts than the best in a class of beginners. Why? Because when you're the worst, you have the most to gain. So adopt that mentality. Don't avoid the stuff that you suck at. Seek it out and attack it with curiosity. Every failure, it's just data. It's feedback telling you what to improve on. As long as you learn from it, it's not really failure at all. It's just It's just a stepping stone. So ask yourself, where are you holding yourself back because you're afraid of being bad? Decide to embrace being bad. You will accelerate your learning like never before. And ironically, you'll become good at that thing faster than you thought possible. Sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something. So keep going. Strategy number 6: teach what you learn. Turn knowledge into belief. So the 6th strategy here is to teach it as soon as you learn it. This is one of my favorites. If you want to truly understand and remember something, turn around and explain it to someone else. Or if no one's around, explain it to an imaginary audience, to your pet, to the mirror. I don't care. Just teach it. Why? Because teaching forces you to consolidate and organize your knowledge in a way that passive learning never will. Research has a name for this. It's called the protégé effect. When you expect to teach something, you learn it more effectively. In one study, students who were told they would have to teach the material to others recalled more information, organized it better, and remembered the important points more than the students who were just told to take a test on it. And here's what I love the most: none of them actually ended up teaching. The mere expectation changed how their brain absorbed the information. So think about that. If you approach learning something as if you'll have to teach it, you'll automatically go into a higher gear. You look for key points, you seek understanding instead of just rote memory, you fill in the gaps proactively, you engage in what scientists call deep processing. So by teaching you're basically tricking your brain into learning more deeply and quickly. On top of that, when you teach, you'll quickly find out where you are confused. You've probably experienced this: you think you get something, but when you try to explain it, you go, um, well, actually, I'm not sure how to put this. Teaching shines a spotlight on the fuzzy parts in your understanding. That becomes gold because then you know exactly what you need to review or clarify. It's like having a built-in knowledge scanner that highlights the missing pieces for you. This has been a huge part of my life. People People often ask why I share so many videos with advice and lessons from others. Do I do it just to help the audience? And absolutely, I love helping Believe Nation. You guys are awesome. But here's a secret. I'm helping myself too. By teaching ideas from videos I watch or books I read or interviews I do, I'm reinforcing those lessons in my own mind too. When I profile a famous entrepreneur or talk about 10 rules of success from Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, I'm effectively reteaching those principles to myself. And that means I'm absorbing them on a much deeper level than if I just I just read them or watched them and moved on. Explaining their rules to millions of people means those rules now become a part of me, and that daily input and output built my belief and knowledge base. So every video I make is not only helpful to you, hopefully, it cements the lessons in me too. And you can do the same thing without having a YouTube channel. Make a habit of sharing what you learn. Did you read a great book? Teach a core idea to a friend over coffee, or record a voice note to yourself summarizing it. You're learning a new technique? Explain it to your team at work. Even better is teach it as if you're teaching a complete beginner. Simplify complex ideas into easy language. That's the Feynman technique in action, and it's magic for solidifying knowledge. If you can't break it down simply, you probably don't get it yet. So go back and fill in those gaps and then try teaching it again. And one more quick hack. You can start a journal or blog or YouTube series where you teach your future self. After you learn something, write a quick entry as if you're instructing someone else on it.

And I like to do this on a smaller scale.

I write notes for my videos or speeches in a way that I'm talking to someone about it, not just bullet points. It makes a difference in recall. So remember the old saying about the learning pyramid that we retain 90% of what we teach and only 10% of what we read? Now, the exact percentages on that pyramid are debated, but the concept holds. Active learning methods— teaching, doing— beat passive ones— reading, listening— by a mile. When you teach, you're not only transferring knowledge, you're transforming it into something that lives in your own words and your experience. And the most beautiful part, when you teach, you also start to embody the identity of a knowledgeable person on that topic for yourself. You're not just someone trying to learn marketing. You're someone who can teach marketing. See how that boosts your confidence and belief? You carry yourself differently and that motivates you to learn even more. So from now on, every time you learn something useful, ask, who can I share this with? How would I explain it so that they really get it? And it might feel awkward at first, but do it anyway. Share on social media, share it in a group, share it with one friend. Don't hoard knowledge, use it and spread it. In the act of teaching, you'll find the lessons sticking to you like glue as well. And strategy number 7, take action. Learn by doing fast. Taking action immediately on what you learn is critical. And so in entrepreneurship, especially learning by doing is the fastest way to go from theory ideas into reality. You've got to move from the abstract from the abstract to the concrete as soon as possible. This not only reinforces what you learned, but it also exposes you to nuances and lessons that you'd never get just by sitting and studying. So there's an old Chinese proverb, "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand." And so research backs this up. When scientists look at people learning a new skill, they found that the group who actually practiced the task had way more brain activity in regions related to skill and performance with fewer errors compared to the group only watched the task being done. So the observers barely activated key parts of the brain and made more mistakes when they finally tried the task themselves. So observation alone was not enough. Physical practice was required for the brain to really encode the skill. To quote the lead researcher, observation cannot replace physical practice in learning a new skill. So you can watch all the tutorial videos in the world or read all the articles and books, but until you get your hands dirty, your retention and understanding will be very limited. And I see this all the time with new entrepreneurs. They'll read 50 books on starting a business, but they haven't actually started anything. They have tons of knowledge that isn't quite real to them because it's not yet applied. The first time they try to implement, they realize, oh, this is harder than it looked on paper, or I didn't fully get that concept until I had to actually use it. So here's how you can start to implement this.

This.

Whenever you learn a new concept or skill, ask yourself, how can I use this today? Even if something that theoretically you won't need until later, find a way to practice it or experiment with it right now in a small way. If you're learning a new marketing strategy, pick one of your products and spend an hour applying that strategy in a mini campaign. Or you're studying a programming concept, awesome, write a tiny program that uses it. If you're watching this video about learning strategies, as soon as this video ends, pick one strategy and do something with So for example, take the worksheet that I talked about, right? And actually write down an action plan there. That's two strategies in one: action and teaching by writing. The longer you wait to apply knowledge, the more it fades and becomes theoretical again. Motion creates emotion and it creates long-term memory. So when I read a great business book or I get advice from a mentor, I immediately look for opportunities to apply it in my business or life that week. If I learn a better way to communicate with my team, I'll try it in our next meeting. If I pick up a tip for productivity, I'll experiment with it the very next morning. It does two things. One, it solidifies the lesson in my mind because I've now experienced it and not just read about it. And two, I get feedback. I see what works. I see what doesn't work, and I learn even more from doing it. So it becomes this virtuous cycle. You learn, you do, you get feedback, and you learn deeper. By taking action, you also create momentum. You overcome the inertia that plagues so many people who know but don't do. Knowledge sitting in your head with no use is actually a burden. It makes you feel guilty or overwhelmed. But knowledge put into practice immediately turns into results and confidence. You start to trust yourself as someone who applies things, not just stores things. And guess what? That identity motivates you to learn even more because you know it's going somewhere. So don't be afraid of doing it wrong. This loops back to embracing the suck. Your first attempt implementing something new will be clunky. That's fine. You will learn way more from a sloppy first try than from endless perfect planning. I like to say version 1 is better than version none. Get a version out there, whatever it is— a first draft, a pilot test, an awkward trial run. You can iterate and improve it, but only if it exists in the real world. Action is where theory becomes tangible and where true mastery is born. So those are 7 strategies. But remember, Knowledge alone is not power until it is applied. We just talked about that. Learning how to learn is the ultimate meta skill. It makes every other skill easier. Imagine the advantage you have in business if you can pick up new technologies, new market insights, new skills twice as fast as your competition. It's massive. As Darwin said, it's not the strongest or the smartest who survive. It's the ones most adaptable to change. Learning is adapting. Bet on yourself and invest the time to sharpen your axe, because when you do, nothing can stop you from cutting through whatever obstacles stand in your way. 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 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 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 make 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, but the next morning I felt a new fire. I realized I could handle failing, but I couldn't live with 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 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 learning that 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 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 this 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 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, 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 breaths depth 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 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. Grows. 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. By making it a non-negotiable routine, you're training your brain that this is who you are now. World-class communicators, for Successful salespeople 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 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.

Fall.

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 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 as 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 techniques 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 continuously. Elon Musk taught himself rocket science 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 sharp, it also keeps you ahead of everyone trying to catch 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, instantly. It is inevitable, truly 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 scary, 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 secret to figuring out exactly what you want to do with your life? It's not a magic test, it's not a lightning bolt moment, it's something you discover. And if you don't figure this out, you might wake wake up one day filled with regret, living a life that wasn't really yours. Jim Carrey's father could have been a great comedian, but he took the safe route and became an accountant. When Jim was 12, his dad lost that safe job. Jim learned the hard truth watching his father: you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love. Jim chased comedy with everything he had, and it paid off in ways the safer path never could. How many times have you done the same? Settled for safe because you didn't believe doing what you love was possible. You might be thinking, well, that's great, but I have no idea what I love. What if I just don't have a passion? The truth is you do. It's just buried under fear, doubt, and everyone else's expectations. Not knowing right now isn't a life sentence. It's the starting point of an amazing journey if you're willing to start. So let's break it down. And this question actually comes from one of our subscribers, user DC369, that asked, how can we know what we really want to do in the future? And if you ever wondered the same thing, keep watching. The first thing you need to do is silence the noise of other people's expectations. Maybe your parents think you should be a lawyer. Your friends all went into tech. Society tells you what success looks like. It's loud, isn't it? It's like static on a radio. You can't hear your song because of everyone else's music. One hospice nurse who cared for the dying noticed something profound. The number one regret people had was not living a life true to themselves, but living according to others' expectations. Rewind and hear that again. The most common regret at the end of their life was ignoring their own dreams. Do you want that to be your regret? So ask yourself, whose life are you living? If all those outside voices went silent for a minute, what would you choose? What secret dream or interest do you push aside because you're worried what others would think? This is your future. You're the one who has to live it. The people giving you advice or pressure, they won't deal with the consequences.

You will.

So don't let their voices become a virus in your mind, quietly killing your You got to cut the cord, tune them out, because you can never find your path if you're busy walking someone else's. Think of it like wearing someone else's shoes. They might be the right size for you, but they still give you blisters. You need to walk in shoes that fit you. So here's a quick exercise. Take out a journal and write down what you would do if nobody would judge you or be disappointed. If you had all the support in the world, what path would you take? Be honest. This is for your eyes only. Honestly, get real about what you want, no matter how crazy or impractical it might sound. Got it?

Good.

Hold on to that because it's the first clue to what you really want. Now, maybe you say, okay, I have ideas, but I'm still not 100% sure which one is the one. And what if I choose wrong? Which brings us to the next part. You have to get out there and try things. You cannot think your way into knowing your passion. You act your way into it. Nobody ever discovered their dream life by sitting on the couch pandering. Clarity comes from engagement, not just thought. Maybe you're afraid of choosing the wrong thing, but here's a reality check: choosing nothing is the only guaranteed wrong choice. When you choose nothing, nothing changes. When you try something, you either win or you learn, but both are progress. We live in a world with endless options, and that can be paralyzing. There's a famous James study. In a grocery store, researchers set up a display of 24 different jams. Tons of people stopped by to look, but only 3% actually bought a jar of jam. They cut it down to 6 flavors, fewer choices, and 30% of shoppers bought jam. Crazy, right? Too many options made people freeze. Life can feel the same way. With so many paths, you end up choosing none. Don't let that be you. Sometimes you just have to pick a flavor and taste it. So pick one of those interests or ideas that you wrote down and do something with with it today, this week, soon. Always curious about coding? Sign up for a beginner's class now. Have a business idea scribbled in a notebook? Start researching or build a tiny prototype now. Interested in design or cooking, podcasting, setting up a YouTube channel? Find a way to dip your toes in the water now. Volunteer, shadow someone, do a side project. Here's why this is so powerful. Science says passion isn't something you find in a fortune cookie, it's something you Research has found that passions often begin with a little spark of curiosity. So maybe you watch a cool documentary or you try a new hobby and you think, huh, that's kind of interesting. If you feed that spark, you read about it, you practice it, you immerse yourself, it starts to glow. Through repeated engagement and positive experiences, that interest builds. And if you keep going, that spark can grow into a flame. A passion is born not in a not by thinking about it, but by doing. Author Mark Manson has a great way to put it: passion is the result of action, not the cause of it. You don't wake up one day and magically know what you're passionate about. You figure it out by trying things. None of us know how we feel about an activity until we start doing the activity. It's a trial by fire. In other words, you won't know if you love filming until you pick up a camera and you make a short film. You won't know if entrepreneurship is for you until you start a little business. Our side hustle. Thinking about it is not the same as doing it. Remember when you were a kid? You didn't sit around analyzing what game to play or how to have fun. You just ran out and played. You tried the slide, the swings, the monkey bars just because it looked fun. That is the mindset you need now. Experiment, play, give yourself permission to explore without a perfect guarantee of success. And don't worry if your first try isn't the thing. Most people don't marry the first person they ever date, right? You meet different people to learn learn who's a good match. Likewise, you might have to try a few jobs, majors, or projects to learn what actually makes you come alive. Each attempt gives you feedback. I like this part, but not this part. It's like getting hotter or colder in a game of treasure hunt. Each step, even the wrong ones, guide you closer to the treasure. Now, as you start taking action, you might still have this nagging worry. Okay, I'm trying things, but what if my path isn't secure? What if I end I end up changing my mind, or the world changes on me. Here's a hopefully freeing truth: your future is not a straight line, and that's okay. In fact, these days it's almost never a straight line, and it doesn't have to be. Gone are the days where you just pick one career at 18 and then retire from it at 65 with a gold watch, right? We're in a different world now. The average American has about 12 different jobs by the time they're 55. Think about that— 12 jobs. And that number is only rising rising. Some experts say many of us will have multiple careers— not just jobs, careers—

in our life.

Not only that, but the world is changing so fast that your dream job might not even exist yet. Literally. One report by Dell Technologies and the Institute for the Future estimated that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't been invented yet. Let that sink in. You could end up doing something in 10 years that today you can't even Google because there's no word for it yet. So if you're worried, what if I picked the wrong thing?

Relax a bit.

You're not signing a blood oath here, right? You're choosing a direction. You're allowed to change course. In fact, you will change course, expect it or not. And that's not failure. That's life. Every experience, even if you leave it behind, builds skills and self-knowledge that help you in the next chapter. So think of your life like a road trip at night. Your headlight might only let you see 100 feet ahead of you, right? You can drive across an entire country that way, only seeing a little bit in front of you at a time. You don't stop driving because you can't see your destination from your driveway. You trust that as you move forward, more of the road will reveal itself. It's the same thing with your path. You just need to see the next 100 feet and drive into that, then the next 100. Adjust as you go. Maybe you start down one path and realize, huh, I actually hate this. Okay, that's valuable information. Now you pivot. You haven't failed. Failed, you've learned. Thomas Edison famously said, after many failed attempts with the light bulb, I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Each failure was just showing him the path that would work. Maybe you go through a few majors in college or a few jobs in your 20s or 30s or 50s before it clicks. That's normal. That's you chiseling your statue, figure out what to keep and what to chip away. What's important is that through all these twists and turns, you stay true to your North Star— the things you value, the problems you care about, the lifestyle that you want. Think of those as your compass. Maybe your compass says you care about helping people heal. That's amazing. Today that might lead you towards nursing. In 10 years, maybe you're drawn to a mental health startup, or you write a book on wellness. The form can change, the mission remains. If you know the general direction— I want to create, I want to help, I want to lead, I want freedom— you can navigate with that even as the terrain changes. So don't stress about drawing a 40-year plan in Instead, get clear on your values and interests. What, what excites you? What problems grabs your heart? What talents do others notice in you? And use that as your compass. Then take the best step that you can today. Trust that you can course correct as new opportunities or detours appear. All right, so you've cut out the noise, you're exploring, you're staying flexible. There's one more piece to this puzzle, and it's a big one. When you do find something you want, something that sparks that excitement, you've got to commit and develop it. So many people miss this. They expect that once they find their passion, everything will be rainbows and easy and they'll be motivated 24/7. Let me bust that myth right now. Even your dream job, dream career, dream anything will have bad days, will have boring parts, will require a ton of work. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It means you're human. It means you're living in the real world. Stanford researchers discovered something really interesting here. They found that when people believe passion is something you just find mind fully formed, they tended to give up faster. If the journey got hard, they'd think, oh, maybe this isn't my passion at all. After, they'd quit. It's like they expected a smooth ride, and when they hit a bump, they bailed. In contrast, people who see passion as something that you develop, who know that any worthwhile pursuit will challenge you, those people persist. They push through those challenges and come out the other side stronger. The Stanford expert suggested we should replace find your passion with develop your And I love that. It means you're not searching for a needle in a haystack. You're planting and growing a seed. Think of that passion or goal like a plant in a garden. Finding it is just picking out a seed. That seed has the potential to blossom, but not if you plant it in poor soil and walk away as soon as the first frost hits. You have to tend to it. You have to water it. You have to protect it when the storms come. In real terms, you have to show up even on the days when it's tough. You have to put in the hours to build and hone your skills. Skills, because passion without skill can only take you so far. You have to be willing to be bad at something in order to get good at it. So give yourself that grace to be a beginner. Maybe you want to be a writer. Are you willing to write articles that aren't great at first, to throw away pages, to edit and edit until your eyes hurt? That process will develop your passion for writing into a career. Maybe you're passionate about helping people.

Awesome.

Are you willing to study long hours in nursing school or stay up late working on your new nonprofit idea. That's the price of entry. Passion is energy, yes, but discipline and perseverance keep that passion alive when times get hard. And here's the beautiful thing: when you push through those obstacles, your passion, it deepens. You hit a new level of fulfillment that the dabbler will never reach. It's like climbing a mountain. The hike can get difficult. You're gonna sweat, you'll get tired, but the higher you go, the more breathtaking the view is. And the people who quit at the first steep hill, they never see what you get to see. So when you face a challenge on the path you choose, a setback, a dull period, a moment of doubt, don't just throw up your hands and say, I don't know, maybe it's just not for me. Remember why you started. Remember that every great endeavor has rough patches. This is where you prove how much you want it. This is where you grow. As you keep at it, something amazing happens. You build confidence. You start becoming excellent at your craft, your business. Your mission. And passion thrives on that. It's a positive feedback loop. The better you get, the more passionate you feel, which makes you want to get even better. And on it goes. That's when you're truly living in your purpose. By now you've had some powerful pieces to work with. You know you need to listen to yourself over others. You know you must take action and follow your curiosity rather than waiting for clarity to knock at your door. You know the future isn't set in stone and it's flexible and you can adapt along the and you know that once you find a direction that excites you, you have to pour yourself into developing it even when it's hard, because that's how passion grows. Now it's time for the final ingredient: belief. You have to believe that it's possible for you. Not easy, not overnight, but possible because it is. And I know it's possible because you're still here, still watching this, investing in yourself. Do you realize how many people never get this far? How many people shove that question of what do I really want to the side and go back to living on autopilot? But not you. You're here. You showed up for yourself today, and that's a huge deal. I want to acknowledge you for that. Most people won't even ask this question, let alone seek out answers and stick through a video to the end, and you did. That tells me you're hungry for growth and for change. You care about your future, and I admire that. So pat yourself on the back for a second, seriously, because you've taken a step that many are too scared to take. You're learning, reflecting, getting ready to take action. And this is how transformation starts. But we don't stop there. Knowledge is potential power. Action is what gives it real power. I want you to leave this video and actually do something with what you've learned, even if it's small. Tonight, before you go to bed, choose one idea that resonated with you and plan a concrete next step. Maybe you schedule that class or email that mentor. Maybe you sit and brainstorm business ideas for 30 minutes. Maybe you simply commit to journaling about about what you really want every morning this week, to keep that inner voice loud and clear. Whatever it is, do it. Make your future tangible starting now. Your future is not some distant daydream. It's built of today's choices. The fact that you're watching this means today you chose to care about it. Keep choosing that day after day, and I promise you, 5 years from now, you'll look back and thank yourself. You'll be somewhere that you chose, doing what matters to you, because you had the courage to you it. And remember, it's never too early and it's never too late. Whether you're 16 or 60, you can start listening to that whisper inside and taking steps. There are people who found their calling at 50, 60, even 70. There are teenagers starting businesses from their bedroom. There is no rule except don't give up on yourself. You've got this one life. Do not waste it living someone else's dream. Figure out what lights your fire and then fan those flames. No one can do it for you, and one day you're going to be so grateful that you did. Your journey to discover what you really want to do is exactly that— a journey. Embrace it. Don't rush to the destination. Learn from every step. Every job you take, every skill you learn, every project you try— they're all adding up to your story, a story that's uniquely yours. So trust the process and trust yourself. You showing up here, doing the work, tells me you're going to make something amazing out of your life. I believe it wholeheartedly. Constantly. So keep going. Keep believing in your vision, even when others don't see it yet. Keep adjusting, learning, and most of all, keep moving forward. Your future self is cheering you on every step of the way.

Getting rich from nothing is 100% possible. Most people think you need money to make money, but that's a lie. The only thing you truly need is resourcefulness and belief. If you sit around waiting for a lucky break or more capital, you will be stuck Do nothing now, and a year from now you'll still have nothing. The cost of not acting is staying broke, frustrated, and watching others live your dreams while you stand on the sidelines. Look at Colonel Harland Sanders.

At 65 years old, he was broke.

He was sleeping in his car. He was surviving on a $105 monthly Social Security check, yet he had a chicken recipe he believed in. He was rejected 1,009 times by restaurants who told him no. 1,000 rejections! Friends, but he didn't quit. Finally, one restaurant in Salt Lake City gave him a chance, and Kentucky Fried Chicken was born. By the time he was 74, Colonel Sanders sold KFC for $2 million and became an entrepreneur legend.

Why?

Because he refused to accept that having nothing meant he was nothing. He turned nothing into a global brand through sheer perseverance. And this isn't just about famous people.

It's personal.

I remember being being a 19-year-old entrepreneur and hitting rock bottom. I struggled a lot in my early days of entrepreneurship.

I felt worthless.

I felt useless as a human being. It was the worst moment of my life for my self-confidence. I was making $300 a month at my startup and actually told my business partner that I was quitting. I broke down crying at my family gathering, you know, full-on ugly sobbing, because I just couldn't see a way forward. But you know what happened the very next Next morning I woke up and something clicked. I thought, okay, I can handle failing, but I can't handle not knowing what could have been. So I decided that I'd rather give it my all and flop than live with this regret of not knowing. A few weeks later, we landed our first big deal, an exclusive partnership in Europe. We went from scraping by on $300 a month to signing a $13,500 contract, and in my head I felt like a millionaire in that moment. I was literally jumping around and yelling, rich.

It wasn't true riches yet, but it was proof, proof that we could do it.

And that one deal changed my life because it proved that you can start with nothing and create something huge. Now, you might be watching this thinking, yeah, Evan, that's great for you or Colonel Sanders, but can I do it? I have no money, no special connections. Is it really possible for me to get rich from nothing? And let's look at that doubt and try to flip it. The fact that you have nothing can actually become your advantage. When you have zero, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, which makes you incredibly dangerous. Remember, every self-made millionaire that you look up to, that you admire, they started with a first step when they had nothing. Everyone starts at zero. The only difference between you and those success stories is that they started and they kept going when most people would just quit. So don't buy into those excuses that are in your head. You can do this. I'm not any smarter or more special than you are. The Colonel wasn't a spring chicken. He was a senior citizen. If you can start at 65 and win, why not you at your age right now? So stick with me and I'll show you how to actually build wealth from nothing. Just some real strategies and some mindset shifts that you can use starting today. Are you ready?

Let's do it.

Belief and identity. The first and most important step to building wealth from nothing is belief. Specifically, the belief in yourself and adopting the identity of a winner. If you don't believe you can become rich, you've already killed your chances. Your mindset is the foundation everything else is built on top of. Henry Ford famously said, whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. And science backs this up. Studies have shown that people with an internal locus of control, basically people who believe their actions determine their life, they tend to have higher income and net worth.

If you believe you have the power to change your situation, you're statistically more likely to do it.

Belief is psychology and it's real. So ask yourself, what identity are you carrying? If you see yourself as a poor person who will never catch a break, that will become your reality. If instead you start to see yourself as an entrepreneur on the rise, as someone who deserves success and is willing to grind for it, you'll start to act that way too. Your identity drives your behavior. High achievers visualize their success and own it mentally long before it actually happens. It's not about faking it until you make it. It's about believe it until you become it. I built my entire brand around one word: belief, right?

Why? Because it all starts there.

If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of advice, I'd keep it simple. Believe more. Believe in yourself more. Believe that it's going to work out. Believe in the work that you're doing. Every great thing that will happen in your life is on the other side of even more belief. Belief in yourself. That's a direct quote from me to me, and now to you. Because when you can cultivate belief, you become more unstoppable. You stop saying, 'I can't,' and start asking, 'How can I?' You stop seeing obstacles as roadblocks and start seeing them as just a puzzle to solve. So surround yourself with belief. I call it borrowing belief from others. So when I was struggling and full of negative self-talk in my head, I flooded my environment with successful voices. It's why I started this channel. I listened to guys like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk every single day. I'd watch their interviews, I'd read their biographies, I'd play their talks on repeat, I watched as many YouTube videos as I could, and their confidence and vision started rubbing off on me. The more that I had Steve Jobs in my ear and Musk in my ear and all these people in my ear, the more I wanted to do bigger things and believed in myself that it was possible to go off and do it. Now, you might not have a mentor in real life, but you have books, YouTube, podcasts, a virtual board of advisors. Feed your brain with possibility, and over time you'll start to believe, hey, if they can do it, so can I. And that identity shift becomes everything. Resilience through struggle. So you're gonna fail. You will face pain and setbacks and rejection on the road to your wealth, and that's okay. That is normal. Getting rich from nothing isn't a straight line upwards. It is full of ups and downs over the course. The difference between people who eventually build wealth and those who stay broke forever is resilience, the ability to keep going after you fail.

Failure is not the opposite of success.

It becomes part of your success. So think of it like this: when you start from nothing, failure, that becomes your tuition to pay for the lessons to get better. In fact, the average entrepreneur fails 3.8 times before their first major success kicks in. On average, almost 4 failures for every big win. And 92% of people give up quitting after their first failure. They try things once, things go south, and they say, well, I guess it wasn't meant to be for me. Meanwhile, the 8% who don't quit after one failure are the ones who become the success stories. Be in that 8%. Every successful person you know has a trail of failures behind them. J.K. Rowling was rejected by 12 publishers before Harry Potter became a global sensation. Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times trying to invent the light bulb. When a reporter asked him how he kept going after so many failures, he famously said, said, I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps. That's the mindset of resilience— seeing each failure not as proof that you suck and you're not good enough, but as one step closer to the result you're going for. Research shows that 60% of the most successful companies were founded by entrepreneurs right after a failure. They didn't quit, they learned, and they launched their next thing. And my life is proof of this. Remember the story I told you of me crying and wanting to it. I was this close to becoming another statistic, another guy who gave up on his dream at 19, at 20, because it got too hard. If I had stayed down, you wouldn't be watching this video and I wouldn't be living my mission right now. Resilience is what saved me— the willingness to get back up one more time. And when that $13,500 deal came through after all those rejections, it wasn't just money.

It was a result of every failure and retry leading up to it.

I learned that every no, every setback can be motivation if you choose to make it So use those setbacks as your stepping stones. As painful as they are in the moment, they are forging you into someone capable of success. I think your purpose comes from your pain. That's one of my core beliefs. The lowest points in your life can create the highest value because they give you a mission. In my case, feeling worthless and struggling so much lit a fire under me to help other entrepreneurs never feel that low too. So whatever you're going through right now, the debt, the doubters, the, the failures, can become your drive and your story. So when life knocks you down, you look it in the eye and say, that all you got? Then you get back up even if you're limping, because resilience is your superpower when you have nothing, because it means nothing will stop you. Strategic partnerships and modeling success. So wealth building is a team sport, especially when you're starting with nothing. One of the fastest ways to go from zero to one is through strategic partnerships and modeling people who've already done it. You don't have money? Fine.

Use what you do have.

You have hustle, you have time, you have energy, skills, and the humility to learn from others. When I started my first business, right, I was a 19-year-old kid, zero experience, zero money, zero connections. How did I get in the game? I found partners. I joined forces with two other entrepreneurs who had strengths that I didn't have. And in that biotech software startup, my partners were the coding geniuses.

Right?

And me, I was a guy willing to hustle for $300 a month and 30% equity to build the business. While all my college friends were off getting corporate jobs paying six figures, I basically said, I have nothing except my work ethic.

I'll work practically for free if you give me a shot.

And that's how we launched. And sometimes a strategic partnership means you contribute sweat equity while someone else contributes capital expertise. Don't be too proud to be the small fish in a bigger pond if it helps you learn and helps you grow. Another partnership that saved my company was bringing on mentors and advisors. In the beginning, I tried to do everything myself and made mistakes everywhere. Finally, I sucked up my pride and started asking for help.

I reached out to people who had been there, and guess what?

When we started asking for help and getting advisors, that's when I started to turbocharge my success. The simple act of getting a mentor that's 10 steps ahead of you can collapse your learning curve and open doors that you never even knew existed. Even recently, I found myself at a HighLevel Mastermind with people who were way more successful than I was— billionaires, YouTubers with tons of subscribers— and I felt like I didn't belong. Imposter syndrome was creeping in. But one of my mentors there basically pulled me aside and said, get out of your head and go ask for help or advice on something. And I did, and it was transformative. And so the lesson for me and for you: whatever you lack, someone else has knowledge, connections, resources, and many are willing to share or partner if you bring value and a learning attitude.

Attitude.

You cannot be too proud to learn. Strategic partnerships also mean modeling success. So find a blueprint instead of reinventing the wheel.

When my business was struggling, I asked, who has solved a problem like this before?

That led me to study Bill Gates and how he grew Microsoft through partnerships. I literally modeled my next steps after what Bill Gates did. We formed an exclusive distribution partnership in another country, just like Microsoft partnered with IBM back in the day, and that move became our first big win.

Win. And we copied success.

And you can do this in any industry. If you're starting with nothing, identify people who started in similar circumstances and then made it big.

Study their path. What strategies did they use? What mindsets did they have?

We cover a lot of them here on this channel. If you want to start a business online but have no money, go research stories of people who bootstrapped a successful startup from zero.

Emulate their tactics.

This isn't about just being a copycat.

Cat.

It's about learning the principles of success from others and applying them in your own unique way. And most importantly, put yourself in proximity to greatness. So you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with, right? As the famous Jim Rohn saying goes. If you currently hang around naysayers or people with small goals, find ways to get around bigger thinkers. That might mean attending networking events or joining online communities or even just consuming content from high achievers every day like we do here. I kind of hacked this through YouTube, right? Profiling and virtually hanging out with mentors like Steve Jobs in his videos, and it filled me with belief and strategies I never would have had on my own. So when you model the success habits of others and build win-win partnerships, you're essentially standing on shoulders of giants. They give you a boost to see further and move faster than you could do alone. Momentum and decision speed. Money loves speed. When you have nothing, your greatest asset is not money. It's time and agility.

Speed.

You can move fast because you're small. You can pivot quickly because you're not weighed down by anything. To actually get rich from nothing, you need to build momentum and make decisions quickly rather than overthinking and waiting for perfect conditions. One thing I've learned from both my experience and by studying other successful entrepreneurs is this: imperfect action beats perfect inaction every time. The longer you wait to make a move, the more likely someone else will swoop in or your motivation will fade. Opportunities, they have a shelf life. A lot of people start to waste years getting ready, writing 50 business plans, researching to death, waiting for the stars to align.

Don't do that.

Launch 1.0, improve later. As LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said, if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched too late. So get version 1.0 out there and course correct with real feedback. I used to struggle with this and probably still do. My nature is to be cautious. I hated failing. It sucked. And early on, I'd overthink decisions out of fear. What if it doesn't work?

What if I look stupid?

It kept me stuck. I had to train myself to speed up my decision-making. And one trick that helped was adopting Jeff Bezos's regret minimization framework. So when I was 19, I had to decide between taking a high-paying job or betting on my struggling business. I asked myself, when I'm 40, what will I regret more? And the answer was clear. I'd regret not knowing if my business could succeed. Bezos's idea is to project yourself forward and ask which choice avoids the bigger regret. For me, that meant leaping into the business. I told myself when I'm an old man, I'd rather know and fail than not know. And that perspective pushes you to act faster on your dreams because the pain of potential regret outweighs the fear of failure right now. And so now I use an even faster mental hack. I've learned just to trust my gut and just do it. I believe great ideas don't randomly pop into your head. They come to you for a reason. So I've adopted this mindset of if I have an idea come to me, I have to go and do it. I don't overthink. I don't overplan like I used to. I get an idea and start immediately. Great ideas flow through me even if I have no clue how it's all going to work out. And I found that when you move on inspiration quickly, amazing things happen before the doubt creeps in. It's almost like the universe is rewarding your momentum. You'll figure out the details on the way instead of trying to have a perfect map from the start. And this applies to building wealth too. You don't need to know every step of your 5-year plan. You need to take that first step right now. So you want to start a business but have no funding? Start one that doesn't require money. A service business, freelancing, selling something that you already own.

Just start.

Want to invest but only have $50? Begin with micro-investing platforms or saving $5 a day. The key is to build momentum because small wins lead to bigger wins and momentum creates confidence. It becomes this flywheel. At first you're pushing really hard and nothing's moving, but once it starts spinning, it gets easier and faster. So make decisions with speed and courage, and you'll gather momentum that carries you through obstacles that stops slower movers. Remember, it's easier to steer a car that's moving than one that's parked. So get moving now.

Not next week.

Not when you feel ready. Ready is an illusion. Act before you're ready and you'll be surprised at how far you can go. Discipline and consistency. Consistency. If you want to get rich from nothing, you must master discipline and consistency. This is the not-so-sexy part of success that most people ignore, and that's why most people never reach their goals. It's way easier to talk about big dreams than to show up every single day and do the boring hard work.

But guess what?

That daily grind is where the fortunes are actually built. Wealth isn't one big lucky strike. It's the compound effect of small actions repeated consistently over time. Discipline means doing what needs to be done even when you don't feel like it, especially when you don't feel like it. It's building the habits that move you forward and sticking to them day in, day out. It can start with something as simple as how do you start your day. So many people sabotage themselves every morning by hitting the snooze button a dozen times. And I've said this before, I'll say it again, the first thing you do every day is tell yourself it's okay not to hit your goals when you hit snooze.

Think about that.

You had a goal to wake up at a certain time, and the first action you took was to break that commitment. That mentality bleeds into everything. So discipline might start with getting up when you said you would and using that extra time to work on you. Read something inspiring, watch a video, exercise, plan your day. For me, I start every day by feeding my mind belief. I go on my believe walk where I'm walking outside and watching an inspiring video for myself that gets me set up for the day. That routine sets the tone for me for a productive day. So figure out a routine that primes you for success and then stick to it religiously. Consistency is closely related but slightly different. It's about showing up consistently and putting in the reps even when progress seems really slow. So when I started on YouTube, trust me, I was not an overnight success. In fact, I sucked on camera. I'm naturally an introvert.

I was awkward.

I was stiff. It took me 350 videos before I even liked my own content a little bit. 350 videos before I wasn't completely embarrassed by what I was making.

I would watch my early videos and cringe, literally hit pause and say, oh, this is so bad. I can't watch this. But I kept posting.

I kept practicing. I kept improving tiny bit by tiny bit. It took around 700 videos before I created one that actually inspired me when I watched it back. 700 tries to hit one that I'm proud of. Can you imagine most people doing that? No, because most people would have quit at video number 10 where they still weren't getting views and still felt extremely awkward. By video 50, they say, I guess I'm just not cut out for this YouTube thing. That's why most people never break through.

They give up way too soon.

So I just happened to persevere through hundreds of mediocre videos because I knew consistency was the only way I would eventually get good.

And it paid off.

Today the channel is over 4 million subscribers. But it took years of consistent effort. And I often remind my community, you very rarely see people who win in any aspect of life who aren't passionate about the thing that they're doing. Passion gives you the motivation to stay consistent, and consistency eventually brings results. Discipline also means sacrificing short-term pleasure for long-term gain. It might mean saving money diligently even when it's hard so you have capital to invest or to start a business. It might mean saying no to nights out or Netflix binges so you can work on your side hustle. For me, discipline is sometimes literally staring at a bag of Doritos, right? It's behind me here on my desk and not eating it. And a fun fact, I do keep that behind me.

It's just as a test of willpower.

You can go look up dandodoritos.com. Just thinking about Doritos or seeing the word Doritos, I have this Pavlovian response. I'm drooling right now. I just want to eat it. So my strategy is called Daniel Doritos. I'll remind myself that I'm stronger than the Doritos. And that bag has been there for so long, it's probably expired, and my mouth still waters when I look at it. But not eating from it every day is a small victory that builds my self-control muscle. It's symbolic. If I can resist that temptation, I can resist others. The point is, you need to train your self-discipline like a muscle. Maybe not with junk food like me, but in your own ways. Set up little challenges that make you mentally strong, because if you can conquer yourself, external obstacles become a lot easier. At the end of the day, consistency and discipline create momentum that money can't buy. They turn ordinary people into extraordinary success stories. If you stay consistent, working on your craft, learning, improving, hustling, the results will compound. It's like putting money in an investment account every day. At first it's small, but over years it grows into a fortune. Your work ethic is the same. Those tiny daily gains, those hours put in when others are sleeping, those blogs or videos or sales calls made every single day. They pile up into something huge, and people will start calling you an overnight success because they won't see the years of quiet, disciplined effort that built the foundation. But you'll know, and you'll be damn proud of it. So the bottom line is, you can get rich from nothing, but you have to believe big, bounce back from your setbacks, learn from other people, move fast on opportunities, and show up with consistency. It's not easy, but it's simple. The formula is right there. Now it's on you to go take action. So go make your move, no matter how small, today.

Your future rich self is waiting. Your brain is not built for nonstop screens and indoor stress.

It is begging for fresh air.

And when you step outside, even for a few minutes, your mind resets. Stress drops, ideas rise. You feel alive again. If you've been stuck, tired, or blocked, the real problem might be that you're just not getting enough sky. I will show you why this matters more than you think. Most entrepreneurs wear burnout like a badge of honor. You grind, you grind, you grind indoors, and you think you're being productive. Meanwhile, Norway, one of the happiest countries on the earth, has a secret weapon. Free Luftsliv. Free Luftsliv. It literally means open air life in Norwegian. They believe life's meant to be lived outside, hiking, skiing, or just sitting in the park. It's part of their culture and their routine. And guess what? Studies show being in green spaces cuts anxiety and boosts your ability to think clearly. In one survey, 90% of Norwegians said they feel less stressed and in a better mood after time in nature. 90%! While we're pounding coffee and hunched over laptops, they're literally refreshing their brains outdoors. You see the contrast here? So here's the consequence: if you keep hustling nonstop indoors, never taking a brief breather, you are on a fast track to burnout. No clarity, no creativity, and eventually no business because you'll quit or collapse. I know it sounds harsh, but I've lived it too. Years ago, I bought a company and tried to do everything myself. I took on everyone's problems and I worked past exhaustion. I was so stressed I had to take sleeping pills just to get me through the night. Me, Mr. Believe, popping sleeping pills because my mind wouldn't shut off. It was so unhealthy. I nearly broke myself by never taking break. And that experience taught me something important: even your strengths turn into weaknesses when pushed too far. Grinding 24/7 is not a strength, it's a recipe for disaster. Now here's the flip side, here's a solution, and it might surprise you. There's a famous story about two woodcutters in a forest. Both are chopping wood like their life depends on it. One guy just hacks away non-stop, never pausing. The other guy stops every once in a while to sharpen his saw. All else equal, same tree, same tools, who do you think cut more wood by day's end? The guy who sharpened his saw. Those short breaks made him far more effective. Free-loose-leave, embracing the open-air life, is how you sharpen your mental saw as an entrepreneur. It's how you keep your edge razor-sharp instead of grinding it down to a dull nub. And I wish I'd understood this earlier. Fast forward today, when I'm super stressed now, you know what I do?

I don't push harder.

I literally get up and go outside and I take a walk. I breathe, I let go for a bit. No phone, no agenda, just a quick walk to clear my head. In fact, right now in my backyard, I set up a tent just so that I can spend as much time outside as possible as well. My goal is 5 hours a day outside every day, even in the cold Canadian winter. If the Norwegians can do it, I can do it too here in Canada. Now I know what you're thinking, Evan, I can't afford to take time off. I can't just go frolic in the forest. I got a business to run. Or maybe I live in a city, there's no nature around me. Listen, those objections are exactly why you're stuck. You think you're saving time by grinding every second, but you're actually losing time by running your brain into the ground. Science backs this up. Stanford researchers found that a simple walk can boost your creative output by an average of 60%. 60%. Steve Jobs knew this. He was famous for holding walking meetings meetings outside. It's what I try to do as well with my meetings on Teams is get outside and walk, even if they're Zoom calls. Mark Zuckerberg does it too. Why? Because movement and fresh air sparks new ideas. Problems you've been stewing on for hours at your desk magically reveal solutions after a 15-minute walk outside. I can't tell you how many video ideas or tough decisions have clicked for me while I was outside walking around my neighborhood. And about that no nature around excuse, that's not going to fly either. Free Loop Sleeve is about using whatever nature you have available. You don't need to have a cabin in the woods or Norwegian fjord in your backyard. Walk around the block, find a local park, sit on a bench under a tree. Heck, if you can't get to a park, step out on your balcony or front steps for 5 minutes of fresh air. The research shows even looking at something green or feeling the sun on your face, you can start relaxing your brain. In the Nordic countries, companies even do walk-and-talk meetings outside. It's built into their work culture. So if they can brainstorm on a stroll in the middle of a work So can you. You make the time because it pays back in spades. Remember the woodcutter? Sharpening the saw might feel like a delay, but it dramatically increases your output. All right, so you're on board, or you're at least curious. You're thinking, okay, Evan, how do I actually do this without falling behind? What does embracing nature do for me as an entrepreneur, really? Perfect. Let's break it down and let's get practical about how free, loose-sleeve, open-air living brain builds your belief, your resilience, your clarity, and your energy as a business owner. So now, how does feel loose sleeve actually translate into entrepreneurial success? I'm going to give you 5 specific ways getting outdoors will make you a better entrepreneur and some tips to get started today. Number 1: mental clarity on demand. Ever notice how your best ideas often come in the shower or on a drive or somewhere away from your desk? That is not a coincidence. When you step into nature, Even just a quiet street with some trees. Your brain gets a break from all of the noise. Studies show that our minds relax in a natural setting, which helps us focus more effectively afterward. It's like hitting a reset button on your brain. I can't count how many times I've been stuck on a problem, taking a 10-minute walk outside, and boom, clarity. There's actually a term for this: attention restoration. Your poor brain only has so much willpower and concentration each day before it tanks, especially if you're juggling a million tasks. Nature gives it a chance to breathe, literally and figuratively. So schedule a small nature break when you hit that midday slump or when you're overwhelmed. You'll return with a clearer head, ready to solve that problem that seemed impossible an hour ago. Number 2, a creativity boost. Goodbye block. Nature is basically the Miracle-Gro for your creativity. I already told you about the Stanford study, the 60% boost in creative output from just walking outside. Imagine you could increase your creative problem-solving by 60% whenever you want just by walking out the door. That's insane ROI for your time. When you're brainstorming your next business idea or writing copy or solving a tricky issue in your company, don't sit staring at the screen banging your head. Change the scenery, go outside, move your body. Even the act of walking seems to get your creative juices flowing. And here's a fun fact: some of the greatest creators and leaders in history swore by walks. Beethoven took long walks every day. Darwin did too. And we know about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Coincidence? Nope. When you're in nature, your mind can wander in a good way, making connections it wouldn't make in a boxed-in setting. I've had video ideas that just weren't coming together. I leave the office, take a walk with some trees, and suddenly I'm hit with a bolt of inspiration for that perfect line or angle. It feels almost too too easy. You might say, well, that's nice, but I work in a concrete jungle. Again, find any slice of outdoors. Even walking on the city sidewalks has benefits. But if you can find a tree-lined street or a small park, that's even better. The key is movement plus fresh air plus change of scenery. That equals creative sparks. So try it the next time that you're stuck. Keep a notepad or use your phone recorder to capture ideas that come. I do this all the time. I'll literally record voice notes on my phone while walking because the ideas start flowing so quickly. Number 3, stress reduction and burnout prevention. This one is huge. If you want longevity in business, you need to manage stress. Entrepreneurs face massive pressure. I see you, I live it. But if you don't release that pressure valve, it will explode on you. Free-loose-sleeve is like a pressure release valve. When you're out in nature, your stress hormones actually drop. Cortisol, the stress hormone that wreaks havoc on your body and mind, goes down when you spend time outside. Your heart rate and blood pressure go down too. You physically can't stay as stressed in a natural environment. Your body starts to calm. Ever step outside after a heated meeting or a frustrating call and notice you feel a little bit better? Amplify that effect by making outdoor time a regular habit. It's preventative medicine for burnout. Instead of waiting until you're at a breaking point like I did years ago, build in small daily or weekly doses of nature to keep your stress in check. So for me, I do a morning walk walk by myself. It does wonders. I call it my believe walk. I try to work outside from my tent wherever possible and spend my 5 hours outside every day. Or if I've had back-to-back calls and my head's going to explode, I go outside even for 5 minutes just to walk around the block and breathe. I come back noticeably calmer. My team can tell. My wife can tell. Oh, he went for a walk. He's okay now. It's almost funny. And beyond the immediate calm, this habit builds your resilience. You're training your mind and body to recover faster. Entrepreneurs who last are the ones who know how to bounce back from setbacks out, burning out. Use nature as your bounce-back strategy. Even on crazy busy days, you can find a few minutes to step outside. No excuses. Think of it as an essential part of your schedule, not an optional luxury. You wouldn't skip charging your phone when the battery's low. Don't skip charging yourself. Number 4: Building real resilience, mind and body. Entrepreneurship is a roller coaster. You need resilience to survive the ups and the downs. So you want a great way to build resilience? Get outside and move. Push yourself a bit out there. There is a benefit most people don't talk about. Spending time outdoors, especially if you do something active, makes you tougher. It doesn't mean you have to go run marathons or go climb Everest. It can be as simple as a hike on the weekend, a bike ride, even a cold morning walk. When you use your body in nature, sometimes you'll face a little discomfort— a steep hill, some rain, cold wind. Instead of avoiding it, embrace it. Every time you overcome a little challenge out there, you're teaching yourself, I can handle this. It's training for your brain. So studies on flee-loose-leave actually highlight this. Using your body outdoors, encountering a bit of resistance like rough weather or tough terrain, it helps you develop more resilience. You realize you're stronger than you thought. The Norwegians also have an expression that there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. And I love the little mind trick, mental reframe because when it's cold, when it's raining, you don't want to go outside like I did for 1 hour this morning in the cold, snowy Canadian winter. It reminds you of who you are. So don't always pick the easy route. Challenge yourself a bit outside. Take the longer walk, bike uphill, go out even if it's drizzling, as long as it's safe. You'll build grit. And if you do it consistently, resilience is a muscle. Plus, the side benefit is you'll get in better shape. Healthy body, healthy mind, more energy and stamina to pour into your business. It is all connected. This is sustainable energy, not chugging energy drinks and praying that you don't crash. And number 5, renewed sense of purpose and belief in yourself. When you're grinding away at work day and night, it's easy to lose sight of why you're doing any of it. You get tunnel vision. Stepping into nature blows open that tunnel. It gives you greater perspective. You're reminded the world is bigger than that client email or that launch or whatever fire that you're fighting today. I can't tell you how many times I've been stressed about a deal or a metric, and then I go for a hike through some quiet trail, even sit in the park, and it just hits me. None of these little problems are the end of the world. I reconnect with my why. I remember I'm doing this to serve, to make an impact, to spread belief, and that bigger picture clarity comes rushing back to me, and I return to work with more conviction. Now, nature has this almost spiritual effect. In fact, experts say that a lot of people feel connected to something greater than themselves. Themselves when they're out in nature. It's humbling, but in a good way. You feel part of something much bigger than yourself, and that can fill you with a sense of purpose. Also, spending time outdoors can build your self-confidence in more subtle ways. So maybe you set a little goal to jog 3 laps in the park and then you do it, or you learn a new outdoor skill like lighting a campfire or simply discovering a new trail on your own. Those things seem unrelated to business, but they build you up. You prove to yourself in small ways that you can figure things out, that you can keep going when it's uncomfortable. It's self-belief training. Linda McGurk, who wrote the book On Free Loose Sleeve, said it perfectly: open-air life is about giving yourself permission to just be. No pressure to compete. And in that space, you find your strength again. When you come back to your startup grind after a weekend camping or an evening walk, you carry that inner strength with you. You're a little bit calmer, you're a little more confident, and a lot more believing in your mission. Your team will feel that energy too. Leadership with calm, confident energy becomes a game changer. So how do you adopt feel loose leave as a busy entrepreneur? Start small and make it routine. This isn't about dropping everything to go live in a tent for a month, though hey, if that's your thing, go do it. It's about weaving open-air moments into your consistently. So schedule a 15-minute nature break each day. Put it on your calendar like a meeting because it's just as important. Maybe first thing in the morning you take your coffee and you step outside instead of scrolling on your phone, or midday you eat lunch outside a couple times a week. Maybe you declare Saturday mornings your hiking time, or you take your kids to the park Sunday afternoon. Treat these not as guilt-inducing "I should be working" moments, but as vital investments in your productivity and in your well-being. Remember, sharpen the saw. Every minute you spend sharpening, recharging, is going to let you cut faster and better when you're back at work. And don't wait for a crisis to force you to slow down, like my burnout episode. Be proactive. So your homework— yes, giving you homework— is to design your first free loose-sleeve moment starting tomorrow. Actually, no, starting today. As soon as the video ends, I want you to step outside for even just 5 5 minutes. Take a walk or simply stand on your doorstep. Breathe in some nice fresh air deeply. Notice how you feel. That clear-headed, slightly energized feeling? That's what we're going for, and you can have it daily. Over time, maybe that 5 minutes becomes 15. Maybe a weekend hike, maybe even a little getaway in nature when you can. You'll find your stress goes down, your focus goes up, and your capacity to believe in your crazy big dreams expands because you're not constantly constantly drained. The entrepreneurial journey is a marathon. To win it, you need sustainable energy, not just spurts of hustle. So free loose leave is your sustainable energy source. It's how you refuel your mind, your body, and spirit so you can keep going 100% without breaking. It's how you stay happy, not just successful. And guess what? Happy entrepreneurs are way more creative and productive. When you make open-air living part of your life, you're building your resilience. You'll think more clearly, strategically, You'll tap into creativity on a whole new level. You'll handle stress like a seasoned pro, and you'll strengthen that core belief in yourself and your mission that nothing can knock you loose. Now go outside and make greatness happen. And when you come back, get ready to crush your next goal with a clear mind and a full heart. You're not sleeping because you're too busy thinking. Your brain doesn't feel safe enough to relax, and that's why you can't fall asleep even when you really want to. This isn't just about getting more sleep. If you don't fix this now, you'll feel more tired, make more mistakes, and won't have the energy to do what matters most. In this interview, Annika Binns helps me understand what's really stopping me from sleeping well. She explains how stress doesn't always feel like stress. Sometimes it's just doing too much, caring too much, or thinking too much. She shows how even good days can be too full and how your brain needs space to calm down before bed. She gives simple tools to rest during the day, fall asleep faster, and stay asleep longer. Sleep isn't lazy, it's smart. And when you learn to rest better, you can live and lead better too.

All right, we're here with Annikin, and she is going to completely change my life. That was the, that was the promise made up front, guaranteed. She's in my master's program. She's an amazing human. And she heard that I was having sleep problems. And she said, I think I can fix that, or at least work towards a solution. And she's going to help me on this episode. And hopefully, I can sleep a lot better, which I can use that energy to go change the world.

Anakin, what do you think?

You know, I always keep my promises.

I love it.

So, let's start here.

Before we actually dive in, you heard me meet, talk about sleep probably a whole bunch of times, you know, at our mastermind events. What was it that I said that made you feel, hey, like, I can help this guy?

I think it was probably over a year ago that you mentioned that you had been having sleep issues. And I, I've been there myself. I had, like, for several years I was having sleep issues. So whenever people come to me and they're struggling with sleep, I'm like, oh, I feel you, and I'll do whatever I can to help you. And, you know, Evan, sleep issues is always at some level related to stress. It can be everyday stress or it can be old stuff.

Today is a great time because last night I actually had some stress dealing with the situation. You know, you get that like email that, you know, just before going to bed, like, oh my God. But in general, I don't, I don't feel like stressed out. So it's great that we maybe can handle both, but okay, what do we do?

And that's really interesting, Evan, that you're not feeling stressed in general during the day. And we've had that conversation before also. It is normal that, you know, at some points in life we are— sleep is affected by something. And even me last week, I had several nights where I had stress during the night. Sleep wasn't optimal. I don't know why, and it's normal. It happens. So for anyone listening, it is normal. We are human beings. We're not machines. We're not robots. So once in a while, it's normal to have bad sleep. And so I'm curious, let's start with where, like, when did this appear? When did you realize that you were sleeping well, suboptimal? Can we put it like that?

I'm trying to think when I started tracking. So one of the biggest challenges that I found since wearing the Oura Ring is I am in bed but I am not sleeping. So I will, I will, it takes me a while to go to sleep typically. I made a few tweaks but still. Um, and I'll wake up before I need to wake up. Just, I've, I was hours before I need to wake up and I'll still just wake up. It's like, I'm like, "Just sleep." And then, I also will wake up in the middle of the night and not know. So, there'll be periods of time where the Oura Ring will say that I was awake and like, "Oh, I didn't realize." I'm not getting up and going to the bathroom or anything. I just wake up apparently or stop breathing or something. So, that took me down this journey of sleep apnea and fixing my jaw and all sorts of myofascial tongue exercises and all sorts of crazy things. Because if you ask me, how well do you sleep? Like, I don't know, I get— I'm in bed for 8 hours a night, but I'm only getting like 6.5 hours of sleep. And so I don't know how long it's been, as long as I've had my Oura Ring tracking, which is at least a couple years, but it's probably way longer.

Yeah, that's interesting. So when you wake up in the morning, do you feel like you you've actually had 8 hours, do you feel well rested or do you feel tired?

Almost never.

I don't feel tired.

Like, I don't feel like, oh my God, I just want to stay in bed. I don't know, maybe that just entrepreneurship has just wired me. Okay, get up, let's go. But on the days when I do feel, I had one night last week where I had like an 85 readiness or something. It's like, oh my God, let's change the world.

This is amazing.

Amazing. You know, you look at today— last night was not a good night, so it's, it's a great little test here. I slept like 5 hours last night, uh, like asleep 5 hours. A normal night might be 6 and a half, um, and I've just gotten used to it, you know. It's like the pain is just there, so you're just used to it. But on the few days, I'd say like maybe 5% of days days, I feel amazing in the morning. I can definitely notice a difference. So my normal, my baseline is pretty rough that I just got accustomed to.

Yeah. Well, that's so interesting that you're saying that, Evan. And I think so. I was having this conversation with my husband last night, and he's also been doing some changes. And he realizes that he could go on, and he even thought that he functioned well on less sleep. And now that he's sleeping more, he's like, wow, this is so different. And I do think a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs, they sleep too little and they're just used to that feeling of being tired, using coffee to get through the day, and it just becomes the new normal, right?

I would not say that I like function better on less sleep. Um, and I, I deeply value sleep. You sent me that book, um, The Pulse Cure. And so that's been one of the— how do you say the guy's name?

Torkel Farah. Torkel. Torkel. Yeah.

Okay. And his IG is like Dr. Torkel, I guess.

Yeah.

That led me to get the Apple Watch and basically it tracks— the Oura Ring will track your heart rate, but it's like 15-minute delay where the Apple Watch is a little faster. And I set an alert that if I'm— I don't know, I don't know my heart's racing. What am I at right now? Like, I have zero— I'm at 96 right now.

Yeah.

But I couldn't tell you, am I at 66? Am I at 116? I have no idea. So I have poor awareness, or I'm just focusing on different things. Yeah, I don't remember what your question was.

I was just talking about how a lot of people go through the day and they they just get so used to functioning because it's like that every day. And you felt that when you actually have that good night's sleep that you feel amazing and we want to get you there. Do you fall asleep easily or do you lie awake, ruminate and stuff?

It usually takes me a while to fall asleep. I don't like to say it that way. It's like historically, I just, I don't like the label of like it takes me a while to fall sleep. Yeah, just in general. But historically, it has taken me a while to, to fall asleep. My brain, uh, you know, doesn't turn off, which is typical entrepreneurship stuff. Uh, everything that I've done around that, um, you know, meditate— like, I can meditate for 10 hours before and then my brain will still be going.

It's like there's no—

my hack in high school, so I guess this has been going on for a while now, if now that I think hack.

My hack in high school was to listen to a sports radio station because I love the Toronto Blue Jays. It's a baseball team. I would set my alarm clock to— it was like a radio alarm clock— to go for an hour. And in that hour, listening to people call in talking about the Blue Jays, I would eventually fall asleep. So having it, having something to distract my brain but not that I care so much about it that it keeps me awake, has been like trying to— the magic sweet This past week I've been, I've been full on, uh, no phone, no electronics past 9:30, 9:30, 9:30, and then just reading in bed and, um, basically read until I start to yawn. And so that's been the little distraction. I need a mental distraction cuz if I'm just sitting there, my mind will just go on a million places, which then keeps me awake.

Or at least that's what I, maybe not, maybe I need the right meditation and then I'm, you know, it's gone. I could, I need the right hypnosis and then it's over. But I'm very open. I believe in sleep.

I'm an advocate of sleep. I want to sleep. I budget sleep. I don't have anything in my calendar on any day before 10:00 AM and I'm going to bed at 9:30, right?

So it's like I have calendar space that I want to be filled up with sleep.

Sleep. So I'm not like, I'll sleep when I'm dead, not that person.

Yeah, well, that's a good starting point. You're dedicated and you want this to happen and you know that it's important. So okay, I'll definitely make you a hypnotic audio file that will help you go to sleep and stay asleep during the night. And I'll make it based on whatever comes up today. And, you know, Now, what is really interesting, and I didn't know this myself until I started tracking my stress levels, is that when we have a day which is just full of activity, it doesn't have to be stressful. You don't have to feel stressed. It's just like when you're doing stuff without taking a break, you are in stress. It doesn't have to be super high stress, but you're activated throughout the day. And when you don't take enough breaks during the day, your body doesn't wind down. Like you can feel mentally relaxed, like there is no stress, but you've been doing stuff. Maybe like for me, it was running errands or cooking dinner or going for a walk, just easy stuff like that. And still that was enough stress during the day. And it made, it made the stress continue throughout the night. So what you're experiencing, it sounds like that you will fall asleep, but the sleep quality isn't good and you're waking up, which is a sign that there is stress in your system. And there can be a lot of reasons for that. And I know that you did work with Dr. Dunwood as well, and there could be some old stuff there. So often when I work with people, it's either the everyday stress they have right now, or it's old trauma. And I spoke to Dr. Dunwood also and discussed your case.

Case.

And he said, what did you find after discussing and discussing my case?

Which I'm totally okay with. Yeah.

I was just curious to, to, to get his, uh, uh, his thoughts. And he said, you know, and he's done the work with you. He's done the clearing and, um, probably it's just current stress and that's what we need to focus on. Um, so I think that's where we're gonna start working and we can easily do a session later where we go back and see if there's anything else there from childhood or whatever. Creating that stress. Because what often happens with clients is maybe they had some— something happened during childhood that, that taught their brain that it's dangerous to go to bed. It can be a child and something, maybe something happens and it's not necessarily something dangerous, but there's a loud noise or something that is interpreted as dangerous by the brain. It can create this sensation that it's scary to go to bed. Or, you know, some people are actually abused and stuff happens, and that can create the link to going to bed, that that is a dangerous thing for the brain. I don't think that's the case. I just want to mention it. And those are things that often come up when I work with people, and we can definitely have a look there later. I don't think we need to.

Yeah, I mean, I'm super fascinated by it. As far as I know, I feel like I had like an amazing childhood, super supportive parents, no abuse, uh, super lucky in that respect. Um, so it's either nothing or I'm so blocked that it's like everything, right? Like that's the other option, is like, hey, something so devastating happened that it just completely removed my memory of it and I'm still living that pattern, which I'm also totally open to finding a way to uncover that. What you just said about the, uh, Fear of going to sleep for some reason, a loud noise or monsters or like whatever that I might be afraid of. Nothing comes to mind, but I haven't thought about it either. So that's worthwhile. When I was younger, was there any reason why I couldn't go to sleep or have difficulty falling asleep? I think back just to the Blue Jay radio, like having difficulty, and that was my solution. But what caused the problem? Problem. Yeah, I don't, I don't, there might be something there.

Yeah. Well, often people don't remember, they can, when I take them back in hypnosis, they can go back to, you know, being 1 year old, and they're in bed crying, and their parents don't hear them, for example. And that's not really stuff that we will remember. And it's still there.

Yeah. Okay.

Well, that's good.

That's some good food for thought.

Yeah. So yeah, we can have a look at that later. I don't really think we need that. So we'll save it for later. It's an option. So how often do you just give your brain free space to just be with your thoughts during the day?

I'll answer this way. You can tell me if I answer your question or not. I have different days where I do different things. So I have some days that are just heavy meetings all day and some days that are just way more open. I haven't noticed a trend on like, on these days it's more I'm better than, like, I sleep better than others. So like Monday, I mean, is my mentoring day. So it's all day mentoring team, like all day call, 25-minute, 5-minute break, 25-minute, the whole day. Um, and I don't know how I sleep. I usually get a massage on Monday after. So that happens my two crazy days, like Monday, Thursday.

I then do a massage at night, which usually makes my sleep worse, funny, funnily enough.

Enough, um, because I maybe rest too much at the massage place, and then it often will hurt my sleep when I do a massage. But other days, like Wednesday, Friday, I book zero. There's nothing booked on those days, and I will, I will create space. So, you know, how, how do I— how I'm interpreting your question, um, I'm not ever really just sitting around. I mean, I'll go for walks twice a day with Nina, and we and I have a goal to be outside for 2 hours plus every day. Um, but on a Wednesday or Friday, I'm still very engaged in stuff, but I get to pick whatever I'm working on as opposed to like being tightly controlled by a schedule or calendar. Is that, is that, am I answering the question?

Well, but yeah, it is. Uh, it's giving me a good picture. So what we need to remember is that we have the need to process our thoughts and be creative and, and just think about stuff. And when we're switched on, we are not accessing that. We're not doing that. So if we go through the whole day and we're on social media, we're talking to people, there's stuff— we're outside of our head, then we have that need to be inside of our head. And then the evening comes, we've been switched on, focus outward the whole day and then we're trying to go to sleep and then the brain switches on. Right. And when our thoughts are very active, it raises stress levels. It's a, you know, it's really difficult to sleep when we have a lot of thoughts thinking about stuff. And even it doesn't have to be stressful things, right? It's just creative thoughts. I know you're creative. I know you have a lot to do and it's probably a lot of fun stuff that you're thinking about.

Up.

And that is enough to affect your sleep. So my, like, one really important thing that I tell all my clients is that you need to give yourself space to just be with your thoughts during the day and just like turn off your phone, be with your head. Just, just go for a walk is fantastic. You do that a lot. And that is really a great way of just, you know, thinking, letting the thoughts just run through and processing whatever is there. And then And it's important to remember that we have something called the default mode network and it switches on when we are relaxing. So our brain is, it's supposed to start to think and become active. It does that. It's a normal thing. So, and especially when there are a lot of things we haven't thought through, then it will become more active. Like, and like you mentioned at the beginning, okay, you get an email at night and boom, you the thoughts are just raising and stuff is happening.

You know what was interesting?

If I look at Mondays, it's straight meetings. And what I usually at 1:00, I'll 1 to 2, I'll try to work outside and do something else. That's when I'll like do my email or social media while I walk outside. Even in winter, it's like, it's cold, but I'm walking outside. I added our, my sales team meets every day at 1:00. And so, because Monday's a mentoring day, I joined them Monday at 1:00. 'clock. And what I would find is by my meeting with Nina, which is 3:30, I would be physically like crushed, and it'd be a lot harder to focus, and I'd really have to push through to— not nothing to do with Nina, she's great.

She is.

It's all Nina's fault. Can you just tell me it's Nina's fault and I can go upstairs and tell her, you know what Anakin said? So, So, so what I did was I, I took that out and I meet my sales team on a different day every month, every week. And then I felt better, but that still may not be optimal. Like it, it taking that 1 hour out just helps me stay at a certain level, but, but there still could be, hey, maybe I'm still doing way too much to the point where like, hey, if I did it all the way through, then I'm actually like getting physically crushed is not the end objective.

There are several things like speaking of sleep hygiene and just say like a good night's sleep starts in the morning. And I'm sure that, you know, that getting sunlight in the morning is really important to set your circadian rhythm, right? Because when you view sunlight in the morning, your melatonin production will start 14 hours after.

So I'll wake up.

Let me see where right now. Now every day I keep track of how long I spend outside. So right now I'm at hour 32:17 and it's like 3:30. So we'll go do a walk outside with Nina after. Um, but I usually do an hour or so in the morning every day, almost every day. I mean, yeah, it'd have to be travel or something, but pretty much every day. Winter, I mean, the Canadian winter sun is not amazing, but still Just, just fresh air, just different routine. Um, that's fairly consistent. Like every day I'm out in the morning and definitely average 2 to 2.5 hours every day outside. During Mastermind, we don't get enough outside time.

So that, that, I don't know, I don't know how to fix that.

Open suggestions, meet out in the parking lot and chat. Uh, But again, apart from those types of things, if I'm at home and I'm on routine, like 85% of my days, I'm getting at least 2, 2.5 hours outside and definitely nursing. Sleep hygiene-wise, I've got a lot dialed in, although I'm still super open, you know, like earplugs, mouth guard, mouth tape, dark room, mask, 8 sleep to cool me down to 19 degrees. I'm sure magnesium, uh, I'm sure all sorts of stuff. Um, and I would love for there to be like some magic weighted blanket that would just put me to sleep at night. I think everything adds just a little bit, which is great, but I think this is still maybe the missing piece. I hope it's the missing piece.

All the stuff you're doing is great, and I think it's important. And I also know that when we have, when we have good sleep, we don't really need to do all the other stuff because sleep will just come naturally. Another thing when it comes to sleep hygiene is indoor lighting. I don't know what your house is like. In my house, we have like downlights on all the ceilings and we are, our biological rhythm is regulated by the sunlight. So in nature, and when the sun is high up in the sky, it is in the middle of the day, right? So when we have a lot of bright light inside, especially when it's up over our head, it tells our head that it's in the middle of the day. So it is super important to turn down the lights and make sure that you have light sources which are more like level with your head. So those are just small things which are important.

Wait, wait, wait.

Light sources level with your head?

Yeah, because— so think about it in nature. The sun, the sun regulates our rhythm. In the middle of the day, around noon, the sun is up in the sky, right? And then it gradually goes further and further down and the light gets more red and orange. So when we— we can create that same environment indoors, right? So we can have more dim lighting. A lot of people use like a red light bulb. Bulbs to give that red light and just like turn down at least all the bright lights, which is, you know, above our head.

So you want lamps instead of overhead?

Yeah. So our house is full of the overhead spotlights and it's just like horrible. So I turn them all off and in the winter it's so dark in Norway. So it's just like, I can't see anything.

Yeah.

So that's cool. It's a little, I'm trying to think, we don't really is it— we have pot lights and stuff, but at night, basically after sun is down, there's no overhead lights. Um, we have some— we have some like kind of like what is in here, although that's a little bright, but I don't know what, what kind of light you call that. Is like, uh, LED light, probably. Oh yeah, a what? Oh, LED.

Did you— LED?

Yeah, light. I've never heard it called a LED light.

That's what we say in Norway.

LED light.

That's amazing. Amazing.

But it's not, you're not ever looking at the light, right? It's like, it's, it's behind it.

Yeah.

It's had a cabinet. So like that kind of light we have around. And so that would stay on. And most of the house is like a darker, it's not quite red, but like a dark, like orangey, dark yellow, light orangey kind of color. What I used to do is like the computer, we'd have like the red, the red filter and the phone, same thing. But then after 9:30, now it's just a yellow or like a dark yellow. Uh, I wear it, I just basically put it in my shirt and then I read like this, and then that's my light source. So it's pretty dark. Like, sleep hygiene-wise, I'm sure everything could get a little better. Yeah, but no, like, um, overhead lights are off. But that's a cool distinction. Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say make sure it's at your, your head level, although I guess it makes sense because the sun is setting and there is no overhead light. Yeah, stars, I guess. Um, yeah, I think we're pretty good there, although we'll pay attention.

Well, yeah, it sounds like you're good. And I didn't come up with that myself. Uh, it was, uh, I heard it on Huberman Labs, so I'm not gonna take credit for it.

He's the one I heard about the morning, like, get outside, you know, within 15 minutes. I used to keep a clock, like, I need to be out of the house and like from the feet on the, feet on the ground in the bedroom to outside in 10 minutes every day. I used to be obsessed about that.

Now I take like, that leads like run to the washroom, brush your teeth, get some water, get outside.

It's like became this mission. Like, okay, I don't have to, let's not make it too stressful every morning.

Sounds good. Because our habits, it's great to have good habits. And when they get too rigid and when we create stress around them, it is really counterproductive. Yeah.

Okay.

So I had a scientist on my podcast. She was speaking about biorhythms and she said that research showed that it wasn't, it's not really the light, the blue light from our screens that is affecting our sleep. It doesn't really have that much effect on us. What she said that it is really the content of whatever we are viewing, that we are being stimulated. It, you know, an email or a Netflix series or whatever it is that is just creating activity and makes us think more. And that is the biggest obstacle to sleep is what she said. So my question to you, Evan, is, okay, so I know you like to watch some series at night, right? And it doesn't have to be like, I can even watch TV at night and go straight to bed. And have a great night's sleep. So I think it really depends on what you're watching. And you know, when you're next to Nina sitting on the couch, that can just be really positive, creates a lot of oxytocin and it could be beneficial. So I think like the most important thing to look at is okay, emails, text messages, and everything that can really spark creativity or a lot of thoughts going on.

Yeah.

So I don't have a good way to measure it. The, the, my best method is been the, the heart rate. Like, is my heart rate going up or not? And, um, we don't watch— like, Nina and I will always end the day with watching some show on the couch, relaxing, um, a massage or whatever, and then, and then getting ready for bed. Um, the show we watch is not a business show. It's, I don't know, whatever show, Netflix, um, House of the Dragon or whatever. Um, and when I got this, I started noticing that when we watched, uh, Blacklist— I don't know if you ever saw that show, was like 10 seasons times 20 episodes, so we spent like a year. We watch one show a night, so it's not like we destroy a series. My heart was going into like stress mode. You don't use Oura, you use— what do you use? Yeah, so the, the message is a little different, but that, uh, restored is the best and, and stressed is the worst, and then there's to do in between. Um, I would spend most of my stress time in the day while watching Blacklist.

Like, I'd be stressed out for an hour watching this show.

It's like, what is happening?

This is the most stressful moment of my day.

And so I had to, uh, practice like breathing while I was watching the show. So we didn't stop watching the show, we just started breathing, and then that really helped. And then I had a goal Um, of after the show, how do I get my heart rate down to like, I want it to be high 60s, but then I could never do it. So it's like, okay, like low 70s.

How do I get to low 70s?

And I could not find a great way besides breathing, uh, which is great actually. So breathing really helped, but it didn't matter what I was doing when I was breathing. If it's just heart rate, I mean, there could be obviously other things happening, but I would sit down and, and I could listen to a meditation track and my heart rate would stay at 72, 73 as long as I was doing the deep breathing. Um, I could load email and social media and like nothing— I guess most of the stuff is interesting-ish but not like emergencies. Uh, same thing, like it wouldn't— doing light work wouldn't impact my heart rate. Um, and but I can never get my heart rate like into the 60s with whatever method I was using. Um, I should check actually. By the time I go to bed now and I'm reading, I take my— I don't sleep with anything on me. So I don't like— I just— Oura Ring said I don't sleep with the watch or the phone nearby or anything else. So I actually don't know what my heart rate is. I could try that tonight. What does my heart rate while I'm reading at night in I don't know how to measure to the question of like, what are you doing at night? And are you stressed or thinking?

I don't know how to measure.

I feel fine, but that's a terrible measure because I always feel fine unless I'm dying. I'm fine or I'm dying, right?

It's like I can't feel the gradient. So my feeling is a terrible— I'm great.

You know, it's like it's—

so I'm not a good barometer. So I need a tool to help me.

And so I thought heart rate would be the best tool. But apart, like, the task I'm doing doesn't matter apart from making sure I'm doing deep breathing. So maybe I need a brainwave tool or something else. I'm like completely open. But that was my last experiment was like, how do I get my heart rate down to as low as possible before going to bed?

Yeah. What is really interesting is that you can have inner stress without your heart rate being really be, you know, high. So it is just that starting those creative thought processes, just like excitement or the email or I need to remember or those things. And it doesn't— you don't really have to feel stressed. You can feel fine and the measurements can be fine and still that will be enough stress to prevent you from sleeping because we need to be in the parasympathetic mode. In order to sleep well and fall asleep.

Like, can I get a number for that somehow?

Well, so I use the Garmin watch, which is really the best when it comes to measuring in real time. You get feedback like 100% of the time. It does measure heart rate, and that is the number that tells you if you're stressed or not.

Oh, okay.

So I mean, I don't know, I don't know how accurate the Apple Watch is compared to to others, I'm sure it could be better. Just from Apple Watch heart rate, I'm in— I mean, even when I look the next day on Oura Ring, it measures heart rate slightly differently. Uh, if I breathe, I can get it down, but it— but again, it's what— to what you just said, I forgot the exact wording, but like you could still be stressed even though your heart rate is low. So what are we measuring then if we're not measuring heart rate? But I don't feel stressed. Like, is there a measure of stress? Because as soon as we rely on like, how do you feel?

Like, I don't know, I feel So let's say that someone sends you an email at night and it's just like, wow, this amazing thing. It's so exciting. Or something pops up. I need to remember it. And you're not stressed that the measurements are great and you go to bed and your brain is like, I need to remember this thing. I need to process it. I need to, and just, it is just continuing, you know, working on whatever you have in your head. And that is what is creating enough stress so that you're not getting the deep rest, or that could be one of the explanations. I know that for myself and from other people I work with, that when there is a lot of thoughts in my head or stuff going on at night, I just, I can feel fine and I go to bed and I see that I've had stress throughout the night. So personally, I don't do any screens. Things, emails, phones, nothing at night because I know myself. And if something exciting happens, I'm like, yay. And then it's like, oh, I can't sleep.

I will tell you that you sent me a yoga nidra exercise, or is the progressive muscle relaxation exercise. And that was the only time, the first time I listened to it was the only time I've ever actually fallen sleep doing any kind of guided exercise. And I've worked with like some huge names. I'm not gonna say anything, you know, on the video, but, uh, and it's been relaxing and fine, but it's— it— I just don't ever fall asleep. Um, we used to use, uh, whatever, all the different meditation apps, and Nina passes out in like 2 seconds, and for me the meditation has to complete and then I can pass out. But as long as it's going, because it's giving me something active I need to do, I'm doing it and I'm focused on doing that thing. And then I can't sleep until it's over. But yours, uh, the first time I've done it subsequently, and, and it gets me relaxed but not sleep. Um, when you're counting, when the counting was happening, I forget where I lost track. And then I, I woke up, I was like Oh, it's done. Where am I? What happened?

How long was I out for?

So I'm excited for my sleep homework and project here.

Yeah.

So I will create an audio file for you and I would love a little wishlist because what is probably beneficial for you is that it's something that you listen to while you're in bed before you go to sleep. Right. So I will normally, I create those audio files just programming you to fall asleep and to stay asleep and go into deep rest. And the interesting thing about like the other audio file I made for you was like a relaxation you can do in the middle of the day. And when you do relaxation like that, yoga nidra and other stuff, you teach your brain that it's that it's safe to rest, that it's normal, and it becomes a habit. So really taking time to do those relaxing things during the day is beneficial for our sleep because if we're switched on throughout the day, doing stuff all the time, and then nighttime comes, like our system isn't used to resting anymore. Like if we don't get into parasympathetic mode during the day, we lose— it's a habit like everything else.

Yeah.

And is there no way to measure that?

There's no number to track besides heart rate?

Oh yeah, well, well, it— the heart rate, it says something about your stress levels. So I haven't used the Apple Watch since, since, uh, talking to you.

I've dropped— what did I say, 96? What was I before? Something like that. So we've dropped 14 points. Let's go.

Oh, nice. Yeah. So I don't know the Apple Watch. I'm sorry. So I use the Garmin watch and there it gives me a graph and it's blue when I'm resting and it's orange when I have some kind of stress level. So it's real, like you can follow it in real time throughout the day.

But it's based on heart rate.

Yeah, it is.

Got it. Okay.

So that is a good measurement. So you need to make sure that you are in deep sleep. Deep rest during the day.

Okay.

It can be like, it could be that you're just watching some kind of a show with Nina. Like, when I watch a show at night with my family, I'm in deep rest.

I think it depends on what you're watching, or unless it just massively stresses me out. But then it's more like an action kind of show. Okay, so during the day, yeah, I'm trying to think if my— yeah, probably not. I'm trying to think if I walk around outside, maybe if I sit outside, I might be able to drop it. I can play with it.

Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be that you're meditating or going into deep relaxation. For me, what works is just even I can, I can be working and I can just like recline on the couch and that brings me into parasympathetic. Sympathetic mode.

Huh.

So you— we're all different. We're all like, what works for me might not be what works for you. So you need to make sure that you figure out what works for you. I often just lie down on the floor for maybe 5 minutes, or I bring my laptop on the couch and I just lie there and work, and, and that's relaxing.

So I like to take the laptop and work outside when I can, when it's warm enough. We have like a, a heater outside if— because Canadian Canadian outside time was probably similar to Norway. Um, one of my other goals, so, so Oura Ring has a restored versus stressed metrics, I guess, sounds similar, may not be as good as that one, but, um, my goal is to have equal, like to have more restored time than stress, and I'm about even.

Yeah.

So on average in a month, I'm a— I'm— I'll keep track. I've got a year's worth of data in a Google Doc every day. Like, I track, uh, restored versus stress time, and I'm within half an hour of zero. So some days are more—

like, when it's Mastermind, it's all stress.

It's like, yeah, 5 hours of stress.

What happened?

Uh, but on other days it's a lot, so— but it evens out.

So, but, but it'd be—

maybe—

I don't know how to get it. It could be a good experiment, like, how do I get it to an hour of restoration during the day instead of aiming for even.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just get enough time during the day where you go into parasympathetic mode. It could be 5 minutes here or it could be an hour there. It doesn't really matter. You just need to teach your system that this is a habit and that will help you sleep during the night. There are some other things, Evan. So, so I used to be like you. I used to be able to fall asleep and then I would wake wake up super early and just be like, I don't feel stressed, but there's so much I need to do and there's so much I want to do and I can't sleep, so I might as well just get up and work. So I used to get up at 4 or 5 and just start my work day because I love my work just like you do. The more we have on our plates, the more our brains will be switched on, and our brain Brains hate forgetting stuff. Our brains hate losing stuff. So when we have a lot of things in our heads, our brain will be, will be scared that we will forget it, that we will lose something. And that can just switch us on so much that we're constantly thinking. So it's, it is super important. And I'm saying this with the biggest heart. I know you love your job and you have a great company and everything. Having too much on your plate is not good for your sleep. So figuring out how you can simplify your work, really. I know you're good at delegating and eliminating and— Oh, it's great.

No, it's an ongoing process. I mean, I heard two things there. One is like the do less, which is great. And it's constantly like, okay, do less and then, ooh, and then do more. It's like, okay, that's too much.

And then do less.

I do less, but the do less becomes more impactful each time. But then, also the forgetting things at night, I would always just email myself. Now, so one of the things before I read, I'll write down 3 things I'm grateful for. And then, if I have any notes from the book or I have to remember something, I'll just write it down so that I'm not thinking about it all night. right? So that is better. But the do less is an on— yeah, I mean, it's an ongoing for sure. You're, you're having—

yeah, I know you care about your job, the, your employees, your clients, and I know you are super engaged. So is there a way— and I know there's always a way, and we can talk more about this later— so I do this myself, just chunking up. Yeah, you want to grow your business, you want to help all these amazing people, you want to do those things and you have a team and I don't know, or I do know that you are involved and, uh, in, in what people are doing. So how can you be less involved in the running of the business and still just like be able to let go and know that things are taken care of? It is running. Like you can be the visionary.

Yep.

But being in the business every day, when it's so big, there's so many moving parts, your brain can't keep an overview over everything. And it is trying to do that. And why is it trying to do that? Yeah, because if it doesn't have an overview over everything, that means it can be something dangerous there, right? So your brain needs overview. And when it doesn't— when it can't see and remember and capture all the moving parts, it has to put you into stress in case there's something dangerous there. So like one of the most important things is really simplify your life. You can still run the amazing business. And how can you chunk up the stuff you're doing so that you have the few things you need to remember, take care of, and that you let go of everything else.

So first answer could be just have Nina do more to liberate her sleep. She got 90 sleep scores, okay? She got 90 last night. Like, Nina, okay, you're not doing enough.

Let's go.

So that's what I— that's what is my first takeaway from Anakin. Nina, you have to do more. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I think my hack for that—

it could be better.

Like, my hack has been different things on different days, so so that I'm not worried about the other stuff on different days. So I know Tuesday is gonna be my YouTube day, so I can just focus on YouTube on Tuesday and then the rest of the week I don't think about it too much unless I kind of want to, but I'm not stressed about like, will I get things done or dangerous spots. But to your point, 100%, I can always be doing fewer things that are more high leverage and letting go of the things that even if I like them, probably shouldn't be doing. And it's that ongoing game, especially as you have team to delegate more, trust more, et cetera. So it's a great reminder actually from a different perspective, 'cause you get that a lot from just in general for growth. You wanna grow your business, you can't do everything. You need team, who, not how, all those things, 10X easier than 2X, et cetera. But also just from an energy perspective, sleep, balance, all that.

That.

It's a nice— I'm being hit by both sides now, which is great.

Yeah. I mean, it is impossible for your brain to keep track of everything, and it is trying to do that. And by trying to do that, it has to switch on the stress response, which is probably, to be honest, the main reason why you're waking up and not falling asleep. Because there's so much going on.

Great.

Yeah, so, and I can do a lot of great things with you— hypnosis and audio files and everything— and if all of that stuff is still going on, nothing is going to change.

Oh, so I can't just blame you if it doesn't work?

Well, you can try.

She's like, I don't care, I'm doing other stuff, that doesn't bother me.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I say this with all the love and care and everything, and I've been there and I know, like, I want you to have no idea of what's going on in your business because that is when you can let go and be present and actually reduce some stress. So I know it's a process, it's back and forth and you will have less to do and then you'll take on more and balance is a process. It is not an end goal.

Goal. Yeah, no, I love it. I, you know, for me then, taking inspiration, how does it, how does it get actionized? Uh, well, it's like habits and calendar, so, uh, that's why I'm asking like numbers. So an easy one could be, you know, restorative time now aiming for 1 hour a day instead of break even. Yeah. Okay. I, I don't know, I'm trying to think if there were evening habits.

I think we, I mean, I mean, so what the audio thing you're going to send me, you said you needed some questions around bonuses or—

I think I have a great idea. So, okay, what you need is help falling asleep and then staying in deep sleep, right?

Yeah, deep and REM. My deep sleep, actually my deep sleep was probably better than my REM sleep. Okay, my REM sleep is usually a little worse and deep, but I would take both. I'll take both.

Okay, good.

But this, the falling asleep, yeah, I mean, throughout the night, I get it says I wake up a couple times, and then, and then I just wake up earlier. I will, I maybe my body's just used to waking up after 6 hours or something instead of actually resting more.

Yeah, so sleep is a habit, right? And Okay. So there's one more thing, Evan, and you did touch upon it earlier. It is your identity and what you think and what you say, the stories you create around this. And you were spot on when you said, I can't, don't remember the exact sentence, something about you don't want to talk about it as if it's happening.

Yeah. I'm a sleep champion.

Not again.

I'm a sleep champion.

Yes.

I crush my sleep. Let's go.

So yeah. And, and this This is so important because, and well, this is often the most difficult thing for people because you need to know that you are already where you want to be and you need to have the identity of a sleep champion. Like you're saying, we can often get stuck in the thought of, oh, I just need to do X in order to get Y, to get to wherever. And as long as we are thinking that we need to do something in order to get to our goal, we are just making sure that we are stuck exactly where we are. I know you know this, and I just want to mention it, but it is super important that you always just take on the identity of a sleep champion, that you are someone who gets the sleep that you need and that you have good quality sleep. And that's the way it is.

And then it's easy. Yeah, it's funny, I forget sometimes, I forget who I'm talking to. You know, when I, when I was talking to, um, all the doctors to align my jaw and like my, my breathing, uh, like it was narrow, so like move my jaw forward so that I have more space to breathe so I don't stop breathing in the middle of the night, um, I would come in and say things like, well, like historically I have, you know, I used to be this person. It's like, what does that mean?

Like, are you struggling with sleep or not? Well, historically I have. It's like, okay, yes, I can find, yeah, I struggle with sleep.

It's like, it causes more confusion. It's like, oh, okay. But I, you know, anyway, I'm talking to you. I know better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can just say I have struggled with sleep up until now.

Yeah.

That's still fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, think about why you're here if you've struggled up until now, right? Yeah.

So many doctors, but it's great. I 1,000% agree. That's been my hack is, like I say, I historically have this, right? It's like, that's the history, but it doesn't have to be what it is right now.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I did that around sickness. I mean, I used to get sick all the time. And I got so sick one time that I was on the couch with hiccups. Hiccups for a day and a half straight. The most embarrassing thing of all time, just like lying on the— I can't.

And I almost went live on my YouTube channel. It's like, is anybody here a doctor? Can anybody help me with like these crazy hiccups? Because I can't.

I did breathe into your arm and like drink water upside down, like all of the, the, the hacks, whatever. Nothing worked. And then I just decided that's it. I am just not getting sick anymore. Anymore. That's it.

I'm done with being sick.

And I just— I've barely gotten sick since then.

Where I used to get sick, I just had the belief.

If you were around me and you coughed, oh my God, I'm gonna get sick.

I have the worst immune system.

And so then I created the worst immune system. So I'm a big buyer on all that stuff, 100%.

Excellent. Yeah, I know you are. Just had to mention it. So, okay, so you continue working on your identity be more cognizant about light, lighting at night. You do so much great stuff. And how can you just give your brain more space to breathe and think? No emails at night. And it is for, for the benefit of being able to be in this game for a long time. And you know this, when you get the rest, you'll be more productive the next day. So yeah, I don't, I know I don't have to say it still. I just—

Oh, it's good. It's a great reminder. It's all awesome reinforcement. And then this audio thing, what's my, what's my homework? What am I doing with the audio thing you're going to send me?

Yeah. So I'll send it to you. Well, it's nighttime in Norway now. So tomorrow morning I'll send it to you and you just listen to it when you go to bed at night. And I will program you to sleep deep throughout the night and get your REM sleep. And the worst thing I can think of—

Is it a recording that I'm like having on repeat or what?

No. Well, I'll make it probably maybe half an hour long and it will just like, I'm not going to bring you out of it like I did on the other audio file, right?

Yeah.

So it's just going to be, you're drifting into sleep and it will just, when it's over, it's over and you'll just continue sleeping. If you do wake up during the night, you can still turn it on again and listen to to it again.

Okay.

I'm very excited.

Yeah.

How— so I don't use any electronics in the bedroom. So what's the guidance? Is it a phone? Is it a computer? Is it—

Yeah, well, it will be an audio file and you can have it on whatever device you want to have it.

Okay.

So yeah.

Probably laptop with the screen turned off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. You'll figure it out. You're smart. Okay.

3-day sleep challenge.

Let's go. I'm excited.

Excellent. And remember, remember, Evan, I can do as much hypnosis as I can, and if you don't make sure that you are— that you're, let's say, tidying up your life so that you have more space, uh, your brain is going to be switched on throughout the night. Yeah, yeah, I'm speaking from my personal experience and all my clients. And I used to be like, there's so much going on. And my head was just working throughout the night and I wasn't getting any sleep. So yeah.

Well, I love it. Well, thank you for being, thank you for forcing this in a very loving, kind way and seeing me struggle, I guess, for the past year and a half or whatever. And I really appreciate the guidance and support. And looking forward to this sleep challenge that I'm about to go on.

You wake up every day ready to hustle. You're grinding, putting in the hours, chasing your goals. But here's the big question: how do you know you're focusing on the right thing? Are you making real progress or just staying busy? You might be climbing the ladder of success as fast as you can, but as Stephen Covey warned, if the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take it just gets us to the wrong place faster. Today, let's ensure your ladder is on the right wall. This topic actually comes from one of you, Maricel Padalaga. A member of our community asked, how do you know you're focusing on the right thing? So Maricel and everyone else who's wondering this, let's dive in and figure this out together in a practical, motivational, and science-backed way. Busy versus productive. Are you doing what matters? First, let's distinguish between being busy from being productive. It's easy to fill your day with tasks and feel like you're working hard. Emails, meetings, errands— you can do a lot and still accomplish little that truly matters. Management guru Peter Drucker said it best: there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently what should not be done at all. In other words, being efficient on the wrong tasks is a waste. Focus is not about doing more things, it's about doing the right things. Think about about it. Have you ever spent a whole day checking off a long to-do list, yet at night you wonder, did any of that really push me forward? Did it even matter? We've all been there. It's possible to be very busy without being effective. If you're climbing and grinding but not seeing results that matter, you might be focusing on the wrong thing. One sign is you feel overwhelmed and burned out but not accomplished. According to a Harvard study, between 25 and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed at work. You don't want to be incredibly busy but incredibly ineffective. So ask yourself honestly, am I busy for the sake of being busy, or am I getting closer to my big goal? Here's a pro tip for you: before you put something on your calendar or your to-do list, pause and ask yourself, if I do this task all day, will I be closer to my goal at the end of the day? If not, it might not be the right thing focus on. The power of focus. What the successful do. Let's talk about why focusing on the right thing is so crucial and how successful people attribute their success to focus. I spent years studying and interviewing top entrepreneurs and leaders for my Top 10 Rules of Success series. One thread I found— focus keeps coming up over and over as the key to success. In fact, there's a famous story where Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were at dinner, and each asked to write down one word that led to their success. Both of them wrote focus. No discussion, no coordination. Two of the richest, most successful people on the planet independently gave the same answer. That's how important focus is.

And they're not alone.

Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple, famously said, people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas there are. Jobs was as proud of the things Apple didn't do as the things they did. Why? Because he knew that innovation and success meant picking the right thing and saying no to distractions. When everything is a priority, nothing is. The right focus often means courageously eliminating even good options that aren't the best for you. Warren Buffett has a great approach to this as well. He once advised his personal pilot, Mike Flint to list his top 25 career goals. Then Buffett told him to circle the top 5 and avoid the other 20 at all costs. Those 20 good but not great goals are the shiny objects that tempt us and diffuse our focus. Buffett's message was this: focus on your top 5 and ignore the rest until you succeed with those. It's about intentionally choosing what not to focus on so you free up energy for what truly matters. Here's another powerful example. Bruce Lee once said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." Mastery comes from depth, not breadth. Whether you're learning a skill or building a business, focusing on one thing and doing it with intensity will beat scattering yourself across 10,000 different things. So the takeaway here is that the highest achievers credit focus as a major factor in their success. They pick the right thing, the project, the skill, the goal that will have the biggest impact, and then channel their efforts into it relentlessly. Now, how do you find your right thing? Let's talk about it. Find your why. Identify the right thing for you. Knowing you need to focus is one thing, but knowing what to focus on, that's the real crux of Marcel's How do you identify the right thing for you and your business or life? This is where you need to zoom out and look at the big picture of your purpose and goals. One approach that I swear by is outlined in my book Built to Serve. In that book, I talk about the framework of who, why, and how to discover your purpose. So the who is identify who you are at your core, your single most important core value. This gives you a guiding star. The why is to understand why why you do what you do. And here's a hint: your purpose comes from your pain. Think about the most painful challenge you've overcome in life. Often your mission, which is your why, is to help others overcome that same kind of pain. If you struggled with something and you found the solution, you'll likely feel passionate about sharing that solution or easing that pain for others. As Built to Serve explains, transforming your personal pain into a mission to help others gives you a purpose-driven focus. And then it's the how. Figure out how you will serve, the actions or business that allow you to live that purpose. So in my book Built to Serve, I explain how finding your who, your core value, your why, your purpose from pain, and how, your vehicle to serve, gives you clarity on where to focus. When you align your work with your purpose, you know you're on the right path. If what you're working on connects to your deepest values and helps people, including yourself, in an area that if it truly matters to you, chances are you're focusing on the right thing. You'll feel it, a sense of meaning, even if it's hard work. As an entrepreneur or creator, the right thing to focus on is usually the thing that adds the most value to others and fulfills you. It's the intersection of what you're good at, what you love, and what makes an impact. So a quick exercise: ask yourself, "Why is this goal important to me?" 5 times. Keep drilling down. If you're building a business, why is it important? To make money. Why is making money important? To provide for my family and achieve freedom. Okay, why is freedom important? Because I want to create, I want to help others without constraints. Aha, so maybe helping others or creating is at the core. This method, similar to Toyota's 5 Whys technique, can reveal if the thing you're doing is connected to a strong why. If after a few whys you land on a reason that deeply resonates, you've likely found a worthy focus. If you struggle to find a good why, that might be a red flag that the thing isn't truly aligned with what matters to you. Also, think about your core values. One strategy I've shared in the past is to distill your values down to one core word. For me, that word is belief. It reminds me to focus on projects that inspire belief in myself and others. For you, maybe that word is service or creativity or freedom or something else. Use your one word as a filter. The right thing for you to focus on will align with with the core value. If your word is service and you're spending most of your time on something that doesn't help anyone, you might be off track. If your word is innovation and you realize you haven't created anything new in months because you're bogged down in admin work, that's a sign to refocus. In short, to identify the right thing, get clear on who you are and what you want in the big picture. Set a clear direction. As the saying goes, begin with the end in mind. Once you have that, the next step is making sure your goals and priorities line up with that vision. Set clear goals and priorities. Having a clear goal is like having a target for your focus. Clarity is power. When you know exactly what you want, it's much easier to see which actions will get you there and which won't. According to decades of research by psychologists Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, setting specific goals can increase performance and productivity by 11 to 25%. That's a huge boost just being clear about your target.

Why?

Because goals give you direction and help you prioritize. As one summary of their study put it, goals tell us exactly where we want to go. When we know where we're trying to go, we get there much more quickly. So step 1 is decide on a clear goal. What's the one thing that if you achieved it would make the biggest positive difference in your life or business? It could be a revenue milestone, it could be a launch launching your product. It could be mastering a certain skill, or even a personal goal like writing a book. Whatever it is, write it down. Make it specific. Make it meaningful. This goal is now your North Star, the right thing that you want to be aiming at. Next, we want to prioritize ruthlessly. Not everything on your plate contributes equally to your goal. This is where the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, comes in handy. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the causes. In practical terms, roughly 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results. So your job is to figure out what that 20% is for you, those vital few tasks that drive your goal forward, and focus on those while minimizing the rest. For example, if you're an entrepreneur, maybe 2 out of your 10 projects bring in the most of your revenue. Focus on those. If you're trying to get healthy, a few key habits like exercising daily, eating whole foods will give most of the benefits rather than obsessing over 20 different supplements and hacks. So how do you prioritize the right thing? Number 1: Brainstorm your tasks and projects. List out all the major things you spend time on or you're planning on. Include ongoing tasks and new ideas that are swirling around in your head. Number 2: Link each task to your main goal of your purpose. So for each item, ask, does this significantly help help me achieve my main goal or fulfill my key purpose? Be brutally honest. If the connection is weak, mark that task as lower priority. Number 3, apply the 80/20 rule. Identify which tasks create the most of your desired outcomes. Which tasks, when done well, drive the needle the furthest? Circle these. These are likely your right things. And then number 4, rank your priorities. Try Warren Buffett's approach. Pick your top 5 priorities that truly matter. Then commit to focus on those and avoid the others, no matter how tempting they are, until your top priorities are secure. It might hurt to put aside a cool project idea or say no to a decent opportunity, but remember Steve Jobs and say no to 100 other good ideas. Focus requires sacrifice. Number 5: Schedule the important task. Take your number 1 priority task and block time for it first thing in the morning. Morning, or as early as possible. This is sometimes called eating the frog, a concept from Brian Tracy, meaning you tackle your most important and usually toughest task first thing when you have the most energy. If you schedule the most important thing first, you ensure that it gets done before distractions and lower-value tasks start to creep in. By setting clear goals and ordering your priorities, you create a roadmap for what the right thing is. It gives you a filter to decide when new tasks come up, whether they deserve your focus or not. Learn to say no. Guard your focus. Once you know what your right thing is, your priorities and goals, the hardest part can be protecting that focus. Distractions will come. Other people's agendas will try to knock you off course. Unexpected opportunities, some good, some not so good, will appear. Here is where you must channel your inner Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett and exercise the power of no. Remember, every time you say yes to something unimportant, you're saying no to something important because your time and energy are finite. It's okay to decline meetings that don't serve your goals, to turn down clients who aren't the right fit for you, or to postpone a cool side project if it steals focus from your main thing. This is not easy. It takes confidence and it takes clarity, but it Pays off big time. Steve Jobs' quote again is instructive: focus is about saying no to the 100 other good ideas out there. He understood that Apple couldn't chase every opportunity. They famously cut down their product lines to just a few key products that could really put their dent in the universe with. You can do the same on a personal scale. Figure out what activities, what commitments, what ideas are not contributing to your top 5 priorities and start gently but firmly eliminating or deferring them. Warren Buffett's avoid at all costs list of 20 things is a great visual reminder. Maybe literally make yourself a not-to-do list. Write down those tempting tasks or habits that you're not going to focus on right now so you don't forget and accidentally slip into them. Post it somewhere that is visible. Also consider the people around you. Sometimes focusing on the doing the right thing means setting boundaries with other people. If coworkers, friends, or even family are pulling you in a direction that conflicts with your main focus, you need to have some conversations. For example, uh, if you're focusing on building your startup on weekends, you might have to say no to some social events. If you're focusing on writing a book, you might need to decline doing some extra freelance work that would eat up that writing time. It's tough, but true friends and supporters will understand when you explain why you're saying no. Remember your why from earlier. And here's a tip: try using a positive no. So for example, I'm honored you invited me to speak at that event, but I have to say no this time so I can concentrate on finishing my product launch this month. I want to give it my all. You acknowledge the request and give your reason, which ties back to your important focus. Every yes and No shapes your future, so be intentional. As you practice saying no to distractions or lesser priorities, you'll find an empowering thing happens: you free up massive energy to pour into the things that truly matter. You'll make progress faster and with more peace of mind because you're not constantly torn in a million different directions. Single-tasking and deep work. Be present on the right thing. Now that you've identified the right thing and cleared some space for it, let's talk about how you focus when it's time to do the work. It's not just what you focus on, but how you manage your attention that determines your success. So in our modern world, distractions, they're everywhere. You've got your phone notifications, emails, social media. We have a multitasking culture, but study after study shows that multitasking is a myth. Trying to do several things at once usually means you do all of them poorly, and MIT neuroscientist Earl Miller explained that our brains cannot focus on two things simultaneously. What we actually do is just switch rapidly between the tasks, and this task switching has a cognitive cost. You lose time and you make more errors when you juggle tasks, even if it feels like you're doing a lot. In fact, when you multitask, you can lose up to 40% of your productivity. Think about that. You could be almost half as productive trying trying to do 2 or 3 things at once compared to doing them all at a time. According to an infographic by the University of California Irvine, it takes on average 23 minutes to refocus on a task after a distraction. Imagine how much focus time you lose if you keep checking your phone or bouncing between projects. So the habit to build is single tasking, or what author Cal Newport calls deep work. This means when you work on your right thing, you give give it your full undivided attention for a set period of time. You eliminate distractions proactively. Close your email, put your phone on do not disturb, maybe even disconnect from the internet if you can, unless you need it for the task. It can help to have a dedicated space or time where you do that one high-value task. Treat it as sacred focus time. There's a great Harvard study by psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert that found something interesting about focus and happiness. They did discovered that people's minds wander 47% of the time on average. Nearly half our waking life we're not fully present in what we're doing. And crucially, the study found that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. When you're not present, when you're neither here nor there thinking of other things, you tend to feel less happy. Even if your mind wanders to pleasant thoughts, it doesn't make you happier than if you just engaged in the present task. In short, being fully present in whatever you're doing not only boosts your productivity, it boosts your happiness and fulfillment. So when it's time to work on that right thing, really work on it. If you catch your mind drifting or you get an impulse to check something, gently pull yourself back. It's like training a muscle, and over time your focus muscle gets stronger. So try this: set a timer for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever suits you and commit to focusing on one task for that duration. No breaks, no switching up. And after the time is up, take a 5-minute break, check whatever you need, then either continue or switch to the next important task for another focus block. This is akin to the Pomodoro Technique and can work wonders for you. You'll be amazed how much you can get done in a focused 30-minute burst on the right task versus a distracted 2-hour or spread across the right tasks plus Instagram plus random emails. Also, eliminate multitasking in other ways. So if you're working on a big project, don't also have 15 browser tabs open unrelated to it. Don't try to have a deep strategy time while also monitoring your text messages. It's like trying to drive 2 cars at once. You end up crashing both. Finally, remember to be present, not just physically but mentally. Sometimes we allocate time for the important thing, but then sabotage ourselves by worrying and overthinking. For example, you set aside time to develop your business strategy, which is the right thing, but the whole time your mind is anxiously thinking about an email you need to send or a minor issue. So to fight this, consider a quick brain dump before your focus session. Jot down any nagging to-dos or thoughts on a notepad to get them off your mind, then promise yourself you'll handle those after your focus block. Clear mind, clear focus. Being present also applies to personal life and rest. If you're resting, really rest. Don't beat yourself up about work during downtime. And if you're with family, then be with them. This trains your brain to focus on one thing at a time, which will help you when you turn to your work focus as well. Action steps. Let's put it all together. We've covered a lot of ground here, from mindset to purpose to practical prioritization. The focus techniques. Now let's consolidate this into a simple action plan that you can start today to make sure you're focusing on the right thing. Number 1: Define your vision. Write down your main goal or purpose. Clarity is your starting point. What's the big win that you're after? Example: I want to grow my YouTube channels to 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year, empowering entrepreneurs. I want to launch my new app and get 10,000 users. Or I want to improve my health and run a marathon. Make sure it's something that excites you and aligns with your values. Number 2, identify the high-impact activities. List all the activities that you do or plan to do related to that goal. Now circle the 20% that truly drive progress, the core value-add work. Be honest with yourself here. If you're unsure, look at past data or ask mentors what really moves the needle. Double down on these core activities. Number 3, eliminate or delegate the rest. Look at the remaining 80% 80% of activities. What can you stop doing, delegate to someone else, or do later? Free yourself from the busywork trap. For example, if you're spending hours designing your website but your key skill is sales calls that bring in clients, consider hiring a part-time web designer. Saying no or delegating the lesser stuff is not a luxury, it's a necessity for greatness. Number 4, schedule your focus time. Take those high-impact tasks and block time on your calendar. Agenda specifically for them. Treat these like important appointments with yourself. If mornings are when you have the most energy, schedule your most important task first. Remember the eat the frog scenario from Brian Tracy? Protect this time from interruptions. Number 5: Use focus tools and techniques. During your focus blocks, remove distractions. Close any apps you have open, put your phone away, maybe play some concentration music if it helps you. Try techniques like the Pomodoro technique we talked about— 25 minutes focus, 5-minute break. If you struggle with staying on task, the goal is to train your brain to stay on one target at a time. Number 6: Review and adjust regularly. Every week, or at least once a month, step back and review. Am I getting results from what I'm working on? If not, ask why. Maybe you need to adjust your strategy. Focusing on the right thing is also about adaptability. You might find that what you thought was the right thing wasn't. And you need to pivot. That's okay. It's better to realize and adjust than keep grinding in the wrong direction. Use any feedback or data you get. So for example, if you spent a month focusing on a marketing channel and it's not yielding results, maybe the right thing to do is shift to a different marketing channel. Constant course correction is part of the journey. By following these steps, you create a cycle of continuous realignment with your right thing. It's like you're a ship at sea. You have a destination. You've mapped out the best route, and you steer the ship daily, and you course correct when the winds change. This way, you know you're focusing on the right thing because you've thought it through and you're paying attention to the outcomes. Trust yourself and believe. At the end of the day, knowing if you're focusing on the right thing comes down to clarity and trust. Clarity in what you want and what matters, and trust in yourself that you've made the best choice you can. Once you've done the work identify your top priority, commit to it fully. Don't second-guess yourself every hour. That only drains your energy. Instead, give it your all. Measure your progress over weeks and months, not minutes. Believe that the course you've set is the right one, and it will reveal itself through results and fulfillment. Remember Marcelle's question. She's looking for that confidence that she's not wasting time on the wrong thing. The fact that you're even asking that question means that you're conscientious and self-aware. That is a great sign. It means you care about your direction and you're not willing to live life on autopilot. Use that as motivation to be deliberate with your focus. Most people never even ask if they're on the right thing. They just drift. But not you. You're taking charge of your focus and thus your destiny. In Built to Serve, I wrote that humans are built to serve and make a difference. When you find the path where you can contribute the most and feel the most alive You found the right thing. Pour your heart into it. Will it be hard? Yes. There will be boring days. There will be doubters. There'll be moments you'll question yourself even. But when you are on the right thing, you'll also experience moments of flow, of deep satisfaction, of signs that you're making an impact. Cherish those and use them as the fuel to keep going. And if you do realize, hey, I've been climbing the wrong ladder, don't worry. It's never too late to reposition that ladder. Some of the most successful people change focus after years in one area. The key is they recognized it and they took action. You can always refocus when you gain new insight. It's part of growth. To sum it up, focus on what matters most: your purpose, your top goals, the few key actions that create the biggest results. Say no to the rest, or at least not now. Work with intense focus in the moment, one thing at a time. Back your Focus with belief, belief in your vision and in yourself. And as you do this, you will start seeing progress. You'll feel more in control, less chaotic. You'll wake up knowing, yes, I am on the right path, and that confidence will give you even more momentum. Success, impact, and fulfillment are all about consistent focus on what truly matters. You've got this. Now go out there, make those tough choices, zero in on your mission, and make it happen. And whenever you feel You're in doubt, remember why you started and believe.

And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be.

Believe.

To learn the Chris Gardner story and why you don't need a college degree to get rich, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Chris didn't just dream about success, he made it happen. After years of struggle, he finally landed a job at a brokerage firm, working long hours and proving his worth. Eventually, he built his own company, Gardner Rich and Company,