The Secret Systems Millionaires & Billionaires Use to Build Wealth

The biggest financial advantage you can ever have is a system that keeps working while you sleep. When you learn as an investor over multiple decades is the only thing that matters is free cash flow.

That's it.

You have to own assets that make you money while you sleep, that grow while you sleep. That's how money compounds, businesses grow, and opportunities seem to find the same people over and over again. Berkshire's record would have been Terrible compared to the way it turned out if Warren hadn't kept learning, learning, learning all the way. I mean, each decade to make the record decent, he had to learn to do some things he didn't know how to do at the start of the decade. Compounding changes the game. So what you have to do if you're a business owner, you have to get yourself where you say, I'm going to put a tax on my business.

Yep.

Not the government tax, my tax. My future self is going to be free forever. Keep putting this off and you'll lose something far more valuable than money. You'll lose time that never comes back. So in the next 3 hours, you'll learn the same wealth-building systems that millionaires and billionaires use to grow money, create opportunities, and build lasting freedom. 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. You've been chasing the wrong number your whole life. The poorest people on Earth always are going after this stuff. When you learn as an investor over multiple decades is the only thing that matters is free cash flow.

That's it.

Have you changed your lifestyle? You don't look like you're buying really expensive clothes. No, I'm not buying really expensive clothes. Are you buying things? Are you buying things that you wouldn't— No, no. I have a little, like, one-bedroom apartment with a mattress on the floor. That's the— that's where I live. The Federal Reserve found that 37% of American adults couldn't cover a surprise $400 expense with cash. The extra money should go into something that gives you money. You want your money to have babies. This is the time to not waste money as a company or as a human being. So this is bigger than money. It's about whether you actually own your time or whether you spend your best years of your life working for a number that can't pay a single bill. Don't spend money on stuff until you have cash flow that can buy stuff. Money's got to circulate. It's not only a servant, you got to keep it moving. It's a servant, and you can put this to work. Let me tell you about a man who understood this better than almost anyone. His name was Sam Zell. He was the son of immigrants who fled Poland right before World War II, and he grew up in Chicago obsessed with one question: not how much is something worth on paper, but how much cash does it actually put in my pocket? So while everyone else chased shiny buildings and Instead of going after the big price tags, Sam Zell went hunting for what he called dead properties, real estate that other people had given up on after a crash. He bought them cheap, fixed the money problems, and turned them into machines that spit out cash every single month for him. So in effect, the way we took over all that real estate was, you know, we'd, you know, make a deal with a bank or make a deal with an insurance company. We'd take over management, we'd stabilize the cash flow. People started calling him the Grave Dancer on the graves of deals everyone else had walked away from. What did you mean by the grave dancer? In the '70s, I was involved in buying up an enormous amount of distressed real estate. And this part proves hopefully the whole point of this video. In early 2007, Sam Zell sold his giant office empire for around $39 billion, one of the biggest deals of its kind that had ever been done. He didn't hold on so he could feel rich on paper. He looked at what the cash was really worth Decided the price he was offered beat the buildings, and he sold right before the market crashed and those same buildings lost a fortune. But we're constantly trying to assess what do we think the assets are worth relative to the stock price. And in the case of Equity Office, we did that on a regular basis. And then all of a sudden, somebody came along and Offered us a number that was materially higher than our NAV. Sam Zell never fell in love with the number on the page. He fell in love with the cash flow and knowing exactly what it was worth. And that's why he won. Now you might be thinking, okay, that's a nice story for a billionaire, but you're not sitting on a real estate empire. You've got a job, some bills, not a lot left over at the end of every month. So how does any of this apply to you? Cash flow thinking doesn't start when you're rich. It starts right now at whatever income you're at today. It's the gap between what comes in and what goes out and what you choose to do with that gap. So someone earning $40,000 who controls their cash flow has more real freedom than someone earning $200,000 who spends every dollar the moment it lands. The person on the smaller salary who keeps a cushion and slowly buys assets sleeps fine at night. The person on the bigger salary who then buys the bigger house with the bigger car payments is one missed payment away from a complete nightmare, and everyone around them thinks that they've made it. How much they were making never was the thing that was keeping any of them safe. The flow was— the cash flow. So you don't need permission to start thinking this way, and you don't need to feel ready. So let me show you exactly how the people who obsess over cash flow actually run their money, step by step, starting from wherever you're standing today. Stop weighing yourself. Start watching the flow. Net worth is a picture. It's a photograph. It's a single moment frozen that says, here's what you'd have if you sold everything today. Cash flow. That's, that's the movie. It's moving. It shows you what's actually moving into your life every single month. And that's the number that decides actually how well you sleep at night. So the first shift is just a mindset one. Stop checking your net worth once a year and start tracking your cash flow every single month. It's important because it saved more businesses than any clever marketing strategy ever has. Cash flow. is the problem. You can run a business that looks profitable and is profitable on paper, and it still goes broke because the money you're owed shows up too late to pay the bills that are due right now today. The same thing happens for a lot of families. For the typical American family, the home is the single biggest thing they own, and you can't spend a house. You can own a place worth half a million dollars and still feel sick every time the furnace breaks because you can't get the money out of the house. It's a number, not a dollar that you can actually go off and use. So here's what I'd love for you to think about this week. Figure out your monthly floor. Add up what your life actually costs to run your rent or your mortgage, the food, the gas, insurance, phone bills, the kids, all of it. Let's say that comes to $4,000 a month. Now your floor isn't actually $4,000 a month because you have no cushion. So your floor is $5,000. You don't feel safe. You don't celebrate. You don't upgrade anything until the money coming in clears that number every month, month after month after month. Write that floor down and put it where you need to see it. Then do one simple thing. At the end of every month, write 2 numbers next to each other. What came in and what went out? That's it. 2 numbers, 12 times a year. That tiny habit will teach you more about your money than any budgeting app you'll download and forget about in the next week, because it forces you to look at the reality in the face on a schedule. And remember one rule that messes almost everybody up: profit is after cost. A big month is not a green light to go inflate your life. A big month is your chance to build the cushion higher because next month the bills show up again, whether you had a good week or a good month or not. The mistake that wrecks so many people, treating one good month like it's the new normal— they upgrade the car, they upgrade the apartment, they get crushed when the next month comes back down to earth. So when you measure this every 30 days instead of once a year, you catch the small leaks while they're still small before they get a chance to actually crater your entire bank account. Learn the difference between looking rich and being rich. Looking wealthy and being wealthy are 2 completely different things, and the gap between them is where so many people slowly drown. You lease the luxury car, the giant house with a giant mortgage, the watch bought on a credit card. All of that is cash flowing out of your life every single month. It looks like Wealth, and it feels like wealth, but it does the opposite of what wealth actually does. It's drying you out while you're smiling for the picture, right? Being rich is boring on the outside. Being rich is cash flowing in while you are sleeping. Look at Ingvar Kamprad, the man who founded IKEA and built a fortune worth tens of billions of dollars. He drove the same old Volvo for 20 years. He flew economy class. He furnished his own home with the budget furniture his own company sold. He wrote memos on both sides of the paper to save money. He didn't need to look rich. Because he was too busy actually being rich, and being rich meant keeping the cash working instead of burning it to try to impress strangers who don't pay his bills. So ask yourself honest question about every big purchase: Is this thing going to put money in my pocket or pull money out of it? A reliable car that gets you to work is a tool. A car that costs you eight hundred dollars a month so people think that you've made it is not a tool. It's not helping you. Same thing with the house. A home you can comfortably afford can be your base. A home that eats forty-five percent of your income every month now. Is not a base. It's a, it's a cage that you built for yourself with a nice kitchen. When you start seeing the world this way, you stop chasing the appearance of wealth and you start building the real thing underneath. And I believe that being leads to doing. So the moment you decide to be the kind of person who watches their cash flow, the smart choices stop feeling like it's this big sacrifice and just starts feeling like a piece of who you are. Turn your extra dollars into little workers. So this is Fun. And I think it's one of the moves that separates the people who obsess over cash flow from everybody else. When they have a surplus, they don't just spend it and they don't just let it sit there losing value. They turn it into an asset that pays 'em back. So every extra dollar becomes a tiny little worker whose only job is to go out and bring home more dollars. That worker can take on a variety of shapes. It can be a slice of a business, it can be a dividend-paying stock. It could be solid companies that send you checks every few months just for holding their shares. It can be a rental unit that pays you rent while it slowly pays itself off. It can be your own skills packaged into something that sells while you sleep, a course, a template, a product. The shape doesn't matter so much as what's the direction we're taking. You're taking money that only shows up once, your paycheck, and you're converting it into money that shows up again and again without you having to continue to trade another hour of your life. There's a strategy I love that you're probably not using yet. Instead of just charging a one-time fee for your work, you take a piece of the thing that you're trying to help build. If you help a company double its revenue and instead of a flat fee, you own a percentage of the upside. Now you get paid long after the job is done and you get paid while you sleep. Own the outcome, not just the hour that you're working, and start smaller than you think you're allowed to. You don't need a fortune to buy your first tiny worker. You could put $50 into a dividend stock this month and $50 the next, and it feels like nothing at first, but you're not really buying the $50. You're building the habit and the identity of an owner, and the owner is the person who eventually gets free. And then keep your eyes on the real exit strategy that every serious person is building towards, even if they don't say it out loud. You work hard now so one day your investments take over. You are not supposed to trade your time for money until the day that you die. You're supposed to build enough cash-producing assets that the assets then carry you and your time finally becomes your own again. Watch the timing, not just the total. Most money trouble is not a total problem. It's just a timing problem. Your expenses come in fast and it's on a pretty strict schedule and they don't care about your feelings or your reasons or your excuses. And your income comes in slower, later, and sometimes not on the day that you expected it. And that mismatch is the exact reason that good, hardworking people end up stressed and short at the end of the month, even when the yearly math should work out fine. So you have to ask yourself the question that the smart operators always ask: what expenses hit fast and what payments can get delayed? Once you can see the gaps, you can build for them instead of getting surprised or getting ambushed by them. You keep a reserve that covers at least a few months of your floor, so one slow month doesn't turn into a full-blown panic for you. Line up your bills so they land after your paycheck, not the day before. Call the companies you pay and ask to move your due dates a little bit later. It sounds too simple to matter, but moving a bill from the first to the fifteenth can be the difference between a smooth month and a super stressful one. So give yourself a buffer between the money going out and the money. Coming in and watch how much calmer everything feels once the timing is on your side instead of against you. And this is the real reason that cash flow beats net worth in the life that you actually live. Net worth does nothing for you on the days that the roof leaks and the client hasn't paid yet. A cushion of cash flow is what lets you handle whatever life throws at you without falling apart or reaching for a credit card at 22% interest. So think about a bird sitting on a branch. She isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust was never in the branch. Her trust was in her wings. Build your cash flow and build your cushion, and you stop being afraid of the branch as well. Your security stops depending on one job or one client or one lucky year, and it starts depending on a system that you can control. Make your money refuse to sit still. This shift might be the biggest one, and this is really about your own identity. People who build lasting wealth treat their money like it has a job to show up for every day. Lazy money, money sitting in a checking account doing nothing, is money that's slowly losing to rising prices, inflation, year after year. Working money is money that's out there earning more of itself while you rest, while you're with your family, while you're sleeping. So put your money to work and keep it there. Reinvest what your assets pay you instead of just spending it all the time and let it compound. When your dividends buy more shares and those shares pay more dividends and you keep repeating that loop, you've started a snowball that grows bigger on its own without you having to do anything. That's the whole secret hiding behind almost every fortune that you look up to, the people that have had massive success, it usually wasn't one giant lucky break. It was cash flow reinvested with patience over a long stretch. So that becomes enormous. The dividends the market pays might only be a couple of percent a year, and that might sound really small, but a couple of percent that keeps compounding and keeps buying more of the machine turns into real money and real freedom faster than you think. So if you look at it this way, let's use some numbers. If you put $500 a month and let everything it earns buy more of itself, in the early years it barely moves. Right? And you'll be tempted to just quit. But somewhere down the road, the growth your money makes each year becomes bigger than what you're putting in yourself. And that's the moment the whole thing turns into a machine that works harder than you do. So few people ever get there, and it's for one reason: they cash out the little payments early to buy something shiny, and they kill the snowball before it ever starts getting rolling. So don't be the person who does that, right? Plant the seed, protect it, and let it grow into a tree that feeds you for the rest of your life. If you have the ability to do this and you have the responsibility If you can build a life where the money flows towards you instead of away from you, then you must, because that freedom, it's also not just about you. It's about the people who depend on you, the causes that you'd love to support, and the version of you that finally gets to stop worrying and start living. So don't wait for permission. Don't wait for you to feel ready. Ready doesn't just come on its own. You know when the best time to start is? Right now. How about right now? You're not behind. You were just measuring wrong. So you were not behind. You just spent years measuring the wrong number and now you know better. So start watching what actually flows into your life. You protect it, you grow it, and you put it to work for you. Your purpose comes from your pain, and the money stress that you've carried can become the exact reason that you finally take control. Getting rich in America is far more ordinary than anyone ever told you. Can I get rich if I just have a salary, do you think? Yeah, you can. But if you wanna make a couple million dollars, 100%. Can everybody do that? It's only not accessible to you If you're a lazy piece of shit that wants to do nothing. I think earning money is one of the simplest things I ever learned, and it's one of the most misunderstood things. I went through the research on America's self-made millionaires, and 80% of them are the first generation in their family to ever be rich, according to Dr. Thomas Stanley and Dr. William Danko's national study in The Millionaire Next Door. I was raised on a farm with my grandmother, um, for the first 6 years of my life. If you'd ask If you asked me at the time if we were poor, I probably would have said no, because when you are living it and you don't know anything else, you think that's the way life is. My car was my home where I'm going to live. Got a blanket, a pillow in there, and all the other stuff went in the trunk or in the other seat. Uh, and then to eat, I figured out a way to eat off $2.50 a day. So this isn't really about money for you. It's about whether you get to decide what your life looks like or whether you spend the next 40 years letting a paycheck decide it for you. The paycheck is one of the most sinister plots ever pulled upon a human being. If you need a paycheck, you've sold your soul. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. There was a woman named Ann Scheiber who spent her whole career as an auditor at the IRS, and she was passed over for promotion again and again, never once earning more than about $4,000 a year. When she retired in 1944, She had a small pension and around $5,000 in savings to her name, and that was it. That's the whole pile. She lived quietly and frugally in the same tiny rent-controlled New York apartment for decades, and to anyone passing her on the street, she just looked like a little old lady with almost nothing. When she passed away in 1995 at the age of 101, the world found out she had turned that $5,000 into an estate worth $22 million, and she left every penny of it to fund scholarships for young women. She never won the lottery. She never started a company. She simply bought shares in strong brand name companies that she understood, like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, reinvested every single dividend, and then did the hardest thing of all, which was to leave it alone for 50 years while it compounded. Nobody handed Ann a dollar of it. She built it one careful decision at a time with habits so boring that the people right next to her never even noticed. And when I sat down and looked at 50 self-made millionaires to see what they actually have in common, Anne wasn't the exception. She was the rule. The same patterns showed up again and again in the retired auditor and the billionaire. And that's exactly why this is so good for you. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that's a nice story, but that woman had 50 years to let it grow and you don't have that kind of runway or that kind of patience. So try to hear me on this because it matters more than almost anything that I'll say today. The research doesn't say that you need a high salary or a head start or a rich uncle. It says you need to do a small set of specific things Things consistently, starting from wherever you are starting today. The Federal Reserve found that there are now around 16 million millionaire households in the United States, which is roughly 1 in 8 American families, and the vast majority built it themselves. The reason this feels out of reach for so many people, it's not your income, it's that nobody ever showed you the actual pattern, so you've been guessing. So let me show you the pattern, because once you see what these people repeat over and over, you can't unsee it, and you can start running This week, decide it's yours first. So before any of them had a single dollar of proof, they decided they were allowed to be wealthy. This might sound soft, and especially as point number one, but it's the most important one on this whole list. So stay with me. Henry Ford said it best: If you believe you can do a great thing or you believe you can't, you're right either way. The self-made millionaires I studied didn't wait to feel rich before they started acting like an owner. of their own future. They switched the order that you've been probably living your whole life. They became the kind of person who builds wealth first in their identity, and then the daily actions followed naturally from that identity. So being leads to doing. When you wake up already seeing yourself as someone who is fully responsible for your own financial life, you stop buying things to look impressive to strangers and you start buying assets to actually become wealthy. And And this is the part that almost nobody talks about. The research on self-made millionaires found that they score sky high on emotional stability and they're comfortable being different from the crowd. They had to be because acting wealthy and looking wealthy are opposite habits and they chose to actually be it. So that one shift, that deciding that it's yours before your bank account agrees, is the foundation underneath every other habit that I'm gonna give you today. Your circumstances right now are a good start. And your only job is to decide that you're meant for far more than them. The bird sitting on the branch isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, it's in her own wings. That's the mindset that you're building. So you need to stop needing your situation to be perfect because your confidence lives in what you're capable of, not in what you currently have. Get killer at one thing. So self-made millionaires, they got genuinely great at one thing before they ever tried to do everything. There's that popular idea floating around that you need 7 income streams or 25 Streams of income to get rich, so people go and they start seven mediocre projects at once, and then they wonder why none of them ever take off. The self-made millionaires—they did the opposite. They went all in on becoming genuinely excellent at one skill or one business, and they let that one thing become the engine that funded everything else later on. So think about this like an edge of a puzzle you're working on. You build the borders first, you get one strong frame locked in, and then the middle pieces become easy to fill in. Anne Scheiber mastered exactly one boring strategy, owning great dividend companies and never selling them. And she ran it for 50 years straight. The richest investors alive will tell you the same thing, that they got wealthy by going deep on one approach and refusing to get bored with it. The multiple streams of income that you hear about are real, but they show up at the end of the story, not at the beginning. They come from owning one thing so completely that it overflows into the next. So pick your one thing right now. Get so good at it. That you become the obvious choice in your own little corner of the world. The person that people call first. Depth beats spread every time, especially in the early years where your energy is your most limited resource. Spend less than you make. Okay, so this is the habit that built Ains' $22 million empire, and you can copy it starting with your very next paycheck. They live below their means while they were building on purpose, and they never apologize for it. Dr. Stanley's research found that the typical self-made millionaire invests close to 20% of their income every single year. His study even found that more than 6 in 10 of them could tell you precisely what their household spends on food, clothing, and shelter each year. That's not something glamorous, and that is the entire point. These are people who could easily afford the flashy car and chose the reliable used one, who could afford the giant house and chose the sensible one, so that the gap between what they earned and what they spent could go straight to work for them. So you don't have to live like a monk for the rest of your life. You just have to win the early years by keeping that gap as wide as you can and pointing it at assets instead of stuff that impresses people that you don't even like. Every dollar you don't spend on looking rich is a dollar you can spend on actually getting rich. The discipline you show in the next 24 months is what buys your freedom for the next 40 years. Make your investing automatic. Self-made millionaires, they set their investing on autopilot so their own emotions could never get in the way. So here's a stat that surprised a lot of people when I found it. Dr. Stanley found that fewer than 10% of millionaires are active traders who buy and sell within a single year, and that a full 42% of them made zero trades at all in the year before they were surveyed. They are not glued to the screen reacting to every scary headline and every hot tip that they get. They set up a simple system where a fixed percentage of every dollar that they earn, often around 10%, gets routed straight into long-term investments before they can even feel it leave. And then they let time and compounding do the heavy lifting for them. This is leverage of the quietest kind. Your money keeps working at 2 in the morning while you sleep every weekend, every holiday, never calling in sick. Never asking you for anything, and the discipline to leave it alone is its own kind of superpower because the urge to panic and sell is what wrecks the results of almost everyone who tries. The ones who win at this aren't the smartest about the market; they're the ones who took themselves out of the decision entirely and let the machine run on autopilot. So set up the automatic transfers this week, even if it's tiny, and then protect it like it's sacred. Guard your time. Like gold, self-made millionaires fiercely protect the one thing they can never make more of, which is their time. The self-made people that I studied valued their time almost infinitely over their money, and they run their days through a simple filter that I like to call eliminate, automate, delegate. So first, they eliminate the roughly 80% of activities that keeps them busy but broke—the stuff that feels like work but never actually grows anything—and then they automate whatever piece of software or bit of AI can handle for them on repeat. And then they delegate what's left over to someone else, even if it starts with just one virtual assistant for a few hours a week. What they keep for themselves is the small, precious slice of work that only they can do—the work that actually multiplies the money. And you can start this today with nothing but your own calendar. So look at everything that you did last week and ask which of it a wealthy version of you would have eliminated, automated, or handed to somebody else. Then go reclaim those hours and spend them on the one or two activities that genuinely build your future. Rich people. Rich people aren't busier than you. They're just ruthless about what they refuse to do because they understand that every hour spent on low-value work is an hour stolen from the work that makes them become free. Build your circle of 50. Self-made millionaires understand that relationships are the highest form of leverage that you will ever have. The richest people don't grind away alone in the corner hoping that someone discovers them. They deliberately build a small circle of the right people who can spend life-changing opportunities their way. So one of the things that I do in our Movement Makers program is I teach making a list of the 50 people in your world who could refer real money or open up real doors for you over the course of a year. And instead of cold pitching them or begging them for scraps, you invite them in, you make them look good, you start a show, you serve them first, you build a genuine relationship, you invite to interview them before you ever ask a thing. The wealth follows the trust, always in that order. And it's not just who you know, it's what you offer them. So the premium things that people actually pay for come down to a few simple words: community, Convenience, customization, and real coaching. And the self-made build their relationships and their offers around delivering exactly those things. When you become the person who gives before you ask for anything in return, doors start to swing open that money alone couldn't open. So you cannot do everything yourself. And none of the 50 millionaires that I studied ever tried to. They surround themselves with people who raised the ceiling on what was possible, and then they did the same thing for others. Never stop learning. Self-made millionaires, they never stop feeding their own mind because the self-made treat learning like a job that never ends. So there's a researcher named Tom Corley who spent 5 years studying the daily habits of 233 self-made millionaires. And one finding stood out for me above the others. A full 88% of them read at least 30 minutes every single day for self-education. So books on their craft, biographies of people that they looked up to, anything that made them just a little bit sharper. Among the people in the study who were struggling financially, only 2% did the same. That gap is pretty big, and it compounds over the years exactly like money does. The self-made pour hours into their own education long after school is over and the tests have stopped because they know that the highest returning asset on earth is this, right? The one sitting between your ears. They chose a biography over entertainment and one hard book over ten easy distractions on purpose every day. So build that habit starting today. Read twenty pages a day. Watch a YouTube video that's educational a day. Take a course that you've been putting off. Get close to the people who are 10 steps ahead of you and learn how they think. You don't have to be the smartest person in any room. You just have to refuse to stop getting better because the version of you that keeps learning is the exact version that eventually gets wealthy. Anchor it to mission. This last one here holds everything together, and it's that for these people, the money was never the actual point. So when you study them up close, self-made millionaires, almost none of them got outta bed every day just chasing dollars. They were chasing a mission, a problem that they were obsessed with solving. A family that they were determined to provide for, a mark that they wanted to leave on the world. The money is just a way of keeping track. And here's why that matters, I think, in the most practical way, because a mission is what gives you the staying power to run these boring habits for 10, 20, 30 years, long after your motivation is gone and like people aren't clapping for you. Even the most successful people I studied spent a huge chunk of their days fighting doubts and fighting their fears, and only a small slice of their time feeling unstoppable. The mission is what carries them through the doubt. Your purpose comes from your pain, from the exact thing in your life you never want anyone you love To go through. When you build your wealth on top of a reason that big, then the frugality stops feeling like sacrifice and it stops feeling like waiting because every dollar is buying you something that you actually care about. So if you have the ability to build this kind of life, then you have the responsibility to do it. If you can, then you must. You're closer than you think. So when I lay all 50 of them side by side, these self-made millionaires, the pattern is, is pretty simple. And that's maybe the best news that you'll hear all week. Decide that it's yours. Master one thing. Spend less than you make. Invest automatically. Guard your time like gold. Build real relationships. Never stop learning. And anchor it all to a mission that's bigger than money. None of that requires a rich family, a genius IQ, a lucky break. It requires you to start and to keep going when it's boring. And the best time to start? How about right now? You're far more capable than your current bank account is whispering to you right now. And the quiet, ordinary, Almost invisible habits that built every one of these fortunes are sitting right in front of you as well, waiting for you to simply pick them up and run. This is the first moment in history where one person with a laptop can outearn an entire company. AI is real and it is going to change every industry. Generative AI is on track to add up to $4.4 trillion a year to the global economy, according to McKinsey. And that number is a window into the biggest wealth shift of your lifetime. The ability to use these tools is both fun and empowering. And the people who step through it in the next 12 months are going to look back on this year as the year that everything changed for them. Let me tell you about a Guy named Tony Din. He was a software engineer with a safe six-figure job at a big tech company. Good money, good title—the kind of job you're supposed to feel lucky to have. But he wanted to build his own thing, and so he walked away from it and started shipping tiny products that he built on his own, building in public where the whole internet could watch him either win or fall on his face. Then the AI wave hit, and he built a tool called Typing Mind. It's a faster, cleaner, more powerful way to use AI. AI chat with a better interface and extra features that the heavy users really love. One specific problem with one clean solution. And here's the best part. He runs the entire business completely alone. No employees, no office, no team, just him and a laptop, often working while he travels the world. And that one tool pulls in over $130,000 a month. He posts his exact numbers in public, so it's not just a rumor. You can go and check for yourself. He didn't raise millions from different investors. He didn't hire 50 people. He found one expensive problem, pointed AI at it, and let the technology do most of the heavy lifting that he used to then build his whole company. That is the AI business model that is making millionaires right now. One person, one specific problem, AI doing the work of an entire team. Now here's where your brain often goes and tries to fight. You're thinking, that's great, but Tony, he's a coder. I'm not technical. I can't build a tool like that. I wouldn't even know where to start. And this is where we got to relax because we need to shift the thinking. The model is not about coding. Tony built a product, but the exact same model works as a service. And the service version doesn't need you to write a single line of code. You bring the relationships and you bring your judgment. AI does the work. You can deliver the work that used to take a whole agency for a handful of clients and keep the money because you don't have the team to pay. The tools have gotten so good that the only thing standing between you and this is a decision just to start. Start. So let me show you exactly how it works step by step. Step 1, pick one specific expensive problem. The biggest mistake people make is trying to help everybody with everything. They want to be a general AI consultant who does a little of this and a little of that. That never works. The money is in being laser specific. So Tony Dinh didn't build a tool that does 100 different things. He built one tool that solves one problem really Well, making AI chat faster and easier for the people who live in it all day long. That's it. One specific painful problem that people pay real money already to solve. So your job is to find your version of that. Pick one type of person and one expensive headache that they might have right now. Maybe it's a small law firm when they need their client intake handled. Maybe it's real estate agents who need their listings written up and their follow-up emails sent off. Maybe it's local restaurants that need their social media run, right? The keyword is expensive. You want a problem where people are already spending money because that means demand is already proven. You're not creating a brand new market, you're entering one that already exists and doing it faster and cheaper with AI. So here's a quick test to find your problem. Look at what businesses around you are already hiring people to do that is boring, that is repetitive, and that is time-consuming. Writing product descriptions, answering the same customer questions over and over, editing videos, building simple reports, following up with leads. Every one of those is a task that AI can now do in a fraction of the time, and every one of those is something a That is the opening for you. The line between what you do and who you serve has to be completely straight. When you try to serve everyone, you connect with no one. When you go all in on one specific person with one specific problem, then you become the obvious choice to work with. So before you go do anything else, get super clear on this. Who do you help and what's one expensive problem you do solve for them? Write it down in one sentence. If you can't say it in one sentence, you're still too broad. Keep narrowing down until it's sharp. Step 2, start high, not cheap. This is where so many entrepreneurs sabotage themselves. They think the way to start is to sell something cheap, a $20 ebook, a $50 mini course, a small digital download. And I'm telling you, that's the slow road to go to nowhere, right? When you sell cheap stuff, you need thousands and thousands of customers just to make a living. And finding thousands of customers takes a massive, expensive marketing machine that you don't have yet. So just switch the math, go high ticket from day one. So let's look at how easy the numbers can get. So imagine you charge $2,000 a month to deliver an AI-powered service. You only need 4 clients to hit $96,000 a year. 4 clients, you can manage 4 clients from your kitchen table. Now picture 8 clients, and now you're nearly at $200,000 a year, still working alone. That's the power of starting high. A small number of clients who pay real money is 100 times easier to manage than a huge crowd of people who are paying you pennies. Ticket does something else for you. People actually take it more seriously. When someone pays you $2,000 a month, they show up, they do the work, they get results, and they refer their friends. So don't be scared to charge what the work is worth. The AI does a lot of the heavy lifting on delivery, which means your margins are huge. You're not paying a team, you keep almost everything. But there's also one more reason why high ticket wins. With a small number of clients, you can give each one an incredible experience. You know their Their businesses, their goals. You answer quickly, you overdeliver. That kind of care is impossible when you're just drowning in thousands of low-paying customers, and it's exactly what turns a client into somebody who stays for years and sends you everyone they know. So start high, serve a few people incredibly well, and let that fund everything you build next. Step number 3: Let AI do the work a team used to do. So this is the engine that makes the whole thing run. The reason one person can now do what used to take 20 people is that AI handles most of the actual labor. So your job is to build a simple system where the machine does the repetitive work and you do the thinking. Run everything through 3 filters. First, eliminate. Look at your day and cut anything that actually doesn't move the needle forward. I used to write detailed notes for a group of mine that I later found out nobody ever read, so I cut it out completely. Be honest about what's just busywork. Second, automate anything repetitive. Give it to AI. Turning a single long-form video into 20 short clips, transcribing every call so that you never lose an idea, drafting your outreach messages, writing your first drafts of your client work, organizing your research— AI can do all of that in minutes. Third, delegate. For a few things AI can't do and shouldn't do, you get help. You can hire a part-time assistant for 5 to 10 hours a week to start, so you learn to lead without the weight of having a full-time salary. When you stack these 3 things together, something pretty wild happens. You start delivering professional-level work at a speed that looks impossible for your clients. They think you have a whole team behind you and it's just you and your AI. Now let's look at a simple client. So say you land a client who needs 30 social media posts a month, a weekly newsletter, and all of their customer emails answered. A few years ago, that's 3 completely different hires. Today you sit down with AI, you feed it their brain and their voice, and you generate first drafts of it all in an afternoon. You spend the rest of your time editing, adding a human touch, your taste, and making sure that it's excellent and you're proud of. The client sees agency-level output. Your actual cost is a few dollars in AI and a couple hours of your undivided attention. And the gap here between what you can deliver and what you have to pay is where the millionaires are being made right now. Step 4, build relationships, not an audience. So a lot of people think that you need to go viral first, right? You think you need a million followers before before you can make money. So you spend a year chasing views and end up broke and burned out. You don't need a giant audience for this model to work. You just need the right relationship. So let me give you a model that I teach my Movement Maker clients. Make a list of 50 people who could each be worth 6 or 7 figures to your business. Not customers, connectors, people who already have the audience or the network that you really want to reach. I call it the Money 50 list. Then instead of asking them for anything, you give first. Invite them to be a guest on a simple show or podcast that you run. You record the conversation, you make them look great, and you build a real relationship. I've had clients build 7-figure businesses off of a channel with fewer than 50 targeted subscribers because they owned the relationships that mattered instead of chasing strangers and just views. And the give-first move works because it changes your whole relationship dynamic. Everyone else is sliding into people's DMs and inboxes asking for their time, their money, Their attention, the favor. You show up offering to make them look good and put a light on their story. You're the only one giving instead of taking at the start, and that makes it different and unforgettable for them. I had a client who did a version of this by simply offering free coaching on Instagram Live just to show off what he knew. And in 2 weeks, he went from signing up 2 people to 55 in his high-ticket program and scaled past $1 million in just a few months. He didn't have a huge following. He led with value and just let the right people come to him. So stop obsessing about your follower count. Pick a handful of people who can change your business, serve them, connect with them, and watch what happens. Quality relationships beats a giant audience every single time. Step number 5, stay lean on purpose. Here's something that nobody actually talks about. The goal is not to build the biggest company. The goal is to keep the most money and the most freedom. So when you grow a giant team, you create a giant set of problems as well, right? Payroll management, drama, overhead. The whole magic of this AI model is that You can make a fortune while staying small. That's the freedom of this model. You get to design a business around the life you actually want. You don't need a fancy office. You don't need a perfect website. You don't need a finished logo or a big brand to begin. Multimillion-dollar businesses have been launched with none of that. What you need is one clear offer, AI doing a ton of the work, and a few great clients. Keep your costs near zero, keep your team tiny or nonexistent, and let the technology be your leverage. Lean is not the limitation here. Lean is your entire advantage. Think about what that actually buys you. No two investors to answer to. No staff meetings. No rent. No payroll deadline hanging over your head every two weeks. When your costs are nearly nothing, you can survive a slow month. You can take a real risk. You can survive a client who says no or is not a fit for you anymore because you're not desperate to cover this giant overhead. That freedom is its own special kind of wealth, and it's only possible because AI lets one person carry the load that used to need an entire team of employees. The smaller the machine is that you build, the more money. Step 6, start before you're ready. Now, this is the one that actually decides who wins. You can know all of these 5 steps above and still do nothing because you're waiting, waiting to learn more, waiting for the perfect idea, waiting until you feel qualified. And while you wait, someone less talented than you is starting messy and figuring it out as they go. Tony Din didn't wait until everything was perfect. He left a safe, high-paying job and started shipping small products on Amazon. And he was 25 years old. Products in public one after another, learning from each one as he went. He didn't get it right on the first try. He kept going and getting it going is what eventually got it right. So here's, here's your assignment this week, not someday, this week, pick your one problem, write down your one offer and have one real conversation with one person who might pay you for it. That's the whole start. Not a website, not a logo, not a business plan, not more research, one offer. Offer and one conversation. The AI tools are sitting there right now, more powerful than anything a billion-dollar company had even just a few years ago. And they're free or nearly free, free to use today. The only thing missing is deciding to move. The window where this is wide open and uncrowded is right now. A year from now, a lot more people will have figured all of this out. The advantage belongs to the person who starts before it's obvious, and that person can be you. So the door's open right Now, and it will not stay open forever. The people who win this won't be the ones with the most money or the best degree. They'll be the ones who actually started while everyone else was sitting around wondering if it was real. Pick one expensive problem, charge real money to solve it, let AI do the work of the team, build a few key relationships, and stay lean. You do not need permission, and you do not need to feel ready because ready isn't real. You just need to start today, right where you are and with what you have. You will never build real freedom from a salary alone. You're not going to get rich. Renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of a business, to gain your financial freedom. Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living, which is fine. Profits make you a fortune, which is super fine. Gallup found that only 31% of American workers are actually engaged at their jobs, the lowest level in over a decade. This is about more than money. It's about whether you spend your one life building a machine that That pays you or renting out your best hours to build a machine for someone else. Let me tell you about a man who figured this out as a teenager with almost no money in his pocket. His name was Fred DeLuca. Back in 1965, Fred was just 17 years old and stressed about how he was going to pay for college. He wanted to become a doctor, but the money wasn't there. He didn't have it. So at a backyard barbecue, a family friend named Pete handed him an idea and $1,000. Open a sandwich shop. That summer, Fred opened one tiny sandwich shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was not glamorous, and that first shop barely made any money. But Fred didn't want to just run a sandwich shop for the rest of his life. He wanted to understand the system behind it so he could repeat it. He got obsessed with the process— how to make the sandwich fast, how to run the store lean, how to teach a total stranger To do it exactly the same way he did, and once he had a system that actually worked, he did something incredible. He didn't open store number two by himself; he taught other people to run his system and let them open the stores so the whole thing could grow without Fred standing behind every single counter. That one idea, turning a shop into a repeatable system other people could run, grew Subway into more than 40,000. locations around the world. Fred DeLuca started with a $1,000 loan and one little store and built a machine that paid him whether or not he ever made another sandwich himself. He didn't get rich from a salary or from working more hours than everyone else. He got rich by building a system that other people could run and then owning it. Now you might be thinking, okay, that's great for Fred DeLuca, but you can't exactly go build a 40,000-store empire from your kitchen table. You've got a schedule, a boss, a job. So how How does any of this help you on a random Tuesday morning? The system isn't about a fast food chain. A system is just any repeatable way of producing income that doesn't depend on you showing up every hour to trade your time for money. It can be small. It can start on the side at night with almost no money. The point isn't to build a 40,000-store empire tomorrow. The point is to stop thinking like someone who only earns when they clock in and start thinking like someone who's building something on the side that earns on its own. So you don't need permission to do this. You don't need to feel Let me show you exactly how to start thinking in systems instead of salaries. Be a killer at one thing before you chase 10. So I need to warn you about something because the internet is full of bad advice on this. You've probably heard that rich people have 7 streams of income, so you go and try to create all 7 things at once. A little store here, some crypto there, a bit of dropshipping, a side gig, and you spread yourself so thin that every single one of them stays small. Small. That's the fastest way to burn out and end up with nothing. Here's what actually works. The path to real wealth, especially in the beginning, is not using multiple streams. It's being an absolute killer at one thing. Pick one skill, one business, one problem that you can solve better than almost anyone else, and pour everything into it until it's genuinely great. Depth beats scatter every single time. When you try a bunch of things that you don't understand and you do them all badly, the market can smell it, and you won't make any. Fred DeLuca didn't run 7 different kinds of businesses. He ran one sandwich shop and he became obsessed with getting that single system perfect. The exact way to build a sandwich, how fast the line moved, how to train a brand new person to do it the same way every time. He drilled that one thing until it was flawless, and only then did he multiply it. That's the order that works. Master one thing, then systemize it, then scale it. The multiple streams comes later, and when they come, they'll mostly flow out of that one thing that you mastered first. So stop trying to do 10 mediocre things at once. Build one boat that actually floats and make it the best boat on the water. Here's a simple test to find your one thing. What can you do that people already come to you for? What do your friends ask you for help with? What could you happily work on at 11 at night and not notice the time? That intersection, the thing that you're good at and drawn to and that other people will pay you for, is where you start to— you plant your flag. Then commit to it for real, not just for one Give it a year of full focus before you ever think about starting the second thing. Almost everyone quits their one thing right before it was about to work, and they jump to a new shiny idea and start the clock over again from zero. Don't restart the clock. Stack your years on one thing and let it compound. Turn yourself into a system, then step out of it. So right now, if you own a small business or you're self-employed, there's a good chance That you don't really own a business. You own a job that you can never quit because the whole thing lives inside, you know, right here, lives inside your head and stops the second that you stop. That's not freedom, that you've just built yourself a job. You have your own form of prison. The fix is to turn what you do into a system that exists outside of you. So you start by writing down every single thing that you do to make money step by step, like you're writing instructions for a complete stranger. How do you find a customer? How do you talk to them? How do you actually deliver the work? How do you get paid? It's boring, but it's powerful because the moment that it's written down, it stops being just you and it starts becoming a process. And a process can be taught, can be improved, can be handed off to somebody else, can be repeated without you. This is exactly what Fred DeLuca did with Subway. He didn't just hope that each new shop would turn out okay, right? He built a simple, repeatable system for making the sandwich and running the store so that someone brand new could open a location and get the same result that he got in his first one. He removed himself from the outcome by building a system that carried the standard for him through every store. You can do the same thing just at your scale, right? Once the process is on paper, you could train someone to run a part of it, then another part. Every piece that you successfully hand off buys you back a little bit more of your time and your life. The goal that you're aiming at is simple and it's, I think, pretty huge. Build the thing so well that it can run without you because a business that can run without you is an asset and a business that can't is Just an extra stressful job that has your name on it, right? So start with the task that you do most often, the one that eats your biggest chunk of your week. Write down exactly how you do it, every step. And then the next time it comes up, follow your own instructions and fix anything that's unclear. Do that a few times and you'll have an actual playbook, not just some idea that lives in your head. Then find the one task that you hate most or waste the best hours and make that the first thing you train someone else to handle using your playbook. You don't have to hire a full-time employee to start. It can be a few hours a week from one person. What matters is that you prove to yourself the work can happen without your hands on everything. Once you feel it for the first time, you get hooked because you just watched your income keep moving while you stepped a little bit away. And that feeling is the whole point of building a system. Stop being an employee of your own money. This one is more of a mindset shift. And it just starts to change how you see the the whole game. You stop thinking like a person who gets a paycheck, and you start thinking like a corporation, like an owner. A worker earns money, pays taxes on all of it, and spends whatever is left over. A smart business does it in the exact opposite order. It earns, it keeps the money working inside the system, and it reinvests to grow, and is built to be efficient with what it owes. The difference repeated for years becomes the difference between just running on a treadmill constantly and actually. Actually, you know, climbing the staircase towards success. You don't need to be huge to start thinking this way. When your one thing starts making real money, get proper advice about setting it up the right way so more of what you earn stays inside your system doing work instead of leaking out to somebody else. A business that's structured well can pay for the tools that it uses, the space that it needs, the help that it hires, all before the tax ever gets counted. While an employee pays for every one of those things with money that's already been taxed. That's not some loophole. That's the entire way that the system's been designed to help people who build and own instead of the ones who just earn and spend. So keep money working in the business to buy tools and assets and help that make you more money. Pay yourself in a smart, planned way instead of grabbing every dollar that comes a second it lands, because every dollar that you leave working in the business, in the machine, is helping build the machine and the business bigger. The rich don't treat their They don't treat income like it's just this paycheck that they can go off and spend. They treat it like it's food for the machine, and they keep feeding that machine until it's strong enough to feed them for the rest of their lives. Own the thing that does the earning. So a salary pays you for showing up and doing the work. An asset pays you for existing. The whole leap from thinking in salaries to thinking in systems comes down to just one idea. Stop only selling your time and start owning things that produce income on their own. So if we go back and think about what Fred DeLuca really owned, it wasn't one sandwich shop that needed him to be behind the counter. He owned the system and the brand behind tens of thousands of shops, and that system paid him a piece of every store in every city, whether he showed up or not. The person running one shop earned from the hours that they put in. Fred earned from the entire network all day long, everywhere at the same time. He owned the thing that did the earning, not a job inside of the thing. You wanna build your life the same way at whatever size that you're at right now. Own a piece of the business, not just a spot on its payroll. When you help a company grow, ask for a slice of it instead of a flat fee so you keep getting paid long after the work is actually done. Package your skills into a product that sells while you sleep instead of only trading your time for money. Put your surplus into assets that send you money back month after month, long after you did the work to buy them. Every dollar you move from your hands into the machine, into an engine, is a dollar that never has to be earned by hand again. Every one of those moves does the same thing for you. It separates your income from the hours. The employee is stuck in this simple, brutal equation. No hours, no money. Get sick, no money. Take a vacation, no money. The owner breaks that equation on purpose so that the earning keeps happening even when they're at their kid's game or vacation or sleeping. That's what it really means to think in systems instead of salaries. You build or buy the engine and the engine keeps working for you. And you don't have to own something enormous for this to completely change your life. Owning even one small income-producing thing starts to change how you see the whole world. The first time money shows up in your account from something that you built rather than an hour of you trading your time, something changes. You stop asking, how many hours can I sell? And start asking, how many engines can I build? And that question asked over and over for years becomes the whole difference between a person who retires exhausted and a person who is genuinely free. So start with one small engine, then continue to build. Use leverage so the machine outlives your energy. This advice allows the system to grow far past what you could ever do on your own. Leverage. Leverage just means you're using something other than your own raw effort and money to get the work done. So there are 3 kinds that you can start using right now. Now, no matter how small you are. The first is other people. So you'll never scale by being the only worker in your business. The moment you can, you hand off tasks that don't need you so your time goes to the things that actually move the needle forward. The second system is tools. A good piece of software, AI, simple automated process can do the work of several people all day without lunch break or days off. And the third is other people's attention and audiences. So partner with someone who already has a customer you want can grow you faster than years of just grinding by yourself. It's actually what saved my first company when I was dead broke and about to quit. I was making $300 a month and staring at giving up. And what saved me was I stopped trying to do everything myself and started building partnerships instead, borrowing other people's reach instead of trying to build everything by myself from scratch. One of those partnerships led straight to my first deal, a great deal for me at the time, and that one deal kept the whole dream alive. I didn't outwork my problem. I just created leverage towards solving it. Leverage is how a system keeps producing even when your personal energy might run out, because your energy always runs out eventually. So you're one person with 24 hours. A machine built on leverage doesn't get tired. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't cap out at a number of hours in your day. And if you have the ability to build something that serves people while you rest, then I think you have the responsibility to go and build it. If you can, then You must. So don't wait for permission. Don't wait to feel ready. And you know when the best time to start is? Right now. How about right now? You were built to own, not just to clock in. You were never meant to spend your whole life renting out your hours. So start with one thing, make it great, turn it into a system, own the engine, and use leverage to let it grow beyond you. Being leads to doing. So decide today that you are a builder of systems and let the action follow. Your purpose comes from your pain, and every frustrating hour that you have traded for a paycheck can become fire inside you that builds something that finally pays you back. Security in a corporate job doesn't exist anymore. The safe job is about to be unsafe. So far this year, companies have cut more than 800,000 jobs. That's the highest number we have seen since the pandemic. A major West Michigan A company plans to cut hundreds of jobs. Tonight, Grand Rapids-based AccraSure is telling us that artificial intelligence is replacing actual employees. Over 80% of students feel they learn nothing about entrepreneurship in school, even though most want to start their own businesses. The only non-gamble in life is going on offense, and you've been taught that going on offense is the gamble because the school system Our school systems teach us nothing about money. Nothing. It's pathetic. So at 25, I recommitted to my education, but this time I started studying not things that were in books, but people that had actually created wealth. Sticking to a traditional career path limits your impact, keeps you miserable, and stops you from sharing your unique genius with the world. My sense is that even for the most successful people in the world, they're not The kids that get into the elite colleges at this point, it's like you've passed some Mandarin examination in China, but you're just so exhausted you're never going to do anything more with the rest of your life. You're burned out at 18. You take a calculated risk to start a company realizing you may forego a couple of years of steady income in another job and whatever else. That's a great risk to take, and if you don't take that risk, I think you have a very high chance that you end up Where are you going to spend your time? Your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life. When I was 19, I had the hardest choice to make. I was in university and I had a job offer for a safe 6-figure investment banking job. It was a job everybody wanted, but I also had a chance to own 30% of a biotech software making only $300 a month. And I picked the startup. I chose the struggle, eat beans for lunch, because the thought of sitting in a cubicle doing work I hated scarping more than being broke. I knew I had to take control of my own income. Think about Colonel Sanders at 65 years old. He had a tiny $105 Social Security check. He didn't go looking for a greeter job at a local store. He took his chicken recipe, hit the road, and slept in his car. He faced 1,009 rejections before finally someone said yes to his franchise idea. He proved that you can create massive wealth at any age just by owning your own ideas instead of working for someone else. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia couldn't pay their rent in San Francisco. They didn't rush out to get safe, normal jobs. Instead, they put 3 air mattresses on their floor and charged people to sleep there during a local design conference. That simple idea turned into Airbnb. They created a $100 million company because they look for a creative way to solve a problem instead of looking for a And right now you might be thinking that you need thousands of dollars in the bank to start making your own money. You think you need rich parents or some giant loan to succeed, and that's not true. Colonel Sanders was broke at 65. Airbnb started with 3 cheap air mattresses. You don't need money to make money. You just need a problem to solve and the courage to take the first step. I'm going to show you exactly how to start generating your own income from scratch. Right now, solve your own biggest problem. To make money without a job, you've got to realize where value actually comes from. You get paid for bringing value to other people. The absolute easiest way to bring value is to look directly at your own life. Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggle with the most is exactly what you want to help other people overcome. So think about your past. If you had a hard time getting fit and you figured out a system that works, that system is your business. If you struggled with anxiety and found a way to manage it, that method, that's your business. You don't need a fancy business degree to make this happen. You just need to be one step ahead of the person that you're trying to help. Over 62% of billionaires are totally self-made, meaning they've created their wealth by solving real problems, not by inheriting cash. People pay you to solve their problems because they desperately want to skip the pain that you have already went through. You're selling selling speed and convenience. If you can help someone skip 5 years of painful trial and error, they pay you for that shortcut. So don't think you need to invent the next big tech platform to be successful. Look at the local business in your town. They need help with their marketing, their accounting, their daily operations. They've got massive problems right now. You can step in and help fix those problems. When you focus entirely on serving others and solving their actual pain points, you stop acting like an employee begging for a simple paycheck, and you start acting like a true entrepreneur commanding a premium price. You stop handing out weak resumes and start handing out powerful solutions for problems. This simple shift in your mindset changes everything. You go from hoping that a boss picks you to knowing that the market desperately needs you. So you've got to stop looking for a company to hire you and start looking for a person to help. The money will always follow the value you provide. So if you fix a $100 If you fix a $1,000 problem, you make a little bit of money. If you fix a $1,000 problem, you make a lot more money. It's simple. Your job right now is to identify the most expensive problem you know how to solve and then go find the exact people who are crying out for that exact solution. But finding a problem is only the first step because your surroundings might be secretly destroying your chances of success. Change your environment to change your mind. Your current environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are right now. Right now, so if your friends all have traditional jobs, they'll constantly tell you to get a safe job. They aren't trying to hurt you; they just don't understand your big vision. Research shows that you're up to 61% more likely to adopt the exact habits and mindsets of the people closest to you. So if you want to make your own money, you must change your daily environment. You've got to completely shut out the negativity, limit your access to people who doubt you, and fill that empty space. Space with extreme positivity and the specific messages you actually want to hear. So if you can't find supportive friends in your own town yet, go find them online. Read powerful books, listen to great podcasts, watch amazing YouTube videos from the exact people who are already doing what you want to do. I started my YouTube channel because I wanted to surround myself with some of the greatest minds in history. I wanted Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett in my ear every single morning. I wanted their intense ambition to rub off on me. You've got to be incredibly intentional with your daily morning routine. Don't wake up and immediately scroll through toxic social media or the depressing news. Start your day with content that makes you believe in yourself. When you consume greatness daily, it starts to feel completely normal. Soon the idea of settling for a boring cubicle will feel totally insane to you. You'll begin to think bigger, act faster, Expect so much more of yourself. You can literally rewire your entire brain for massive success just by changing what you look at and who you listen to every single day. So treat it like a garden, right? Your mind is a garden. If you plant negative seeds, you'll grow a massive negative life. If you plant seeds of belief, you'll grow a massive awesome empire. You've got to ruthlessly protect your focus. So stop giving your attention to things that make you feel small and start obsessing over the ideas that make you feel powerful. The moment you change your inputs, the outputs will transform forever. But once you fix your surroundings, you need a system to actually get you moving. Which brings us to the simple 2% trick. Use the 2% rule to build massive momentum. The biggest thing you're missing right now is just momentum. You're sitting on a truly great idea, but you haven't taken any real action. You're constantly overthinking it. You want everything to be 100% perfect before you finally launch. You want the perfect logo, the perfect website, the perfect business plan. Stop doing that. Perfectionism is just you being afraid. Studies reveal that perfectionism actually decreases your productivity and increases severe mental burnout. You don't need a perfect plan. You just need to execute the first 2%. If your goal is to write a book, bestselling book, the first 2% is writing just one single page. If your goal is to start a massive YouTube channel, awesome. The first 2% is pulling out your phone and recording your first really messy video. Don't worry about step 100, just focus completely on step number 1. Take the absolute smallest, easiest action right now. Once you take that first step, your brain, it gets a, it's a quick win. And that quick win builds confidence and that confidence creates momentum. So when I wrote my book about momentum, I didn't plan it out for long months. I just started typing The physical action itself creates the energy you need to keep going. So waiting around for the perfect moment, what does it do? It guarantees that you'll wait forever. Action cures fear every single time. When you're moving forward, you simply don't have the time to sit there and doubt yourself. So don't let your greatest ideas die just silently here in your head. Put them out into the real world. Start messy, start small, but you've absolutely got to start.

Start when?

Today. It doesn't matter if your first attempt looks crazy, ridiculous. The only thing that matters is that you aren't just standing still anymore. You're finally in the game. Every massive company started as some tiny, flawed little experiment. You are no different. So push through the hesitation, click publish, make the call, and watch how quickly your life begins to change. Now that you're moving though, you've gotta prepare yourself for the hardest phase of all, and this is where almost everyone quits. Expect to be terrible at first. So now you've got to accept a really harsh reality. Your first attempt at anything new is going to be absolutely terrible. Your first product will have tons of flaws. Your first video will be incredibly embarrassing. Your first major sales call will feel completely awkward. And that is completely normal. Everyone starts out at the bottom. You just don't see the messy hidden starts. Data shows that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to truly master any complex skill. You just can't skip the struggle. When I first started on YouTube, I was completely terrified. I was shy, quiet, introverted. I did not like being on camera. It took me 350 videos before I wasn't completely embarrassed to watch myself back, and 700 public videos before I actually felt inspired by one piece of content that I made. And I made absolutely hundreds of terrible videos. You can go back and watch them, but I kept going Anyway, most people just quit because they tried five times and they expected to be world class immediately. They let the ego stop you from making actual progress. So the fact that you're willing to try and be terrible becomes an actual secret advantage. So embrace the highly awkward phase. Look at your early failures as data, and that's going to be part of your story as you climb. Every single time you fail, you learn exactly what not to do the next time. Will be an inspiration to others. If you can handle looking foolish. for a little while, you'll eventually become completely unstoppable. The only real failure in life's quitting before you get good. So you've got to give yourself permission to be a total beginner. Stop comparing your chapter 1 to somebody else's chapter 20, right? Your journey is your journey, and that is okay. So put in the boring reps, do the unglamorous work. The mastery that you want is waiting on the other side of 1,000 terrible attempts. And once you survive that awkward Here are 3 ways you can speed up your results by borrowing the exact blueprints of people who've already won. Model the massive success of others. You don't need to figure out all of this on your own. That was one of the biggest mistakes that I made early on. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make a massive fortune. The smartest entrepreneurs study the exact people who've already won and simply model their success. So if you want to build a $100,000 consulting business, someone who already did exactly that. Study their public website, look at their specific pricing, see exactly how they talk to their premium clients, then thoughtfully apply those same proven principles to your own unique style. According to the Small Business Administration, businesses that receive direct mentoring and strictly model-proven strategies are 2 times more likely to survive their first 5 difficult years. When my first business was struggling. I felt completely lost. I had no real idea how to turn things around. Then I decided to intensely study a highly successful software company, Microsoft, because I had a software company. I looked at how they operated, looked at how they got their first clients, not how they make an extra million now. I didn't steal or copy them, but I learned directly from Bill Gates's powerful framework. And that single focused decision saved my entire company. Success always leaves clues. There's a roadmap out there for you to do whatever You want and achieve whatever you want. You just have to be humble and curious enough to actively go and follow it. So read the biographies of great leaders. Watch the long-form interviews of the performers that you look up to and respect. Find the hidden patterns in their daily behaviors, and then creatively adapt them to your situation. Why would you spend ten years making deeply painful mistakes when you can learn from someone else's expensive experience in just ten days or ten hours? So be an aggressive student of greatness and your path to find. Financial independence will be so much faster. You don't lack the ability, you just lack the right model. So find your ideal model, study them relentlessly, build your own blueprint for your special flavor. And then when you've got the right model, you need the right people. And there's a specific way to get the most powerful CEOs to take your call. Build real relationships instead of fake followers. So most people think that making money online means You definitely need millions of random followers, right? You think that you need to go incredibly viral to succeed, and that's a massive and actually dangerous distraction. You don't need a million casual subscribers to make a million dollars. You just need deep, highly meaningful relationships. Don't worry about the vanity metrics; they will constantly waste your time. Instead, focus on direct business development through high-value connections. One of my favorite strategies, what we teach inside our Movement Makers program, is a business development show. It's a dedicated interview. Don't constantly cold call potential clients. Warmly invite them onto your show to share their story. People love talking about themselves. When you feature them prominently, they feel valued and you built a relationship. Statistics clearly show that 84% of B2B sales start exactly with a warm referral or strong existing relationship. When you interview someone, you spend real focused time with them. You build authentic trust with them. That genuine trust Trust turns into lucrative partnerships, massive referrals, highly paying clients. It literally doesn't matter if your new channel only has 200 total subscribers. We're going after people who have high demand but low media demand. You're coming in as media right now, and you can get top industry leaders who've built multimillion dollar networks. So don't worry about the random clicks and start aggressively chasing real conversations. Add massive value to the exact people that you desperately want to work with. Feature their deep expertise. Ask them incredibly great questions. Do your research before you have them on. Give them a beautiful platform to share their story. When you actively become a super connector and a supporter, the big money naturally follows you everywhere you go. Your network is truly your actual net worth, so start building it deliberately and strategically today. Stop worrying about the algorithm and start obsessing over the actual human beings you want to serve. And building that network takes extreme focus. Focus, which means you've got to completely change how you manage your 24 hours. Make every single day truly count. Your limited time is your absolute most precious asset. If you want to permanently escape the endless job cycle and build your own incredible life, you've got to maximize your specific daily actions. So you wake up every morning with a clear intention: make today truly count. Before you hit your head, your tired head on the pillow, Tonight, do one specific thing that moves you significantly closer to your dream. Make one beautiful piece of art, send one highly important email, record one incredibly helpful video. Create something today that you desperately want your future grandkids to see. Research strongly indicates that completing just one highly meaningful task a day significantly boosts your overall life satisfaction and guarantees long-term success. To make real time for that meaningful work, you've got to ruthlessly manage your busy schedule. You must eliminate, automate, or delegate absolutely everything else. If a specific task doesn't directly serve your core mission, stop doing it. If a basic computer program or AI can do it, awesome, automate it immediately. If someone else can do something significantly cheaper, hire them right away. Don't waste your unique genius on boring busywork. Focus only on the high-level tasks that actually move the big needle forward. When you finally take control of your daily time, you instantly take total control of your personal income. You stop hopelessly trading hours for a flat, boring salary and start aggressively trading massive value for huge financial returns. You already have absolutely everything it takes to build a beautiful life of total freedom. You just have to firmly decide that you're ready to step up and claim it. And this brings us to the absolute most important truth of all, and it's something that I hope that you remember Remember every single morning when you wake up, your belief is your ultimate superpower. You are entirely capable of building a massive life on your own terms. So trust your vision, take the messy action, and never let fear make your decisions for you. If you're broke right now, it's not because you're lazy or because you're not smart enough. It's because the game was designed for you to lose, and nobody ever handed you the real playbook. The Federal Reserve's own data shows the bottom 50% of Americans own just 2.5% of the wealth in the entire country, which means half the people in the richest nation on Earth are fighting over crumbs. But 500 years ago, a ruthless Italian named Machiavelli wrote down the cold, brutal strategies that the powerful were using to win and keep winning. And today I'm handing you 10 of them, because the day you stop playing fair with a system that was never fair to you is the day everything starts to change. Let me tell you about a man named Ronald Read. He grew up dirt poor on a farm in Vermont, so poor that he hitchhiked and walked miles just to get to school. He came home from the war and spent about 25 years pumping gas at a gas station, and then he worked as a janitor at JCPenney sweeping floors for another 17 years. He never made much money in his life. He wore the same old flannel coat held together with safety pins and drove a beat-up secondhand car. So when Ronald Read died in 2014, at 92 years old, the people in his small town got the shock of their lives. This quiet janitor had left behind an estate worth almost $8 million. He gave $4.8 million to his local hospital and $1.2 million to the library. How does a gas station attendant and a janitor die richer than most doctors? He spent less than he earned. He bought shares of boring, solid companies. And then he did the hardest thing of all— he waited for decades. He let his money quietly multiply while everyone around them spent theirs on stuff that fell apart. He wasn't lucky. He wasn't a genius. He was patient. He was disciplined. And that combination beats a giant paycheck every single time. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that's great for Ronald, but I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I can barely cover my rent. So how am I supposed to build wealth from nothing left over at the end of the month? Here's what's important to understand. Building wealth on a low income was never about much you make. It's about strategy. And strategy is the one weapon that doesn't cost you a single dollar. A high income with no strategy goes away. You've watched broke celebrities and bankrupt lottery winners prove that 100 times over. But a low income with brutal discipline strategy compounds into actual real freedom. The amount you start with matters far less than the rules that you're playing by. And most people never learn the rules because the people who profit from you being broke don't want you to. So let me give you the 10 moves Machiavelli would hand you if he were sitting here with you today. And fair warning, they're gonna feel uncomfortable because comfort is the exact thing that's been keeping people broke. Number 1, bet on your skill, never on your luck. So Machiavelli split the whole world into 2 forces. There's fortuna, which is luck, the random chaos that you don't control. And he said it rules maybe half of your life. And then there's virtue— the— your skill, your foresight, your decisive action. And that's the half that you do control. Broke people spend their whole lives praying to Fortuna. They wait for the lottery ticket, the inheritance, the lucky break that's going to save them. The strategist does the opposite. You pour everything into virtue and take command of what actually is in your hands. And the very first thing in your hands is information. So start tracking every single dollar that comes in and every single dollar that goes out starting today. Most people who are broke generally have no idea where their money disappears to, and you cannot command an army that you cannot even see. So when you log every transaction for 30 days, you'll find the leaks, the subscriptions you forgot about, the little daily spends that quietly are bleeding you dry. Plugging those leaks is the easiest money that you'll ever make, and it costs you nothing but a little bit of honesty. All progress begins with telling the truth, and that includes telling the truth about your money. And foresight is the part of virtue too. The strategist doesn't just react to the month, he plays the long game. He sees the moves 3 years out and acts on it today while everyone else is only thinking about Friday night. You don't control whether you got dealt a bad hand, but you absolutely do control how you play it. Number 3, Number 2, see the game exactly as it is. Machiavelli's most powerful rule was to deal with the world as it actually is, not as you wish it were. So here is a cold reality: the financial system is not on your side. It is engineered to keep you spending and borrowing because your debt is somebody else's income. Buy now, pay later, 0% financing, credit card minimum payments— these things are all designed to look harmless While they quietly drain you for years. So you fight back with what I call rich math. Never ever judge a purchase by its monthly payment. Judge it by its full total real cost. The system trains you to ask, well, what's the monthly payment? Because that little number, it hides the damage. The wealthy ask, what does this actually cost me in total? And what could that same money become if I invested it instead? And then you hunt down your high-interest debt and you destroy it like your future depends on it. Every dollar you pay in interest is a soldier that is fighting for the other side. Take those soldiers back. Number 3, build walls of discipline, not willpower. So a brutal truth about human beings that Machiavelli understood 500 years ago is that people are weak under pressure. Your willpower will absolutely collapse the moment when something gets hard, and life always gets hard. That's why he never trusted good intentions. He trusted strong walls. So stop relying on motivation to save money, because motivation is the most unreliable thing that you can do on your own. Build the wall instead. The very moment that money hits your account, automate a transfer that pulls a set amount into a separate savings account before you can even think about it. Then make that account painful to reach— no debit card attached to it, delete the app off your phone. The goal is to make saving completely automatic and make spending that money a genuine hassle. You pay yourself first before a single bill, before a night out. When the structure does the work, your weak moments can't sabotage you anymore. Number 4, move in complete silence. Machiavelli knew that the moment that you reveal your strength, you paint a target on your own back. The same thing is true with money. The second the people around you, they sense that you've got got some, they all want a piece of it. Family starts asking for loans, friends expect you to grab every check, and worst of all, you feel this pressure to prove it with a new car or flashy wardrobe. So you do the opposite of what your ego wants. You build your wealth in total silence. You let your money be present but completely invisible. Drive the modest car for a few more years, keep the quiet apartment, wear the regular clothes. Let your bank account grow while your lifestyle barely changes. The broke person spends to look The strategist looks ordinary on purpose and gets rich for real. Think about Ronald Reed again. The whole town thought he was just a poor old janitor right up until the day he died, and that invisibility—that was a superpower because nobody ever came asking for a handout and nobody ever pressured him to keep up. Every dollar you don't spend impressing strangers is a dollar that stands guard growing your army. Let them underestimate you. The quiet ones are the ones. Number 5, seize assets. Don't rent out your hours. The 99% trade their time for money, and that's exactly why 99% of people don't get rich. There are only 24 hours in a day. Everybody has the same 24 hours. So when you sell your hours, your income has a hard ceiling no matter how hard you're working. Machiavelli respected those who seized territory and held it. And in the money game, your territory is assets, the things you own. Things you own that make money whether you show up or not. So shares of solid companies like Ronald Read bought, a small piece of real estate down the road, a digital product you build once and sell 1,000 times. This is where the pay yourself first money goes, not into savings account to rot, but into ownership. So stop thinking like a worker who rents out your hours and start thinking like an owner who buys things that pay you. Every dollar you put into an asset is another soldier you send out to work 24 hours a day. And just like you, that soldier never sleeps and never quits. Number 6, be ruthless about your generosity. This one might sting, but you might need it. Machiavelli warned that generosity given carelessly will bankrupt the giver and breed entitlement in everyone around them. So when you're building wealth or on a low income, you simply can't be the personal bank account for your entire circle. Giving money out of guilt drains your reserves and also trains people to depend on you instead of building things for themselves. So you give with strategy, not with guilt. Give when it actually builds something, when it lifts someone towards standing up on their own, not when you're being pressured into doing it. Protect your capital the way that the general guards a treasury that funds the entire war, because the thing that people don't say is staying broke so that you can rescue everybody else doesn't actually help anybody. Get strong first. A wealthy you can help 100 people for the rest of your life. A broke you can't even help yourself, and it definitely can't help them. So it's put your own oxygen mask on first before trying to save the whole plane. Number 7, build the machine, then master one thing first. So the wise don't chase money around all day. They build a machine that commands money to come to them. Ronald Read built a quiet machine out of dividend stocks that paid him whether he was awake or asleep. So the goal becomes to build an automated income that doesn't depend on your sweat. But listen to this carefully because a lot of people get this wrong. So don't try to build 5 machines at once when you're starting out. The path to wealth is almost never multiple streams of income. It's not. Look at people's stories. It's not. It's becoming absolutely killer at one single thing. The people who chase 5 side hustles all at the same time usually do 5 of them really badly and burn out with nothing to show for themselves. So pick one skill, one asset, one stream, and you master it until it actually pays you. Then and only then you can take that money and start building the next machine. Like the expression goes, one blade sharpened to a razor's edge beats 10 dull blades every single time. Number 8, pay for speed. Here's a strategy that feels completely backwards when money is tight, but it's actually how achievers win. Achievers pay for speed. So when you're broke, your instinct is to figure everything out for yourself for free. But figuring out alone can cost you years and a mountain of actually expensive mistakes. The single smartest investment a low-income person can ever make on their own is into skills and knowledge, is into yourself, because your ability to earn is the one asset that no stock market crash can wipe you out and no thief can ever steal from you. A $30 book or an online course It teaches you a skill which raises your income for the rest of your life is the highest return you can make on earth. It's not even close. Look at it this way: if you spend three years struggling alone to learn something an expert could have taught you in three months, that lost time isn't free. It's the most expensive thing that you'll ever buy, and you paid for it with time out of your life. So before you try to invest in anything else, invest in your own earning power first. Sharpen the one tool that produces all the other. Others, which is you. Number nine: Speak like someone who selects, not someone who begs. Machiavelli understood that power is established by how you carry yourself. So show weakness and dependency, and the world will exploit you every time. So watch how you speak about money. Broke people speak like applicants, hoping, asking, begging for a shot. Wealthy people speak like they select, like they're the prize. Choosing who gets access to them. You have to retrain your own thinking and language. When you sit down to negotiate a salary, a rate, a price, a deal, you communicate from a place of authority and calm value, even if you don't have a ton of money in your bank account. So stop saying, I was hoping for, and start saying, well, my rate is. Stop apologizing for your prices. Learn to say a number and then go completely silent and let it sit there, because the person who speaks first in negotiation usually loses. People will always pay more to someone who carries themselves like they're worth more. And remember, raising your income is the single fastest accelerant on this entire list, and it very often starts with nothing more than how you talk about your own worth. Number 10: Strike now while everyone else is hesitating. Machiavelli said fortune favors the bold and that wealth grows in the exact spot where hesitation dies. The number one reason people stay broke for their whole life isn't a lack of money. It's waiting, waiting for more money to start, waiting for more time to start, waiting for the perfect moment that is never ever coming. So let me be as clear as I can on this. Don't wait for permission. Don't wait to feel ready because ready is fake. You start with whatever you have in your hands right now. Invest $20 this week. Open the account today. Track your first dollar tonight. Here's how it works. You get rich slowly, and then you get rich suddenly, because the slow part only ever begins the moment you decide to start. The best time, they say, right, to plant the seed was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. How about right now? The story they'll tell about you. The fact that you're starting with less isn't the thing that disqualifies you. It's actually the thing that's going to make your story pretty remarkable. Ronald Read proved that a quiet janitor can outbuild a millionaire. And if a man with a safety pin that holds his coat together can do it, so can you. You have the ability, so now you have the responsibility to actually use it. Billionaires aren't a different species. They just do things that you're not doing yet. Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. I just read and read and read. I probably read 5 to 6 hours a day. And I went digging through the data on the world's richest people, and according to Forbes, 67% Of them are self-made, meaning they built the whole thing themselves instead of inheriting a single dollar. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. People like me, I was born in a very poor family. I never got a great education. I failed all the examinations for what reason? I don't know. Later, I realized I don't have money. I don't have technology. I don't have a lot of good backgrounds. We have a rich uncle or something. No. The only thing I competed with my people than. young people is let's compete for 10 years later. So the habits that separate them from everyone else are the exact same habits sitting available to us today. And by the end of this video, you're gonna know precisely what they are. Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management. There were people that were going off in 18 different directions, doing arguably interesting things in each one of them. Good engineers Lousy management. You need to work super hard. And I mean, if you do simple math, say like, okay, if somebody else is working 50 hours and you're working 100, you'll get twice as done— as much done in the course of a year as the other company. Let me tell you about a young woman selling fax machines door-to-door in Florida. Her name was Sarah Blakely.

Every day she put on her suit, walk into offices, and get doors slammed in her face so many times that she started to expect the rejection before she I did that for about 3 months, worked at Disney World, and then I ended up selling fax machines door-to-door for 7 years until I cut the feet out of my pantyhose.

She had no background in fashion, no business degree, no rich family, and no connections in any industry that mattered to her.

I'd never taken a business class. I'd never worked in fashion or retail, and I had $5,000 in savings. I just moved out of my mother's house. I was 27 years old, and I was probably dating a loser at the time.

What she did have was one small idea. She hated how her pantyhose looked under white pants, so one night she grabbed scissors and cut the feet off, and suddenly she looked smooth and put together.

It all started with my own butt. I did not like the way that it looked in white pants, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. And I cut the feet out of control-top pantyhose, threw them on under my white pants, looked fabulous, felt great, but they rolled up my legs all night. And at the end of that night, I went to a party in Buckhead. I said to myself, I have got to figure out a way to create this so that it stays down on the leg.

That was a whole billion-dollar idea at the start. She took $5,000 of her own savings, every penny she had, and went to work. And here's where almost everybody else would have folded. She drove all over North Carolina to the different hosiery mills, and every single one of them told her no. They thought her idea was silly.

I went to a website called thomasnet.com where I found a list of all U.S. manufacturers, and I literally went down the list finding hosiery and shapewear and started calling each one of them on the phone.

Well, I did this for about 6 to 8 months, and everybody said the same thing, which was She spent 2 years hearing no from the very people who made the product until one mill owner, whose own daughters begged him to help her, finally said yes.

I actually got a phone call from one of the manufacturers in North Carolina, Sam Kaplan in Charlotte, and he said, I quote, Sarah, I have decided to help make your crazy idea. And when I asked him why he had the change of heart, he simply said, I I have 2 daughters. So he had run the idea by his daughters. They said, it's brilliant, Dad, help this girl make it. And he— we set out to make it.

Then she cold-called Neiman Marcus, one of the biggest retailers in the country, with zero connections and somehow landed a meeting.

Second she answered the phone, I took a very deep breath. I was so scared. And I said, hi, this is Sara Blakely, and I've invented something that's going to completely change the way all of your customers wear clothes, and I'll fly to see you if you'll give me 5 minutes. And she just kind of took a pause and she goes, well, where do you live? I said, Atlanta. She goes, all right, if you're willing to fly here, I'll give you 10 to 15 minutes.

When she felt the buyer losing interest, she asked the woman to come to the bathroom and showed her live how she looked in the product versus without it. The buyer said yes on the spot.

I went to the Neiman Marcus headquarters and I started going into my spiel and And I was— I knew I wasn't really making a ton of sense. And so halfway through it, I go, you know what, you just have to come with me to the bathroom. I go into the stall, I have on the white pants that caused me to invent it. I come out with the Spanx on, I turn around, I had just shown her what it looked like without the Spanx on, and she took a step back and she goes, I get it. And then she goes, it's brilliant.

Then Oprah Winfrey named it one of her favorite things, and it exploded. Sara Blakely built Spanx into a company worth over $1 billion while owning 100% of it, never taking a dime of outside investment, and never spending money on advertising. In 2012, she became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world at 41. She started by selling fax machines and cutting up her own pantyhose. She didn't have anything that you don't have, but she did do something with it. Now here's some of the objections that I Often they come out, you might be thinking, okay, sure, Evan, but these people, they're just built differently. They're geniuses. They got lucky. They had connections or rich parents that I'll never have. And listen, I understand why it feels that way because that story also makes people feel comfortable. It lets you off the hook. But look at the data again. 67% of them are self-made. Sarah Blakely was selling fax machines. Michael Dell was a broke college kid. When you dig into their real stories, over and and over, you find people who started with almost nothing and got rejected for years. What they had was a set of habits and beliefs that anyone can copy, including us, starting today. And that's genuinely great news because a habit can be learned. A rich uncle can't. Luck can't be scheduled, but a habit you can install this week and run for the rest of your life. So I look closely at how these people actually think and operate, and the same 7 patterns show up again and again. Again, no matter the industry, the country, or the decade. So let me walk you through exactly what all of them have in common. They bet on themselves before anyone else would. The first thing they all have in common, these billionaires, is that they believed in themselves before there was a shred of proof that they should. Sara Blakely believed in cut-up pantyhose while every mill owner in North Carolina laughed her out of the building. Michael Dell believed in his idea so much that he started building and selling computers Out of his dorm room with about $1,000 to his name, then dropped out of school to go and chase his dream. Larry Ellison started Oracle, which became one of the biggest software companies on the planet with less than $2,000. None of them waited for some committee to approve them, and none of them waited to feel ready. And that's the key that unlocks everything else, because self-belief isn't something that you're born with. It's a decision that you make on purpose every day. You press your inner I believe button, especially on the days when there's zero evidence yet and everyone around you thinks that you have lost your mind. Notice something. None of these billionaires believed because it wasn't working. They believed first and the working came second. That's the order almost everyone gets backwards. They say, I'll believe in myself once I see results, but the results only show up for people who believe before the results existed. So here's what we do today. Pick the thing that you've been doubting yourself on and take one small action that only makes sense if you believe it's gonna work. Register that domain name, make the first call, post the first video, because if you won't bet on you, you can't expect anyone else to. They outwork the room because they're genuinely obsessed. So the second thing billionaires share is a work ethic that borders on obsession. Elon Musk has openly talked about working over 100 hours a week for years while building his companies. Now, I'm not telling you to burn yourself out, but the lesson that I found underneath the hours is when you're genuinely obsessed with what you're building, the work stops feeling like work. The hours fly by because you actually want to be there. Billionaires didn't force them through something that they hated. They found the thing that they were so lit up by that they do it for free, and then they poured everything into it so they could make money at it too. The takeaway isn't to just grind 100 hours starting Monday. It's find the work that pulls that energy out of you naturally. So the project that you stay up late for because you can't wait to see what happens next with it. And let me be clear about what obsession really means, because I don't want you to hear it wrong. It doesn't mean abandon your family. It means when you're working, you're actually working fully present, not half scrolling through your phone while pretending that you're building your dream. An hour of total focus will beat 8 hours of distracted effort. That's how a person with a full-time job and 2 kids still builds something extraordinary on the side, one obsessed hour at a time before the whole world wakes up. Because being leads to doing. When you become someone obsessed with a mission that's bigger than yourself, The doing takes care of itself, and you will outwork rooms full of more talented people who are only there for a paycheck or a strategy. Obsession beats talent every single time. They're learning machines who read more than they react. So number three habit for billionaires is not as in your face as some of the other ones, but it's still really powerful. These people are relentless, lifelong learners. Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors who ever lived, has said that he reads something like 500 pages. A day, and that his success builds the way compound interest builds, a little knowledge stacked every day for decades. Bill Gates reads around 50 books a year and takes a full week off twice a year just to read and think. Do you see the pattern here? While everyone else is scrolling and reacting to the day, billionaires are feeding their minds and they guard their thinking time. And here's the, what I think it's a really beautiful part for us. This is a single easiest habit on the whole list to copy right now for free. You don't need $5,000 or a dorm room or even an idea yet. You just need to read 10 pages a day, listen to the audiobook on your commute, watch the interview with someone who has done what you want to do instead of the show that leaves you entertained but empty. Every book, every video is a mentor that you can carry in your pocket, someone who spent 30 years learning something hard and packed the rest of it into a few hours just for you. So pick the one area that you want to change the most— your health, Your money, your business, and read the best 3 books on it this quarter. That alone puts you ahead of almost everyone you know because the average person doesn't finish a single book after school ends. Knowledge compounds exactly like money does, and the people at the top, they never ever stop being students. They turn their deepest pain into their purpose. Number 4 habit of billionaires is the one that hits me at my core because it's everything that I teach. The most driven people on the planet almost always build their success on top of their pain. Your purpose comes from your pain, the exact thing that you struggled with, uh, the wound that you still carry around, that is usually the thing that you're meant to help the world with. So let's look at Oprah Winfrey. She was born into deep poverty and survived abuse as a child, and she took all of that pain and transformed it into one of the most powerful platforms for human connection the world has ever seen, becoming a billionaire as well in the process. Now, she didn't bury the pain. She poured it at her mission. Sarah Blakely kept every rejection letter she ever got, and her father used to ask her at dinner, what she failed at that week to celebrate the failure so she'd never fear it. She turned the, the pain of 1,000 slammed doors into a force for good for her. So the work for us, stop running from your pain and start asking what it's trying to point you towards. What have you survived that you could now help someone else survive? What problem do you understand from the inside out because you actually lived it? That is not a weakness that then you hide. It's a map of purpose for you. The billionaires don't have less pain than you. They just pointed it in a positive direction. They focus on one thing and cut the rest ruthlessly. So number 5 habit of billionaires, they say no to almost everything. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, the company was drowning in dozens of confusing products, and he walked in and slashed the entire lineup of products down to just 4. He said, focus isn't about saying yes to what you love. It's about saying no to the 100 other good ideas. And this connects to one of the most important truths: 10 times is easier than 2 times. To really double what you've got, you can grind harder at everything you're already doing, but to grow 10 Sometimes you're forced to drop the 80% of your effort that's going to average things and pour everything into the 20% that you're genuinely world-class at. The billionaires, they're masters at this. They find the one thing that they're best in the world at, and they cut away everything else that creates distractions for them. They eliminate busywork. They automate what a tool can handle. They delegate the rest so their own hands only touch the work that only they can do. So now it's time to get brutally honest about where your hours are actually Write down every project, every commitment pulling at your attention, then circle the one that would make everything else easier if you nailed it. That's your one thing. Everything you didn't circle, that's a distraction, something to delegate or something to, to let die on purpose. One scattered person doing 15 things is always beaten by a focused person doing one thing at a world-class level. So pick your one thing, go all in, and let the rest go. They play the long game when everyone else wants it now. Number 6 habit of billionaires is patience, the trait almost nobody talks about because it is not sexy. These people think in decades while everyone else thinks in days. Jeff Bezos ran Amazon at a loss for years, absorbing brutal criticism because he was building for a future that only he could see. Warren Buffett made the vast majority of his enormous wealth after the age of 50 simply by letting compounding do the heavy lifting over decades of patience that most people never have. Sara Blakely spent 2 full years just getting a factory to say say yes before Spanx ever hit the shelf. So this pattern is everywhere. The billionaires, they plant seeds and they're willing to wait for the forest to grow. This world is addicted to overnight results, and you can use that as your unfair advantage because almost everybody quits early. They start a business, they give up at month 3. They start investing and panic sell the moment the market dips a little bit. They start a channel and delete everything after 20 videos. If you can simply become the person who keeps going while others quit, who lets the compounding happen for them, who plants and waters the seeds without, you know, pulling it up every week and starting to go do something new, you'll one day be standing in front of a forest while everyone else is still complaining that their seeds never did anything in a weekend. So stop asking how fast can this pay off and start asking where will this be in 5 years if I don't quit? Delayed gratification is seen as a punishment, but it's not. It really just is the price of admission to get everything that you truly want one patient year at a time. They make absolutely sure the world knows who they are. The final thing that billionaires share is that they flat out refuse to be a secret. Best known beats best. It does not matter how good your product or your talent is if nobody on earth knows you or your company exists. The most successful people understand that being great in private doesn't really get you very far, uh, especially if your company is great in private. So they tell their story and they make sure that they're seen, their company is seen. Sara Blakely got Spanx into Oprah's hands and became the face of her own company on purpose. These founders put themselves Out there, their companies out there again and again, long before they felt polished or they felt ready. And this is exactly where so many talented people lose because you're brilliant, but you're hiding yourself, telling that the work isn't good enough, and hopefully someday we'll magically discover all of this stuff. That's not how it works. And waiting to be discovered is how most gifted people stay broke their entire lives. You have to be willing to be seen. So pick one platform, just one, and share one useful thing that you know. It's not gonna be a masterpiece. That's okay. Just one honest, helpful thing, and then do it again tomorrow. You'll be bad at first, and that's fine. I made about 350 videos before I stopped being completely embarrassed by my content. And so get out there, start making. And there's one more thing underneath all of these 7 habits, and it holds them all together. These people fail more than everyone else tries, not less. James Dyson built 5,126 failed prototypes over 15 years before his vacuum finally worked. And today he's a billionaire because of it. To them, a failure is not proof that they're not good enough. It's just one piece of information, one step closer to finding the thing that works. So go collect some nos on purpose. When you stop being afraid to fail, you almost become impossible to stop. You already have what they started with. We've now gone over everything that these billionaires have in common. Bet on yourself early. Get genuinely obsessed. Never stop learning. Turn your pain into purpose. Focus on one thing. One thing: play the long game, make yourself known, and never let failure stop you. None of these requires a rich family or some genius IQ. They are all decisions and habits available to you the moment you decide to begin. And the best time to begin is now. How about right now? You already have what every one of them started with: a mind that can learn, hands that can work, and a pain that can point you towards your purpose. And if you can do these things, and you can, then you must. Ready to discover the skills that could skyrocket your success this year? These aren't academic theories; they're practical. In-demand abilities that you can learn without a formal degree. Each skill taps into emerging market needs, offers entrepreneurial leverage, and has scalable impact. Let's dive in and imagine the possibilities each one opens up for your business and income. Skill number 1, AI integration and automation, turning intelligence into income. Okay, so what is it? Here we're going to leverage AI and automation tools to streamline operations, create smarter products or even launch AI-driven services. It's using machines to do the heavy thinking or doing for you, from chatbots that handle customer inquiries to AI systems that optimize your marketing or inventory in real time. Here's why it matters this year. The AI revolution isn't coming. It's right here now, and it's rewriting the rules of business. By 2024, 70% of organizations reported using AI in some capacity, up from just 55% the year before. Companies are pouring investments into AI at record levels, over $109 billion in the US in 2024, with nearly $34 billion globally into generative AI. And they desperately need people who can make it work. The catch? There's a huge talent gap. 94% of business leaders say they face AI-related skill shortages on their teams, with 1 in 3 reporting massive gaps in critical AI roles. What does that mean? Demand is way bigger than supply, and that means opportunities for you. Entrepreneurs who are AI savvy can step in and command premium prices for their solutions. This isn't just for tech companies either. From healthcare to finance, AI is being woven into daily operations. Even the FDA has approved hundreds of AI-enabled medical devices, and self-driving cars are logging thousands of rides right now. The world is racing to adopt AI, and those who can ride that wave stand to reap huge huge rewards. So how can entrepreneurs profit? Think of AI as a force multiplier for your business. An entrepreneur with AI skills can automate super boring processes, freeing up time to scale faster. You can make smarter products with better features. You can offer AI consulting and integration services to companies who are willing to pay for help. So for example, a small e-commerce founder might use AI to personalize their shopping experience for each customer. Automatically, leading to happier customers and higher sales. Or maybe you're launching a micro SaaS tool that uses AI, like an AI scheduling assistant or content generator. Even a one-person business can serve thousands of customers when AI is doing most of the work. The evidence is everywhere. Companies using AI report higher productivity and lower costs, and many have seen AI-driven projects boost their bottom line. One entrepreneur created an AI-powered copywriting service and landed hundreds of clients globally, essentially earning money 24/7 as the AI works for them. The key is that AI is practical and learnable. With countless online courses and tools, you can start applying AI even if you're not a programmer. Many AI platforms are actually plug and play. So this year, knowing how to harness AI is like having a superpower. It's not just about efficiency, it's about unlocking Unlocking new income streams. From automating your marketing to building the next ChatGPT-like app for a niche industry, AI integration is a skill that can pay off almost immediately. So embrace it and you ride the biggest tech wave of our era straight towards profit. Now, AI might be the brains, but data is the backbone. So next, let's look at the skills that turn raw numbers into gold. Skill number 2, data analytics and business Business intelligence, profiting from big data. Okay, so what is it? It's the skill of collecting, analyzing, and drawing smart insights from data to drive business decisions. So data analytics is like having x-ray vision for your business. It lets you see the patterns and trends that normal people's eyes would miss. So business intelligence, or BI, goes hand in hand, focusing on those who are using insights to make strategic calls. This skill isn't about math geniuses. It's about knowing which numbers matter and how to translate them into action. So why it matters right now in this year, we live in a world that has tons of data. Every click, every purchase, every interaction, it can be tracked. But few people know how to turn that ocean of information into actual real value. And that's where you can come in. Companies have realized that gut instinct isn't enough. 81% of businesses now believe data should be at the heart of all decision-making, and they're willing to pay handsomely for those who can deliver results. Why? Because data-driven businesses simply perform better. They're more productive and more profitable on average than their less data-savvy peers. Companies that truly embrace analytics have seen efficiencies boost as high as 60 to 80% in operations. It's not just about giant corporations. Even small startups benefit when they can quickly identify which product feature is a hit or which marketing channel brings the best ROI. And this is a very clear trend. The global big data analytics market is It's over $270 billion in value and still growing. And there's a shortage of professionals who can wrangle data effectively. Executives are literally hungry for insights. A recent survey found 88% of business leaders rank data analytics as a top priority for upskilling in their organization. So this year, being fluent in data is like having a secret weapon in your market. You base decisions on facts, not guesses, which is a recipe for success. Winning. So how can entrepreneurs use it? Data analytics can make you rich in 2 ways. First, by applying it to your own business, you can pinpoint your most profitable customers, you can find inefficiencies to cut, you can test pricing strategies with actual hard evidence. For example, Netflix famously used data analytics to save $1 billion a year by recommending exactly what viewers wanted. So imagine bringing that kind of insight into your business decisions. Secondly, you can sell this skill as a service to others. Many companies, especially smaller ones, they drown in data but have no idea what to do with it. You could come in as a freelance analyst or consultant, turn their data into a clear action plan, and charge premium fees for delivering growth or savings. So picture telling your client, I found a way to boost your sales 20% by analyzing your customer behavior, and then actually doing it. There are real case studies of entrepreneurs doing just this. One startup founder used business intelligence tools to optimize her inventory and eliminated over $100,000 in annual waste, directly padding her profits. Another built a consulting agency that helps local businesses set up simple dashboards and KPIs, and within a year he was booking 5-figure contracts regularly. The bottom line is data analytics is practical and learnable. There's tons of online courses, YouTube videos, tools that are now drag and drop. Master it and you can either supercharge your own business or become the go-to data guru who turns others' confusion into cash. So in this year, data, it's the new oil, and knowing how to drill for it is an extremely high-income skill. Now, having great data is pointless if you can't attract customers. That's where our next skill comes in. It's time to cash in on the art of getting noticed. Skill number 3, digital marketing and growth hacking, scaling visibility into wealth. So what is it? Digital marketing is a skill of getting customers for people's businesses online through channels like social media, through search engines, through email, through LLMs, and more. Growth hacking is a trendy way to say creative, fast-paced marketing experimentation, right? So finding clever, low-cost tactics to drive growth or sales for your business or other people's. This skill is about making your business impossible to ignore on the internet and turning that attention into revenue. So it covers everything from running targeted ads, optimizing a website to rank on Google or GPT, crafting viral content, analyzing campaign data to tweak for better results, uh, making YouTube videos to spread your message. Why it matters this year is you could have the best product or service in the world, but if nobody knows about it, you don't make a dime. This year, digital marketing remains one of the highest skills for entrepreneurs because online attention is the currency of kingdom. Just look at the numbers. Global digital ad spending is projected to hit $843 billion. Yes, with a B. Companies large and small are pouring money into Facebook ads, Google searches, TikTok videos, wherever their audience lives online. And they need experts who know how to navigate this landscape. The job outlook also reflects that demand. Marketing roles are expected to grow by 10%, faster than the average for all careers. And in particular, there's surging demand for people skilled in areas like marketing and analytics, content creation, and SEO/SEM, because every business wants to rank number one on Google and decode the algorithms of ChatGPT. The beauty of digital marketing is that it's practical and learnable. No MBA required, just practice, creativity, and keeping up with the trends. We're also seeing new frontiers like AI-driven marketing. Over 50% of businesses are already using generative AI to improve their operations. All this means that entrepreneurial marketers who stay sharp can out-hustle their bigger competitors. So in this year, if you know how to get the right message to the right people at the right time online, you basically have a license to print money. So how can you use it as an entrepreneur? Digital marketing is often the make-or-break skill that determines if you scale or if you stay stuck. And so if you master it and you can acquire customers on demand, you can enter new markets quickly. You can even build a personal brand that multiplies all of your opportunities. Take, for example, an online fitness coach who leverages By mastering YouTube and Instagram, she grows her audience to hundreds of thousands and launches a fitness app that earns 7 figures online. Or think of a small local business owner who uses savvy Google search ads and SEO to dominate local search traffic, right? Their store goes from unknown to the go-to place in town. And these aren't hypotheticals. These things are happening right now, all around us. As an entrepreneur, you can also sell digital products Digital marketing expertise. If you're great at, say, SEO or Facebook ads, you can freelance or start an agency. Businesses are eager to pay because they've seen the ROI. For every dollar spent on email marketing can yield $36 in return, as various studies have shown. So a skilled email marketer is worth their weight in gold. Another real-world use case: an entrepreneur growth hacked his startup by creating a referral program that went viral. So think Dropbox. Box's free storage for referral strategy, acquiring millions of users without a massive ad budget. That's growth hacking in action. So digital marketing lets you scale up quickly. An ad campaign can reach millions of people overnight. A piece of content that catches fire can bring in floods of traffic. You're not limited by your local area or your storefront. And with analytics tools, you can measure every penny and double down on what works, like truly data-driven marketing. And the emotional side, it's pretty thrilling to see your blow up because of a campaign that you created. The control is right here. It's in your hands. With consumer attention shifting every year— today it might be YouTube or LinkedIn newsletters, tomorrow who knows— entrepreneurs who have the skill will ride each wave and outpace their competition. Digital marketing and growth hacking are high-income skills because they directly drive revenue, and mastering them means you can virtually write your own success story in this digital So now you've got the customer's attention. Now we need to convince them to open their wallets. The next skill is all about the art of persuasion, and it's one of the oldest and most profitable tricks in the book. Skill number four: persuasive communication and storytelling. Selling anything to anyone. So what is it? This is the skill of conveying ideas in a compelling way. So that's through sales pitches and marketing. Copy or even everyday networking conversations. It includes sales and negotiation, right? Convincing a customer or partner to say yes. Copywriting, which is writing words that sell from ads to landing pages. And storytelling, crafting a narrative that hooks people in emotionally. It's how to talk or write so people listen, trust you, and feel motivated to act, like clicking the buy now or signing a contract. Why it matters this year is no matter how advanced technology gets, the power of a good story and genuine connection never goes out of style. In fact, as automation rises, those human-centered skills become more valuable. This year's marketplace is hyperstimulated. Consumers see thousands of ads and posts a day, so the ability to cut through that noise with a resonant message is pure gold. 68% of consumers say that a brand's story influences their buying decisions. People remember stories up to 22 times more than plain facts. That's huge for entrepreneurs trying to build a memorable brand or pitch to investors. And yes, we see evidence that storytelling and communication translate to better results. Marketing campaigns built around a narrative can boost conversion rates by 30% or more. On the sales side, companies are actively looking for leaders with strong social influence and communication skills. Even the World Economic Forum highlighted leadership and social influence as a top skill for the future. Why? Because a person who can rally a team, win over a client, negotiate a profitable deal, they are invaluable. Also, let's talk money. Jobs like sales executives or copywriters are often high paying because they directly bring in revenue. A top-performing tech sales rep, for example, can earn a 6-figure base salary plus another 6 figures in commissions. Copywriters who crack the code of persuasion are similarly rewarded. Many freelance copywriters charge $100 Plus an hour, and businesses happily pay because one killer sales page or email sequence can generate hundreds of thousands in sales. Words are powerful, and this year those who can wield that power expertly will find that it translates into serious income. So how can you use it as an entrepreneur? You're always selling—not just your products, but your vision, your brand—even selling yourself as a trustworthy partner. Persuasive communication turns this into a super. Mastering storytelling means you can craft a brand narrative that makes customers feel something and remember you. So for example, instead of just saying, our shoe is comfortable, you share the story of a customer who, thanks to your shoe, ran their first marathon pain-free to honor a loved one, right? Now you're not just selling a shoe, you're selling inspiration, you're selling identity. That's the difference that makes people lifetime fans. On a more practical side, entrepreneurs skilled in communication, they'll just close more deals. So imagine you're negotiating with a supplier or an investor. If you can clearly articulate your value and persuade them effectively, you'll likely get better terms, maybe tens of thousands saved or gained in one conversation. If you sell services or high-ticket products, strong sales techniques like consultative selling or solutions-based selling is key. Today's customers expect you to understand their needs and tailor your offer. Being able to do that can literally double or So for example, you can monetize a skill by offering freelance copywriting or sales consulting. Great copywriters are in short supply, even with AI writing tools around, because someone has to give the AI the right emotional direction. Businesses will pay top dollar for emails and ads that actually convert. One excellent sales page can be worth millions to a company. So paying a writer $10,000 a craft, it's a no-brainer for some companies. Skilled copywriters routinely make $100,000 or more a month. Earn over $150,000 a year once they built a reputation. And don't forget content creators and influencers. They are essentially storytellers too, turning authentic communication into followers and income from ads and sponsorships or product sales. Emotions drive decisions, and if you can tap into emotions with genuine communication, you can drive decisions in your favor. So this year, mastering persuasive communication and storytelling isn't just a nice to have, it's often the difference between a business that just fizzles out and one that actually becomes a phenomenon. We've covered brains, data, marketing, charm. Our final skill might not sound as glamorous, but it's a massive moneymaker in today's world. It's all about protecting the wealth that you're building, and it's an area where demand is exploding. Skill number 5, cybersecurity and data protection. Guarding the digital gold mine. Okay, so what is it? Cybersecurity is the skill of keeping data software systems safe from hackers and breaches. It's being the digital bodyguard for businesses. This includes understanding how to prevent attacks, so think malware, phishing, ransomware, knowing how to plug vulnerabilities in networks or websites, and making sure that companies follow best practices so sensitive information like consumer data is not not stolen or compromised. It's deeply technical for those who specialize, but at a high level, it's very learn-by-doing, problem-solving field, and you don't need a PhD to get good at it, just solid training and experience and a curious mind. Data protection goes hand in hand. So think dealing with proper handling and compliance, like the laws of the land. So for an entrepreneur, having cybersecurity skills means that you can both protect your own venture, but also potentially offer security solutions to other people. As a business. So why does it matter this year? One word: risk. As businesses digitize every aspect of their operations, the risk of cyber attacks have skyrocketed, and so have the costs. The average cost of a single data breach hit an eye-watering $4.9 million globally. So for a small or mid-sized company, that kind of hit can be fatal. That's why firms are desperate for cybersecurity expertise and why it's become a high-income skill, high-demand main skill. We're in a situation where there aren't nearly enough cybersecurity pros to go around. The global cybersecurity workforce is millions short. One recent study showed about 4.8 million cybersecurity roles are unfulfilled worldwide. There are millions of openings and not enough people with the skills, a gap that widened by 19% in just one year. So talent shortage is actually the number one obstacle companies face in securing their systems. This kind of supply-demand mismatch is exactly what drives up incomes for those who have the skill. So companies have even started to prioritize this in budgets because they simply cannot afford the alternative. Companies without adequate security staff end up paying on average $1.76 million more per breach due to slower response and damage control. But just beyond like corporate IT departments, every entrepreneur with an online presence needs at least basic cybersecurity savviness. Cyber threats this year are more sophisticated. Yes, hackers Hackers are using AI too. So on top of that, customer trust and regulations require more solid data protection. You don't want to be that startup that leaked user data and lost credibility overnight. So from ransomware attacks shutting down hospitals to small businesses getting scammed from phishing, the threat is universal. This urgency is driving a huge market for cybersecurity products and consultants. Global spending on cybersecurity is rising every year. Tens of billions of dollars annually as businesses effectively say, please take our money and keep us safe. If you can step in with the skills to do so, you will be richly rewarded. So as some evidence, top freelance cybersecurity experts report rates of $200 to $300 an hour, and experienced security consultants can make over $500,000 a year by serving multiple clients. So it's no surprise that when the stakes are this high, companies are willing to pay for peace of mind. So how can Entrepreneurs use it. If you're building your own company, cybersecurity skills are like an insurance policy and a selling point. You can save a ton of money by implementing security measures yourself instead of hiring some expensive firms and avoid disaster that could derail your business. But also, being more security-minded from day one can be a competitive advantage. You can use that in your marketing. Customers and partners will feel safer dealing with you. So for example, e-commerce entrepreneur who knows how to secure their payment systems and protect customer data not only avoids costly breaches, but can market their store as ultra secure, which gains more customer trust and extra sales in an era of privacy concerns. On the other side, cybersecurity is also an amazing service and a business opportunity. So given that huge talent gap, you could start a consultancy or freelance as a virtual CISO, as Chief information security officer for multiple small companies that can't afford one in-house. They get your expertise part-time, you get a hefty paycheck. Some entrepreneurs are launching cybersecurity startups. So whether that's developing a niche security software tool or you're offering specialized training, there's even demand for things like ethical hackers who companies pay to test their defenses. We've seen solo consultants charge retainers in the thousands per month per client just to on call for security incidents. And with new data privacy laws popping up all the time, like Europe's GDPR and others, businesses are scrambling for guidance, which is another avenue for advisory services you could offer if you're well-versed in compliance. So the key point is this: threats are growing and talent is scarce. If you equip yourself with this skill, you become part of a highly sought-after elite group of people. Not only can you command higher fees because preventing a multimillion-dollar breach is essentially worth a high payout, but you also carry the confidence that you can protect the empire that you're building too. In a time where a single hack can wipe out years of effort, the entrepreneurs who understand cybersecurity will safeguard their wealth and even turn security into a profitable service for others. It's truly a high-impact, high-income skill for today's age. So each of these 5 skills— AI integration, data analytics, digital marketing, persuasive communication, and cybersecurity— security hits the sweet spot of being practical, learnable, and immediately valuable this year. They align with the biggest technology shifts and market needs that we are seeing right now. AI is everywhere. Data is the king. Online growth is non-negotiable. Human connection still seals a deal, and security underpins it all. The best part is you don't need a fancy degree to get started with any of these. There are YouTube videos, boot camps, online courses, communities for each skill that you can start learning right now. Entrepreneurs who invest time in mastering even one or two of these will position themselves to generate wealth in the short term. We're talking within a year or two, not decades. And it's all backed by trends and numbers that I've already cited throughout this entire video. The market is hungry for these abilities. So ask yourself, which of these skills speaks to you right now? The entrepreneur is getting rich. This year aren't necessarily the ones with the most funding or the fanciest ideas. Often they're the ones who have the right skills at the right time and execute relentlessly. Now you know 5 of those right skills. It's time to choose, learn, and leap. Here's to your success, because this year might be the year your hard work and high-income skills make you the next great success story. Almost every business that dies gets killed by Unfortunately, one does have to be focused on the short-term and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die. Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management. I have to say it. And there were people that were going off in 18 different directions doing arguably interesting things, but not the right thing. Interesting things in each one of them. Good engineers, lousy management. Successful businesses have to satisfy a real need, a need that people will actually pay to have fulfilled. Now, you may have an idea, you may love your product, you may love your service, but if that product or service doesn't fix a specific problem, your business will fail. Nearly half of new businesses fail within their first 5 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 22% of business startups fail in the first year, and 50% of new businesses fail within the first 5 years. And what's really on the line here, it's not just your business, it's the years of your life that you're about to pour into it and whether they add up to something that lasts or disappear like it never happened. Take a wild success like Airbnb everybody knows about. Well, that company was famously passed on by many smart investors Because people thought no one's gonna rent out a space in their home to a stranger. Of course, people proved that wrong. But one of the reasons it succeeded, aside from a good business model, a good idea, great execution, is the timing. That company came out right during the height of the recession when people really needed extra money. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. So I went deep on 50 businesses that died, and I kept coming back Back to Sam Walton. Before he built the biggest company on the planet, Sam was a nobody running a single Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, pulling in about $20,000 a year. He worked harder than anyone in town. He obsessed over low prices and treating customers right, and he turned that little rented store into one of the most profitable shops in the whole region. He did everything right, and then he lost it all. Sam didn't own the building; he only rented it, and when his landlord. saw how much money that store was making, the man refused to renew the lease to Sam and handed his entire business to his own son. Just like that, the best store in the area was gone, and Sam Walton had nothing to show for years of work except one pretty brutal lesson. You have to own the land. You have to own the building. You have to own your foundation. Anyone else might have walked away right there. Most people do, but Sam didn't. Your purpose comes through your pain, I think. And Sam's purpose got forged the day he lost that store. With his wife Helen pushing him to start over in a new town, he sold what was left, moved to Bentonville, and in 1962, he opened the first Walmart. He built it on everything that loss taught him. Today, Walmart pulls in $648 billion a year, and about 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store. Your setbacks do not have to be permanent. It's only permanent if you stop. Sam turned the pain of losing one store into creating 10,000 more. Okay, so here's what you might be thinking. Your business might be different. You know, your idea is better. You care more. You'll outwork everyone around you. So those 50 dead businesses have nothing to do with you. I get it. But here's what hit me when I studied them. Almost all these founders thought the exact same thing. They weren't lazy people. A lot of them were brilliant. A lot of them were working 80-hour weeks. What killed them was not a lack of effort. It was a blind spot. One weakness that they never saw coming. Exactly like Sam Walton not owning his building. Effort doesn't save you from these blind spots. Seeing it does. So let me walk you through the blind spots that killed all 50 businesses so you can find yours before it's too late. Killer number 1, running out of cash. The first killer is running out of cash, and it took down more of these businesses than anything else. Here's the part that scares most people. You can run a business that looks profitable on paper and still go broke because profit and cash are not the same thing. Profit is a number on a spreadsheet at the end of the month. Cash is what's actually in your account on Tuesday when your payment is due. Your expenses show up fast and on time. Your payroll, your rent, your ad spend, your software, they all, they get paid with clockwork. They're showing up. Your customer payments, they show up usually slower, 30 days, 60 days, sometimes 90 days later. That gap in the middle is where businesses often bleed out and you can be growing the whole time it's happening. It gets worse when the founder hits one month and treats it like this is the new normal. I've watched people spend tens of thousands of dollars on fancy equipment after a single strong week and then get wiped out the next month because they had a slow month and because they kept zero reserve. I watched a coaching company hit almost $4 million a year in revenue and still have to shut its doors. Almost $4 million. They ran outta cash because they spent too much on ads, paid the team too much, built a structure that they couldn't sustain, and never looked deeply at their accounting. And if you're trying to build the whole thing on $87 or $99 a month product. Listen, because the capital burns out before the idea burns out. Low-ticket models often need massive scale. They need huge customer service, and they get hammered by refunds and chargebacks. So here's what you can do. Watch your cash, not just your profit. Keep at least 3 to 6 months of expenses in reserve so one slow month can't end you. Know your numbers cold. I know it's hard for some people. Every week, not just once a quarter, once a year when it's already too late and sell something with enough margin to actually fund the business. So I don't like decisions that make me feel weak, and nothing makes you feel weaker than checking your bank account and realizing that the money is already gone. Killer number 2, building something nobody wants. The second killer here is building something that nobody actually wants. This one is pretty sneaky because it feels like progress, right? Your head's down, you're building something, you're quietly creating, and you add another feature and And it feels like that you're being productive because you're busy and you're busy and, and you're shipping, and then you take it out to the markets and like nothing happens. And I did this with my very first software company. I spent months building a feature that I thought was incredibly cool, right? We took it to the market, like nobody wanted it. Nobody. All that time, all that work was gone because we built in a vacuum and never asked a single customer if they actually needed this thing or not. The fix here is so simple that it's almost embarrassing. Hurts. Go find a customer first, then build around what they actually need. So talk to 10 real people in your market before you build anything. And don't ask them if they like the idea. Ask them the problem that keeps them up at night and what they've already tried to pay to solve. Then sell it before you make it. Take a deposit, pre-sell the spot, get a real credit card payment for the promise of the thing. If real people won't pay you for the promise of it, they won't pay you for the finished version either. It's a lot harder. And you just saved yourself a year. Get honest about the problem that you solve, because if you don't solve a real problem, you do not have a real business. Entrepreneurship is about solving problems. You have an expensive hobby. And one more addition here: chasing small, broke customers and hoping they grow rich with you— they won't. Pick customers who can actually afford you right now, who have the budget to pay you what you're worth today, right now, and build for them. Killer number 3: the right things in the wrong order. Okay, the third killer here is doing the right things in the wrong order. A lot of these businesses They didn't die because the founders were doing dumb things. They died because they were doing smart things in the wrong sequence. And I see it all the time. A founder with no steady revenue decides to build a massive global brand or launch a low-ticket online course before they've ever built a simple high-ticket engine that brings in real money every single month. So they spend a year on logos and funnels and fancy websites and content while your bank account slowly drains and not one of those things is actually paying your bills. The order matters more than the effort. So phase 1 is something higher ticket that generates steady cash. One offer, a clear customer, enough money per sale that a handful of clients keeps your lights on. That cash funds the team and the systems you need to survive everything that comes next. Only once that engine is steady do you earn the right to go to phase 2, the lower ticket courses, the products that end up scaling. And then only after that, you build phase 3, the big brand, the global audience, get steady money coming in first, and everything you build on top of it gets so much easier because now you're building with money in the bank instead of running on your savings and investments. When you try to skip that first step, it's like you're, you're building a house and you're trying to create the second floor before you've even built the foundation. And you know how that ends. Killer number 4, no systems, no scale. The 4th killer is having no system. A friend of mine, Nick Peterson, likes to say, nail it, then scale it. And this is also a powerful idea in the book The E-Myth Revisited, which is That most small businesses fail and most franchises can succeed. And so think about why is that? A franchise runs on documented, repeatable recipe that almost anyone can follow. Walking into any location of a big franchise and you get the same result because the magic is written down in a playbook that anyone can run instead of just locked inside one person's head. The average founder does the opposite, right? You keep shooting from the hip, you keep trying to do the entire business inside your own head, and if you never write it down your killer recipe, then 2 things happen, and both of them can be completely fatal. First, you can't scale because you are the bottleneck for everything, right? Ever, ever feel that you're the bottleneck? Every decision, every fire, every customer waits on you. And second, anyone you hire operates at a lower level because they're guessing at what you do instead of following a proven process. And then you decide hiring doesn't work when really you just never gave people the recipe to So I think being leads to doing. So start being the kind of owner who builds the systems, even when it's just you. Write down exactly how you get a customer step by step, how you deliver the work step by step, how you keep them happy and get them to refer to you step by step. Turn the magic in your head into a checklist your team can run without you standing over them. The day your business can win without you in every single room is the day it stops being this fragile little egg and starts being worth Killer number 5, keeping the wrong people. The 5th killer is keeping the wrong people. This is tough. This one is hard because it's personal and it costs you twice. Founders hold on to underperformers, the team members who are barely treading water, the friends you had from high school, the people that you might have started with. You hold onto them long after you should have let them go because firing usually feels cruel and hiring again feels pretty exhausting. But every single day you hold onto someone who's just okay, you give up the chance to bring in somebody great. Because A players are in limited supply and you've got a seat filled with someone who's just the wrong person. A B player doesn't just do B-level work, they block the A player who could have had that seat. And the other side of this is maybe even worse— putting good people in the wrong roles. If you take someone whose gift is starting new creative projects and bury them in, uh, monotonous, boring, repetitive grind work, they're going to burn out and fail. And it's not their fault. You put them in the wrong seat and then blame the person. So match the work to the person's natural strengths. Give the starters the new projects and the finishers the systems, and be brutally honest with yourself about what's actually moving the business forward and who's just kind of still being busy. That's a good start, but now I want you to go further than good. We build a team where every single seat is filled by someone who is excellent at that exact job, and watch how much lighter the whole thing gets carried. Killer number 6, the best kept Secret. The sixth killer is just being the best kept secret in your industry. You can have the highest quality product in your entire market and still lose to a mediocre competitor who just simply cracked the content code because best known beats best every time. If nobody knows you exist, your quality literally does not matter because they can't buy what they can't find. And this might be a little uncomfortable. A lot of founders hide behind their branding, their funnels, the logos, the pretty websites because all that work feels feels like work while letting them avoid the one thing that actually pays the bills, asking for the sale and collecting the payment. It's so much more comfortable to redesign your homepage for the 80th time than to look someone in the eye and ask for their credit card. I watched a friend of mine spend $70,000 in a single year on polished thought leadership content and get basically zero results to the point where he almost quit creating content completely. The content alone didn't save him because without a clear ask, It's just expensive time that you're putting out every week. So put yourself out there every single day. Tell people exactly what you do and who you help, and then make the ask. The money is on the other side of the ask, and the only way you get good at asking is to ask more often. Killer number 7, built on rented land. So the 7th killer is building your whole business on land that you don't own. So remember Sam Walton losing that store because he only rented the building? The modern version of his mistake, it's It's everywhere and is, it is deadly. You build your entire business on top of one thing that you don't actually own, like one social media algorithm, one marketplace, one big client who makes up 80% of your revenue. When I looked at those 50 failures, more than half of them were dangerously concentrated on a single platform or a single customer. And the day that the algorithm changed or the terms changed or that one client walked away or went under, the business that took years to build was gone in a week. It feels completely fine when it's working, right? You're on top of the world, which is exactly why so many smart founders miss it until it's too late. The platform giveth and the platform taketh away, and you don't get a vote, right? So own your foundation, own your email list, because that's an audience nobody can just delete or take out from under you. Own the direct relationship with your customers, not just the followers on a page that you've rented. Spread your revenue so no single channel platform or client can end you by changing their mind on a Tuesday. Build on ground you actually control, the way Sam Walton swore he would do the day he lost that first store. Killer number 8, quitting right before it works. The 8th killer— oh, this is so tough— it's quitting right before it works. When sales slow down, founders panic and fall straight into a scarcity mindset. They start slashing prices, offering payment plans they can't afford, chasing any customer with a pulse, and making desperate decisions that dig the hole deeper Instead of actually helping them climb out. And a huge number of them give up the exact moment that success was just around the corner. MrBeast, Jimmy Donaldson, made 130 videos before he ever cracked 10,000 views. 130 videos. Imagine a version of him who quit on video 129, one away from the breakthrough, convinced that it's just never gonna work. That person never becomes MrBeast. It shows up in small ways too. You send one email, you don't hear back, and you decide, oh, they're not When the truth is the win was 3 follow-ups away with just a busy person who doesn't hate you. They're just busy. Success lives in the consistent repeated effort, the boring follow-ups that everyone else is too proud or too scared to do. I think if you have the ability, then you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. So when that voice shows up and it's telling you, hey, you should quit, treat it as a signal that you're close and push for just one more time. So just build a little momentum and protect your belief like it's the most valuable asset that you own. So here's what I really want you to hear. Every one of these 50 businesses died from something the founder could control. That's not bad news. That's actually awesome news. It's the best news that you'll get all day because it means survival is in your hands. Not, not the market, not the government, not the president. I love this quote about a bird on a branch isn't scared of the branch breaking because her trust isn't in the branch, it's in her wings. So trust your wings, go find your blind spot and fix it before it finds you. Some of the smartest people on the planet running billion-dollar companies make Catastrophically bad decisions all the time, and it's almost always for one boring little reason. Most people don't take enough risk. You got to leave your home, you got to leave your comfort. Everybody can do 10 times more than you think you can, and before you get to 10x, you'll end up changing the goal to 10 times more. Study after study shows that 70 to 90% of major mergers and deals actually fail, according to Harvard Business Review, which means even the so-called X Experts get it wrong far more often than they get it right. I find it really powerful. I found power in saying yes to so many things. I'm in yes culture. My whole game is yes, comma. I'm not a great person to ask the no thing. I think there's people that are more disciplined at no. I just like the value of yes, and then if I'm a week, an hour, a year in and I've realized it's not right, I leave. And here's why it matters to you, because the exact same blind spot that cost these giants billions of dollars is quietly costing you opportunities in your own life and business right now too. If you want to be successful, learn from the other people's mistakes. Let me tell you the greatest example of this in all of history, I think. Picture the year 2000. There's a tiny, struggling little company called Netflix that mails DVDs to people in little red envelopes. It's losing money. Money and its young founder Reed Hastings is nervous about the future. So Reed flies to Dallas to meet the absolute giant of his industry, Blockbuster. Did you go to Blockbuster or did they come to you? No, we tried going to Blockbuster for months. We tried reaching out to them, but this was this ultimate— I mean, listen, we were doing $5 million a year. They were doing $6 billion a year. It took months and finally we got the call. That's when Blockbuster calls, goes, we'd like to see you tomorrow in Back then, Blockbuster was a monster. It had 9,000 stores. It pulled in $6 billion a year, and it made a fortune charging people late fees on their rentals. Reed walks into that meeting and makes Blockbuster a simple offer. We make our pitch. We go, we'll combine forces. You'll run the stores, we'll run the online business. We'll build a blended model, which our research has shown is a game changer, and everything will work out. He asked them to buy his little company Netflix for $50 million and let his team run their brand new online business for them. And here's the moment that changed everything. The Blockbuster executives basically laughed him out of the room. $50 million for some tiny website that mails DVDs around? No thanks. And then they asked the big question, you know, how much? We figured we're $50 million in the hole, so $50 million. And there's this silence in the room, and I'm looking at, uh, Blockbuster execs trying to piece together what the reaction is, and it finally dawns on me they're trying to suppress laughter. They were making way too much money on late fees to care about some silly little internet idea, so they said no, and Reed flew home stung. Now here's how the story ends. Blockbuster, the giant kept right on doing exactly what was already working, all the way up until the world quietly changed. In 2010, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Gone. And that tiny little company they laughed at, Netflix, the one they could have owned for just $50 million, is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars. One single word, no, ended up costing Blockbuster absolutely everything. And the scary part is they didn't say no because they were stupid. They said no because they were comfortable. Now you might be sitting there thinking, this has nothing to do with me. You could be thinking, Evan, these are giant corporations with billions of dollars on the line, and I'm just a regular person. I'm an entrepreneur. What does Blockbuster's mistake have to do with my business or my life right now? I think all progress begins with telling the truth. Blockbuster didn't fail because of money or size. It failed because of a mindset, and it's the exact same mindset that is quietly ruining a lot of people's decisions every day too. It's the fear of letting go of what feels comfortable. It's the little voice, the whispers that say, don't risk the safe thing for the unknown thing. You feel it every time you stay in the job that you've already outgrown, or you sit on the idea that you're too scared to actually start. So in the next few minutes, let me walk you through the simple patterns hiding behind history's worst business deals so you can spot them coming and never make the same mistake in your company. The most expensive word in business is no. Here's the first pattern, and once you see it, you'll start seeing it absolutely everywhere. The most expensive word in all of business is the tiny word no. Blockbuster said no to Netflix, but they are nowhere near alone. Back in 1999, a search engine called Excite had the chance to buy a little startup named Google for just $750,000. They said no. The greatest interest came from Excite and actually came from Vinod. You were the investor in Excite, and we spent a while talking to them and talking to you, Vinod.

Yeah.

You remember that. In the end, I don't think the management team there was quite as excited about it, no pun intended. Google's now worth trillions of dollars. Yahoo had the chance to buy Facebook for $1 billion back in 2006, then they got greedy and tried to lower the price at the very last Second, and a young Mark Zuckerberg just walked right out of the room.

Zuckerberg's decision not to sell Facebook to early bidders has become legend in Silicon Valley. After he rejected a bid from Viacom, Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion in the summer of 2006. But when Yahoo stock fell more than 20% after a disappointing earnings report that July, Yahoo reduced its offer and Facebook again walked Facebook is now worth over a trillion dollars too.

Do you see the pattern forming? Every single one of those nos came from a smart, wildly successful company. They weren't dumb people. They simply couldn't see the future because they were too busy protecting their comfortable present. So here is the takeaway. The next time a scary opportunity shows up, the kind that makes your stomach turn and flip over a little bit, don't reflexively just say no just to feel safe. Again, stop and pause. Ask yourself if you're saying no because the thing is truly wrong for you, or just because it feels new and unfamiliar. Because saying no to the right thing is quietly the most expensive mistake a human being can make. Good is the enemy of great. Here's the second pattern, and it's a sneaky one that hides in plain sight often. Good is the enemy of great. So think about it: Blockbuster was not struggling at all when it said no to. Netflix. It was absolutely thriving. It had 9,000 stores and billions in revenue rolling in. And that right there was the whole problem. When something in your life is going badly, you fix it fast because the pain forces you to. But when something is going fine, you protect it, you cling to it, and you quietly stop reaching for what could be next. That comfortable, good enough kind of success is exactly what lulled Blockbuster to sleep while a tiny little Netflix quietly built the entire future. And this same silent killer could be running loose in your business, your life too right now. It's the decent enough job that's good enough so you never chase the great one. It's the relationship, the fine little routine, the comfortable plateau that you've settled onto. Good feels safe and it's warm, but good is exactly where greatness quietly goes to die. So look really hard at your own life right now and ask, where am I settling for good and calling it finished? That cozy little spot you don't ever want to leave might be the exact thing that is holding you back from something truly incredible. Ego writes the checks that bankrupt you. Pattern number 3 is maybe the deadliest of all, and it all comes down to pure ego. Smart people make genuinely terrible choices because they are flat-out terrified to walk away from a process that already made them rich. I call this moment the death of an ego, and almost nobody is brave enough to go go through it. So look at Kodak. All the way back in 1975, a young Kodak engineer invented the world's very first digital camera. Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invented the prototype that would eventually become the digital camera. Kodak literally held the entire future of photography in their own two hands, but the executives took that invention and buried it. Why on earth would they do that? Because they were making an absolute fortune selling film, and a digital camera that needs film would kill their golden goose. In the mid-'70s, 1976, Kodak owned 95% of the film market and 85% of the camera market in the United States. Their ego and their past success completely blinded them to what was coming, and by the time they finally tried to catch up to everybody else, it was way too late, and Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. With the failure to successfully pivot to digital complete on January 19th, 2012, They didn't lose because they lacked the technology. They literally invented it. They lost because they couldn't let go of who they used to be. So ask yourself honestly, what old way of doing things are you still clinging to just because it worked for you once before? Sometimes the exact thing that got you here is the same thing keeping you from getting there to the next spot. The tiny things that make a big difference. Decision you regret for the rest of your life. Here's a pattern that's much smaller but somehow even more painful. Sometimes one tiny fear-based decision ends up haunting you forever. So meet Ronald Wayne. Most people have never heard his name, but he was actually the 3rd co-founder of Apple, sitting right alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak back in 1976. Ronald owned a full 10% of Apple. Think about that. But only 12 days in, he got scared. The young company felt risky. He was worried about the debt and he just wanted out. So he sold his entire 10% stake back to Jobs and Wozniak for a grand total of $800. That very same stake today could be worth tens of billions of dollars. $800. He didn't lose it in some complicated deal or some giant market crash. He simply gave it away in a moment of panic, right when things got a little scary. And that's an important lesson. The most painful regrets in life usually aren't the big dramatic gambles. That didn't pan out. They're the moments you bailed on something that you believed in the second it got a little uncomfortable. So before you walk away from something that you know deep down has real potential, stop and ask if you're leaving for a genuinely smart reason or just because the fear got way too loud for a minute. Bet on people, not just on numbers. Now here's a pattern that runs in the complete opposite direction. The quiet secret of the people who actually win big: they bet on people, not just on spreadsheets. So picture two different investors looking at the very same young, broke, totally unproven founder named Jack Ma, the man who would build Alibaba. One investor, a famous Wall Street firm, looked only at the shaky numbers, got nervous, and ended up selling their early stake way too soon. They missed out on billions of dollars. But another investor, a man named Masayoshi met Jack Ma for just a few short minutes and said yes almost instantly. He wasn't betting on the messy numbers because the business looked shaky on paper. He later said he could simply see that Jack's eyes were shining, and he chose to bet on the person. That one decision to back a human being instead of a spreadsheet became one of the greatest investments in all of history. So the lesson: numbers can only tell you what has already happened. Let people show you what's actually possible. When you're deciding who to trust, who to partner with, or even when to finally bet on yourself, don't just stare at the safe, provable numbers on the page. Learn to see the fire in a person's eyes, especially your own. Don't choke the golden goose. So here's a pattern: when you finally do win on something great, don't smother the very thing that made it special in the first place. In 1994, Quaker Oats bought the quirky little drink Snapple for a massive $1.7 billion. Snapple was fun, it was weird, people loved it. So what did Quaker do with it? They stripped out all the fun and they treated it like a boring grocery store product and alienated the exact customers who loved it the most. And just 27 months later, they sold Snapple for $300 million. They lost $1.4 billion, which works out to losing more than a million dollars for every single day they owned it. MySpace did the same a thing to itself. After News Corp bought it for $580 million, they crammed it so full of ads that users fled to a cleaner, simpler Facebook, and MySpace later sold for $35 million. So the takeaway: when something in your life is genuinely working, whether it's a business, a relationship, a daily routine, the worst thing you can do is start changing it before you truly understand why it works. When you finally get your hands on something great, your first job is not to fix it. Your job is to protect the magic that made it great to begin with. Overthinking is its own decision. Pattern number 5 is one you might be doing at this very moment, and I'm guilty of too— overthinking. While you sit there gathering just a little bit more information, waiting for the perfect moment, and running the same numbers for the 100th time, the opportunity often will stand up and walk out the door. So here's a question that that I, I want you to burn into your brain forever. What's the real opportunity cost of you overthinking yet another chance? Yahoo didn't just say no to buying Google one single time. They hesitated, they debated, they tried to squeeze out a slightly better price. And while they were busy overthinking it all, Google quietly became completely unstoppable. Waiting felt safe to them. It was actually the opposite of safe. Choosing not to is still a decision, and it's almost always the worst one available. You will basically never have all the information that you want. That, that perfect moment you're waiting for is a complete myth. The only way to know 100% is when it's already happened. So you know when the actual best time to act on a real opportunity is? Now. How about right now? The longer you sit and analyze and stall, the more those Blockbuster and Yahoo-style moments show up in your life. Done and moving forward beats perfect and frozen every Never hand your future to a rival. Here's one of the sneakiest patterns of them all. Sometimes a company literally hands its entire future straight to a rival without even realizing that it's happening. And the greatest example, I think, is Xerox. So back in the 1970s, Xerox built a secret research lab, and inside that lab, they invented the actual future of computing— the mouse in your hand and the graphical screen that you're literally looking at right now. That's right. Looking at right this second. They had it first, but Xerox was completely obsessed with selling photocopiers, so they never saw what they were truly sitting on. They even invited a young Steve Jobs in for a friendly tour, and Jobs walked right back out of the door with the blueprint for the personal computer. Xerox handed Apple the future on a silver platter, and Apple ran with it to become one of the most valuable companies on the entire planet. So the lesson here, and it's a big one: never give away the one thing that's going to define your future. It's totally fine to get help with the small stuff, but the core idea or skills that decides whether you win or lose— guard that one thing and build it yourself. Don't trade your future away just because you're too busy protecting your comfortable present. Decide from your future Not from your fear. This is a fun last pattern, and it quietly ties all the other ones together. The worst deals in all of history were made from a place of fear, never from vision. Blockbuster, Kodak, Yahoo, all of them—they decided out of fear of losing what they already had instead of excitement for what still could become. So the simple tool that you can apply in your business, your life: when you're staring down a big, scary choice, don't ask the fear-based questions. What could I? What could I possibly lose here? Instead, imagine yourself at 80 years old sitting in a chair and looking back over your entire life. Then ask, will I deeply regret not doing this? And if the honest answer is yes, then you absolutely have to do it. Personally, I would generally rather know and fail than spend my whole life wondering what if. And that is exactly how the people who change the world make their decisions instead of the comfortable giants who get left behind in the dust. Because if you have the ability to see a better future for yourself, then you have the responsibility to actually move towards it. And being the kind of person who decides from vision is precisely what leads to actually building the life you really want. You can see the patterns now so you'll never repeat them. Here's what I really want you to walk away from this video today with: every single one of these billion-dollar disasters came down to the same thing: fear, ego, and comfort beating out courage and vision. And now you can see those patterns hopefully coming from a mile away, which means you never have to become the next Blockbuster in your own life. You are already ahead of the giants. Nobody ever achieved their dreams by playing it safe. I've seen it again and again. The people who reach the top are the ones who are willing to leap when everyone else clung to the edge. If you If you never dare to pursue what you love, you'll spend the rest of your life haunted by regret, knowing you let fear stop you from becoming the person you were meant to be. Lady Gaga was no overnight sensation. She bet everything on herself long before the world knew her name. At 19, she dropped out of a top university to chase a music career, working 3-day jobs just to survive. Soon, her gamble seemed to pay off. She landed a record deal, but 3 months later, the label dropped her. Gaga was devastated. That Christmas, she moved back into her childhood home in tears. Everything in her screamed that she'd failed, but instead of giving up, she doubled down on her dream. She hit the grimy New York clubs and burlesque shows that finally let her unleash her authentic self. There, amid the dive bars and drag queens, she honed the fearless persona that we now know. And it was in one of those clubs that she got her next big break. big break. R&B star Akon saw her perform and signed her to an Interscope imprint. By 2008, Lady Gaga's debut album was a global smash, and the world recognized a star had been born. But remember this: when she was dropped by that first label, Gaga felt the same crushing doubt you feel when your dreams get rejected. She faced the same pressure to quit that you might be facing right now. The only difference is she didn't quit. She felt the fear and kept going anyway, and that made all the difference. When I was 19, I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I had dream job offers waiting, jobs I'd wanted all through college, and I turned them all down. Instead, I agreed to take 30% of a struggling startup and pay myself just $300 a month. I was supposed to be a banker, not an entrepreneur living on ramen and hope. I was terrified, but I said yes to the startup, and it absolutely did not go as planned. We sucked at the start. We failed over and over, and those failures drove me into the lowest point of my life. After continuing to look at my empty bank account, I finally broke. One day I told my business partner, I'm done, I quit. I felt like I'd wasted a year of my life and had nothing to show but fear and shame. The next night was the worst of my life, but the next morning something in me flipped. I realized I could handle failing, but I could not handle giving up on my dream. If I quit now, I'd always wonder What might have been, so I decided to give it one more shot. But this time, I tried something different. I read how Bill Gates made his first million and discovered his strategy of partnering to sell software. So why not model it? I thought. I went back to my partner. Yes, after quitting the day before, and we refocused our approach. I started reaching out to potential partners, trying to sell through them instead of all alone. And within a few weeks, I closed my first. Major deal. Everything began to turn around. That tiny company I joined at $300 a month grew to over 300 customers in 30 countries, and we got acquired. None of that would have happened if I hadn't made one gutsy decision under pressure: to press on just a little bit longer when every fiber of my being wanted to run. I was scared, I hesitated, and I acted anyway. And that made me who I am today. Now, you might be thinking Sure, this all sounds great for them, but I just can't risk everything like that. I have responsibilities. I'm not Lady Gaga or Elon Musk. I'm just me. Maybe you have a family to support or mortgage to pay. Maybe you're telling yourself you're just not talented enough, you're not lucky enough, not something enough to pull it off. Listen, that voice is lying to you. Every one of the people that I'll talk about here, they felt the fear. They had doubts. They had people telling them they were crazy, but they didn't let that stop them, and neither can you. In fact, the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe. Mark Zuckerberg, who built Facebook, said it best: in a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. If you freeze and you do nothing, you're virtually guaranteeing that nothing will change. And years from now, do you know what hurts more than failure? Regret. Psychologists have found that when people When people look back on their lives, they regret the chances they didn't take far more than the ones they did. So yes, you might fail if you go after your dream, but if you don't even try, you'll live with regret. Which one do you think is worse? The pressure you're feeling right now, that knot in your stomach, it's not there to hold you back. It's there to push you forward. So let's push forward together. Okay, you've seen how Lady Gaga put it all on the line for her passion. She is far from alone. Alone. Now let's dive into 9— 9 more incredible people who risked it all to chase their dreams and see what you can learn from each of them. Sylvester Stallone, betting on himself when it mattered most. In the mid-1970s, Sylvester Stallone was a broke, struggling actor with a paralyzed slur to his voice and barely $100 in his bank account. He had to sell his dog to buy food. But Stallone had one thing going for him, a script he'd written in a fever of inspiration, the story of an underdog boxer named Rocky. When Hollywood producers read Rocky, they loved it. They offered Stallone $300,000 for the script, an unheard-of sum for an unknown writer. There was just one catch: they wanted a famous actor, not Stallone, to play the lead. This moment right here, that was Stallone's crossroads. He had nothing— no money, no security. Yet he refused to sell his story unless he could star in it as Rocky. The studio kept upping the offer all the way to $350,000. Stallone still said no. Imagine that. He's practically homeless, but he walks away from a small fortune on principle. He later said, you just roll the dice and fly by the seat of your pants. That's exactly what he did. Ultimately, the producers caved. They paid Stallone a fraction of their original offer $35,000 and let him play Rocky. Stallone poured every ounce of his soul into that film, and we know how the story ends. Rocky became an Oscar-winning smash hit grossing over $225 million. It turned Sylvester Stallone, the starving actor who bet on himself, into a Hollywood legend. Now think about what you can take from this. Stallone literally had nothing to lose except his dream, and he protected that dream with everything he had. Are you protecting your dream that Number 2, Beyoncé, daring to break all the rules. In December 2013, at the peak of her career, Beyoncé did something that shocked the entire music industry. Without a whisper of warning, no marketing, no singles on the radio, she dropped a full surprise album on iTunes overnight. The move defied every traditional rule of music promotion, and Beyoncé was terrified about it. I was so scared, she admitted. I already imagined the worst that could happen. I was so scared. That could happen. Releasing an album with zero promotion was a huge risk, even for Queen Bey. Industry experts called it career suicide. Harvard Business School even wrote a case study on what a gamble it was. Why did she do it? Because Beyoncé felt creatively suffocated by the old way of doing things. She wanted to reclaim her power on her terms. In her own words, she wanted to show other women, you don't have to go sign with someone else. You Do it yourself. So she trusted her gut and jumped. The result: her self-titled album broke records, racing up to number one on the U.S. and proving all the skeptics wrong. It was a cultural earthquake that changed how albums could be released. More importantly, it taught millions of entrepreneurs and creators that sometimes the boldest, scariest move is the one that sets you free. Beyoncé was already a superstar, but with that single daring act. She went from superstar to icon because she owned her vision completely. So ask yourself, where are you playing by others' rules? Maybe your breakthrough lies in trusting your own. Number 3, Elon Musk going all in, literally. Elon Musk's risk-taking is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. After selling his company PayPal in 2002, Musk personally made $180 million from the deal. He could have retired at 31. Instead, he risked every cent of it on 2 wild dreams: SpaceX, a private rocket company, and Tesla, an electric car startup. Friends told him he was crazy— why not just invest a little and keep a safety net? But Musk poured all of his PayPal fortune into these 2 ventures. By 2008, both companies were on the brink of bankruptcy. The global economy was crashing, and Musk himself was broke to boot, as he later recall, he had to borrow money for rent that Christmas. It was the worst year of my life, he said. Think about that— a multi-multi-millionaire reduced to scrounging, all because he believed so fiercely in his dreams of space travel and sustainable transport. Musk had one rocket launch before SpaceX would run out of money. If that launch failed, it was game over. They launched and it succeeded. SpaceX hit orbit for the first time. Just weeks later, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract, saving the company. Around the same time, Tesla secured critical funding to stay alive. By the skin of his teeth, Musk's all-in bet paid off. Today, SpaceX routinely sends rockets to space, and Tesla is a household name, together worth over a trillion dollars. But it all traced back to that moment when Elon Musk put everything on the line. The takeaway here isn't be reckless with your money, it's have skin in the game. Musk was so invested, literally, that failure was not not an option. He worked night and day, slept under his desk, and did whatever it took. When you treat your dream like your life depends on it, powerful things happen. Number 4, J.K. Rowling, turning rock bottom into a launch pad. Joanne J.K. Rowling knows about risk on a very personal level. In the early 1990s, she was a single mother living on welfare, battling depression, and writing stories in Edinburgh cafes because she couldn't afford heat at home. She had no stable job, no spouse, and barely enough money to feed her baby. Chasing a fantasy of becoming a novelist seemed to outsiders utterly impractical. She spent years crafting Harry Potter under these conditions. That was her risk— devoting what little time and energy she had to a dream that no one else believed in. And initially, it looked like a pretty bad bet. 12 different publishers rejected Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. 12 nos in a row. Any one of those could have been the moment she quit. Can you imagine? You're exhausted, living on government assistance, and a dozen publishers slammed the door in your face. It would have been easy to say, I tried, it didn't work, I need to get real. But J.K. Rowling refused to give up. I never really gave up on Harry, she said, because I always had a tiny stubborn core that believed I was meant to be a writer. Finally, a small Bloomberg took a chance on her manuscript, and we all know what happens next. Harry Potter became a once-in-a-century phenomenon, making Rowling the world's first billionaire author. The key here is that she risked continued failure and hardship in the short term for a chance at a massively different future. She literally bet years of her life on a story about a boy wizard, and the bet transformed her life and millions of others. others. If you're hesitating because the odds look bad or people scoff at your idea, remember Rowling writing in that café. Remember that every single no is one step closer to yes, as long as you keep knocking on doors. Number 5, Walt Disney, betting his home on his vision. Walt Disney is now synonymous with magical success, but in 1937, he was on the verge of losing everything for his dream, Disney had a bold idea to make the world's first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Today that sounds cute. At the time, it sounded insane. A full-length cartoon was such a crazy gamble that Hollywood insiders called it Disney's folly. They were sure it was going to ruin him. Walt's own wife and brother tried to talk him out of it, but Disney believed in the project, so he Went all in. He and his brother Roy Disney mortgaged their homes to help fund the production. The studio took out loan after loan, stretching to the brink of collapse. Midway through production, Snow White ran massively over budget. It ended up costing $1.5 million—an unheard of amount in the 1930s. There were moments when Walt couldn't make payroll and was begging bankers for one more loan. He was literally risking his family's house on this animated. Finally, in late 1937, with Walt Disney's personal finances going to zero, Snow White premiered. What happened? It received a standing ovation from the audience and went on to become the highest-grossing film of its time. It validated Walt's crazy gamble 1,000 times over, and it gave birth to the Disney empire that we know today. But imagine if it had failed. Walt Disney would have been financially ruined. He knew that, yet he was willing to take the risk. the chance because he so passionately believed in the art of animation. His risk wasn't just about money, it was about proving that animation could move people's hearts, and it did. The lesson here for us is sometimes the world calls your dream folly until you prove them wrong. If your conviction is that strong, you might have to put everything on the line. That's sometimes what it takes to build something that outlasts you. Number 6, Oprah Winfrey, reinventing at the pinnacle of success. Oprah Winfrey was already a multi-millionaire media queen when she decided to take one of the biggest risks of her career. In 2011, at age 57, Oprah walked away from her phenomenally successful daytime talk show, the number one show for 25 years, to launch her own cable network, OWN. Think about that. She voluntarily gave up a sure thing— her show was a money printing machine— to start a new venture from scratch. And the launch of OWN was rough. In its first year, Oprah's network struggled so badly it lost over $100 million and was bleeding viewership. Critics called it Oprah's flop. Her reputation took a huge hit for the first time in decades. She was kept out of Time's Most Influential list that year. Oprah herself went on TV and confessed, had I known it was this difficult, I might have done something else. This is Oprah Winfrey, one of the most confident, capable people on the planet admitting that self-doubt had crept in. That's how intense the pressure had gotten for her. She invested not just her money but her name, her legacy into OWN, and it looked like a very public failure. But here's the thing about Oprah— she doesn't give up. Instead of folding, she doubled down too. In 2012, she took over as CEO of OWN, retooled the programming, and partnered with people who could bring fresh content like filmmaker Tyler Perry. Slowly but Slow but surely, the network's fortunes reversed. By 2013, OWN was turning a profit and climbing in its ratings. Today, OWN is a success and an extension of Oprah's vision, but it exists only because Oprah was willing to risk her enormous success to grow even further. She could have coasted on her talk show into comfortable semi-retirement. Instead, she essentially said, I'm going to bet my empire on the chance to empower more people in a bigger way. So for us, the takeaway is that even at the top, growth requires risk. You're never too successful to challenge yourself. Oprah had everything to lose, and that's exactly why she had to try. Number 7, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, from $7 to Seven Bucks Productions. Today, Dwayne The Rock Johnson is a global movie star and entrepreneur, but in 1995, he was just a 22-year-old kid with a failed dream. He'd spent his youth training to be a professional football player. That dream collapsed when he got cut from the Canadian Football League. Suddenly he had no team, no career, and only $7 to his name. Literally 7 bucks in his pocket when he flew home to Florida. He sank into depression, living in his parents' tiny apartment, feeling like he'd let everyone down. But in that rock bottom moment, Johnson made a decision. He refused to be defined by failure. With only $7, he looked in the mirror and told himself 2 things: I'm broke as hell, and one day I won't be. He pivoted to a new He knew pro wrestling, his family's business. Even there, success wasn't instant. He started as a nobody in dingy arenas, faced the crowds jeering at him, chanting "Rocky sucks," and paid his dues with countless bumps and bruises. But he poured his heart into it with a ferocious drive, motivated by that memory of having nothing. In a few years, The Rock became the biggest name in WWE. Then guess what? He risked it all again at the peak of his wrestling fame. He decided to pursue. Acting, a field where so many wrestlers had failed. Hollywood was skeptical. He's a muscle action guy, not a real actor, they said. Johnson had to prove himself all over from scratch. He took roles that paid a fraction of his WWE income, trained with acting coaches, and hustled. But slowly, film by film, he built a new reputation. Now he's the highest-paid actor in the world, with blockbuster franchises and his own production company called Seven Bucks Productions, in honor of that humble beginning. The Rock's story illustrates the power of reinvention and just work ethic. He risked failure twice— once when he had nothing, once when he had everything— and both times it moved him to new heights. His mantra is, always be the hardest worker in the room, and he lives it. So ask yourself, are you willing to outwork everyone and risk starting over in order to live your vision? Number 8, Colonel Harland Sanders. Never too late to risk it all. Not all big dreamers are young. Harland Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, was 65 years old when he embarked on the riskiest venture of his life. Up to that point, Sanders's life had been marked by failure and frustration. He had been a farmhand, a soldier, a railroad worker, a lawyer very briefly, a gas station operator. He kept losing jobs or businesses due to fights and fires, the Depression, you name it. In his 60s, he ran a small restaurant attached to a motel in Kentucky where he served fried chicken using a recipe that he'd perfected. But then an interstate highway opened that bypassed his restaurant, and he had to shut it down. At an age when most people retire, Sanders looked at his almost empty bank account and saw one last chance. He had a great fried chicken chicken recipe. What if he franchised it to restaurants around the country? So he hit the road, living out of his car, going door-to-door to diners and cafes to pitch them adding on his Kentucky Fried Chicken to their menu. He was rejected again and again and again. In fact, by his own count, 1,009 restaurants said no before he finally got his first yes. 1,009 rejections! Most people couldn't handle 100 rejections, let alone 10 times that, but the Colonel kept driving, kept pitching. Finally, in 1952, one restaurant in Utah agreed to sell Sanders's chicken. It was a hit. Slowly, deal by deal, Sanders built a franchise network, and by 1964, KFC had grown to 600 locations, and Colonel Sanders sold the company for $2 million, which is about $15 million today. Not a bad retirement fund for a guy who'd been barely scraping by. And the brand kept exploding globally way longer Not long after, Colonel Sanders became an unlikely celebrity with his face still on every KFC bucket to this day. The lesson here for us is clear. It's never too late to chase your dream, and it's never too late to fail one more time if it brings that failure a little bit closer to your success. Sanders had every excuse to resign himself to a quiet old age. Instead, he risked his small savings and his pride on a crazy idea, and it made history. So whatever age or stage you're at. If you're still breathing, there's still time to bet on yourself. And number 9, Tyler Perry. This is 6. Number 9, Tyler Perry, fighting through failure after adventure. Tyler Perry is one of the most successful writer-producer-actors in Hollywood today, but his early journey was a trial by fire. In 1992, a young Tyler Perry had saved up $12,000 while working odd jobs. He poured every penny of it into producing his first stage play in Atlanta, I Know I've Been Changed. Perry was sure that this play, based on his own painful experience, would resonate with his audience. He rented a small 200-seat theater, scraped together a cast, and prayed for a good turnout. Opening night, only 30 people showed up. The show bombed. Tyler Perry's entire $12,000 was gone in a flash, and he had nothing to show for it. He was devastated. That kind of failure might make you quit on your dream for good, right? Not him. Perry took odd jobs again as a waiter, a bill collector, slowly saved up money, and tried again to stage the play. It flopped again. He tried again and again from 1992 until 1998. Every single time he put on the show, it failed to attract a crowd. 6 years of persistence, 6 years of losing money and sleeping in seedy motels, even living out of his car when he couldn't afford to pay rent. He reached the edge of giving up. His mother pleaded with him to get a real Good job. But Tyler Perry says, I thought I had failed, but the truth is I never really failed because I didn't stop. Each version of the play taught him something new— a better joke here, a tighter scene there. In 1998, he tried one last time. He changed his marketing strategy, promoting the play through local churches and the Black community in Atlanta. This time, the word caught fire. The show sold out for 8 nights straight. Tyler Perry finally had his break breakthrough. His blend of his humor and his faith and raw honesty struck a chord, and it launched an entertainment empire for him. Within a few years, he was making moves, writing best-selling books, eventually building his own 330-acre film studio. And today, Tyler Perry is a billionaire. But he'd be the first to tell you that the foundation of his success was failure— repeated, soul-crushing failure that he refused to let crush his spirit. So if you're struggling and it feels like you're banging your head Remember Tyler in that car, homeless but unyielding. Sometimes the darkest hour really is just before you're done. Now it's your turn. Most people never even get to this point, but you did. You showed up, you listened, and now you're ready to make a move. It's time to take all this inspiration and turn it into action. Think about the one story here that resonated with you the most, the one that made your heart beat a little bit faster. Hold on to that feeling because that's your sign. That's your inner hero saying it's go time. No more excuses. No more waiting for the right moment. You create that moment. Bet on yourself. Start today. Imagine stepping on the campus and rubbing shoulders with the future co-founder of Wikipedia or playing pickup basketball with the guy who'd one day build a TV empire beaming into 400 million homes. The University of Alabama Alabama has produced some legendary entrepreneurs, and today you're going to learn from 10 of the best. These aren't just regular Crimson Tide alumni. They're world changers, innovators, and rule breakers who turn bold ideas into reality. Get ready, because these stories will fire you up with practical lessons and motivation to elevate your entrepreneurial game. All right, let's kick it off with number 10, Marilyn Hewson, the aerospace power player. So starting off our list is A leader who shows that entrepreneurial mindset matters at the highest levels of business, Marillyn Hewson, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin. Now, she's not a founder, but as a UA alumna, class of '76, who rose from entry-level analyst to CEO of the world's biggest defense contractor, Hewson exemplifies intrapreneurship and visionary leadership. At Lockheed Martin, Hewson oversaw game-changing projects like the F-35 fighter jet program and led a 100,000-employee company to record growth. In 2018, Fortune ranked her number 1 most powerful woman in business, and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. So why include her on our list of entrepreneurs? Because Marillyn ran Lockheed with the innovation and boldness of a startup founder, encouraging cutting-edge R&D, agile problem solving, and even internal Shark Tank-style pitches for new ideas. She proved that you can have an entrepreneurial impact from within a giant corporation. Houston's story also shows the doors an Alabama education can open. She's been an active UA supporter, and the business building Houston Hall is named after her, a testament to giving back. For the aspiring entrepreneur, she's proof that where you start doesn't limit where you can go. From Tuscaloosa to top of the Fortune 500, Marilyn never forgot the values learned at UA. If you aim high, stay humble and empower those around you— Houston was known for championing diversity and young talent— you can leave an outsized legacy. So your challenge: channel that same executive mindset in your projects. Think big, act with integrity, and never stop innovating, whether you're employee number 1 or 100,000. Coming in at number 9 is Destin Sandlin, YouTube educator and engineer. So switching gears to modern media entrepreneurship, meet Meet Destin Sandlin, the brain behind the hit YouTube channel Smarter Every Day. Destin earned his engineering degree from UA in 2005 and a master's from UAH, but he's become world famous not from a traditional engineering job, rather by teaching science on YouTube right here. What started as a hobby in 2007, posting fun slow-motion videos and science experiments, has exploded into a channel with 11.7 million subscribers and over 2 billion views. Think about that reach. Dustin essentially founded a one-man, now multi-person media company that educates millions outside a classroom, and he did it with an engineer's approach— lots of curiosity, analytical thinking, and continuous improvement in his content quality. Dustin's journey has led him to incredible opportunities. He's interviewed President Obama one-on-one, traveled the world for science stories, and inspired countless young people to pursue STEM. Not bad for a self-described Alabama country boy with a camera. His story proves that in today's world, you are not limited by your geography or traditional gatekeepers. If you have an expertise or message, and in his case was making science fun, you can directly reach a global audience. It's unbelievably empowering. So whether you are coding software or creating content, remember Destin's example. Consistent effort, genuine passion, and smart use of technology can transform a small side project into a full-blown career, and one that makes you and millions of others smarter every day. All right, coming in at number 8 is Morris Dees, the civil rights entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship isn't confined to tech or business. Sometimes it's about building movements for justice. Morris Dees applied his UA-honed legal skills to co-found the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, in 1971, creating one of America's America's most impactful civil rights organizations. After graduating from Alabama's law school in 1960, Dees could have pursued a comfortable law career like everyone else. Instead, he felt called to fight the hate and intolerance plaguing the South. SPLC started small, a few young lawyers in Montgomery, Alabama, but Dees thought big. He pioneered using lawsuits to bankrupt violent hate groups and bring justice where others thought it to be impossible. His team took on the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups, winning multimillion-dollar judgments on behalf of victims and decimating those organizations. That's social entrepreneurship at its finest: identifying an ingrained societal problem and innovating a solution that changes the game. Morris D's work literally reshaped civil society. The SPLC has taken numerous hate groups to court and won, and its famous hate map keeps the nation informed on extremist threats. D's reminds us that entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for profound change. He's a lawyer by training, entrepreneur by mindset, proving that with ingenuity and determination, you can fix systems that seem unfixable. So if there's a wrong that you feel compelled to right, you might just be the entrepreneur to do it. In Dee's words, it's very rare that a person who stands up to do what's right fails. His life's work certainly didn't fail. It's still saving lives and inspiring new generations of changemakers. Coming in at number 7 is Wynton Red Blount, a construction mogul and visionary builder. Ever walked into a massive stadium or flown from a space launch pad and wondered who built this? One answer: Wynton M. Red Blount, a UA attendee who became a construction magnate and one of Alabama's most influential businessmen. Red Blount founded Blount International, a construction company that tackled projects of awe-inspiring scale, from the Louisiana Superdome to Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 39A, which sent Apollo 11 to the moon. Yes, this Alabama entrepreneur literally helped launch mankind's giant leap. Now, beyond business, Blount also served as U.S. Postmaster General. He was the last one to hold it as a cabinet post, and he was a major philanthropist in the state. But it all began with a small contracting firm he started with his brother after World War II with with grit and an ambitious vision. So take inspiration from Blount's legacy in Alabama. He donated generously to education and the arts. The Blount Undergraduate Initiative at UA carries his name, and despite his national stature, he invested in his home community. As you succeed, remember your roots. Building a business that thrives is fantastic. Using that success to uplift others is even better. Blount's life shows us to think big, literally beyond the world, while staying grounded in service and integrity. All right, number six: Benjamin Russell Jr., creator of the sweatshirt. Chances are you or someone you know is wearing a comfy sweatshirt today, and you have Benjamin Russell Jr. to thank for that. This story goes way back to 1920s. Benjamin Russell Jr. was a football player at Alabama who got fed up with the itchy, heavy wool of jerseys of the era. So instead of just complaining about it, he innovated. Russell teamed up with his father Benjamin. Benjamin Russell Sr., who ran a small textile mill founded in 1902, and together they developed a lightweight, all-cotton practice jersey, effectively inventing the modern sweatshirt. That simple idea turned into a revolution in sports apparel. The Russell's company, later known as Russell Athletics, would go on to outfit athletes and fans for generations, becoming a major brand and eventually becoming part of Fruit of the Loom/Berkshire Hathaway. By the way, Russell's athletic invention didn't just make players more comfortable. It kicked off the idea of athleisure long before it was a trend. The sweatshirt became an American wardrobe staple on and off the field. So the next time you throw on that hoodie, remember it started with a UA student athlete who turned irritation into innovation. The big takeaway: solve a real problem and you might accidentally start an industry. Even a seemingly small improvement, a softer shirt, can snowball into something huge over time. All right, coming in at number 5 is Janet Gerwich, the beauty entrepreneur and brand builder. How do you go from a small-town Alabama student to a cosmetics industry titan? Janet Gerwich has that playbook. A 1976 UA graduate in fashion merchandising, Janet climbed the corporate ladder at major department stores, then made a bold entrepreneurial leap founding her own beauty brand. In 1995, she co-founded Gerwich Products, and in 1996 launched the Laura Mercier cosmetics line. Back then, niche makeup brands weren't the powerhouse businesses that they are today, but Janet's keen eye for an emerging trend, the flawless face concept, set her brand apart. She partnered with a French makeup artist, Mercier, developed high-quality products, and marketed them as the go-to tools for a natural yet elegant look. Fast forward, and Laura Mercier became a globally beloved brand famous for products like its tinted moisturizer. Gerwich eventually sold the company for a hefty sum, but she didn't stop there. Today, she's an investor and board member for a roster of beauty and fashion companies and even a minority owner of the Houston Astros. Talk about a portfolio. If you have expertise from your career— Janet had 20-plus years in retail— and you spot a gap in the market, bet on yourself. Gerwich took all her industry knowledge and bet it on her own venture at age 40, an age when many are afraid to pivot. That courage was rewarded many times over. Your experience is an asset. Combine it with courage and you could create the next breakout brand. And if doors don't open, knock again like Janet did. Persistence plus insight is a winning combo. Number 4, Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity. So next is a University of Illinois law graduate who redefined giving back on a global scale— Millard Fuller. In 1976, Fuller co-founded Habitat for Humanity International, a nonprofit nonprofit that has helped over 39 million people achieve safe housing. But his story starts earlier. After earning his UA law degree in 1960, Millard became a self-made millionaire by 29, then had a change of heart. He realized that true success meant using his skills to help others. So selling all his possessions, he and his wife Linda started building houses for those in need, one humble home at a time. That tiny project grew into Habitat for Humanity, a movement where volunteers and future homeowners could build houses together, providing a hand up, not a handout. Fuller's guiding philosophy: communities thrive on love and concern. For a community to be whole and healthy, it must be based on people's love and concern for each other, he said. And he put that belief into action. You can do well by doing good. Fuller proved that sound business skills— raising funds, organizing volunteers, managing projects— can drive a mission that benefits society. So as an entrepreneur, your venture doesn't have to be purely profit-driven. Some of the most fulfilling enterprises are those with a double bottom line: making money and making a difference. Also, don't fear starting small. Habitat began on a community farm with a few volunteers. By persistently replicating that model, Fuller scaled a local idea into a global organization. If you have a socially conscious idea, start where you As Fuller's life shows, the ripple effect of compassionate entrepreneurship are immeasurable and incredibly rewarding. All right, coming in at number 3, Joe Gibbs, the co-founder of the Golf Channel. How does a business grad from Alabama help turn a niche sport into 24/7 entertainment? Joe Gibbs did exactly that. A 1975 UA alumnus, Gibbs co-founded the Golf Channel in 1975. Channel and proved that even a single sport idea can become a booming business. In the early '90s, Gibbs noticed golf's passionate following and envisioned a channel just for golfers. Critics thought it was too narrow, but Joe saw an opportunity. Partnering with legendary golfer Arnold Palmer, he raised an $80 million startup fund and launched the Golf Channel in 1995. Fast forward, and the network became a staple for fans, at one point reaching 85 million homes during its peak and about 59 million homes as of 2023. A focused vision can beat a broad one. Joe Gibbs bet on a singular passion and in doing so created an entirely new space in media. So ask yourself, what community or need is underserved? If you can answer that and deliver real value, you might just tee up the next big thing. Number 2, John Hendricks, founder of the Discovery Channel. Ever binge-watch Shark Week or an epic space Thank John Hendricks, the UA Huntsville alumnus behind Discovery Channel. In the early 1980s, Hendricks took out a second mortgage on his house to fund his wild idea: a cable TV network dedicated to satisfying curiosity. That network, launched in 1985, grew from broadcasting to 156,000 households into a global media powerhouse now reaching over 400 million homes worldwide. Talk about a vision. Hendricks literally named his memoir a curious discovery, and for a good reason. He believed curiosity was the driving force of progress. Curiosity is the fuel of human progress, he says, a mindset he kept while building Discovery into the world's number one non-fiction media company. So what's one crazy idea that you have that others don't quite get yet? Hendricks' story proves that if you see an unmet need like intelligent entertainment, go for it. Market research Research helps, but it starts with your gut. Be ready to sacrifice and blaze a trail. When you stay true to a mission you believe in, you attract others who believe it too. As Hendricks showed, a single entrepreneur's curiosity can snowball into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise fueling the curiosity of the world. And coming in at number 1, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales gave the world one of its greatest free resources. Back in 2001, he dared to believe knowledge should be accessible to everyone and acted on that belief. He co-founded Wikipedia, the open encyclopedia that now hosts nearly 7 million English articles and tens of millions in hundreds of languages. Think about that: an idea born in a UA grad's mind now empowers billions with information. Wales's vision wasn't just technical; it was deeply human. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet planet is giving free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing, he famously said. So the big lesson for you: big visions can start small. Jimmy began Wikipedia with a community of volunteer editors, a radical openness, and relentless faith in his mission. So dream big. Your venture might not build the sum of all human knowledge, but if it solves a real problem and you rally others to believe in it, you can achieve something just as extraordinary. Don't wait for permission to pursue your vision. Jimmy Wales was just a guy in Alabama with a crazy idea. If you have a mission that fires you up, like giving everyone knowledge, then start now. Be bold, be open, and get others involved. As an entrepreneur, your vision can change the world if you're willing to pursue it relentlessly. Roll Tide, roll inspiration! These top 10 entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leaders from the University of Alabama come from different eras and industries, but they share something powerful: an unwillingness to settle for the way things are. They each said, I can make this better, whether this was an encyclopedia, a TV channel, a community's housing, or even the culture within a huge company, and then followed through with action. That's the heart of entrepreneurship— your vision and your grit. So now it's your turn. You've got your own ideas brewing, your own problems to solve. Pick a lesson from each of these legends. Be curious, be bold, persevere through all the nos, innovate from what you know, and lead with your heart. As an entrepreneur or aspiring one, you're joining a proud legacy of UA changemakers. And who knows, one day your story might be the one that inspires the next generation of Crimson Tide entrepreneurs to keep pushing boundaries. So get out there and build something great. And as always, keep that fighting spirit. The world needs what you've got. Roll Tide!

Roll Tide!

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