This is Everything You Need to Become Mentally Strong, Focused & Free

Distractions are stealing your life one decision at a time. Trying to pursue too many goals at once can definitely be counterproductive. Now, I realize that life is complicated. We all have multiple goals that we're trying to pursue, but if we have particular goals that are important to us, we have to be careful to not get distracted by other goals. If you want to get work done, you have to manage distractions and interruptions. You want to eliminate distractions. Every time you say yes to things that don't matter, you move further away from the person that you could become. Lean into saying no. Not with a negative energy, but just with a necessary no. I was always like 2 or 3 months behind. I was always on the hook for more stuff than I should have been. And it was 'cause I was saying yes to too many things. Many times I would get myself into situations as an adult where I didn't wanna say no because I didn't wanna hurt anybody's feelings. That to me has been the greatest lesson of my life is to recognize that I am solely responsible for it. Not trying to please other people, not living my life to please other people, but doing what my heart says. If you keep doing this, you won't just lose focus, you'll lose your chance to build the life you actually want. In the next 3 hours, you'll learn how to protect your time, sharpen your focus, and execute on what actually matters. 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. Being a good person does not mean you have to say yes to every favor someone asks of you. So the first thing that you need to know is that you have to be able to say no. And what no means is that you're not going to do it. Well, focusing is, is saying yes. No, focusing is about saying no. True stoicism teaches that your internal assets like time and peace of mind are your most valuable resources and you must protect them. So to minimize stress, and stay productive. You have to learn the gentle art of saying no. God, your creator, did not make you just to be an instrument for other people's relief. If you keep handing over your life to please everyone else, you will wake up 10 years from now completely burned out, empty, and living someone else's dream instead of building your own. When people have been depending on you, they will not appreciate the boundaries. They will not appreciate the no. Your time is limited. So don't waste it living someone else's life. Over 2,000 years ago, the great Stoic philosopher Seneca noticed something crazy about how people act. He saw that people would fight to the death to protect their land and their money, but they would happily let strangers steal their time. He says, look, if your neighbor came over and parked their car on your property, if your neighbor built a shed on your property, you'd say, what is this? Get off, you can't do this. But if your neighbor wasted an hour of your time, you would let them, which is insane because you can You can get more property. You cannot get more time. In his famous essay, "On the Shortness of Life," he wrote that people are frugal with their property, but when it comes to wasting time, they are totally reckless. He realized that your life is not actually short. You just waste a lot of it by handing it over to people who do not care about your goals. It makes no sense. You can always make another $100, but you can't make another 2 hours that you just wasted on something stupid. Stop handing out your time to everyone and start valuing your time. Realize it's the most important thing you have. Now I know what you're saying right now. You're thinking that setting hard boundaries will make you lose clients and friends and opportunities, but you've got it completely backwards. People don't respect pushovers. They respect people who value their own time. Setting limits doesn't push the right people away. It actually filters out the users and the manipulators. If you wanna know exactly what you should never hand over to anyone else, You need to learn these 5 rules. Your time without limits. You can lose your entire business today and you can build it back tomorrow. You can lose $100,000 in a bad deal and you can figure out a way to make $200,000 next year, but you can never get back the 5 hours you wasted yesterday. Time is the only resource you possess that is strictly non-renewable, yet you probably treat it like it's infinite. You let people interrupt your deep work just because they ask politely. You take random phone calls that are not on your schedule. You agree to coffee meetings that have absolutely no clear agenda just because you want to be seen as a nice person. Every single time you do this, you are silently destroying your own potential. People lose control of their lives not because they make one massive catastrophic mistake. They lose control because they let their time slip away in a thousand tiny, unnoticeable ways. A 10-minute chat here, a small favor there, a quick text response that breaks your focus— it all adds up to a mountain of wasted potential. According to According to a study by the American Psychological Association, constantly shifting between tasks and dealing with interruptions can cost you up to 40% of your productive time. So let's think about what that means for your business. You are literally burning almost half of your working hours just because you refuse to say no to people. When I was 19, I was part of a biotech software company. I was grinding every single day, trying to be everything to everyone. I took every meeting, I answered every email immediately. I thought that was what hustle looked like, but I ended up completely burned out and actually quit on my business partner. I felt entirely isolated and alone. I had to learn the hard way that giving away unlimited access to my time did not make me more successful. It just left me empty and exhausted. You have to build an invisible wall around your schedule. If someone asks you for a piece of your day, they need to earn it. You are not a public park where anyone can just wander in and set up a picnic, right? You are a private fortress. You must guard your working hours with intense jealousy. Stop letting the outside world dictate your daily agenda. Your inner peace and emotional control. So the ancient Greeks, they had a specific word for the ultimate state of mental calm. They called it ataraxia. It translates to being completely unbothered and free from emotional disturbances. It doesn't mean that you have a tensionless life and no problems. It means that you have bulletproof calm while the problems are happening around you. It is the ability to walk through a storm and stay entirely level-headed without letting the chaos out outside get inside your head. But right now you're handing your ataraxia over to people who do not deserve it. You let a rude comment from a stranger ruin your entire morning. You let a complaining client dictate your mood for the rest of the day. You invite toxic people into your physical and mental space, and then you wonder why you feel so drained. There are specific types of people you must absolutely refuse to give your emotional control to: the constant complainer, the gossip, the energy drainer. When you react emotionally to these people, you are handing them the steering wheel to your life. The Stoics believe that your mind becomes shaped by what you expose it to. So if you sit there and listen to someone complain for 20 minutes, their negativity becomes your negativity. So you must practice emotional detachment. When someone tries to upset you or pushes your buttons, you pause, you take a breath, picture their words just bouncing right off you. You do not have to join their drama. You do not have to match their negative energy. The less you react, the less power they hold over you. You have to realize that keeping your peace of mind requires you to make logical choices, not emotional ones. If someone constantly brings instability into your life, you must limit your exposure to them immediately. Protecting your mental space, it's not selfish. It's the smartest business decision that you can make. Your self-respect and need for validation. So one of the most dangerous things you can give someone is the power to validate your worth. In today's world, it's incredibly easy to base your self-esteem on external metrics. You look at how many likes you get, how much praise your boss gives you, or what your family thinks of your new business idea. The moment you rely on other people to validate your choices, you become a prisoner to their opinions. So Marcus Aurelius wrote something brilliant about this in his journal. He said, It never ceases to amaze me. We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. Think about how crazy that is. You know your dreams better than anyone else, right? You know your work ethic. You know what you are trying to build, yet you will let a passing comment from someone who is not even trying to build a business stop you in your tracks. When you seek validation from the outside world, you create a pretty fragile dependency. Opinions change constantly. People will misunderstand you. People will project their insecurities onto you. If your self-respect is tied to their approval, your confidence will collapse the second when they stop clapping for you. So when I started my YouTube channel, I was pretty bad on camera. I was pretty terrible. I was a massive introvert. It took me 5 years to hit 2,000 subscribers. That is a painfully long time to work on something without getting massive external validation. I made 350 public videos before I stopped being completely embarrassed by my own content. I made 700 videos before I actually watched one and felt inspired by my own work. If I had waited for the world to validate me, I would've quit in the first month I had to anchor my confidence in my own effort, not in the view counts of the videos. So you have to anchor your self-respect in your own virtues and your own actions. Are you showing up every day? Are you putting in the work every day? Are you treating other people with respect? If the answer is yes, then you do not need anyone else to validate you. Stop negotiating your own self-worth. Stop performing for an audience that does not truly care about your long-term success. Evan Carmichael. Your power of choice. There's a concept in Stoic philosophy called proairesis. It refers to your rational mind and your fundamental capacity to make choices. It's the core of human freedom. You cannot control the economy, you cannot control the algorithm, and you certainly cannot control what other people do, but you always retain the absolute power to choose your response. The problem is you give this power away constantly. You let guilt, social pressure, and fear make your choices for you. So, uh, when a client demands that you lower your prices and you agree just because you're afraid of losing them, you are surrendering your pro-heresis. When a family member pressures you to take a safe job instead of building your startup and you give in to keep the peace, you are surrendering your power of choice. So you need to draw a line in the sand. Your ability to decide the direction of your life is not up for negotiation. People will always try to bargain with your dignity and your direction. They will try to make you feel bad for having high standards. They will call you stubborn or difficult just because you Refuse to conform to their expectations. Let them call you whatever they want. A study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who feel a strong sense of autonomy and control over their choices experience significantly higher levels of long-term wellbeing and success. So you have to act like you are the CEO of your own life. Every time you say yes to something that you hate, you are betraying yourself. You are telling your own brain that your preferences do not matter. So start practicing the word no. Say it firmly and do not offer a massive apology or a long explanation. You do not owe anyone an explanation for protecting your own life path. When you can reclaim your power of choice, you stop being that passenger in your business and you finally take the wheel. Your ultimate life purpose. The final thing you must never give away is your life purpose. Your purpose is the anchor that decides the quality of your entire existence. If you do not have a clear purpose, your accomplishments will always feel completely empty. You will end up working 80 hours a week to build a massive company, only to realize you hate the industry that you're in. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself daily to stay focused. He wrote, "Get busy with life's purpose. Toss aside empty hopes. Get active in your own rescue if you care for yourself at all, and you do it while you can." Too many entrepreneurs let the market dictate their purpose. Chase whatever trend is hot right now, or they build the business model entirely based on what some guru told them to do. You have to figure out what you are actually meant to do. I deeply believe that your purpose comes directly from your pain. So the things that you struggled with the most in your past are the exact things you are uniquely qualified to help other people overcome. So I struggled with a lack of belief. I did not believe in myself enough when I was a young entrepreneur. So now My entire life is dedicated to solving the world's biggest problem, which I believe is that people do not believe in themselves enough. I don't let anyone pull me away from that mission. And you must find your core mission and guard it fiercely. Do not water it down. Do not make it more digestible for the masses. Do not abandon it just because the path gets difficult, right? You were built to serve. You have a message and a gift that the world desperately needs. But if you let other people distract you, manipulate you, steal your focus, you will never deliver that gift. Refuse to hand over your purpose to the chaos of the outside world. Protecting these 5 things will completely change your trajectory. But there is one final mental shift you must make today if you want to ensure you never fall back into the trap of pleasing everyone else. The ultimate shift. You have to accept that greatness requires you to be misunderstood by average people. Stop apologizing for having standards that demand your full focus. Protect your mind, right? Guard your time and ruthlessly defend your purpose against any distraction. You do not lack discipline. You just have a terrible daily environment. They say we're creatures of our environment. You believe that, Post? Yes, I am a creature of my environment. You're the boss in your apartment, right? No matter what, no matter how little it is, if it's— whether it's a big house or a little house, that space right there, you're the boss. That's what your business is. That's what your life is. You create the space so you can control it. You control your environment, but you have to architect that. The space you choose to work in can seriously impact your productivity and your mood. Structuring your surroundings to make good choices automatic is the real secret behind every millionaire that you admire. You don't have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it. Your brain is a record of your environment. Who you surround yourself matters. What content you consume matters. If you keep fighting against a broken routine, you stay stuck exactly exactly where you are for the next 10 years. Growth requires deliberate habits. If you don't know your routines, how are you supposed to ever feel your best? No one can live without a routine. You just forget that. If you guys don't have a routine, I would recommend like you get one going. In 2006, doctors at the Massachusetts General Hospital wanted to improve the eating habits of thousands of staff members and visitors. They did not talk to anyone about willpower or motivation. They simply changed the physical environment. They added bottled water to every single refrigerator right next to the soda. Within 6 months, soda sales dropped and water sales skyrocketed. They proved that you often choose things not because of what they are, but simply because of where they are in your environment. Now I can hear your doubts right now. You might be telling yourself that you've tried routines, you've bought the planners, and you always fall off track after a couple days. But your systems did not fail because you are weak. They failed because you designed them for the perfect version of yourself, not the tired and stressed-out version of yourself. When you build a system based on your actual reality, it does the heavy lifting for you. Let me show you how to structure your day so that success becomes completely automatic. Stop chasing goals and start building a daily machine. Goals are completely useless for changing your daily behavior. You have probably set massive goals for your business before, you wrote them down, you felt a huge rush of motivation, and you pictured how amazing your life was going to be. But a goal only tells you where you want to go. It does absolutely nothing to help you take the physical steps to get there. When you only focus on the goal, you put yourself in a constant state of failure. You wake up every single day realizing that you are still not a millionaire. You still do not have a massive audience and you are still struggling. And that gap The gap between where you are and where you want to be creates massive anxiety for people. The most successful entrepreneurs in the world do not focus just on their goals. They focus on their systems. A system is just a repeatable process that guarantees you take action regardless of how you feel. There's a fascinating study, uh, from the British Journal of Health Psychology that showed how people build new habits. The researchers divided people into different groups to see who would stick to a workout routine. One group was just told to track their workouts. Another group was given motivational speeches to boost their desire to exercise. The final group was told to create a specific system. They had to write down the exact day, time, and location that they would work out. The results were pretty shocking. The motivation group only had a 35% success rate, but the group that built a simple system had a 91% success rate. You do not need more motivation to build your business. You just need to decide exactly when and where you are going to do the work. So when I started my YouTube channel, uh, I didn't have a goal to reach 4 million subscribers. If I'd focused on that massive number, I would've quit in, in the first month. Instead, I built a system. My system was simply to create and upload a new video every single week at the beginning. Now we do every day. My first videos were terrible. I was awkward and shy and completely embarrassed to watch myself on camera, but my purpose comes from my pain. I struggled so much when I was starting my first software company. I wanted to quit. I felt totally isolated and alone, and I knew there are other entrepreneurs out there feeling the exact same pain. I wanted to help them. I wanted to help you. So I stuck to my system. I made 350 videos before I was finally not embarrassed by my own content. I made 700 videos before I actually inspired myself. I did not win because I had better goals than anyone else. I won because my system forced me to put in the reps when nobody else was watching. If you want to finally break free from the cycle of starting and stopping, you must build a system that tells you exactly what to do every single morning. Your system will build your momentum. Once you have momentum, becoming successful is just a matter of time. That leads me directly into the next system you need to build. Design your environment for the lazy version of you. You always try to design your life for the perfect version of yourself. You assume you will wake up full of energy, ready to crush your tasks and completely immune to distractions. But that perfect version of you is not real. You need to design your systems for the tired, stressed, and lazy version of yourself. When you are exhausted, your brain will always choose the path of least resistance. If your guitar is in a closet, you will never practice. Practice. If your camera is packed away in a bag, you will never record a video. If you have to search for your client list, you will never make your sales call. You have to remove all the friction between you and the work. I want to share a powerful concept from an IT developer named Oswald Knuckles. He created a daily system called resetting the room. Whenever he finished watching television, he does not just turn it off, he puts the remote back on the stand. Fixes the pillows, and folds the blanket. Whenever he takes a shower, he wipes down the toilet while the water is warming up. He does not view this as cleaning. He views this as preparing the room for his next action. He intentionally designs his environment so that his future choices are as easy as possible. You must apply this exact same system to your business. When you finish working for the day, clear your desk, open the exact software you need for the next morning, leave your notes right next to your keyboard. When you sit down the next day, you will not have to think about what to do. The work will already be waiting for you. This is also how you protect your mindset. Lack of belief is the biggest problem in the world right now. It's what I believe. Your current environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are. If you want to change your life, you have to radically change what you feed into your mind. Set up your environment so that success and belief are impossible to ignore. So every single morning I have a system where the very first thing I do is play a video of someone who inspires me. I call it my believe walk. Get up, go outside for at least 15 minutes, Put on something that inspires you. I listen to Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Les Brown. I do not leave my inspiration up to chance. I manufacture my belief by designing an environment that forces me to think bigger. Your environment will always beat your willpower in the long run. So fix your surroundings today and your habits will automatically fix themselves tomorrow. But fixing your physical environment is only the first step. Now you have to clear out the mental clutter. The 10-minute mental cleanse system. You are probably carrying hundreds of uncompleted tasks in your head right now. You are thinking about the emails you need to send, the videos you need to film, the clients that you need to get on and call, the bills you need to pay. This creates a massive amount of mental static and stress. When your brain is overloaded with things that are not finished, you literally cannot focus on the task that's right in front of you. This is a psychological phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect. In the 1920s, a psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik noticed that waiters in a restaurant could remember complex unpaid orders with perfect accuracy. But the exact moment the bill was paid, the waiters completely forgot the order. Your brain is programmed to constantly remind you of unfinished tasks until you either complete them or put them into a trusted system. To stop this mental drain, you need to build a mental cleanse system. Them. Take 10 minutes every single evening to write down every single thought, idea, and obligation floating around in your head. Do not organize them yet, just get them out of your brain and onto a piece of paper. This simple act tells your brain that the information is safe. Your brain will finally stop reminding you about these tasks, and your anxiety will disappear. Once everything is written down, pick the one most important task that will actually to move your business forward. Circle it. That becomes your only focus for the next morning. Everything else can wait. Now, you're probably an overthinker. You get these bold, powerful, and courageous ideas, but instead of acting on them, you sit and think. You analyze the risks, you worry about what people will say, and you let the idea die. You have to trust that great ideas flow through you for a reason. When you get a great idea, you must take one small physical step towards it within 5 minutes. Buy the domain name. Record a rough voice memo, send an email to a potential partner. Lock the idea into reality before your mind can talk you out of it. When you stop storing your ideas in your head and start putting them into the physical world, your entire business will transform. But even the best productivity system will fail if you do not have the right foundation. This brings me to the most important system of all. Build a system that forces you to serve others. If your only goal is to make money, you will quit as soon as the process gets painful. Entrepreneurship is incredibly hard. You will face rejection, you will lose money, and you will have days where you want to shut everything down. In those dark moments, wanting a bigger bank account will not give you the strength to keep going. You are built to serve. You wanna wake up every single day and feel like your life actually matters to somebody else. When you make your business about helping other people, you tap into this unlimited source of energy. Researchers at the Wharton School of Business conducted a fascinating study on university call center employees. These employees were tasked with calling alumni to ask for donations. The job was highly stressful, it had a huge turnover rate. The researchers brought in a student who had received a scholarship funded by those exact donations. The students simply talked to the employees for 5 minutes about how the scholarship had changed his life. Over the next month, the employees who met the student increased their total revenue by 171%. They did not get better scripts. They did not get better training. They simply realized that their work was actually changing a human life. Money is incredibly important. You need money to hire a team, scale your impact, and take care of your family. Money can absolutely be in your top 5 priorities. I think it actually has to be. It just can't be number 1. Your number one priority must be the mission. You must have a cause that you would fight for even if you were not getting paid. You need to systemize your service. Make it a mandatory part of your daily system to help one person with zero expectation of getting anything in return. Answer a question in a forum, uh, leave a detailed comment on a small creator's video, or send an encouraging message to a client or a friend. When you focus intensely on who you are serving, your fear of failure goes away. You stop worrying about looking perfect on camera because you realize the message is more important than your ego. Your business will explode the moment you realize that your true job is just to pull other people out of the same dark hole you used to be in. But even the best mindset will fail if you give up too early. Track your actions and ignore your results. Your obsession with immediate results is destroying your long-term potential. So you start a new routine, you work incredibly hard for 2 weeks, and then you turn around and realize nothing has changed. You still do not have the sales, you still do not have the audience, and your bank account looks exactly the same. So you decide the system is broken and you quit. But the system is not broken. You are just expecting to see the harvest while you are still planting the seeds. So in the science of continuous improvement, there is a concept known as the plateau of latent potential. When you first build a new system, your results will flatline for a long period of time. You will put in massive amounts of effort and see absolutely zero external reward. This is where 99% of people give up. But your effort is not being wasted. Your effort is being stored. When I first started my journey, I tracked my year-over-year growth. After 5 years of making content consistently, I only had a few thousand subscribers. Most people would look at those numbers and call me a complete failure. If I had judged my success purely by those results, I would have quit. Like 1,000 times over. But I did not track my results. I tracked my actions. I focused entirely on the fact that I showed up and I did the work I promised myself that I would do. You have to love the process of building your business. If you only love the reward, you will never survive the years of grinding in the dark. You must be completely stubborn about why you are doing this, but incredibly flexible about how you get there. Build a system where your only definition of a successful day is whether or not you executed your daily habits. When you stop obsessing over the outcome and start obsessing over the daily inputs, your success becomes absolutely inevitable. Your ultimate engine. You already have everything inside you to do something truly legendary. You just have to stop waiting for permission and start building the routines that guarantee your victory. Trust that your ideas matter. And take immediate action on them today. I believe in you and know you can build the life you dream about. Retiring early is a completely broken goal that is secretly destroying your daily drive. When it comes to retirement, some people have a vastly different experience than the one you might imagine, filled with lazy days of sleeping in and no responsibilities. And for many, this major life shift may trigger some possible mental health issues. Working is not just about money. People don't understand this very often until they stop working. Work defines who you are. It provides a place where you're social with people. It gives you interaction with people all day long in an interesting way. It even helps you live longer and is very, very good for brain health. People are trying to wind down and figure out how they're gonna slow it down or wrap it up. Fucking wrapping it up, man. Start it up. If you're working this hard just to escape your work, it means you've built a business or you have a job that you fundamentally hate. People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing, and it's totally true. And the reason is because it's so hard that if you don't, any rational person would give up. How can other people tap dance to work? What's the secret of that? You find your passion. What I tend to try to tell people people in terms of what does it take to be successful. Find something you love to do and then be great at it. If you don't pivot and build a lifestyle you actually want to live today, you will wake up in 10 years exhausted, sick, and full of bitter regret. Sometimes it's whoop, need to pivot, need to change the old aperture, change lenses on the way I'm looking at this position. When I'm 80, now 90, I wanna have minimized the number of regrets that I have in my life. And most of our regrets are acts of omission. They're things we didn't try. It's the path untraveled. Those are the things that haunt us. You're haunted by all the opportunities that you missed by not bringing your best at that time when you could have won, but you didn't win because you allowed life to interfere with that one shot. There is a famous parable about a businessman who was walking on the pier of a small coastal village. He saw a local fisherman dock a small boat with just a few fish. The businessman asked why he did not stay out longer to catch more. The fisherman said he had enough to feed his family. The businessman asked what he did with the rest of his day. The fisherman smiled and said he sleeps late, plays with his kids, takes a nap with his wife, and plays guitar with his friends at night. The businessman laughed and said, "I have an MBA and I can help you. You should work harder, buy a fleet of boats, open your own factory, and make millions." The fisherman asked how long that would take. The businessman said, "Maybe 20 years." The fisherman asked what would happen next. The businessman said, "Then you can retire, move to a small village, sleep late, play with your kids, and play guitar with your friends." The fisherman just looked at him and said, That's exactly what I'm doing right now. Now you might be thinking that you don't want to just sit on a beach all day. You have big goals, you want to make an impact, and you actually like building your business. I do too. You don't have to give up your ambition to find peace. The point of the story is not to stop working. The point is to stop building a business that destroys your life today for a promised reward 20 years from now. You can have the success and the lifestyle right now, and I'm going to show you exactly exactly how to do it. Define your actual enough. So you've been told your entire life that the ultimate goal of an entrepreneur is to build the biggest business possible. You start a company, you hit your first revenue goal, and what is the very first thing you do? You immediately set a larger goal, right? You hit $10,000 a month and suddenly you feel like a failure because you are not making $20,000. You cross a million dollars a year and instantly you feel behind because you do not have a $10 million empire. This is running on an endless treadmill. The businessman in the story wanted the fisherman to scale his operations, to buy a fleet of boats, to open up a factory. But he had absolutely no real reason for the fisherman to do it other than the fact that society says bigger is always better. Do you actually have a real reason for wanting a massive business? You need to figure out what your actual financial enough is. Science proves that chasing money for the sake of money will never make you happy. There was a famous study that was conducted by researchers at Purdue University that looked at data from over 1 million people across the globe. They found that emotional well-being and daily happiness actually peak at an income of about $75,000 a year. Making more money beyond that point does not significantly increase your daily joy, your peace, or your happiness. It often just brings more stress, more overhead, and more problems. Mo' money, mo' problems. You need to sit down today and calculate exactly what your ideal life costs. Write down the cost of your house, your food, your hobbies, the experiences that you want to have with your family. You'll probably realize that you need far less money than you think to live the peaceful life that the fisherman was already living. So figure out what your number is. Stop chasing some fake standard of success that leaves you completely exhausted. Once you know your number, you can finally stop putting off your life until tomorrow. Stop waiting for permission to live. The absolute biggest trap that the businessman presented was the idea of someday. He told the fisherman to suffer for 20 years so that someday he could finally relax. And chances are you're probably doing the same thing to yourself right now. You're telling yourself that you will finally take a vacation when the business hits a certain amount milestone, right? You tell yourself that you'll finally spend time with your kids when the operations are perfectly systemized, right? You're delaying your actual life or future that is completely unguaranteed. You have to stop waiting for permission to live. You need to apply the regret minimization framework that's famously used by Jeff Bezos. The concept is incredibly simple. You just imagine yourself, uh, as an 80-year-old sitting in a rocking chair, looking back on your life, you ask yourself, what will I regret more? Will I regret taking a risk to live the life I want right now, or will I regret playing it safe and waiting for someday? When I was 19, I used this exact framework. I was studying finance in university. I had the opportunity to go work for one of the biggest investment banking companies in the world. I thought it was my dream job. It was a 6-figure job straight outta university. It was safe, it was secure. It was exactly what society told me I should want. But I had another option. I could join 2 friends in a software startup. I would get 30% equity, but I'd only make $300 a month at the start. And it was the hardest decision of my life. I had to look at myself and ask what my older self would regret. I knew that if I did not try to build a business, I would regret it forever. I would rather fail knowing I had tried than spend the rest of my life wondering what could have happened. So I turned down the safe money and I chose the startup, and it was terrifying, and there were times that I wanted to quit. but it was a defining choice of my life. You have to make the same choice. Stop waiting for the perfect time. Take the action today to build the life you actually want to live. Find your true purpose in your deepest pain. You might be sitting there thinking that you don't even know what kind of business to build that would allow you to feel free. You wanna escape the corporate grind, but you don't know what your real mission even is. The answer is usually hiding in your own past. Your true purpose comes directly from your deepest pain. Whatever you struggled with the most in your life is the exact thing that you are meant to help other people overcome. So, uh, if you struggled with your weight and finally figured out how to get healthy, your mission is to help others do the same thing. If you struggled with massive debt and finally crawled your way out to financial freedom, your mission is to teach others your framework. works. When I was starting my journey, I struggled heavily with being an introverted, shy entrepreneur. I had zero confidence and zero belief in myself because I felt that intense pain. My entire life mission is now to help other entrepreneurs believe in themselves more. It's why I make these videos. When your business is tied to solving a pain that you deeply understand, it completely changes how you show up. It stops feeling like a stressful grind and starts feeling— like it's your, it's your calling, that it's calling to you to act. You stop building a business just to make a quick dollar, and you start building something that actually matters to you and to others. And having this deep purpose is not just, it's not just good for your business, it's literally physically good for you. A major study published in the JAMA Network Open found that having a strong purpose is directly associated with a decreased risk of early mortality. So people who have a reason to wake up in the morning literally live longer, healthier lives. So do not build a massive soulless fishing fleet just because a businessman told you it was a good idea. Build a business that solves a real problem for the younger version of yourself. And when you find that calling, you have to make sure that you do not lose sight of what actually matters. Focus on who you are serving today. The businessman in the story was obsessed with the global market. He wanted the fishermen to sell to middlemen, open a cannery, move to the big city, and dominate the world. Right. The businessman was completely focused on all the millions of strangers the fisherman was not currently reaching. But the fisherman, he was completely content focusing on his family, his friends, and his local village. He focused only on the people right in front of him. And this can be a massive lesson for your business. When you are trying to grow, it's incredibly easy to get obsessed with the audience that you do not have. You stare at your analytics, you complain about your lack of followers, you get frustrated that you're not famous yet. You forget about the actual humans who are already showing up for you and watching your content right now or buying your products right now. When I first started my YouTube channel, it was a very slow and painful grind. In my first year on the platform, I only gained 25 subscribers. My very first video sat on the internet for a year and got only 3 comments. One comment was from my mom, one was from my sister, and the third comment was from one random guy. Most people would look at those numbers and quit, right? They'd say the market is too small, nobody cares. But you have to focus on who you are serving, not who you are not serving. So I decided to make my videos for that one random guy. If my content helped him believe in himself a little bit more, then the video was a success. You can adopt that same exact mindset. If you have 10 clients, treat them like absolute royalty. Stop ignoring the people who support you today just because you are distracted by the thousands of people who do not know you yet. If you serve the few people in front of you deeply, the growth will happen naturally. But as that growth happens, you have to protect your schedule. Break the hustle prison to buy back your time. Now, you might already have a business that is completely running you into the ground. You want the fisherman's lifestyle, but you feel trapped inside the businessman's reality. You're working 80 hours a week. You answer emails at midnight. Uh, you can't even remember the last time you took a nap or played the guitar. To get your freedom back, you must ruthlessly apply a 3-step framework. You must eliminate, automate, delegate. First, you must eliminate. So here you look at your calendar and you audit every single task. You are probably doing things that bring absolute zero value to your life or to your clients. You are attending useless meetings. You are doomscrolling on social media and you're creating reports that nobody reads, right? Stop doing them immediately. Second, you automate. So you have to use software and systems to take over repetitive tasks. Stop manually sending onboarding emails, stop manually booking appointments and let technology do a lot of the heavy lifting. And then third, and maybe most importantly, is you delegate. You have to stop trying to be a control freak. You are holding your business back because you insist on doing everything yourself. You should not be editing your own videos. You should not be doing your own bookkeeping or designing your own graphics if you are not the best in the world at those skills or want to learn them. I'm terrible at video editing, so I don't edit my own videos. I hire people who love doing the work that I hate. If you don't learn to let go, you will destroy your physical and mental health. There was a comprehensive study by Gallup on employee and founder burnout that found that unimaginable workloads and unreasonable time pressure are the leading causes of severe burnout. You are doing this to yourself. You have to fire yourself from the jobs you hate within your own company. That is the only way you buy back your time. That is how you build a real business that actually gives you the freedom to sleep late if you want to, spend time with your family, and enjoy your life today. Build a life you love today. You have the complete power to design a business that serves your life right now. Stop delaying your joy for tomorrow that is not guaranteed. You can have massive ambition and daily peace at the exact same time. Reading a book a week will not make you rich. Number one, every single day you got to feed and strengthen your mind. I just read and read and read. I probably read 5 to 6 hours a day. I was very, very bookish. I was reading all the time. You need to read the exact books that billionaires actually use to make their biggest decisions. If you're on a desert island, and you only have one book, what book would you take? Probably you'd take the Bible. Warren Buffett gave me a copy of Business Adventures, feeling like with our dialogue about trying to understand the world of business that I'd enjoy it as much as he had. And in fact, it was phenomenal. Oh, I knew he'd like it. I mean, that was written for him. It was written for me too. If you're gonna run a company, you should read The Impact of Philosophy. And if you keep filling your head with average advice, you will stay stuck in the exact same spot that you are in right now. Listening to advice from other people should be approached with great caution. This is Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich. I've been reading this thing now for 23 years. I'll probably read it for another 23 years. Dr. Joseph Murphy wrote this book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, and that's probably one of the best books that you're ever going to find because you're going to learn something about your mind when you read this book. When Warren Buffett was just 19 years he was just a regular college kid trying to figure out his future. Then he picked up a copy of the book called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. That one single book completely changed the way he looked at money. He said it gave him the exact intellectual framework he needed to make smart decisions without letting his emotions take over. This is a book that first came out in 1949, The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. When I read this book, it changed my life. He did not need a genius IQ to win. He just needed to follow the exact playbook inside that book, and he said he's used it to make billions ever since. Now, you might look at Warren Buffett and think he has some special brain power that you don't have, making his reading list useless for you. But Buffett himself said that strong character and emotional control matter way more than your IQ. These books are designed to build your discipline, not just test how smart you are. Once you learn how to think like the greatest investor in history, your entire business will change, starting with these 10 books. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. So Benjamin Graham wrote The Intelligent Investor in 1949. Warren Buffett read it when he was just 19 years old. It gave him his entire philosophy for life and business. You know, I obviously recommend first and foremost The Intelligent Investor. Well, all of the important ideas in investing really are in that book. Graham created a character in the book book called Mr. Market. So imagine you own a business with a partner named Mr. Market. Every single day he comes to your door. He offers to buy your shares or sell you his. Some days he's very happy and quotes a high price. Other days he's depressed and quotes a very low price. Graham says you cannot let Mr. Market's mood change your own mood. You have to look at the real facts of your business. This applies directly to your life and business right now. You are letting outside voices act like Mr. Market. If someone leaves a bad comment on your video, you feel terrible. You You wanna quit. You are letting their mood destroy your belief. The world's biggest problem, I think, is that people do not believe in themselves enough. So you have to build a iron wall around your mind. When people tell you your dream is impossible, they are just acting like a depressed Mr. Market. You must ignore them entirely. You have to stay grounded in your own truth. You are capable of amazing things, but only if you take control of your own reactions. When you master your own belief, nothing the market does can stop you. But you cannot just rely on belief alone. You also need a strong foundation of facts to stand on, which leads perfectly to the next book, Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham. So before Graham wrote his most famous book, he co-authored a massive textbook called Security Analysis in 1934. He wrote it right after the terrible 1929 stock market crash. Warren Buffett still points to this book as a total game changer for him. If you're a real student of security analysis and you read and understand That you should do all right. The book teaches the exact difference between an investor and a speculator. A speculator is just a gambler. They throw money at a stock hoping that the price goes up tomorrow. An investor does the boring work. They read the balance sheet. They look at the actual cash a business makes. They look for safety. You might be acting like a speculator in your own business right now. You're looking for a quick shortcut. You want a viral video to make you famous overnight. You buy expensive courses looking for the magic trick. But real success takes hard work. It takes reps. When I started on YouTube, my first 350 videos were terrible. I was awkward. I was uncomfortable, but I kept going. I did not gamble on a viral trend. I put in the boring work every single day to get better. You have to expect to suck at the start. If you want to build an empire, you cannot skip the foundational work. You must analyze your own actions and make real improvements every day. Doing the hard work is how you build real value. So look at your daily routines and find the boring work that you're avoiding. But looking at numbers is only one half of the puzzle. To get the other half, you have to look at his next book recommendation, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher. Warren Buffett says his investment style is 85% Benjamin Graham and 15% Philip Fisher. I would recommend the first two books that Phil Fisher wrote. Uh, back around 1960, Common Sense and Uncommon Profits, and the second one, those are very good books. Fisher wrote this incredible book in 1958. While Graham only cared about the math and spreadsheets, Fisher cared about the actual people running the business. Fisher created a brilliant strategy he called the scuttlebutt method. So to use this method, you don't just read financial reports, you go out into the real world, you talk to the company's customers, you talk to their suppliers, you talk to their competitors, you find out the real story behind the scenes so you can apply the scuttlebutt method to your own network right now. You can't build a massive company hiding behind your computer screen. You need to get out there and talk to real people. Your environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are. So if you want to level up, you must change who you talk to. Seek out mentors who are 10 steps ahead of you. Ask your customers what they actually hate about your industry and then fix it for them. Get in the room with people who force you to play a bigger game and think more legendarily, right? The right conversation can completely change your life. So you have to step out of your comfort zone to find the real truth. Reach out to 3 people today who can help you grow. But even when you do the right research, you will still face massive failures, which is exactly what the next book prepares you for. This is Adventures by John Brooks. In 1991, Warren Buffett met Bill Gates for the very first time. Gates asked Buffett for his favorite business book. Buffett loaned him his personal copy of Business Adventures. This book is a collection of true stories about Wall Street. The most famous story in the book is about the Ford Edsel Ford spent $350 million designing a new car. They thought they knew exactly what the public wanted, but they refused to listen to the real feedback. The car ended up being a massive failure and Ford lost a fortune. You are going to face massive failures on your journey too. It's a guaranteed part of the process. You will launch a product that nobody buys. You'll get a video that gets zero views. I lost a ton in my early career too. I almost quit on my business partner. It was incredibly painful, but your purpose comes through your pain. You cannot let a failure destroy your momentum. You have to look at your mistakes, Learn the lesson and try again. The greatest entrepreneurs in the world have failed more times than you have even tried. So do not hide your failures. Use them as motivation to become smarter and stronger. Write down your biggest failure today and extract the lesson that it taught you. You just have to make sure that you are not taking advice from the wrong people along the way. Where Are the Customers' Yachts? by Fred Schwedt. Okay, so this is the book Warren Buffett calls the funniest investment book ever written. Written. Fred Schwed published it in 1940. The title comes from an old story about a man visiting New York City. The visitor looks out at the harbor and sees dozens of beautiful, expensive boats. His guide tells him that those yachts belong to the Wall Street bankers and stockbrokers. The visitor then asks a very simple question. He asks where the customers' yachts are. The joke is that the advisors get rich, but the people taking the advice go broke. So you need to be very careful about who you listen to right now. The Internet is full of fake experts trying to sell you a shortcut. They'll promise to make you rich overnight, but they're only getting rich by selling you their stuff. You do not need another massively expensive program to succeed. The boldest ideas you have are in your head right now, and they're the right ones for you. You just need to trust your own gut and take action. Stop outsourcing your belief to other people. Stop waiting for someone to come and rescue you. You need to be the hero of your own story. So take one of your ideas and start building it today instead of just buying another book, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. So this massive book was published way back in 1776, but Warren Buffett still quotes it today. Adam Smith is known as the father of modern economics. In this book, Smith explains a concept called the invisible hand. He says that when people work to create value for others, they naturally end up building wealth for themselves. He uses a famous example of a pin factory to show how dividing up work makes everyone more productive. So he showed that you do not get rich by forcing people to pay you. You get rich by trading something something valuable that improves their lives. This is the exact definition, I think, of being built to serve. If you are unhappy in your business right now, it's because you are not serving enough people. If you're broke, it's because you are not providing enough value to people. So it's time to stop thinking about how much money that you want to make. You start thinking about how many problems that you can solve for others. When you focus entirely on making your customer's life better, the money will naturally follow to you. So wake up every single day and ask yourself, how can you serve? Give away your best advice for free. If you do that, your business will grow faster than you ever imagined. But to serve at a high level, you have to overcome your own inner fears, which brings us to our next book. Personal History by Katharine Graham. Katharine Graham was a legendary publisher of the Washington Post. Warren Buffett invested in her company and became her close friend and mentor. Her book tells a story of how she took over the newspaper after her husband died. She was suddenly in charge of a massive corporation. She had to lead the paper through the incredibly stressful Watergate scandal, and she eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. But in her book, she admitted she was out She was absolutely terrified at the start. She constantly felt like an imposter. She did not believe she was smart enough or tough enough to lead. You might feel the same intense fear right now. You look at your goals and you think that they're maybe too big for you. Your brain will try to protect you by giving you smart reasons to quit, but you must take action anyway. Katharine Graham did not wait until she felt confident. She took the job while she was still shaking. So if you lack belief in yourself, You must borrow belief from other people. Find a mentor or watch a video. We make them every day here. Someone who inspires you. Let their confidence carry you until you build your own. You will never feel fully ready, so you must start before you are ready. Building that momentum is the only way to find your true value. The Theory of Investment Value by John Burr Williams. So Warren Buffett read this book early in his career, and he says it gave him the exact mathematical formula for investing. John Burr Williams published it in 1938. He Warren Buffett explained that the true value of any stock is based on the cash it will generate in the future, discounted back to today. He proved that a business is not just worth its buildings or its inventory. A business is worth its future potential. You can apply the same math to your own life right now. So you're not just defined by your past mistakes. You're not defined by your current bank account balance. Your true value is based on the incredible potential that you have in the future. But to reach that potential, You have to think long-term. So we stop getting frustrated because you didn't get that quick win this week. Look 10 years down the road, build habits today that will pay off massively in your future. You must protect your daily routines because they compound over time. The actions that you take right now are creating your future value. So you can write down your vision and stop sweating the small stuff in the way. To make sure you take the right action, you need to upgrade your mental software every day. Which brings us to our next book, Poor Charlie's Almanac by Peter Kaufman. This book is a massive collection of speeches and wisdom from Charlie Munger. Charlie was Warren Buffett's business partner for decades. Buffett says Charlie completely changed the way he thought about investing and life. Munger believed that you cannot just use one tool to solve every problem. He said you must build mental models in your head. So for example, uh, he used a model called inversion. So instead of asking how to succeed, he asked how to guarantee failure, and then he just avoided doing those He pulled knowledge from psychology, history, math, engineering. You need to take control of the mental models you are feeding your brain right now. Most people, they wake up and they immediately scroll through negative news or toxic social media. They fill their heads with garbage and then wonder why you feel stuck. You need to protect your mind. Start your day by listening to people who inspire you. Change the morning routine today. Read books that challenge your thinking. Watch content that makes you want to play a bigger game. The Believe Walk Challenge. Wake up, get outside for 15 minutes, put something on in your ear that makes you believe in yourself more. When you consistently put good Greatness in your head, greatness will eventually come out of you too. You need to train your mind to see opportunities where other people, they just see obstacles. But all the mental models in the world mean nothing if you fail the final test. The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Warren Buffett highly recommends this book to show what happens when incredibly smart people make terrible moral choices. This book tells the full story of the Enron scandal. The executives at Enron were brilliant. They had the best degrees from the best schools. They knew how to make massive amounts of money. Money, but they completely lacked integrity. They lied to their employees, they lied to the public, and they lied to themselves. Eventually, the entire company collapsed, losing $74 billion, and the leaders went to prison. Intelligence will not save you if your character is broken. You must figure out your one word. You need a core value that dictates every single decision you make. My word is believe. Every video I make, every business I start, every conversation that I have, I try to align it with belief. If you chase profits while ignoring your core values, you will eventually lose everything that actually matters. You want to wake up every day proud of the person that you see back in the mirror. So stay completely honest with yourself and your customers. When you build a business on the foundation of truth, you build a business that will last for generations. The greatest investment is in yourself. So you already have everything you need inside of you to win. Your past does not define how high you can climb right now today. So take the first step right now and let your momentum carry you forward. Protect your mind, serve others deeply, and never stop chasing your ultimate potential. Investing is not a talent reserved for the rich. It's a skill you have to learn or you'll stay broke. Every self-made investor started with zero knowledge and had to figure it out through learning and effort. If you keep waiting for someone else to show you how to invest, you'll be stuck watching opportunities pass you by while others multiply their money. At 19 years old, Warren Buffett got rejected by his dream— he had applied to Harvard Business School and they told him he wasn't good enough. Buffett was crushed. He thought this rejection might derail his ambitions before they even began. But instead of giving up, he found another path. He discovered that his hero Benjamin Graham was teaching at Columbia University. Buffett applied to Columbia last minute, got accepted, and eagerly soaked up everything Graham had to offer. In one cold Saturday, Buffett took a train to Washington, D.C. and literally pounded on the door of a little insurance company called GEICO just to learn more. A janitor let him in, and Buffett ended up getting a 4-hour crash course from a GEICO executive. No one has ever received a better half-day course, Buffett said. That one bold move led to Buffett's first big investment profit. He made about a 50% gain on GEICO stock within a year. The point is Buffett felt a burning urgency to learn everything about investing. He didn't wait for a teacher to come to him. He hunted down knowledge. The pressure he felt to prove himself, to seize the opportunity to learn, is the same pressure that you're feeling right now. When I was 19, I partnered in my first company. It was a biotech software. I worked 12 hours a day and earned almost no money. I was making about $300 a month and eating the same cheap bean salad for lunch every day. Month after month, nothing worked. After 9 months without a single win, my confidence had collapsed. One day, I picked up the phone. I called my business partner and said the words I never thought I'd say: I quit. The moment I hung up, I broke down sobbing. I never felt I'd always seen myself as a fighter, not a quitter. Yet there I was, quitting. I barely slept that night. I was heartbroken and thinking I'd just thrown away my dream. But by morning, a new feeling hit me, regret. I imagined looking back years later, knowing that I gave up, and the pain felt even worse than my pain of failing. So I swallowed my pride, went back to my partner, and asked if I could undo my mistake. He agreed to take me back, but I knew I couldn't just return to doing the same things. I needed a new strategy. Instead of trying to figure it all out by myself, I studied how Bill Gates built Microsoft through partnerships. I stopped trying to reinvent the wheel the wheel and modeled someone who had already succeeded. Within 3 weeks, we landed a $13,500 deal. After months of almost zero income, $13,500 felt like a million dollars, and that one deal saved our business. We kept using that strategy, grew the business to success, and eventually sold the company. I learned one of the most important lessons of my life. When you feel like quitting, that's the moment you must push yourself to learn to try something new. Under that pressure of failure, I finally opened up to learning from others. Others, and it changed everything. Now, maybe you're still thinking, well, that sounds great for Buffett or for you, Evan, but I have no idea where to start. I'm not a financial genius. I seriously need someone to help me or I'll mess this up. In fact, one of you, Vishal Bhardi, a subscriber, asked me point blank, can anyone help me learn investing? And I get it. When you're new, it feels like you're stumbling in the dark and you desperately want a guide. You might think you need a finance degree or a mentor holding your hand, or you're worried that you'll lose money because you don't know what you're doing. But thinking that is exactly what is holding you back. If you keep believing that you're helpless without an expert, you're giving away your power. The truth is you have more resources at your fingertips today than Warren Buffett did at 19, than I did when I got started. The only permission you need to start learning is your own. Others can help through videos, interviews, books, but nobody can do your pushups for you. For every excuse you have— I'm not good with numbers, I don't have a mentor, I might fail— there's someone out there with the same obstacle who went out and learned investing anyway. If a broke teenager in Omaha could knock on doors to learn finance, it If a struggling entrepreneur could model a billionaire's strategy to save his business, why not you? The moment you stop waiting for help and start helping yourself, you'll realize you're not as lost as you think. So let's break this down. Here's how you can take charge and learn investing no matter where you're starting from. Shift your mindset. Anyone can learn investing. The first thing you must do is believe that you can learn this. If you think investing is only for math geniuses or Wall Street wizards, think again. One of the most powerful investing stories is about a man named Ronald Read, a janitor from Vermont who quietly amassed an $8 million fortune by the time he died in 2014. He had no fancy degree, no high-paying job. He simply saved and invested consistently over his lifetime. His friends were stunned, but the message is anyone can be a great investor. In his book The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel uses Read's story to drive home that successful investing isn't about social status or IQ. It's about mindset and behavior. Modern psychology backs this up. The research on growth mindset shows that if you believe skills can be developed, you perform better and go further. And investing is no exception. It's a set of skills you can improve with study and practice, not some innate talent you either have or you don't. Billionaire investor Charlie Munger put it like this: I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up. So becoming a learning machine is far more important than having a high IQ or making one lucky trade. Adopt the identity of a student of investing. Commit to being the person who reads, who asks questions, who tries things. Did you know that in a 5-year study of rich people's habits, 88% of self-made millionaires reported that they read for at least 30 minutes every day to educate themselves? Weren't born knowing how money works. They devoured knowledge daily until it started to click. Warren Buffett, one of the richest investors on the planet, famously said that he reads 500 pages a day because that's how knowledge works— it builds up like compound interest. And he added that anyone can do it, but most people won't. So you can prove him wrong. Start viewing yourself as a lifelong learner of finance. You don't have to read 500 pages today, but do read something. Replace the I can't learn investing with I'm learning investing every day. Every expert was once a beginner who decided to learn. And so embrace that mindset today. Model the masters. Learn from the great investors. The fastest way to learn investing is to stand on the shoulders of giants. You don't have to invent a strategy from scratch. You can model the masters. I built my YouTube channel on this idea. Success leaves clues. In my own life, modeling Bill Gates's partnership strategy saved my business. Business. In the investing world, the giants have left roadmaps in the forms of books and letters and interviews. Seek them out. You can start with the classics. Warren Buffett became Warren Buffett by studying others. He read Ben Graham's book The Intelligent Investor at age 20, and it changed his life. In fact, Buffett calls The Intelligent Investor by far the best book on investing ever written. So why not read the book the greatest investor used himself? There's a treasure trove of wisdom available to you from investors who've been through at all. Here are a few must-read resources that can kickstart your education. So we talked about The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. That's a definitive book on value investing, and Warren Buffett credits this book for shaping his investing philosophy, again, calling it the best book about investing ever written. It will teach you how to think about stocks for the long run and not fall for short-term market swings. Next is One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch. It's a read that shows how average people can beat the pros by investing in what they know. So Lynch was one of the most successful mutual fund managers ever, and he writes in pretty plain English beginners. The book proves that your everyday knowledge, the stores that you shop at, the trends you see, can translate into great investments. It's empowering and practical for first-time investors. And third is The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. It's a modern classic on the behavioral side of investing. So Housel's insight is that mastering investing isn't just about what you know, it's about how you think and act. So he shares 19 short stories that show how our mindset mindset and habits impact our financial success. So this book teaches you how to manage your fear, your greed, and impatience, the emotions that most often hurt investors more than a lack of knowledge. So absorb the wisdom from these masters. Read Buffett's annual shareholder's letters. They are free and they're online. You can learn how he analyzes businesses. Watch interviews with investors like Ray Dalio or Cathie Wood or Chamath Palihapitiya. We've done top tens on all of these people to see how they approach decision making. When you study the greats, you're essentially getting mentored by them across time and space. It can collapse your learning curve dramatically. But remember, learning alone isn't enough. You'll need to actually put it into practice. Which brings us to the next point. Start small. Learn by doing. You can read 100 books on investing, but nothing will teach you faster than actually doing it. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. At some point, you have to hop on and start to pedal. Start small and get your feet wet. Open a brokerage account or even a simulated trading account if you're nervous and make your first tiny investment. It could be as little as $50 or $100 in an index fund or a company that you believe in. The amount isn't going to make you rich. That's not the point. The point is to turn theory into experience. Studies on learning show that active practice beats passive study by a mile. Educational research illustrates that people retain up to 75% of what they learn when they practice by doing compared to maybe 10% retention from reading about it. In other words, you could read about investing for a year and still feel unsure. But if you actually invest, even with play money, you start internalizing the lessons. You'll feel the emotional ups and downs of the market, learn how to place orders, and see how you react when the stock you bought drops 10%, which it will at some point. Those experiences are invaluable. They give you feedback that no book book or video can fully simulate. So keep your initial stakes small so your early mistakes are cheap. Think of any minor losses as tuition fees in the school of investing, right? Every mistake is showing you what not to do the next time. And nearly every great investor went through a phase of errors and learning. The key is they learned and they didn't quit. And as you gain confidence, you can gradually invest more. Most successful investors begin with basic low-risk portfolios and learn by doing, growing bolder as their knowledge increases. You might start with a simple index fund or a few stocks, and over time, as you study and observe, you'll get better at identifying what makes a good investment for you. And here's a practical approach. Keep an investing journal. Each time you buy or sell something, jot down why you did it. For example, I bought Company X because I think their new product will increase profits next year, or I sold Y because I panicked when it fell 5% in a day. Review these notes periodically. Patterns will emerge and teach you about your own psychology. Maybe you'll see that you sell too quickly out of fear, or that your best decisions were when you stuck to companies that you understand. This internal reflection turns experience into wisdom. And don't be afraid to ask questions and engage with communities. Join an investing forum or find peers who are also learning. Teaching somebody else what you just learned is another powerful way to solidify the knowledge. And remember, there's a learning pyramid. Teaching others has the highest retention. You could share a bit of what you learned from a book or discuss a small investing experiment. It will make you more confident that, hey, I do know a lot of things now. The bottom line is this: action creates clarity. So the, the fog of I don't know what I'm doing begins to lift as soon as you start placing that first trade or start that first investing project. Suddenly, P/E ratios, index funds, dividends— they're not just concepts. They're real things that you're interacting with. Every step you take gives you a little more competence and a little more confidence. So start now with whatever small step you you can. Buy one share of that company you admire, or set up an automatic transfer of $20 a week into an investment account. Get in the game and learn as you go. Stay consistent for the long term. Remember that investing is a long-term game. The goal isn't to get rich by next Tuesday. It's to build wealth and knowledge steadily year after year. So as you start learning and investing, think of it like a marathon. It's not a sprint. Consistency and patience are your superpowers here. Now, there will be times when you feel discouraged or confused. Maybe the market dips and your portfolio loses some value, or you hit a complex concept that frustrates you. Expect that. It happens to every investor, no matter how experienced. The ones who succeed aren't the ones who never have any doubts. They're the ones who persist through them. Volatility in your emotions and in the market is part of this process. As one investment guide puts it, the market will prove you wrong at times. You will make mistakes. But learning to be a successful investor is a gradual process, and sticking with it for the long run is crucial. So when things go wrong, don't beat yourself up. Analyze it, learn the lesson, and keep moving forward. Remember, every setback is an opportunity to learn. So make a habit of continuous learning and investing. So for example, uh, commit to reading one investing article or a few pages of a book or one video, no matter what. Commit to putting a little money aside every month to invest, no matter what the market is doing. This discipline builds momentum, and over time, your knowledge compounds just like your money does. Think of how compound interest works. A little growth each day can lead to massive growth over years. Knowledge compounds too. Every new thing you learn builds on the last and expands your ability to make good decisions. So 5 years from now, if you stay consistent, you'll look back and be amazed at how far you've come, both in your portfolio and in your understanding. It also helps to keep your why in mind. Why do you want to learn investing in the first place? Is it to secure your family's future? You want to achieve financial freedom? You want to not feel clueless when money decisions come up? Whatever it is, write it down. Think about it. In tough moments, revisit your why. It can help give you more patience. When you know you're in this for the long haul, the day-to-day bumps don't shake you as much. You start thinking like an investor who asks, what will this be worth in 5 or 10 years instead of panicking over today's news? And one more reminder, celebrate your progress, not perfection. Did you finish reading your first investment book? Awesome. Did you make your first profitable trade, even if it was only a $20 gain? Amazing, right? These are milestones. By acknowledging them, you reinforce the identity that you are an investor now, a learner. You're a doer. You're someone who actively is building their future. And that identity shift, that becomes everything. You're no longer the person wondering, wondering, can anyone help me learn investing? You're the person who is helping yourself learn it every single day. You made it this far in the video, which tells me that you're serious about your financial future. Every investing master was once a beginner who simply refused to give up, and now you're on the same path. So keep feeding your mind, keep taking action no matter how small, and be proud that you're doing what most people only talk about. By showing up and learning today, you've already set yourself apart from most people. People think a college degree is the only ticket to success, but why do so many billionaires ignore traditional education? This question might shock your teachers, but it's a reality we see with icons like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Richard Branson. These moguls broke away from the conventional path, and some even dropped out and still built empires. Are they just lucky geniuses, or do they know something about learning that schools don't teach you? In this video, we'll explore why billionaires often buck the traditional education system their school system, and more importantly, what they do instead. By the end, you'll see how you can apply their approaches to your life. Let's dive in. Breaking the school equals success myth. So we're all taught that good grades and diplomas lead to success. And yes, education is valuable. In fact, 84% of the richest people did graduate college. But here's the twist. Many of the most famous billionaires succeeded without finishing school. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Anderson, all left college early and still landed on world's wealthiest lists. These cases are exceptions, not the rule, but they prove that a traditional degree isn't the only path to extraordinary success. Why is this dropout billionaire story so enticing? It's because it challenges the norm. It makes you wonder if going against the grain might actually work. Now, I'm not telling you to drop out of school. Most people who do that don't become billionaires. What matters is why these outliers felt they could ignore the usual root. They weren't anti-education. They were just pro-learning in their own way. They believed in a different approach to education, one built on passion, vision, and continuous self-improvement. Passion over diplomas. The billionaire mindset. One key difference. It's mindset. Billionaires often prioritize passion and purpose over following a preset curriculum. They ask, is this teaching me what I need to fulfill my vision? And if the answer is no, they aren't afraid to chart their own course. Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college because he couldn't see the value in it for his goals. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out, so I decided to drop out. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, Steve Jobs said. Free from required classes, he then followed his curiosity, like taking a calligraphy class just because it fascinated him. That seemingly useless interest later helped him build the Macintosh's beautiful typography. In other words, by pursuing what intrigued him instead of a standard syllabus, curriculum syllabus, Jobs learned things that helped revolutionize personal computers. This pattern, it shows up again and again. These innovators have a burning interest or vision that traditional schooling can't always accommodate. They are hungry to learn, but on their own terms. Psychology calls this a growth mindset, the belief that you can develop your abilities through learning and efforts. People with this mindset thrive on challenges and see failure as a chance to grow. Billionaires like Jobs, Branson, or Musk, they exemplify this. They don't see a grade trade as a limit of their intelligence. They constantly ask questions, seek new skills, and believe that they can figure things out. As Stanford Professor Carol Dweck notes, having a growth mindset is essential for success. And these entrepreneurs, they live that mindset every day. Passion matters more to them than diplomas. Instead of studying something because it's required, they zero in on learning what fuels their mission. This doesn't mean school is bad. It means education is not confined to a classroom. If you have a dream that doesn't fit neatly into a degree program, program, are you willing to learn in other ways? That's the question these billionaires answered with a resounding yes. Self-education. Learning never stops. Just because they ignored formal education doesn't mean billionaires stop learning. Far from it. In fact, they are often obsessive self-educators. They simply trade classrooms and exams for books, mentors, and real-world practice. Learning becomes a lifelong habit, not a phase of life. Elon Musk is a perfect example. He earned degrees in physics and economics, but he's the first to say that college wasn't where he learned the most. You don't need college to learn stuff. You can learn anything you want for free. I think colleges are basically for fun, Musk bluntly remarked. This isn't a knock on knowledge. Musk arguably knows more than most graduates. It's a knock on the traditional format of knowledge. When Musk wanted to build rockets, he didn't go back to school for aerospace engineering. He taught himself by reading textbooks and seeking out experts. One early SpaceX mentor said Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights. All that information, it was out there, and Musk had the self-drive to absorb it. This self-education habit is common among top billionaires. They read voraciously. Warren Buffett, for example, spends about 5 to 6 hours a day reading and has done so throughout his entire career. He says the key to success is simple: read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest. The average person could do it, Buffett insists, but most won't, which is why he gains a competitive advantage. Bill Gates also shared that reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding. So these billionaires, they essentially create their own curriculum continuously. They treat learning as a daily ritual, not something that stops at graduation. Now, you might not have 5 hours a day to read, but the lesson here is that information is freely available as than ever before. Books, online courses, videos like this one. Billionaires take advantage of this. They turn their curiosity into knowledge. No permission needed. So ask yourself, when was the last time you learned a new skill on your own just because you wanted to? The tools are out there and the most successful people use them relentlessly. The school of experience. Learning by doing. Beyond books, billionaires learn by doing. This is a huge factor in why some of them cut short their formal They felt they could learn more on the job or by starting a venture than sitting in a lecture hall. There's a saying, experience is the best teacher. These entrepreneurs take that view to heart. They see the real world as their classroom. Let's look at Sir Richard Branson. He struggled in school because of dyslexia and dropped out at age 15 to start a youth-run magazine. Pretty bold move, right? Branson says it was the hands-on experience that taught him what he needed. I left school at 15 and I was struggling to survive in the jungle, and that was a great education. Just getting out there hands-on teaches you a lot. His magazine venture became his first success, and he kept building from there, from music to airlines to telecom. Branson believes if you want to be an entrepreneur, then don't waste your time going to university or business school. Just get on and do it. It's not that he sees no value in knowledge. He simply learned by jumping in and figuring things out. Out on the fly. In Brant's own words, my career has been my education. He wrote about how tackling real business problems taught him more than any textbook. In the end, solutions to big problems won't come from doing school reports, but by getting out there, asking questions, seeing differently, and finding the answers ourselves. That quote is awesome because it's so empowering. You can learn by trying, by creating, by failing, and then by trying again. And schools Often fear failure. You get a bad grade and it hurts your GPA. But in the entrepreneurial world, failure, it's feedback. Every failed product, every mistake teaches a lesson that brings you closer to your goal. Take the example of software billionaires. Many of them started coding and launching projects as teenagers. Bill Gates was programming computers in high school and even got early business experience through a deal to analyze traffic data. By the time he dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft, he'd already been doing tech and business for years. The doing gave him the confidence that he was on the right track. Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg built the first version of Facebook in his dorm room. It grew so fast that he left Harvard to devote himself to it full-time because the experience of running a real company was teaching him more than any class in that moment. Here's the practical insight. Don't wait until you graduate to start pursuing your dream or testing your ideas. Start your projects now. Now get that experience. Maybe it's a side hustle, a YouTube channel, a nonprofit initiative, whatever drives you. Treat it as your personal hands-on MBA. Classroom learning is valuable, but it complements experience. It can't replace experience. Even if you stay in school, which can be great, seek out internships, build prototypes, join competitions, get your hands dirty. That's how you internalize skills and stand out. Billionaires often have a head start on mastery because they began their 10,000 hours of practice long before others did. Mentors and networks versus professors and grades. Another thing billionaires do differently is seek mentors and learning from people, not just from institutions. So instead of only listening to professors or chasing A's, they actively find teachers in real life, experts, fellow entrepreneurs, even competitors to learn from them. They treat networking as learning. Elon Musk, as we already talked about, he cold-called rocket experts when he was starting SpaceX. He wasn't shy about asking questions and getting guidance outside of formal class. That aerospace consultant, Jim Cantrell, became Musk's mentor in the early days, and Musk soaked up knowledge from him and others in the field. Essentially, Musk created his own advisory board of experts to educate him. This kind of mentorship and advice-seeking is something you can do at any stage. If you're curious about a field, reach out to people who know more. Many successful people are surprisingly willing to share advice if you're genuinely interested and respectful of their time. Billionaires also learn from peers. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has often cited how important his network at Harvard was, not the classes, but the people. He met co-founders of Facebook there and even met his wife in college. Zuckerberg valued college as a great social experience to meet talented people, but he's not sure that college is preparing people for the jobs that they need today. In a podcast interview, he pointed out that huge student debt and lack of practical training are big issues with the current system. He even suggested that maybe not everyone needs to go to college, especially as more alternative paths emerge. This is coming from a Harvard dropout who clearly learned a lot from other people and from actually launching the company. What billionaires do is surround themselves with smart, driven individuals and learn from them. It's often said that you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with. If you spend your time only in structured classes, you're limited to that environment. These entrepreneurs went out and found communities where they could exchange ideas, get feedback, and be inspired. Think of the PayPal Mafia. That's Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others who built PayPal in the early 2000s. They learned from each other, and after PayPal, that network spun out into multiple billion-dollar companies— Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir, YouTube, etc. They didn't learn that in a lecture. They learned it by collaborating and mentoring each each other. So the actionable insight for you: find your mentors and your tribe. If you're in school, those could be a professor whose outlook you admire, or a club with like-minded innovators. If you're already in the working world, seek mentors in your industry, or even online. We live in an age where you can follow CEOs on X, you could join startup meetups, or watch interviews. This channel right here is full of advice from legends, effectively giving you access to virtual mentors. So take advantage of that. Don't learn in isolation. Successful people often credit mentors for their breakthroughs, so why not proactively look for those teachers outside of the classroom? Skills over degrees. Value creation is the real test. Traditional education is big on credentials, grades, degrees, titles. Billionaires, however, focus on skills and value creation. They ask, what can you actually do? What problems can you solve? Paper qualifications alone don't impress them as much as real capability. Elon Musk shows this attitude in his his companies. When hiring, he famously says a college degree means little to him compared to someone's ability to get things done. We don't care where you went to school or even if you went to school, just show us your code, Musk wrote when recruiting engineers for X. He has hired people without degrees who demonstrated talent through coding projects or practical work. Musk even noted that he'd value a candidate who built useful software on their own over someone with a PhD but no tangible output. This mindset permeates many innovative companies today. Google, Apple, and others have relaxed degree requirements because they realize what billionaires knew all along: skills are more valuable than credentials. Billionaires ignore traditional education in the sense that they don't blindly trust the system to prepare them. Instead, they take responsibility for mastering the skills they need. If school provides it, great. If not, they'll get those skills elsewhere. It's no coincidence that many self-made tycoons are essentially self-taught in key areas of their business. Another example is how these leaders often encourage unconventional problem solving. They're not looking for how well you can memorize textbook answers. They care how you think. The conventional education model sometimes trains us to avoid mistakes and just follow instructions. But in business, the big wins come from thinking differently and sometimes breaking the rules legally and ethically. Of course, billionaires often credit their success to understanding the limitations that traditional thinking imposes. Mm-hmm. Posed. They keep an open mind and adapt quickly, which is a skill in itself. So ask yourself, what skill do you need to reach your goals, and how can you start developing it today? It might be coding, marketing, design, public speaking, anything. You can learn so much through practice, online tutorials, mentors, etc. Don't wait for a syllabus to tell you that it's time to learn a skill. Seek out the knowledge and practice on your own. Your ability to create value is what will ultimately determine your success. — not just the name of a school on a diploma. Education in your traditional sense is one way to gain skills, but it's not the only way. And billionaires prove that by hiring and succeeding based on real-world abilities. What you can do: design your education. By now you might be thinking, okay, I get it, billionaires learn differently, but what about me? The great news is you can apply these principles in your own life starting now. You don't have to be a billionaire or ignore your classes to benefit from this This segment is all about you taking these insights and turning them into action steps for your personal growth. Step number 1, take charge of your learning. Even if you're in school, don't be a passive student. Identify what skills or knowledge you need for your goals and actively pursue them. This could mean reading books outside of your coursework, signing up for an online class, or building something on your own. Be the CEO of your own education. So for example, if you dream of starting a business, start learning about entrepreneurship right now, not just theoretically, but by running a small venture or side hustle. Remember, all the knowledge you need is accessible if you're resourceful. As Elon Musk said, you can learn anything you want for free in today's world. So make a list of topics you're curious about and commit to learning a bit each day. That habit is like compounding interest on your personal value. Number 2, follow your curiosity and passion. So if there's a project or subject that lights you up, dive into it, even if it's not part of a formal program. Steve Jobs learned calligraphy with no idea how it would help him. It seemed useless at the time, but it became incredibly useful later. Trust that your interests have value. Your passion can become your superpower because you'll naturally put in the hours to excel at it. So if you're coding late at night, or you're tinkering in a workshop, or you're writing stories, or you're designing games, know that you're building real expertise. It might even turn into a career or a company. Billionaires often started with a personal fascination that grew. Think of Zuckerberg with social networking, or Musk with space and electric cars. Give yourself permission to explore outside of the lines. Number 3, embrace failure as learning. So don't be afraid to make mistakes. Just treat them as lessons. In school, failing a test feels like the end of the world. But unlike failing a test, just means learn and try again. The road to success is paved with trials and errors. Instead of chasing perfect grades, chase improvement. Did your idea or prototype flop? Great. You just found one way that doesn't work. As Thomas Edison would say, analyze it, adjust, and try again. Each iteration makes you smarter and more resilient. This is how entrepreneurs eventually hit on billion-dollar ideas, not usually on the first try, but through persistence and learning from each attempt. So start reframing failures as feedback. The faster you learn to do this, the faster you'll grow. Number 4: Seek mentors and peers who inspire you. You don't have to figure everything out alone. Reach out to people who are doing what you want to do or who have the skills that you want to develop. That could mean emailing a professional in your field for advice. It could It could be finding a teacher or coach who believes in you, or joining a community of like-minded learners. Build your own personal board of advisors. As they say, success leaves clues, and by surrounding yourself with successful, positive people, you'll pick up on their habits and their mindset. Many successful entrepreneurs say they got a crucial boost from mentors. So look around. Who in your life or your extended network could be a mentor for you? And how can you contribute value to that relationship as well? It can start as simply as asking the question or seeking feedback on your work. Don't Don't be shy. The worst that can happen is you get no reply, but the best is you gain a lifelong coach or friend. Number 5, focus on skills and impact. So starting today, pay attention to what you can do, not just what grades or certificates you have. Make a list of skills you want to acquire in the next year and start working on them one by one. Treat it like a game or like a challenge. You can't code? Cool. Try a beginner project on GitHub or coding bootcamp online. Want to improve public speaking? Awesome. Join a local Toastmasters club. club or practice by making short videos posted on YouTube. Each skill you build is like adding a tool to your toolbox that can open new opportunities for you. And when you do pursue formal education or apply for jobs, you'll stand out because you can demonstrate real abilities. You will have a portfolio of projects, not just a resume of classes. And that's the kind of thing that impresses visionary leaders. They see a bit of themselves in someone who goes beyond the syllabus. Believe in your own path. At the end of the day, the reason billionaires ignore traditional education is because they believe in their own path. They have an unshakable faith in their vision and in their ability to learn what's necessary along the journey. And this is perhaps the biggest takeaway of all, self-belief. When Steve Jobs dropped out or when Elon Musk started a rocket company with no aerospace background, there was an immense level of self-belief work. They bet on themselves. They believe that they could figure it out even if they took an unconventional route. And guess what? You have that same potential for self-belief. It doesn't require billions of dollars or a genius IQ. It requires giving yourself permission to trust your intuition and abilities. Believe that you can learn whatever skill or knowledge you need. Believe that you can contribute to the world in a meaningful way, degree or no degree. Education is everywhere if you have the mindset to see seek it. This isn't about saying college is worthless. College can be an amazing resource and experience for many people. It's about realizing that your education is ultimately in your hands. You don't have to be limited by what's taught in a classroom. You can learn from books, from people, from trials, from YouTube, from every experience life throws at you. Billionaires become billionaires in part because they never stop learning and never stop growing. They cultivate themselves relentlessly. And as a lot of the stories on this channel highlight, each of these leaders had moments of doubt and obstacles, but they push through by focusing on growth and keeping their vision front and center. They model success, they learn from others, and then they turn around and innovate in their own way. Now it's your turn. Believe that you can craft your own path, and maybe that means excelling in school and doing extra on the side. Maybe it means taking a non-traditional route in your career. Whatever it is, know that the same principles apply. Stay curious, be courageous in action, seek wisdom from you were and trust yourself. You have the ability to achieve great success and fulfillment by learning and adapting continually, just like the billionaires we talked about. In the words of one of those billionaires, stay hungry, stay foolish. That was Steve Jobs. And be hungry to learn and unafraid to do what others might call foolish when you pursue an unconventional dream. That's how you break new ground. That's how you end up changing the world. So why do billionaires ignore traditional education? Because learning on their own terms empowers them to achieve the extraordinary. And you can do the same in your life. It all starts with a choice to take ownership of your growth. Remember, you have what it takes to succeed with or without a fancy diploma. Use every resource available, never stop improving, and believe in yourself even when the road is different. Forge your path, keep learning, and keep going. Ultimately, the most important school is life itself. Yourself. And class is in session every day if you're willing to learn. So go out there and make your own education, your own destiny. You've got this. Your life will not move forward one inch until you face exactly where you are right now. You can't fix a lie, and you can't improve something you won't admit is broken. It might feel safer to pretend everything's fine, but that is exactly what's keeping you stuck. If you refuse to acknowledge the truth that you're lost or feeling or in over your head, you will stay lost. You'll keep spinning in circles, making the same mistakes and wondering why success isn't happening. Do you want to look back in 5 years and realize you wasted all that time because you were too proud, too scared, or too stubborn to be honest about where you stand? Of course not. So listen, the first step to any transformation is brutal honesty. Even NASA knew it. Apollo 13 didn't radio Houston saying, Hey, we're fine. No, they said, Houston, we have a problem. Only by admitting the problem could they scramble to find a solution and bring the crew home. Hiding the issue would've been fatal. In life, it's the same for you. You can't launch to the next level until you say, this is where I am, this is what's wrong. Let me tell you a quick story. When I was 19, I started my first business and it was failing hard. I was making no money. I was eating beans for lunch, barely surviving. Surviving, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. I lied to my friends that business was great because I didn't want them to know I was struggling. Looking back, it was stupid. That was my 19-year-old brain. But at the time, my ego couldn't handle admitting that I sucked. The pressure kept building until one day I actually quit on my business partner. I told him I'm done and I walked away. And that night I hit my rock bottom. I sat there thinking about how much I would regret I would regret it for the rest of my life if I gave up completely. And in that moment, I finally faced the truth. I don't know what I'm doing. I need help. I need to change. So the next day I went to my partner's apartment and we got back to work, but differently this time. I swallowed my pride and started studying how Bill Gates built Microsoft, trying to model someone who did know what they were doing. I admitted my way wasn't working and opened myself up to learn. And guess what? That's when we finally started to get results. That painful honesty honesty saved my business. It was one of the worst times of my life because I was working hard with nothing to show, and I felt like a loser. But the moment, the very night I admitted where I was and what I lacked, I found a way forward. Now maybe you're thinking, okay, Evan, but won't focusing on the negative just make me feel worse? What about faking it until you make it and staying positive? And I hear you, and it's a fair concern. You don't want to wallow in what's wrong, but understand, admitting where you are isn't negativity. Negativity, it's actually empowering. You can still believe in yourself and acknowledge that something's not ideal right now. This isn't about beating yourself up and throwing some kind of pity party. It's about freedom, liberation. When you face the facts, you free yourself to change them. Hiding from the truth is not positive thinking. It's being a coward in disguise. You are stronger than that. Think of a doctor with a patient. They have to diagnose the disease before they can treat it, right? Telling the patient, "All good," when cancer is spreading isn't kindness, it's cruelty. You need to be your own doctor now. Diagnose your reality so that you can heal it. Admitting a weakness doesn't make you weaker, it actually shows your strength. It takes guts to say, "Here's where I'm at," and only the strong and smart are brave enough to do it. So, are you brave enough? Good. So let's do this. Let's talk about why you can't go forward until you admit where you are and how you can actually start doing it. Okay. Now, all right, take a deep breath because we're about to get practical and real. How do we actually admit where you are and why is this so powerful in moving you forward? First, let's stress why this matters so much. Self-awareness, being brutally honest about your current situation, is the foundation of all growth. In fact, a Cornell University study of 72 executives found that high self-awareness was the strongest predictor of success overall. Not IQ, not fancy degrees, just the courage and honesty to realistically assess themselves. Think about that. The people who rose to the top were the ones willing Being willing to say, here's what I'm good at, here's what I'm bad at, here's where we really stand right now. Being self-aware, admitting where you are is literally a superpower in business and in life. When you have that clarity, you know what to focus on, what to improve, what to let go of. When you don't, you chase the wrong things or trick yourself into standing still. So reason number 1, clarity is power. If you don't know exactly where you are on the map, you can't chart a course to where you want to go. Imagine trying to get directions on a GPS, but refusing to input your current location, right? No thanks. I don't want to admit that I'm in Nowheresville right now. Guess what? The GPS can't give you a route. You're driving blind. But that's what so many people do in life. They set goals. I want to get to that destination, but they never pinpoint their starting point. You need that starting point. Maybe your goal is to be a successful entrepreneur. Okay. Where are you right now? Maybe you have zero experience, zero sales skills, skills, $50 in your bank account, admit it. That's your starting point because from there you can make a plan to get skills, to raise money, whatever it is. If you lie and say, I'm fine, everything's fine, I've got it all figured out, you're building a castle on quicksand, right? Clarity gives you solid ground to build on. Reason number 2, admitting where you are saves you time, years of it. When you face the truth early, you can course correct quickly. When you ignore it, you waste so much time. I almost wasted my entire company at 19 by avoiding the truth. I meet people all the time who spend years in denial. The entrepreneur whose business is bleeding money but won't admit their model isn't working and they keep sinking more cash into a losing game. The person in a toxic relationship who says, "It's fine, it's fine," while they're dying inside, losing precious happiness. The aspiring artist who won't admit that they need more practice, so they never improve and wonder why they're not getting a break. Please don't be that person. Person. You have a dream to chase, and you don't have years to throw away living a lie. The sooner you say, "Here's the real problem," the sooner you can fix it and move forward. Now I get it. Admitting the truth can hurt. It can feel like defeat or embarrassment. Your ego, it hates it. That voice in your head goes, "If I admit I'm not good at this, won't people think less of me? Won't I think less of me?" But listen, every winner you admire has has done this. Every successful person at some point looked in the mirror and said, "All right, here's where I really am." This is not weakness. It's what legends do. You can't become great if you're deluding yourself with comforting lies. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest of all time, didn't pretend he was perfect. When he lost, he looked at why. He admitted his defense needed work or his conditioning wasn't enough. And then he trained harder. That's why he kept getting better. better. The same goes for you. Be grateful to find a weakness or a flaw because now you can improve it. Let me share another personal example from my journey. Years after that first business, I started YouTube and I struggled again. For years I put out video after video with almost nobody watching. In my first year on YouTube, I had 25 subscribers. Can you imagine? Uh-huh. A year of busting my butt and making content and I could barely fill a classroom with my audience. 5 years in, I had just a few thousand subscribers, and that's painfully slow growth. I felt like, man, is this ever gonna work? But here's what I did. I admitted I wasn't good enough yet. I didn't say the algorithm's against me or make excuses. I said my videos aren't great yet. I need to get better. I was embarrassed by my own content. I mean it. I couldn't even watch my early videos, my first 350 videos, without cringing. It took me 350 videos before I could watch one back without being embarrassed, and 700 videos before I made something that I actually love. That's how long it took me to find my groove. And I was honest with myself through it. I knew I wasn't a natural on camera. I knew my content needed to work. I knew I was an introvert. And that honesty kept me humble enough to keep learning and hungry enough to keep going. Most people would have quit. Most people would have said after 50 bad videos, "Well, I guess I'm just not cut out for this." Or worse, some people would delude themselves and say, "My content is amazing. The world just doesn't get it." And then stay stuck at 50 views a video for forever. I didn't do that. I acknowledged the suck. I embraced the suck, as they say, and I kept moving forward. And because of that, I went from 25 subscribers in year 1 to now over 4 million subscribers. Why? Not because I'm special or lucky, but because I faced reality and kept working on it. And I want that for you too. Whatever your goal is— music, business, fitness, anything— be honest about your level right now. It's okay if you're bad at the start. Admit it and then get to work. That's how you become one of the best. Reason number Number 3, admitting where you are opens you up to help and growth. This one is huge. As long as you're in denial, you're effectively closing the door on any help that could come in. When you say, "I got it, I got it, nothing to see here," you're shutting out mentors, advice, support, all the stuff that could accelerate you. The moment you say, "I need help," or, "I don't know what I'm doing here," boom, that door opens. And I had to learn this the hard way too. I've always been the kind of guy who hates asking for help. Can you relate? Mr. Lone Wolf over here. Mm-hmm. But a few years into my journey, journey, two people changed that. First, I married my wife, Nina. And now Nina is, for me, the most supportive person in the world. She wanted to be there for everything. And at first I was like, "Nah, you don't need to come to my events. You'll be bored." I literally said that to her, but she came just to support me anyway. And it blew my mind. I realized I needed that support. I just didn't know it until I felt it. Having someone in your corner, even just in the audience smiling, gave me a boost I never knew I was missing. Mm-hmm. Was missing. And around that same time, I met my agent, Steve. Now Steve was also a tough mentor. He worked with people like Mel Robbins and Grant Cardone and big personalities. He doesn't sugarcoat his advice. He gave me hard feedback, pushed me to make better content, to think bigger, to stop playing small. It was like a bootcamp for my ambition. And his advice really stung sometimes, if I'm being honest. It's not fun being told your videos need to be way better, step it up. But I needed to hear it. And because I was finally willing to accept help and feedback, my growth started to explode. And that year was a turning point. The channel really started to take off. My impact started to grow, everything. If I had stayed prideful and never admitted I could use some guidance, I would probably still be crawling along slowly, frustrated that I wasn't winning. And instead, by opening myself up, by admitting I don't have all the answers, I could actually use some help here, I gained a loving supporter, my wife, and a kick-butt mentor with Steve, who together helped supercharge my success. So who or what are you shutting out by not admitting that you need help? Is it a coach you haven't approached? A friend that you haven't confided in? An online course or group that you've been too proud to take? Drop the ego, get the help. There is zero shame in learning or receiving support. That's how every great person you admire got to where they are. Someone showed them the way once they admitted they needed it. Now let's bring this home with a powerful mindset shift. There's a concept I love from Jim Collins, who wrote Good David DeGraeffe called the Stockdale Paradox. It says you must retain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Both, not one or the other. What does that mean for you? It means you must absolutely believe that you will achieve your goal, you will get out of the hole, you will win, but you refuse to pretend the hole isn't there. You confront the brutal facts of, I'm in a hole and it's 10 feet deep and the walls are really slippery. You don't sugarcoat it. And because you do that, you can devise a plan, to climb out. Meanwhile, you keep the faith that ultimately you will succeed. This is exactly what I'm asking you to do. Believe in your ultimate ability, but be dead honest about where you are right now. The heroes of the world, the ones who survive and thrive, they do all of this. The optimists who stick their head in the sand and just hope without facing reality, they fail. They die of a broken heart, as Admiral Stockdale says about the naive POWs who kept saying, "We'll be out by Christmas," and refused to accept the harsh truth. Don't let that be you in your journey. Be courageous enough to say, "Here's the truth of my situation," and optimistic enough to say, "I can and will change it." All right, so now it's gut-check time for you. I want you to think about your life and identify one area, just one to start, where you know you haven't been fully honest with yourself. You already know what it is. It's that thing that popped in your head as I've been talking. Maybe it's your career, maybe it's your health, maybe it's a relationship, Maybe it's a project that you just keep putting off. What are you telling yourself there? And what's the actual truth? Are you telling yourself you're giving it your all when deep down you know you're playing at 50%? Are you telling yourself everything is fine just to avoid conflict when deep down you know it's not fine? Be real, call it out, write it down if you need to. The truth I need to admit is blank. This is your moment because once you shine a light on that thing, it loses power over you. You can finally deal with it. If you've been drifting been in denial, this right here is the moment you grab the wheel of your life again. No more autopilot, no more hiding. It might feel like a punch to the gut, but it's also a surge of relief and empowerment. Remember, truth is the starting line. It's not the finish line, it's the start. When you admit where you are, you give yourself permission to begin the journey to where you want to be. You stop being stuck in the fake world of shoulda, coulda, woulda, and you step into reality. And only reality can be changed. I promise you, when you do this, you will feel a weight lift off your shoulders. You'll finally see a path forward. It might be a long path. Mine sure was, but at least you'll see it and you'll be moving. And movement— progress is happiness. So have the courage to be brutally honest with yourself today. Not tomorrow, not next week. Today. Greatness begins not with a single step, but with a single truth acknowledged. Tell yourself the truth so you can change your reality. You owe it to yourself and your dreams. Don't let the fear rob you of your destiny. Face where you are so you can get to where you're meant to be. Quitting your toxic job might be the smartest decision of your life. I know that might sound radical. Most of us grew up being told, don't be a quitter, and to just be grateful that you have a job. But staying in a poisonous work environment is far more dangerous than walking away. It's like drinking slow poison every single day, one that kills your enthusiasm, your confidence, maybe even your health. And if you don't take action, the toxic job will bleed you dry until there's nothing left of the person that you are meant to be. Not leaving becomes the biggest regret of your life, and I don't want that for you. Need proof? Let's talk about Steve Jobs. Picture 1985, a 30-year-old Steve stands on Apple's campus as the company's board fires him from the very company he founded. Public humiliation.— devastation. For a moment, he felt like his life's work was over. But what happened next? Freed from the corporate drama, Steve tapped into a well of creativity he didn't even realize he had. He started a new company, NeXT, and helped launch Pixar. Yeah, the Pixar that gave us Toy Story. 10 years later, Apple begged him to come back, and he spearheaded the greatest turnaround in tech history. Steve later admitted that getting getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. The weight of that toxic fight at Apple was gone, replaced by a beginner's lightness and bold creativity. So imagine, the worst career setback became the launching pad for legendary achievements. Now, if Steve Jobs hadn't left that toxic situation, would we even know his name today? Would we have the iPhone in our pockets? Sometimes walking away is the only way to reach your true potential. Now you might say, Well, that's Steve Jobs. Evan, what about you? Fair. Let me share a quick story from my own life. In my early 20s, I built a very successful website. I grew it to over 100,000 pages of content and built some significant momentum behind it. And on paper, it looked like a dream. We even had some pretty famous contributors, but there's a little secret behind it. I started to hate it. It stopped being fun. It turned into a soulless content factory that was draining me. And every morning I woke up dreading to have to go and do this work. So I did what I thought was unthinkable at the time. I shut it down overnight. Boom, deleted the whole thing. Just had a homepage, even with all of its traffic and success. Why? Because I didn't want to stay in the business, even a successful one that I didn't love. And people called me crazy. They said, Evan, you're throwing away years of work. This is too risky. But here's what I saw. I don't see it as risky to walk away from something that you don't love and move towards something that you do. Mm-hmm. So starting over on YouTube became my plan. I didn't see it as a step back. It was a step towards what gave me purpose. And guess what? It was one of the best moves I ever made. That decision led me to build this channel and be with, with you guys here, Believe Nation, reaching millions of entrepreneurs today. I would make that crazy choice again in a heartbeat. So I get it. I know what it's like to stand on that ledge looking down into the unknown, wondering if you're about to ruin your life or you're about to save it. I also know the number one objection running through your head right now. Right now is fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of financial instability, fear that you'll regret quitting or that you'll miss the paycheck or the security or even your coworkers. Maybe you're thinking, but my job is stable. The economy is rough. I have bills. I have a family. Isn't it safer to just stay? You might even feel guilty for wanting to quit when others are struggling to find work. And I get it. I hear you. I mean, it's real. Those fears are real, but I wanna flip them a little bit on you. What if the greater risk is actually staying put? What if the true cost of your stable job is far higher than a few steady paychecks? But times have changed. As I often remind people, the most stable thing for your parents was to get a job. But today, the most stable thing is to build your own business. That's right. In, in today's world, relying on a corporation for 40 years is riskier than betting on yourself. Companies lay people off on a whim. Industries get disrupted overnight. Job security is an illusion. Now, meanwhile, building your own thing, becoming an entrepreneur, puts you more in control. It can actually be way more secure because you're not at the mercy of some boss or board who doesn't care about your dreams. So if your biggest objection to quitting is stability, realize that clinging to a toxic job is not the safe path. It's a slow path to losing yourself. And the sooner you see that, the sooner you can break free. Now, I wanna give a special shout out here because this entire video was sparked by one of you. A subscriber asked me, did I make the right decision? They had just quit their toxic job and were filled with doubt, wondering if they'd made a huge mistake. So if you're like them, if you've taken that leap or you're thinking about it, I want you to pay close attention. Now I'm going to break this down step by step, so by the end of this video, you'll not only have your answer, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner. Sound good? Let's dive in. Spot the toxicity. Signs you're in a bad job. So how do you know if your job is truly toxic and not just normal work stress? First, trust your intuition. If every Sunday night you feel dread sinking into your stomach, if you wake up anxious, exhausted, physically ill at the thought of going to work, that's a pretty big red flag. But let's get specific. Toxic leadership tends to follow a pattern. Here are some common signs of a toxic boss or toxic workplace. Number 1, constant criticism and belittling. So your boss never misses a chance to tear you down, especially in front of others. They think that fear is a management tactic. It's not. It's actually abuse. Next, micromanagement and no trust. You're not allowed to make any decisions. Every minor task is scrutinized. It's like your boss wants to make you feel incapable. Next, favoritism and politics. The office feels like Game of Thrones. Promotions and perks, they're not based on merit, but on sucking up to the boss. If you're not in the chosen clique, you're treated as disposable. Next, no respect for boundaries. You're expected to answer calls at 10:00 PM, work weekends, sacrifice your health or your family, for the team, yet no real gratitude. And burnout is celebrated as hard work. Next, lack of integrity. Ever been asked to lie to a client or cut corners? Maybe your boss takes credit for your wins and blames you for their mistakes. These ethical lapses crush your spirit because they force you to betray your own values. Does any of that sound familiar? Even one of these is bad. A combo is really toxic. Research shows that people don't leave jobs, they leave managers. In fact, one study found 57% of employees employees have left a job because of their direct manager. Think about that. Over half of people quit not because of pay, not because of workload, but because their boss made life hell. And nearly 1 in 6 have quit multiple jobs due to bad managers. If you're feeling alone or weak for wanting out, remember, you are not alone. You're in the majority. Wanting to escape a toxic boss isn't a sign of failure, it's a sign of health. It means your spirit knows deserves better. Great leaders coach you, toxic leaders crush you. And if you're being crushed, you owe it to yourself to consider an exit plan. One more subtle sign, you've lost your passion. A toxic job can make you forget why you chose your career in the first place. If you used to love coding, designing, teaching, whatever you're working on right now, and now you hate it, ask why. Is it really the work or is it the environment that is tainting the work? Often it's the latter. For example, uh, you might love helping customers, but under a toxic sales culture, you start to resent even the customers. And that's sad, right? Don't let a bad environment trick you into thinking you hate your calling. Remove the toxic environments and your passion can return. So step 1, identify the poison, call it out. Write down the things that make your job toxic, whether it's a person, a practice, or a value mismatch. This clarity does 2 things. Number 1, it confirms that you're not crazy. You're not overreacting. There are real problems. And 2, it gives you motivation to resolve them. Resolve to do something about it. So remember, you are not a tree. If you're not happy where you are, you can move, but first you must recognize that the soil itself was rotten. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. The true cost of staying stuck. So let's talk about the long-term costs of sticking it out in a toxic job, because a lot of people tell themselves, well, maybe it'll get better, I'll just endure a little bit longer. Listen, and during a toxic environment is not a of honor. It's a slow form of self-destruction, and I don't say that lightly. I'm talking mind, body, and soul. Mentally and emotionally, a toxic job will erode your confidence and happiness day by day. You start doubting your abilities because you're constantly being criticized. You might develop anxiety, depression, or find yourself lashing out at loved ones because you're carrying so much stress every day. Think about it. How many times have you come home from work in a bad mood, too drained to play with your kids or to pursue your hobbies. That's not just a rough day. If it's happening most days, that's a rough life. I often say the woman who should cure cancer might be stuck as an unhappy manager somewhere, not living her potential. Staying in the wrong job doesn't just steal your joy, it steals your destiny. You could be using that time and energy to build your dream or create something that changes the world. Instead, it's being siphoned off by Negativity, that is the ultimate theft. Now, let's get physical. Stress is sometimes called the silent killer for a reason. When you are in a constant state of fight or flight at work, your heart's always pounding from your boss's emails, your stomach in your knots before meetings, it can wreak havoc on your own health. How bad can it get? There was a study out of Sweden that found that men with inconsiderate, unskilled bosses had a 40% higher risk of heart attacks. I'll say it again, 40% higher risk of heart attacks. Toxic work isn't just unpleasant, it can be lethal to you. Another fun statistic, workplace stress in general contributes to over 120,000 deaths a year in the United States. 120,000. The pressure from overwork, job insecurity, bad bosses, it's literally killing people and costing nearly $190 billion in healthcare. So when I say poison, I'm not just being metaphysical. Chronic stress from a bad job can trigger high blood pressure, insomnia, weakened immune systems, and even increase your risk of anxiety disorders and substance abuse. Is any paycheck worth that? Not for me. Now let's think about the opportunity cost as well. Every year you stay in a place that isn't helping you grow is a year of lost growth somewhere else. It's a year you could have spent leveling up your skills, starting a business, finding a team that actually values you. You shouldn't need a health crisis or breakdown to wake up. So consider this video your wake-up call. Let's visualize life if you stay versus if you go. Close your eyes and imagine it's 5 years from now. If you stay in this current toxic job, what do you see? Maybe you've been passed over for a promotion again because you're not the favorite. Maybe you're still under that boss who makes you feel small. Maybe your confidence is lower than ever and you feel bitter and angry and you wonder, what if every single day? Now imagine you leave. The first year might be challenging. Change is always challenging. But now you're growing. You maybe started your own business or you joined a healthier your company. You are excited again. You are waking up with some purpose. You've met mentors or partners who actually inspire you. You like hanging around. You feel proud of yourself for taking the leap. Which picture feels like your true life? I'm guessing it's the second one. The difference between those two futures comes down to one hard choice made once, the choice to leave. But before we move on, I want you to burn this in your mind. Staying in a toxic job is not loyalty. It's a slow surrender. You are trading away days of your life for what? A paycheck? Comfort? Familiarity? None of those are worth your soul or your sanity. You have a higher purpose to fulfill, and if your current environment is holding you back, it's not only okay to leave, it's necessary. It's required. Don't wait for the breaking point, create a breakthrough instead. So now let's talk about how to shift from that doubt and fear into action and form a new identity. From doubt to action, changing your story. Okay, Evan, you might be thinking, I recognize my job is toxic and I know it's costing me my health and my happiness, but I'm still scared. How do I go from knowing I should quit to actually doing something about it? Great question. This is where we tackle the doubt that's holding you back to transform it into forward motion and hopefully into a new identity for yourself as a free, more empowered person. And hey, maybe even an entrepreneur. First, let's normalize something. Fear is normal. Of course you're hesitant. You've been conditioned to value security. Stepping away from a paycheck or a career path that you've invested years in, that's one of the hardest decisions that you'll ever make. Even I, the Believe guy, had moments of intense doubt. Remember I told you I shut down my successful website to start all over on YouTube? The next morning I woke up and I thought, oh my gosh, what did I just do? There was a knot in my stomach too. Doubt was whispering, you blew it, Evan. But I pushed through that moment with one simple thought: what am I more afraid of, temporary uncertainty or permanent regret? And for me, regret is way scarier. The idea of waking up at 80 and thinking I never even tried to live my dream, that just sends chills down my spine. I want to reframe your fear. Yes, quitting is scary, but what What about the fear of wasting your potential? What about the fear of staying average because you were too afraid to even try? Those fears should terrify you more than the fear of trying and stumbling. Sometimes it helps to take small actions to prove to yourself that you won't implode if you make a change. I'm not telling you to march into work tomorrow and yell, "I quit!" You know, unless you're ready, and then by all means. You can start with micro steps. You can update your resume. You can— Yeah. Reach out to one person who's doing something that you'd love to do and ask them how did they do it. You can start a side hustle on weekends to test the waters of entrepreneurship. Each little step will build confidence. Action is the antidote to anxiety. When you're doing something, even something tiny, you're no longer just sitting in fear. You are moving. Now let's talk about identity. If you have been in a toxic job for a while, it can really warp your your self-image. You start to identify yourself as the frustrated accountant or just a cog in the machine. And you need to rewrite that story. You are not your job title, especially not a job that is wrong for you. So you start by identifying where you are going, not where you are right now. Even if you haven't left it yet, start calling yourself by the identity that you aspire to. So for example, uh, even in your head or to friends or someone you trust, I'm an entrepreneur building my future business. Even if you haven't started yet. Or I'm a content creator in the making, or I'm a future founder, like whatever resonates with you. This isn't meant to be fake it till you make it. It's about believe it until you become it. It shifts your mindset from being a victim of circumstances to the hero of your story. When you see yourself as an entrepreneur, at least someone worth more than how that toxic boss treats you, you'll start to make decisions that align more with that identity. So here's a powerful exercise. Create a brief a brief vision of my ideal workday. Pretend it's a year from now and everything has gone right. Describe where you are, what kind of work you're doing, what your environment is like, how do you feel, and be as specific as you can. I wake up energized, excited to work on my online business. I have supportive clients. I create content that helps people. I take a break at lunch to hit the gym, and I'm there to pick up my kids from school. Like whatever it is for you, paint that picture of an ideal day. Deal day. That's your North Star. Anytime the doubt creeps in saying, maybe I should just stay, look at that vision. That's what you're fighting for. And if you stay in your toxic job, that vision will drift further and further away. If you start taking action, that vision gets a lot closer. One of my favorite strategies to break the doubt is to find examples of others who have done it. So your brain might be telling you, if I quit, I'll never find another job. I'll go broke. Everything will fall apart. But is that true? Think of people you know or figures you admire Who made a scary jump and landed on their feet. They're everywhere. Maybe it's your friend who quit finance and started a bakery and is much happier, even if she makes less money right now, she's alive again. Or the countless entrepreneurs that I've profiled here on this channel who left their corporate gigs to solve a problem that they were passionate about and then built huge businesses. Seeing their stories chips away at the power of your doubt. It replaces the fear of the unknown with the inspiration of possibility. If they can do it, so can you. There are entire communities of people who've quit toxic jobs and gone on to thrive. Look for them, seek them out, even the online ones, and surround yourself with those success stories. Then let's talk about support. Don't do this all alone. Find your believers, the people in your life who uplift you. Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's a sibling, maybe it's a friend, just one good friend. Share your plan with them. Tell them, I'm thinking of leaving my job and here's why. The act of voicing it can be liberating. And if they're truly supportive, they'll remind you of your strengths when you forget them. If you don't have anyone in your immediate circle right now, think about getting a coach or join an entrepreneur group or an online community. The community here on this channel can be that for you too if you want. We're Believin' Nation, you know, we're meant to have each other's backs. I'm, I'm making this video as a result of a question that one of you guys asked. The opposite of a toxic environment is a nurturing environment. So start building that around you before you you even leave, because it will give you the courage. Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. We can always bounce back from failures, but if you let doubt stop you, you'll never take the shot in the first place. So we shift the story that you're telling yourself. You're not running away from a job, you're running towards a better life. You're not giving up on a career, you're taking charge of your destiny. There's a big difference here. Once you internalize that, your doubt will start to shrink and your determination will to grow. Turning pain into purpose. So let's shift gears now and talk about something really beautiful. How can your pain become your purpose? This is one of my core beliefs. I think one of my most quoted lines is, your purpose comes from your pain. I think whatever you struggle the most with is what you want to help other people through. The very experiences that hurt you can be flipped into motivation that drives you to help others or create something meaningful. So how does this relate to quitting a toxic job in every way possible. If you have endured a terrible boss, a bullying corporate culture, a soul-crushing role, you've likely thought, "It shouldn't be this way, right? There's got to be a better way to this." Guess what? That thought is a seed of purpose. Many extraordinary companies and projects have grown from that exact seed. People who left toxic workplaces often end up building healthier businesses, better cultures or innovative solutions that solve the problems that they have witnessed. Your frustration can be turned into innovation. So for example, you might have a vision of a workplace where employees are actually happy. Imagine that. Where leadership is empathetic and where everyone thrives. Maybe your purpose becomes to start a business with that very culture, proving that it's possible to succeed without toxicity. If you were an industry that overworked employees to burnout. Maybe your new company sets a trend for work-life balance and profit. There are CEOs out there who explicitly said, "I started my own company because I was sick of how I was treated at my old one." Pain to purpose. Or it could be more direct. Say, say you're a nurse who loved helping patients, but the hospital administration was toxic and made you miserable. Maybe your purpose is to create a better patient care service, or become a health coach, or start a YouTube channel educating people on healthcare. Something that still helps others, but now on your terms with your own values. The pain of being prevented from giving true care can be motivation of delivering care in a new way. In my case, my first business was a biotech software company. Was really hard. I've talked before about how I was making $300 a month and eating beans for lunch every day and felt like a clueless kid among all these seasoned entrepreneurs. I was too embarrassed to talk to customers on the phone because I felt I didn't belong. And that experience was, was painful. It was really painful. I came like this close to quitting on my partner. I even told him I quit one dark night, you know, but that pain, it shaped me. It became my purpose to help other entrepreneurs not suffer the same way. I don't want the next generation to feel alone and hopeless like I did. Your purpose comes from your pain. So ask yourself, what pain has your toxic that toxic job caused you and how could you use that experience to make work better for yourself and for others. Maybe you've been through harassment. Your purpose could be advocating for respectful workplaces or developing an app that anonymously reports misconduct. Maybe you wasted hours in pointless meetings. Can you relate? Could your purpose be a productivity tool or consultancy that helps businesses run better? Maybe you felt voiceless and unseen. Could your purpose be Whether it's be to lead a team where everyone's voice counts or to teach leadership courses on emotional intelligence. Like there's a million things that you could do. There's gold in your story if you're willing to go and mine for it. Turning pain into purpose gives you incredible resilience too, because once you find meaning in what you went through, it doesn't feel wasted. It wasn't just pointless suffering, it was training. Viktor Frankl, a famous neurologist and Holocaust survivor said, "some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning." When you quit your toxic job and use that experience as motivation to build something better, suddenly all those awful days become part of a more heroic narrative. It gives you a why that's bigger than just making money or escaping a bad boss. You're now on a mission, and a mission ignites passion. I see this in entrepreneurs all the time. The most fired up founders are the ones who are solving solving a pain they personally experience. They know the problem deeply, and they're determined to fix it for everyone else. That could be you. Your toxic job might actually be pointing you to the problem that you're meant to solve in the world. How's that for a plot twist? The very thing that's hurting you now could be the source of all your future success and impact. So practically now, how do we do this? Start by journaling or reflecting on this question: what has my my bad job taught me about what people need. It might be that people need more encouragement, or better work conditions, or a more efficient way to do X, or a product that removes a certain frustration. List out the pains, then brainstorm how each pain could be addressed or eliminated. You don't have to come up with a business plan on the spot. Just ideate. Just think. This shifts you from a victim mode now into a creator mode. When I shut down my website because it became a content factory. That pain became the seed for my YouTube channel, which I crafted very intentionally around purpose and not just ad revenue. I wanted to feel authentic, like every video meant something, because I never wanted to feel that emptiness again. And now this channel has over 4 million subscribers and more importantly, a global impact on entrepreneurs' lives. That's pain that was transformed into purpose. Imagine a future. Future where you love what you do because it's deeply connected to who you are and what you value, where every day you're not just earning, you are fulfilled. And that's possible, but often you have to walk through the fire first. And you're in the fire right now, so use it to create something new. Your toxic job is not the end of your story. It can be the beginning of your mission. You are the hero in this movie, and every hero uses their lowest moment as the springboard to their greatest triumph, right? This toxic job can gift you the clarity of exactly what you don't want. And from that, you can craft exactly what you do want for yourself and for others. That's the silver lining. That's turning your pain into purpose. Courage to bet on yourself. Okay. We've done a lot here. We've recognized the problem. We've calculated the cost of staying. We've started shifting from doubt into action mode, and hopefully we've We've ignited some purpose from our pain. Now it all comes down to one thing: the courage to bet on yourself. This is the final bridge to cross, actually making the leap and not looking back. And I want to arm you with everything you need to make that leap with a lot more confidence. First, a story from my life that hopefully perfectly illustrates this. When I was 19, I had to make the toughest decision of my life. I had a high-paying job offer from a big investment bank that I thought was my dream same job since I was a kid. And at the same time, an opportunity to own a piece of a struggling startup with almost no pay. Everyone around me said, take the Wall Street job, Evan. It's six figures. It's prestige. It's safe. Safe. There's that word again. But in my heart, I felt like if I didn't at least try down this startup path, I would regret it forever. I remember literally imagining myself looking back as an old man asking myself, when I'm an old man, I don't want to look back and wonder what if, right? This was Jeff Bezos's regret minimization framework. Basically, choose the path you'll regret the least. For me, that was entrepreneurship. I said, you know what, I can always go and get another job, but I don't want to live with the regret of not knowing. Even if the most likely outcome was failure, I'd rather know and fail than not know. And that one little mindset shift gave me the courage to turn down the lucrative job and bet myself. And let me tell you, best decision ever. That startup journey, while it was super hard, set the foundation for everything that I'm doing right now. And spoiler alert, I never had to crawl back to the bank for a job. Once I tasted the freedom of carving my own path and having success, I never looked back. And so I love the same boldness for you. You have to believe that you are worth betting on, that your future is worth a gamble, because honestly, what is your alternative? Betting on a company that is that is making you miserable? Betting on a boss who doesn't appreciate you? No. Bet on the one thing in this world that you can control— yourself. And when you do, something amazing happens. You rise to the occasion. It's like the universe meets you halfway. The moment I fully committed to my startup, opportunities appeared that I would have missed if I had stayed comfortable. We landed a partnership that transformed our company not long after I chose to stay in the game rather than quit. It's as if Courage acts like a magnet for good things. Now, I'm not saying quit irresponsibly. Have a plan, have a runway of savings if possible, be smart about it. But once you decide, I'm doing this, go all in on that decision. Don't keep one foot in and one foot out or you'll never take off. One exercise you can do is make a list of the worst-case scenarios if you leave and the best-case scenario. The worst case could be something like, I trial and fail, burn through some savings, and then get another job in a year, right? Right. When I realized that telling myself, hey, even that failure isn't the end of the world, I can survive, the fear shrank. The best case on the other hand was I built something amazing. I'm happier, I potentially make way more money and on my own terms and have a bigger impact. And clearly the upside far outweighed the downside. So let's address some of the practical stuff that often scares us. Money and resume gaps. Money is a valid concern. But remember, a toxic job can cost you more medical bills and therapy. And just life in enjoyment than, than it's worth. Still, you need to eat, so create a financial plan. How long can you last without steady income? What expenses can you cut temporarily to buy yourself freedom? I've seen people move to smaller apartments, sell a car, tighten the budget for a year as an investment in their dream. That's courage with wisdom. Also consider building a bridge. Maybe you go to a less toxic part-time job while growing your business, or you do some freelance gigs. There are always creative solutions once you commit to finding them. Your toxic job is not the only source of income on the planet. Resume gaps? The world has changed. People aren't as freaked out by nonlinear careers as they used to be. In fact, having the guts to leave a bad situation can sometimes make you look more attractive because it shows that you have standards and initiative. And if you start your own venture, successful or not, you'll have learned so much that any forward-thinking employer would value that experience. In worst case, you frame your time as a sabbatical to reskill and work on personal projects. Not a big deal. Don't let outdated norms chain you down. And one more thing, remember that subscriber who asked, "Did I make the right decision?" I told them, I'm telling you now, yes. If you left a toxic job, congratulations, you just saved your life, literally and figuratively. It's like escaping a sinking ship. Now it's time to build a boat of your own or find a better boat. Give yourself permission to feel proud of that decision. Don't waste energy second-guessing if you should have quit or not. Use that energy to make the decision pay off. Pour that doubt energy into hustle energy. And if you haven't left yet, but are about to, visualize the moment after you resign. Maybe you're shaking as you hand in that letter, or you have a conversation, but then freedom, a huge weight lifts. Even if the road ahead is uncharted, you'll likely feel an overwhelming sense of relief. I've heard people say they feel alive for the first time in years, right? You feel after quitting. That's when you know you did the right thing. Anchor on that feeling. It will carry you through the challenges of building what's next. So let me speak to your heart directly right now. You have greatness inside you. You were not put on this earth to be a doormat for a toxic boss or a mindless drone in a company that doesn't value you. You have unique talents, ideas, and a story that matters. And by betting on yourself, you're saying to the world, I am worthy of something better. And that's a pretty powerful statement. That's an act of self-love and courage that will ripple out to all the people around you. Your family will see a happier you. Your friends will be inspired by you, and you'll inspire your coworkers who are still stuck. You might become the example that gives them the courage to improve their lives too. Courage is contagious. It's okay to be afraid, but you do it anyway. As the saying goes, "Feel the fear and do it anyway." Courage isn't the absence of fear, it's acting in spite of it. And guess what? Once you take that step, you'll realize you're stronger longer than you even knew. Then you'll wonder, what other amazing things can I do that I was scared of before? That's when the whole world opens up to you. The fact that you're still here tells me that you're serious about this change. Now do something about it. You deserve better, and better is waiting for you on the other side of that door. If you're an entrepreneur and you're not mentally tough, you will fail. The world will break you if you let it, especially in business. You have to become unbreakable to achieve your dreams. But here's the thing: unbreakable does not mean unemotional or unkind. You can be tough as a Spartan and still have a heart. In fact, that's the only way it truly works. The Spartan mindset: strength at all costs. Let's talk about Spartans. These were the warriors so tough that their name is literally synonymous with toughness. Picture this: 480 BC, Thermopylae. The Persian army, hundreds of thousands strong, demands that tiny Greek force surrender. King Leonidas of Sparta refuses. The battle begins. Day 1, wave after wave of Persians attack and the Spartans push them back, inflicting heavy losses. Day 2, the Persians try again with their elite troops. Still no break. The invaders are unable to break through the Greek defenses. Think about that. The greatest empire of the time couldn't make a dent in 300 Spartans and their Greek allies for 2 whole days. They only won on day 3. 3 by surrounding the Spartans, who fought to the last breath rather than give up. The Spartans became legends of resilience because they refused to break. That's the Spartan mindset. No surrender. No, I can't take this. It's whatever it takes until the job is done or you're dead on the field. Now, as entrepreneurs, we thankfully don't have to face invading armies, but we do face attacks, failures, rejections, market crashes, haters, self-doubt, you name it. And the question is, will you stand firm like a Spartan, or will you surrender at the first arrow life shoots at you? The fear of going cold. Now you might be thinking, okay, Evan, I get it. I need to be tougher, but I'm afraid if I harden myself like that, won't I lose my compassion? Won't I have to become a jerk or a robot to survive? This is the biggest doubt you might have about building strength. You worry that if you become unbreakable, you'll also become cold. That you'll sacrifice your kindness, your empathy, your humanity. And I hear you, it is a valid concern. Nobody wants to turn into a heartless machine just to succeed and make money. Being unbreakable does not mean being unfeeling. Real strength isn't about shutting off your emotions. It's about learning to control them, to channel them, and not be controlled by them. You don't have to sacrifice empathy to build resilience. Actually, if you do, you're likely to hurt yourself and your business in the in the long run. Strength without kindness is empty, and kindness without strength is ineffective. You need both. Think of it this way: a Spartan's warrior heart was in protecting his people. The 300 at Thermopylae weren't fighting just for glory. They were fighting out of love for their homeland and their families behind them. Their purpose gave them their strength. Your purpose can give you your strength without making you cold. My story, breaking my neck and breaking my limits. So in 2019, I went on a 90-day, 23-city tour to speak to entrepreneurs just like you. I was on a mission, my mission to spread belief. And about 2 months in, something crazy happened. I blacked out and broke my neck in 2 spots. Yeah, you heard that right. I literally broke my neck in 2 spots. I also compressed my spine. I got concussion. I needed staples in my head. The doctors put me in a neck brace. They put me in a neck brace so that I could wear this 24/7. I could barely move. Move, every single step I took hurt. Now, I had every reason to quit the tour. No one would blame me for stopping. I mean, hey guys, I'm going home, I broke my neck. It's a pretty good excuse to cancel the rest of the dates, right? But I didn't cancel. I finished the last month of my tour wearing this neck brace, injury and all. I sat on stage in city after city, unable to turn my head, looking like Frankenstein's little cousin, and I still delivered my speeches. Why? Because I promised myself and all of you that I would show up, because I had people in each city who had bought tickets, who were counting on me to to help them because I'm built to serve. My purpose to inspire others made me unbreakable even when my body literally broke. Now, did that ordeal make me cold and cruel? Not at all. In fact, it made me more compassionate. I felt an even deeper gratitude and love for the people I met because I saw how much they believed in me to continue. It reinforced why I do what I do, to help. I learned that true resilience is fueled by love and purpose, not anger and— Anger. Bitterness. So lying in that hospital bed in Denver, I decided I'm going to show what belief can do. If I can still show up for others with a broken neck, what excuse do I have when I'm healthy? And that's the Spartan mindset— push through the pain for a cause that's greater than the pain. And let me tell you, when you push through like that, you shift your identity. I went from doubting if I could go on to taking action one painful step at a time to transforming into a guy who knows he can the things he sets his mind to. That's why I still keep this on my shelf here at home. And that's exactly what I want for you, to experience that shift from doubt into action to transformation in your own life. Strong and Kind: The Power of Compassionate Resilience. So how do you become unbreakable without turning into a stone-cold jerk? How do you develop a Spartan's toughness and still keep a warm heart? It's absolutely possible. Possible. In fact, I think it's the only sustainable way. And don't just take my word for it. Let's look at some of the science and some real-world evidence to back it up. Psychology proves that kindness builds strength. We often think that we have to be hard on ourselves or others to toughen up. It's wrong. Recent research shows that kindness towards ourselves actually builds stronger mental toughness than harsh self-judgment ever could. Being overly critical might feel like you're being strict or disciplined, but it actually undermines undermines your resilience. Now, on the flip side, self-compassion, treating yourself with understanding and patience, creates the mental safety net you need to bounce back faster. A 2021 analysis of 27 studies found that people who practice self-compassion have greater emotional resilience, recover faster from setbacks, and persist more towards their goals than people who are harsh on themselves. Think about that. Being kind to yourself makes you tougher. So being soft with yourself in a healthy way actually makes you harder to break. Great leaders lead with empathy. Empathy is not a weakness, it's a superpower. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella famously said that among all leadership qualities, none of it matters without empathy. Early in his career, he was even told during an interview, you need to develop empathy, when he gave a too logical answer to a problem. And he took that But here's the lesson at the heart. Under Nadella's leadership, Microsoft transformed, not by becoming softer in a bad way, but by infusing a culture of empathy and trust. And the result was a stronger, more innovative company. The lesson is you can demand excellence and be resilient through crisis while also caring deeply about your team and customers. In fact, that empathy might be the glue that holds everyone together when things get tough. Soft front, courage and vulnerability. Researcher Brené Brown uses a phrase borrowed from a Buddhist teacher, which goes like this, strong back, soft front. It means have a strong spine, stand your ground, know your values, that's your strong back, but keep a soft front, stay open, vulnerable, curious, soft front. In other words, be tough-minded, but tenderhearted. This idea is, I think, awesome for entrepreneurs. It's not about wearing your armor 24/7 and trusting no one. It's about having solid confidence and boundaries that you won't break or bend on what really matters while still being vulnerable enough to listen, to learn, to care. You need that balance. If you go all hard front, hard back, you become brittle, defensive, isolated. That's when you actually do become cold and breakable. But strong back, soft front, you become resilient and adaptable. You can stand firm through all the storms, but you also give and receive support. You can bend without breaking. Now maybe you're thinking, all right, Evan, I believe it in theory, but how do I actually do this? How do I train myself to be strong and kind at the same time? Great question. Let's get practical. Building your unbreakable but not unfeeling mindset. So to develop a Spartan mindset with a heart, you need to train in two areas: your mental toughness and your compassion. Think of it like when you're forging steel, you're making a sword, it takes tempering, which is heat and pressure, and then quenching, cooling, right, to make the blade strong. So here are 3 practical steps to help you get started. Number 1, embrace discomfort daily. Train like a Spartan trains. The Spartans became unbreakable by training in discomfort constantly. You can do this in modern life. Seek out controlled challenges to toughen your mind. It could be taking cold showers. It could be doing that workout when you don't feel like it. It could be— It could be making that sales call you're afraid to make, or waking up an hour earlier than you want to, releasing your first YouTube video. Push your limits a little bit every day. Discomfort is your gym. It's where you build those resilience muscles. When you voluntarily do hard things, you teach yourself, "I can handle this." Then when involuntary hard things like crisis has hit, it's not your first time in the ring. Importantly, when you face these challenges, do it with intention, not anger. So for example, decide that today you'll work on a tough project for 2 hours straight, no interruptions. It will be hard and your brain will whine, but when you complete it, celebrate that win. It wires your brain that hardship is training, not trauma. And as you embrace discomfort, remember why you're doing it, to become stronger for your ultimate mission. That purpose keeps you from growing bitter. You're not doing hard things for the sake of misery. You're doing it to build capacity. Mm-hmm. Your capacity to serve and succeed. Next, practice compassion. It's a strength, not a softness. This might sound very counterintuitive, but to avoid becoming emotionally cold, you need to actively practice kindness to yourself and others as you pursue your goals. Start with self-compassion. When you fail or hit a wall, watch yourself talk. Instead of berating yourself and yelling at yourself, "You're the worst," pause and speak to yourself like you would to your best friend. Literally say something like, "This is tough. Anyone would I'm not alone in struggling. Let's figure this out. I can grow from this. I will get better. Great things come to me. This isn't being easy on yourself. It's being smart. Remember, beating yourself up only floods you with stress and makes you less resilient, while self-compassion boosts your learning and comeback power. So give yourself that pep talk with understanding, not a drill sergeant scolding. Next, extend compassion to others around you too. As a leader, challenge yourself to perform an act of kindness each day, even under stress. It could be as simple as thanking an employee or checking in on a colleague who's having a rough time. One thing I do every morning is I record a video that I send to my team and I'm recognizing at least one person on the team. This keeps your humanity alive and well. It reminds you why you're fighting, not just for numbers, but, but for people. And guess what? Kindness is contagious and strengthens the bonds in your team and your network. Those strong relationships become part of your resilience. When you know you're all fighting together and care about each other, you can go 10 times harder and endure more because you're not alone and you know what matters. Next, set boundaries and stand for your values. So being kind does not mean being a pushover. Spartans had a code, lines they would not cross or let others cross. You need your own code of values and boundaries. Decide what you stand for, integrity, quality, whatever is core. I call it your one word. I wrote a book about it. And be uncompromising on that, no matter what the price is. Pressure. Also, set boundaries for how you're treated and how you spend your time. If you're always saying yes to everyone to please people, you will get stretched and snapped. Boundaries keep you strong. They are a form of self-respect and respect for your mission. So for example, you might set a boundary that you don't tolerate abuse from clients or team members. Everyone must treat each other with respect. That doesn't make you weak, it makes you principled. Or you set a boundary that you're going to carve non-negotiable time for rest or for family. So you stay balanced and you don't burn out, right? Burnout becomes your path to coldness because you have nothing left to give. When you enforce these boundaries, do it calmly, do it firmly. You don't have to get angry. It's possible to say no with a smile. In fact, true Spartan mindset requires saying no to distractions and toxic influences because by protecting your time, your energy, your values, you actually increase your capacity to be patient and kind where it truly matters. You're creating a focused, values-driven life. And that focus is strong instead and it means when you show up for others, you're actually fully there. You can be kind because you've taken care of your strength. Think of it like this, a warrior sharpens his sword, right? That's building toughness, and also keeps it clean and oiled. That's maintaining kindness. You like that one? I like that one. Both are needed for the sword to perform at its best. By following these steps, you're training both sides of the coin, your inner Spartan warrior and your inner compassionate leader. Over time, you'll notice something amazing happens. The more that you push yourself to be strong and the more you nurture your empathy, the less fear you have. You won't be afraid that toughness will make you cruel because you see your kindness growing alongside your grit. And you won't be afraid that being kind makes you weak because you'll see yourself overcoming challenges like a beast, like a Spartan. You'll realize kindness is your edge, it's not your enemy. Thank you. Transformation from soft to strong and loving it. So imagine yourself a few months from now, a challenge hits because they always do. And your immediate reaction is not panic. It's not asking why me? It's not running away. Instead, you square up like a Spartan on a battlefield. All right, let's go. I've been training for this. You take a deep breath. You remember your purpose. You recall that there are people you care about depending on you and you charge forward. And because you've also kept your heart open, open, you're not just charging forward alone. You have allies. You're not just fighting for yourself. You're leading with clarity and passion. It's an identity shift from seeing yourself as a potential victim of circumstances into a warrior for your dream and a guardian for the people that you serve. Remember, unbreakable doesn't mean never bending. It means you bend and you bounce back every time. The Spartan mindset in the 21st century isn't about shutting down your emotions. It's about being the warrior, the one who fights for love, love of the craft, love of your family, love of your vision of a better world. So the next time someone tells you nice guys finish last, or you worry that being empathetic is a liability, think of Leonidas fighting for his people. Think of a mother working 12-hour shifts to feed her kids. Think of a CEO valuing empathy and still crushing goals. Think of me sitting on stage with a broken neck because I cared about Community, strength and kindness can coexist, and together they're invincible. So now it's your turn. Take a step back and ask, where do I need to toughen up? And where can I be kinder to myself or others as I do it? Identify one action for each and do it today. Maybe you'll finally start that project you've been procrastinating on. That's your toughness training. And you'll also forgive yourself for procrastinating. That's your compassion training. And get back on track. Maybe you'll hold an employee accountable for a mistake, toughness, but do it in a way that coaches them rather than belittles them in front of others, kindness. These little choices, they build your new identity. Do not be afraid of the struggle, embrace it. And do not be afraid of your empathy, embrace that too. Combine them and you become an unstoppable force for good. This is how you become unbreakable without becoming cold, by forging yourself— Unbreakable. Fire and in love. Never take advice from someone who isn't where you want to be. Everyone has an opinion about your business and your life, but if they haven't accomplished what you're chasing, then their opinion is nothing more than noise. If you keep listening to unproven naysayers, you'll start living their fears instead of your own ambition, and you'll end up as stuck and as small as they are. Colonel Harland Sanders heard no 1,900 times 9 times before he finally got a yes. He was over 50 years old, broke, and sleeping in his car, knocking on door after door trying to sell his fried chicken recipe. 1,009 restaurants told him his idea was worthless. They laughed at the notion that a retired gas station cook could build a franchise. He was too old. It was too late. It would never work. Most people would've given up after a dozen rejections, but he got 1,000 and he refused to quit. He believed in his recipe even when nobody else did. Finally, at age 65, Sanders found one restaurant owner who took a chance on him. That one yes birthed Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the franchise took off. Within a few years, Colonel Sanders had over 600 KFC franchises and would sell his company for $2 million, becoming a legendary entrepreneur. He endured more rejection and naysaying than almost anyone, and he proved every last doubt or wrong by persevering. He felt that sting of every rejection, but he used it to keep going. And that's the same pressure that you might be feeling right now. People telling you no, you can't do it. Sanders heard the same thing 1,009 times and he won. What about you? When I was 19, I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I was a co-owner in a tiny software startup making only $300 a month while my university friends were accepting 6-figure corporate jobs, and I was This close to quitting on my business. In fact, one night I called my partner and I said, "I quit. I can't keep doing this. I feel worthless." I was broke, embarrassed, and convinced I wasn't good enough to be an entrepreneur. I thought I made a huge mistake turning down the safe jobs. I was living at home, eating beans out of a can, too ashamed to tell my friends how bad it was. I was afraid I'd never make it. I had hesitation, fear, doubt. I lived it all. But the next morning I woke up and I realized I hadn't truly given it everything. Before I threw my dream away, I had to try one more thing. I asked myself, who has already built a successful software company? I knew I wasn't the first guy to face these problems before, so I studied Bill Gates and how he built Microsoft from nothing. I learned that Microsoft partnered with bigger companies to break into new markets. I figured if it worked for Gates, maybe it could work for me. So I stopped stopped trying to do everything alone and started modeling someone who had made it. And soon after, I closed my first big deal. $13,500 in my bank, more money than I'd ever seen in my life. And more importantly, I finally had a strategy that I could repeat. I, I wasn't a failure after all. I just needed the right model to follow. So I went from being hopeless to now having energy because I saw proof that my business could work. I learned that whenever I'm lost, I can find someone to someone who has done it before and learn from them. And that realization saved my company and set the course for my entire career. Even later on when I struggled, I kept looking for successful entrepreneurs for guidance. I read stories of successful entrepreneurs and realized that they had doubted themselves too, just like I was doubting myself. It made me think, wow, these famous entrepreneurs were scared just like I am now. And if they could push through the self-doubt and the outside criticism, So could I. And every time I modeled success and surrounded myself with belief, I found the strength to keep going. Now, you might be thinking, okay, sounds great, Evan, but how do I actually do this? How do I find those who've done it before me? And what about the naysayers in my life who are always chirping in my ear telling me that I'm wrong? In fact, one of our subscribers, Jeremiah Williams, asked this exact question. How do you find those who've gotten it done before and push away the naysayers and the ones who don't have a resume and are always recommending the opposite of what you should be doing. Now, maybe you're wondering the same thing right now. Maybe you feel surrounded by people who just don't get it, who second-guess your every move. You might even wonder, what if they're right and I'm the crazy one? So first of all, consider who has given you this so-called advice. Are they living the life that you want? Have they built a business, taken a risk, achieved the dream? If not, why on earth would you let them choose your destiny? The The truth is, people who have never stepped into the arena will always shout from the cheap seats about what you should do or shouldn't do. It's easy to be a critic when you've risked nothing. And here's the thing, our brains are wired to overvalue negative voices. Psychology calls it the negativity bias. We feel the sting of a critic's words more powerfully than the joy of someone's praise. One harsh comment from a naysayer can echo in your head louder than 10 compliments from supporters. Studies even show that negative information grabs our attention and even seems more truthful to us than positive news. So think about that. Just because someone says, "It'll never work," with some level of conviction, your brain might believe them by default, but you can't let a built-in bias run your life. You need to recognize that just because their negativity feels loud and real, it doesn't mean that it's true. It just means human brains latch onto fear. So logically, a person has no results to back up their opinions, their opinions are hollow. As the saying goes, never take advice from someone who isn't where you want to be. Why? Because people who haven't achieved your goal lack the experience and understanding to guide you. Their advice is often based on their fears, their limits, not yours. Jeremiah, you mentioned these naysayers don't have the resume. Exactly. They have not walked the path that you are walking, so their map is useless to you. In fact, following advice from unqualified people is a sure way to get unqualified results. If you let people with no vision impose their vision on you, you'll end up with no vision at all. So what do you do? You flip it. You seek out the people who have done it. Even if you don't know them personally, you can learn from them. Read the biography of an entrepreneur that you admire. Watch interviews or top 10 rules. I've made lots of them for you guys. Join online communities or local meetups where winners are hanging out. Surround yourself with perspectives that come from experience and success, because here's another truth: one example of success destroys a thousand options of failure. The moment you find even one person who achieved what you want, the naysayers lose their power over you. They can't say it's impossible with a straight face anymore. That person is living proof. So instead of trying to convince negative people, go find inspiring people. Let their victories drown out the negativity and speak possibility into you. That's how you push away naysayers. You crowd them out with even louder voices of confidence and success. So let's dive into how to do this step by step. How do you push away the naysayers? How do you protect your dream and keep moving forward? Let's break it down. Step number 1, model the people who you have done it. The fastest way to silence the haters is to let the results speak. And if you don't have the results yet, borrow someone else's. Find the heroes of your industry. Find the entrepreneurs or the creators who have accomplished what you aspire to do. Go in detail, study their path, learn from the best instead of listening to the rest. This has been a core of my philosophy from almost day one. I call it modeling success. Find someone who has made it and learn how how they did it. Why reinvent the wheel? Their journey leaves clues for you. So read their books, listen to their talks, dissect their strategies, watch their videos. When I was struggling in my software company, I told the story about Bill Gates and how he built Microsoft. He built it by partnering with IBM. That insight gave me my strategy. You can do the same with whomever inspires you. If you want to build a revolutionary car company, right? Study Elon Musk's journey with Tesla. If you want to create You want to create a media empire, study Oprah's early years and how she persisted after being fired and told that she was unfit for TV. Whatever your goal is, someone out there has achieved something similar. Use them as your virtual mentor. I call them aspirational mentors. Ask yourself, how do they deal with critics? What tactics help them win? What beliefs carried them through? And this isn't just anecdotal, it's backed by actual data. According to research, 93% of young entrepreneurs believe in the need to interact with mentors who have been there and done that. They know its value. And even more striking, a study by Cabbage Inc. found 92% of small business owners credit mentors with directly improving their business's growth and survival. Did you catch that? 92%! Almost everyone who succeed has guidance from someone who's ahead of them. And if you look at failures, the absence of mentorship is often a factor. One report noted that a third of successful entrepreneurs had a mentor or support network compared to only 14% of entrepreneurs with failed businesses. Those numbers tell the story. If you learn from those who know, you dramatically increase your chances of success. So your action step right after this video, identify one person who's achieved your biggest goal. It could be a famous founder. It could be someone in your community who's a few steps ahead of you. Commit to studying their journey this week. It might mean reading a book they wrote or watching an interview they did, or even reaching out to ask them for direct advice. And don't say, "They'd never talk to me." Have you tried? Successful people often love to share advice with bold, coachable up-and-comers. Even if they don't respond, you still have their interviews, their biographies, their videos, their lessons available to you. Plug into that wisdom. Fill your mind with their experiences instead of your neighbor's doubts. When you're busy implementing a proven strategy you learned from a winner, you won't have time to worry about loser talk. Step number 2, cut out the negative noise. You must protect your mind and your environment. That means distancing yourself from the people who only bring pessimism and doubt into your life. I know this can be tough. Sometimes the biggest naysayers are your friends. They're your parents, they're your siblings, they're your colleagues. You don't necessarily need to cut them out of your life completely, though in some cases that might be a good idea, but you do need to cut off their influence on their opinions. Opinions. Stop seeking input from people who only criticize or discourage you. If you have an idea and you already know Uncle Bob is going to roll his eyes and list 10 reasons it won't work, don't ask Uncle Bob. He's not on the invite list for your dream. Not everyone deserves a seat at your table. This is a powerful rule that I follow. Don't share big dreams with small minds. It's not an insult. It's a filtering mechanism. Some people in your circle simply don't have the capacity to see see what you see, and that's okay. But you have to be wise about it. If every time you announce a new project, you are met with, "Ah, are you sure? Sounds risky. Maybe you shouldn't do that," that chips away at your confidence, and over time, it can poison your mindset. In psychology, there's a concept of social support and its effect on self-belief. Lack of support or outright negativity from those around you can literally make you feel devalued and full of self-doubt. Studies show that people who feel unsupported by their peers and family tend to experience lower self-esteem and start doubting their capabilities. So in other words, constant negativity from others can trick you into believing negative things about yourself that are not true. So what do you do if you're surrounded by naysayers? Set boundaries. Limit the exposure you have to their doubt. If it's family who mean well but always worry, you might say, Thank you for your concern, but I've got to follow "Okay, I'm on my path. I'll keep you posted on the good news." Then stop discussing your business with them. Change the subject. Seek feedback from someone more qualified instead. Remember, you do not need everyone's approval to pursue your dream. You need your approval, and you likely need a few qualified mentors or allies that we've already talked about, but you definitely don't need the peanut gallery chiming in, right? It's okay to nod, smile, and internally reject their negativity. Negativity. You don't have to argue or try to convince them. Just ignore them. As one entrepreneur bluntly put it, if someone says you don't know what you're doing, cut them out. There are plenty of supportive people out there, so don't waste time with haters. Now, that may sound harsh, but it's true. Life is too short to have dream killers in your ear 24/7. Surround yourself with those who uplift you, not pull you down. And that brings us to the flip side of this. Curate positive input. It's not enough to eliminate the— negative. You have to replace it with encouragement and belief. This might mean finding new friends or fellow entrepreneurs who get it. If you don't have anyone like that around you locally, find them online. Join a mastermind group, a startup founders forum, even the comment sections of channels like this. There are thousands of like-minded entrepreneurs out there who are also pushing ahead and fighting their own doubt. Connect with them, share your struggles and wins. The difference it makes is night and day. When you hear, "You can do this," from someone who understands the grind, it propels you forward. When you hit a wall and a fellow entrepreneur says, "Hey, keep going. I've been there," suddenly that wall doesn't seem so high. We human beings are profoundly influenced by those that we regularly interact with. There's a famous quote by Jim Rohn. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Whether or not that number 5 is exact, the principle holds. Your environment shapes you. So choose your 5, or however many, wisely. Would you rather be the average of 5 doubters who have achieved nothing, or 5 go-getters who are crushing it? The choice is yours. So make a plan. Identify the negative influences that you need to minimize and identify at least one positive influence that you can add. It could be as straightforward as spending less time in that toxic group chat and more time watching this YouTube channel or being around young entrepreneurs that inspire you or cutting out the weekly rant session with your cynical friend and instead scheduling a brainstorming call with a business buddy. These might seem like small moves, but over time, they radically change your mental atmosphere. When you normalize success and positivity around you, the naysayers' voices fade into irrelevance. They become background noise. That's easy to ignore because your foreground is filled with possibility and action. Step number 3, use naysayers as your fuel, not as feedback. Here's a little secret. The best entrepreneurs and achievers in any field don't just ignore their naysayers, they use them. They transmute that negative energy into motivation. So think about it. When someone says you can't do it, you have a choice. Let it discourage you or let it light a fire under beneath you. Choose the fire. Let their doubt become your rocket fuel. Say to yourself, all right, watch me. Not out of ego, but out of determination. One of my favorite examples of this is Michael Jordan. Early in his life, Jordan faced a huge naysayer setback. He was cut from his high school varsity basketball team as a sophomore. They told him he wasn't good enough to play basketball, effectively a naysayer telling the 15-year-old Michael Jordan, you're not varsity basketball material. That rejection devastated Jordan. He went home and he cried in his room. But then what did he do? He used it. He channeled that embarrassment and frustration into practice. Jordan woke up every morning before school to practice harder and make sure he'd never get cut again. He famously said that seeing the list without his name on it was the best thing that happened to him because it drove him to improve. By the next year, he grew taller, he trained like a beast, he made the the varsity team, and the rest is history. He became one of the greatest athletes of all time. Would that have happened if he didn't face that early doubt? Who knows? But Jordan himself credits that experience as fuel for his fire. He needed to prove that coach wrong, and in doing so, he unlocked his own greatness. You can do this on a smaller scale every day. Next time someone says you can't, take it personally, not in a wounded way, but in a motivating way. Think, I'm gonna work twice as hard and make sure their words look ridiculous. Some of the best success stories come from the desire to prove the doubters wrong. As one motivational speaker put it, the greatest revenge is massive success. You don't need to literally get revenge on anyone, but the point is to channel any anger or frustration you feel from criticism into your work. Let it drive you to be better. There's even research in psychology about this. It's related to a concept called psychologic revenge. Psychological reactance. When someone tells you that you can't do something, it often increases your desire to do exactly that thing. It triggers a defiant motivation. Oh yeah? Watch me. So use that phenomenon to your advantage. Instead of letting a "you can't" comment make you slump down, let it straighten up your spine. When you're grinding through a tough day, remember the people who said that you'd fail and allow yourself a little inner smirk push harder. They expect you to quit. Wouldn't it be fun to prove them wrong? Turn it into a game if you have to. However, there's an important caveat here. Don't make naysayers your sole focus. The goal is not to live your life to impress or prove things to negative people. That can become toxic in its own way. Rather, we're going to use their doubt as a little spark, but keep your focus on your vision and the positive reasons why you're doing this. You're not building your dream just to spite somebody else. You're You're building it because it matters deeply to you. The naysayer fuel is just a bonus boost on days when you need that extra little kick. Ultimately, the biggest fuel should be you and your belief in yourself and the impact that you wanna have on the world. But hey, if on a cold morning, remembering a critic's words gets you outta bed and into action, take it. That's turning negativity into productivity. And here's one more example, the Wright brothers. When they set out to invent the airplane, most of the world's experts and media— Opened their mouths. Openly mocked them. A well-known New York Times piece in 1903 questioned their sanity for thinking they could fly a machine heavier than air. Rather than fold and quit, the Wright brothers doubled down on their experiments on the sands of Kitty Hawk. Within months of that ridicule, they achieved the first powered flight in human history. Imagine the satisfaction and validation they felt when the world realized these crazy bicycle mechanics had have done the impossible. They proved every expert wrong. That's the power of persistence in the face of naysayers. So today's ridicule from them can become tomorrow's applause if you keep going. So the next time someone laughs at your idea, treat it as a milestone. You might be on to something truly innovative or ambitious. Wear it almost as a badge of honor. People are laughing? Good. It means I'm dreaming big. And as long as you believe and put in the work, their laughter will eventually sound like ignorance. So action step for you: write down one negative comment or one piece of advice that someone has given you that really got under your skin somehow. Then write a promise to yourself right next to it: I will show them what I'm made of by doing X. And use it as a mini contract. And whenever you're tired or you're discouraged, revisit that and let it remind you that you have something to prove. Not really to them, but to yourself. That that you won't be swayed by external doubt, that you can and will rise to the challenge. Step number 4, surround yourself with belief. Okay, we've cut out the negativity and we're using any lingering negativity as motivation. The final piece is to immerse yourself in a culture of belief. Humans are social creatures, so we can lean on each other for cues about what is possible. Deliberately build an environment physically in your environment here Mentally, that breeds confidence and growth. That means actively seeking out people and inputs that reinforce the identity that you want to have. So if you're an aspiring entrepreneur, hang around other entrepreneurs, connect with people who have that can-do spirit. When other people who are hustling, creating, solving problems, they're around you, you start absorbing that energy and that mindset. Their belief rubs off onto you. You are borrowing belief. Think about the difference. In one scenario, you spend your evening with a few friends who complain about their jobs and say that your business idea sounds too risky. And in another scenario, you spend the evening at a meetup of startup founders or on a Zoom call with a mastermind group, and everyone is sharing their tips on marketing and cheering each other's progress. That's a night and day difference. In which scenario do you think you'll leave feeling fired up versus feeling deflated, right? It's obvious. So intentionally curate your peer group. If your current friends aren't on the same wavelength as you, that's okay. You can still love them, but you might need to expand your circle. Find the people who get it. Even just one or two can make a huge difference in your life. When you hit a setback, a supportive peer will then say, "That's just a hurdle. You've got this. Here's what I tried," instead of, "I told you so. Maybe you should quit." One response moves you forward, the other one paralyzes you. Also, internally, fill your mind daily with positive educational content—podcasts, YouTube You know, good one, right? Right here. Books. Let the voices of winners be the background music of your life. It's hard for self-doubt to dominate your thoughts if every day you're listening to interviews with successful people who also struggled but made it through. You start to normalize the idea that struggle is just part of the process, not a sign that you are terrible and doomed. You hear over and over how others push past doubters. That creates mental mental resilience. It's like mental armor against the naysayers. I personally still do this myself. I surround myself with stories and examples of greatness to keep me inspired. It's like you're having a shower every day. You do it regularly to stay clean, or in this case, to keep your mindset clean from skepticism. So here's a practical tip: curate your social media for this purpose. Follow accounts that post motivational content, business tips, success stories. Mute or unfollow the people who complain or Let's break those down. Use the power of algorithms for good. Engage with content that uplifts you and educates you, and you'll soon see more of it. Soon even your scrolling can become a mini coaching session rather than a comparison trap or negativity feed. I want you to literally engineer every aspect of your life to reflect belief, not doubt. Your 5 closest contacts, your media diet, your daily routine, make them align with the new content. Confident you. And let's not forget celebrating small wins. Building belief also comes from you proving to yourself that you're making progress. Every time you hit a little milestone, no matter how small, acknowledge it. Did you launch your website? Hey, you got your first sale? Awesome. Finish a prototype? Celebrate. Share with those supportive people in your circle. Let them hype you up. This reinforces that you are on the right track and starts to drown out any remaining echoes of past naysayers. Success is the ultimate rebuttal, to doubt. Even tiny successes start constructing an identity for yourself as someone who follows through. Each win is a brick in the wall shielding you from the negative outside opinions. And over time, that wall becomes a fortress of unshakable self-belief. Remember, belief is contagious. When you carry yourself with conviction, you attract others who have it or want it. You'll notice fewer naysayers approach you because frankly, they know their pessimism and won't find that ear with you. And even if they do pipe up, it just bounces off the fortress that you've built for yourself. You'll find yourself almost pitying the naysayer because they're stuck in a negativity loop while you're out here making moves and surrounding yourself with positivity. And who knows, maybe one day one of those former naysayers will come to you for advice once they see that you are succeeding. That's a full circle moment that often happens. By then you won't even feel the need to say, "I told you so." Mm-hmm. You'll just help them if you can because you're operating from a place of confidence and generosity, not insecurity. So what are we gonna do? Create an ecosystem of encouragement around you. Life will still have ups and downs, but when you're immersed in an environment of yes, you can, you become unstoppable. You've pushed the naysayers to the sidelines and you're playing center field with a team that wants you to win. And that changes everything. Look at what we've done here. You've learned to stop giving weight to unqualified qualified opinions. You've learned to seek guidance from those with real experience. You've set boundaries against negativity and bolstered your surroundings with support and inspiration. You've turned doubts into determination. This is how you push away the naysayers, not with anger or fear, but with clarity, confidence, and action. You don't defeat naysayers by arguing with them. You defeat them by outgrowing them, by doing the very doing everything they said you couldn't do and doing it well. So now it's on you. You have everything you need to move forward despite the doubters. It might feel lonely at times, but remember, you are not actually alone. Every successful person you admire walked through a gauntlet of naysayers and obstacles. They felt what you feel— the pressure, the doubt, the temptation to quit— and they kept going. This is your turn to do the same. Your dream is Your future self is counting on you not to let it slip away because of a few negative voices. Those voices only have power if you hand it to them. So take it back, protect it, surround it with people who believe in it. And when you do get that yes, whether it's a sale, an investment, an opportunity, you'll realize all the naysaying was nothing but background noise. In fact, you might even thank them for motivating you to push harder. So go forward and build that thing they didn't want you to do. They said you couldn't. Prove them wrong, sure, but most importantly, prove yourself right. Prove that your intuition about your dream was right all along. And as you take action and gain momentum, you'll notice something. The naysayers' voices fade and your own inner voice grows stronger. And that voice says, "I can do this." That's the one that matters. And it's getting louder every day you choose to believe. You've got this. Now step up and make it happen. And congratulations, you're one video closer you're meant to be. Believe. For more incredible motivation, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there. You say you want a better life, but every day you repeat the same habits and deep down you know nothing will change if you stay the same. When something is important enough, you do it even though the odds are not in your favor. The difference between winners and everyone else