How to stay poor (Harsh Truth)

At some point in your life, you are going to reach a crossroads. You're going to want to ascend to the next level. Maybe that means starting a new business. Maybe that means offering a new product, buying a van, getting the premises, investing in a mentorship. Whatever it is, there's going to be difficult decisions to make. And what you're naturally going to do is ask the people around you whether or not they think it's a good idea. And I'm gonna say something exceptionally controversial today. I I don't think that's a good move. And before I tell you why, let me explain a concept first. There's a term I use a lot. It's called high agency, or what I sometimes call being agentic. To be high agency means to act without permission, and I'm not talking about consent here, obviously. I'm talking about taking action before you have the level of reassurance from those around you that you think you might need. Business loves high agency people. I love high agency employees. The the ones that go out and show a strong level of initiative. They don't wait to be told, they just move. But most people have been conditioned to do the opposite, to check in, to get approval, to wait for the green light from someone else before they commit. And unless your spouse or parents are exceptionally wealthy and successful business owners who have built something that you're trying to build, I'm going to be very straight with you. I don't think their opinion is as important as you might be allowing it to be. And I know that sounds a bit fucking insane. I should ask my wife, I should ask my parents. But if they haven't done the thing you're looking to achieve, what does their opinion count for? They don't have experience in doing the thing. So think about it like this: would you ask someone for advice on how to fix a car that has never fixed a car? Like, obviously you wouldn't. So why would you ask golf advice from someone that has never picked up a golf club? So why would you ask your spouse whether you should make a certain decision around your business if they've never built one? And so here's a trap. One of two things is going to happen. The first one, you ask for advice and they love you and they're scared to see you fail, so they tell you not to do the thing. And I guess that's fair enough on some level, but at the same time, if they're showing a lack of faith in you, maybe that's indicative of your past behavior. Maybe you've started things before and not followed through. That's worth sitting on. The second one is much harder to hear and perhaps more toxic. It's actually very toxic. Humans do not like to feel inferior. And in some close relationships, people will subconsciously hold you back from making the right decisions because if it were to pay off for you, it would make them look bad. And I'm sorry for going this deep on a dog training business channel, but you will notice there are certain people around you who question your decisions. It could be a colleague, it could be a spouse, it could be a parent. Parents are actually really bad for this. Not mine, to be fair, they've been great. But I do see it constantly. Parents inherently holding their back for one of the two reasons. I hope it's the first, not the latter, but it might be the latter. And it comes down to this: we've been culturally indoctrinated to aim for mediocre. Your business teacher in school didn't have their own business. They were a teacher. Just sit on that for a second. And the people who taught your parents about life and about business and about making money and about being successful, they were also teachers. Generation after generation, we have been made to believe that aiming for mediocre is a good thing. Finish school, go to college, go to uni, get a job that pays 30, 40, 50 grand. And that's great, that's great, but that's the ceiling. And without putting my tinfoil hat on, I believe the system is designed to keep you somewhat subdued, and everyone around you comes from that same system. So when you're making choices to take leaps of faith, they are inevitably going to be averse to it because of— that's how they've been conditioned too. And once I started thinking like this, once adopted this mindset, it completely changed the trajectory of my life and how I operate, how I learn, how I work, the information I consume as well. It also affects like how much time I spend on social media, how I manage the relationships with those closest to me, and how I deal with my clients and my staff and, and everything in between. You have this moment where it clicks. You realize you've been looking at everything from the wrong angle, the complete wrong perspective, because if you've been looking at it through the perspective of people who taught you, who haven't done the thing you want to do. Again, I know this is exceptionally deep, but I think this is one of the fundamental mindsets you need to adjust if you want to go on and do something great for yourself. And I'm not saying you need to adopt this to become the next Elon Musk, but if you want to get out of the hole you're potentially in right now, working a lot and not seeing much in return, then you need to shift how you think before, how, before anything else changes. I'm sorry to go all alpha bro motivation on you, but I've seen it time and time again proven to be true, and others close to me have proven it to be true, and this is a hill I will die on. Please be very conscious. My point to summarize: be very careful who you're taking advice from. People are going to take digs at you. People are going to try and hold you back. It's super important you're very conscious of that, that you identify it and that you look through it. It could be a colleague making fun of you for doing a TikTok or social media. It could be a spouse. Example: one of my mentees recently, they went on to launch a new product or, well, a new service, and someone they knew in a professional capacity like went out of their way to take a big at them for that particular thing. I'm not going to go into the details out of like respect for their privacy. They sent him a bitchy voice note essentially, and I had to explain to my mentee that there's no other reason for that behavior other than they're attempting to hold you back because of the choices that you have made have made them feel inferior, and people just don't like to feel inferior. So just be very, very careful whose opinions you are taking on board. Anyway, just words of potential wisdom. It might not matter to you. It might matter to you. I'm not even gonna give a CTA in this video. If you found it helpful, just leave me a comment and send me a DM on Instagram or something, and hopefully this changes your perspective on things slightly. If not, no worries. I'll just catch you in the next one.