In this solo motivational video, entrepreneur James Blackwell (founder of three 7‑figure companies) shares the mindset that propelled him from a $10,000 credit‑card startup in 2015 to over $30 million in online revenue. He argues that true success requires being “unreasonable” – a disciplined, almost psycho‑obsessive alignment with one’s future self – and drowning out the comfort‑zone advice of friends and family. Blackwell introduces a “death‑bed test” inspired by Seneca’s Stoic writings and Jeff Bezos’s regret‑minimization framework, urging viewers to picture their final moments and act now to avoid the pain of lifelong regret. He recounts personal setbacks (a failed coffee shop, a panic attack, relationship sacrifices) and highlights the contrast between the short‑term pain of discipline and the eternal pain of regret, citing mentors like Grant Cardone, Jim Rohn, and Naval Ravikant. Blackwell also emphasizes that peace comes not just from wealth but from faith in Jesus Christ and from building systems that free him to work a three‑day week, travel, and generate generational wealth. He concludes with three concrete notebook prompts to help viewers define their future self, identify unfulfilled promises, and take an immediate actionable step, inviting audience engagement through comments and likes.
Chapters
The best business advice I could ever give you sounds a bit crazy. It's to be psycho, to be a little bit psycho and unreasonable. So you need to be so aligned and so hungry to become the actual person that you know you were meant to be, and that the only thing you fear is actually growing old and regretting the things that you told yourself that you could have done. Because a man's biggest regret is unfulfilled potential. So hello, ladies and gentlemen, James Blackwell here, founder of 3 7-figure companies. I started from scratch. Today is a bit different. I'm not going to be talking about sales or marketing or hiring. I'm going to be talking about the one mindset that really got me from a $10,000 credit card all the way to generating over $30 million online and why I'm at peace more now than I ever have been. So I'll be honest, it's going to be not the most comfortable advice. I want to give you it raw and to the point because it's the advice most people don't want to hear. So stick with me to the end because obviously the last part is going to be the bit that truly matters. The first part is what being unreasonable actually means. So what do I mean by that? Grant Cardone wrote a book that I read many years ago and it was like called Be Obsessed or Be Averaged. And the whole point of it was that obsession isn't a disease, it's a gift. The people who get told they're too much, too intense, too obsessed, they are the ones that actually build something and are truly successful. And he also talks about that in the 10X Rule book as well. Whatever goal you've set, it's probably too small, and whatever effort you think it'll take, multiply by 10. Think about that. Every reasonable person you are around will tell you to play it safe. They will keep that job or they will keep the business at a certain level. That's their comfort zone. And or they might use an excuse. I'll wait till the kids are older. Wait until the market picks up. Wait until you've got more savings. And it all sounds sensible. But that is the problem. Being unreasonable doesn't mean being reckless. It means being so aligned with the person you're meant to become. That the other people's opinions of what's realistic stop mattering to you. You've got to drown out your current friends and family members because it means setting goals that make them slightly uncomfortable, and you need to go for them. The last thing that you want to do is get stuck in the middle. So most people perform 7 out of 10 out of their capacity of what their potential is. And that is the worst position to be. And here's something I've learned from working with over 1,700 founders. Most people don't fail. They just never start properly and implement. They wait for the right time. And then 10 years later, they're still telling themselves next year. I know this because I nearly became one of them when I first started. My first business was actually a coffee shop when I was 21. And it ran for 2 years, but it failed. And after that, I went back actually into employment. So I actually worked in car sales at BMW and then in a recruitment agency. And I told myself I'll go again when the time was right. By the age of 28, I felt behind. I was watching people my age building things and I was still sitting in someone else's business, making someone else rich. So I went all in in 2015, $10,000 credit card, back against the wall, and that was on the line. I had a mortgage at the time with the house, and the reasonable people around me, they all played it safe. So all my friends stayed in their job with some share equity in the business. Most of them are still in that job today. But if you've got that voice in your head telling you you're meant for something more and you keep ignoring it, then that is when the regret starts. And that leads me on to the deathbed test, I call it. A man's biggest regret is unfulfilled potential. So Seneca, a great Stoic philosopher, I've read his books many times, wrote about this 2,000 years ago in The Shortness of Life. It's just a quite a short book. He said it's not that we have a short time to live, it's that we waste so much of it. 2,000 years later and people are still doing the same thing. Jeff Bezos talks about something he calls regret minimization framework. So before he left a secure, well-paid job to start Amazon, he pictured himself at 80 years old looking back and he said, will I regret not trying this? And he knew he wouldn't regret trying and failing. He'd regret never trying. So I want you to do this right now. So you might be a business owner right now, but you're at a certain level. You might only be at $10K, $20K a month, so you're struggling to break through this $100K a month barrier. You need to picture yourself on the deathbed, not thinking about the money you lost or the business that didn't work when you tried something. It's thinking about everything you knew you could have been and never went for. I call it the shoulda, woulda, couldas. The business you never started or the investment that you didn't make in team. I talk about building offshore remote teams. It's a no-brainer. That's a lot less risk capital. The trips you never took, the leveling up, the bigger house that you wanted, or the experiences that you wanted with your family, or that version of you that you kept putting off because you do not want to be on your deathbed knowing you didn't give it everything because regret will cost you way more than any risk that you're ever going to take. And I say that from Going through this journey as an entrepreneur for over a decade. Now I'm sitting here, yes, with all of the luxuries, but I am at so much more peace now. Yes, because of God and being aligned with my faith, and the fact of like I actually took the risks and got rewarded for them. The next part is look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's easy because it's not. So when I first started out my business, I was working 60-hour work weeks. There was stress, there was anxiety. Had my first panic attack back then, over a decade ago, which is crazy. I never had one since, but it was the not knowing if it was going to work. There was so much uncertainty, and it is a lonely road as an entrepreneur. So I sacrificed a relationship, I sacrificed some of my health at the time. And when I look at photos of me in years 2 and 3 in that business, I look actually way older then than I do now. And I remember going to Dampenier's Castle for 8 days. I might do a video on that if anyone's interested about that full experience and break it down. And he looked in the room and he said, 90% of you will actually split up with your partner after this, because when you go all in, not everyone around you will come with you, which was a crazy statistic, but a lot of that actually held up. But here is what Jim Rohn told me. A great mentor. I learned a lot from his books and his seminars. I used to listen to him every single morning. So he said, he said, we must all suffer from one of two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Now, the pain of discipline is short. It's the early mornings, the hard conversations, the risk, but the pain of regret will last you forever. So you have to choose which one you want. Is it the regret of not really investing in your business to take it to the next level, to take that quantum leap from being that solopreneur to actually going and generating more income for you and your family? And as I'm here now, having achieved pretty much everything I originally wanted on my dream vision board of creating an 8-figure net worth, having multiple homes around the world, everything that I wanted. I can tell you what's on the other side. All of the cars and homes, that freedom to live where I want, when I want. I've got all of that. And I'll be honest, when I was in Dubai with everything I dreamed of, I still felt that something was missing. And obviously I've led back on previous videos about my faith and leading me to God. And one of the mentors I learned, I learned from Naval Ravikant. He says desire is a contract you make with yourself. To be unhappy until you get what you want. And I have lived that. Every goal I hit, I just signed a new contract with myself of what I had to do to level up and the sacrifices I had to make to get what I wanted. But I know now I'm at way more peace than I was 5, 10 years ago when I first started out. And it's not all because of the money. The money helps for sure, for sure. But the peace comes from knowing I gave it everything as well. So I didn't leave anything on the table as such. So whatever happens from here, I'm just grateful to God and I'm at peace. I'll never lie awake wondering what if. There's still things I want to achieve in life and there's still other levels that I want to surpass. And finding my faith in Jesus Christ gave me the peace that no number in the bank account ever could. And the thing that most people don't tell you is the game never ends. you just obviously level up with the game. So once you hit the goals you set that you started in the business, and then the next step, you don't just sit on a beach and you actually have to find new goals and a new future self you want to become. So a lot of that was down to generating a certain amount of wealth for me and a certain level of freedom, building systems in all of my businesses so it's less reliant on me, so I can work a 3-day work week, still travel the world, invest in homes, and having that financial freedom as well. So for me right now, it's all about building that generational wealth, having a bigger impact on other entrepreneurs and helping my family and all of that. And what I want you to do is just grab a notebook. So what works for me is grabbing a notebook and write down 3 things. One, who is the person you're meant to become? Not who your parents want you to be or your friends who think it's realistic for you. 2, what have you told yourself that you would do but you still haven't done yet? And be honest where that gap is. And 3 is what's the one step you can take just this week, not next year, this actual week to start that forward momentum? Because you don't have to have it all figured out. You can think your way into the next version of you and the clarity becomes from doing. So be unreasonable. Be so aligned and so hungry to become that person that you know you're meant to be, that the only thing you fear is growing old. And regretting the things that you told yourself you'd do. Because most people, like I said, they don't fail. They just never start that forward motion of taking the next step in business. So drop a comment below. Tell me the one thing that you've been telling yourself you'd do. Put it out there because that is step one of making that commitment. So if you like that video, drop me a like or comment. The next video I might do might be on my experience at Dunpenyes Castle, or what would you like to learn from me next? So yeah, I'm enjoying the sun here in Marbella before I head back to the UK, and I'll catch you on the next one.
