Joe DownsCEO & Co-Founder, Belrose Storage Group. Founder, Storage Moguls.

Become Who YOU Want to Become NOW

27 Jul 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:05

In this motivational monologue, the speaker tells the story of 17‑year‑old YouTuber David Perleschi, who, instead of studying for a test, recorded four videos that would be released at 6‑month, 1‑year, 5‑year, and 10‑year intervals. In each video he publicly declared the person he intended to become, outlining concrete goals and aspirations. By publishing these commitments, he "burned the ships"—a metaphor for eliminating the option to retreat—forcing himself to act toward his future self. The speaker uses this anecdote to challenge listeners to consider who they want to be in five years and what actions they must take today to ensure that future self becomes reality. The talk emphasizes future‑self visualization, public commitment, and immediate, purposeful action as keys to personal transformation.

Chapters

So you probably don't know this if you, if you didn't read the book, but he became famous because as a 17-year-old, and by the way, this is only a little over 10 years ago, he's like 27 and change now. He recorded 4 videos one night instead of studying for a test. Now he already had a following of 8,000 people on YouTube that watched him as he was a gamer. And this night he recorded 4 videos and those 4 videos were to be released into the future. One at a 6-month interval, one at 1 year, one at 5 years, one at 10 years. And in those videos, he described who he expected to be at those intervals. And a little bit was, I hope this, I hope that, but it was a lot of, I'm going to be doing this and I'm going to be doing that. And it was very introspective and very philosophical. It was very interesting for a 17-year-old to do. And in effect, what he did, David, was he burned the ships, right? He was Cortés in that moment because he released them publicly. So who is David Perleschi in 5 years? What is he doing? Where is he? How is— what is his life like? And what are you doing today to make sure if you got in that time machine, that's what you would see?