Lewis HowesYour Personal 24/7 Greatness Coach

He FAKED His Job for 2 Years…

15 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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1:09

In this segment of the YouTube interview, Brendon Burchard recounts a period of two to three years when he pretended to be a writer, frequenting cafés and mimicking the habits of successful authors while actually not producing work. His financial situation deteriorated, leading to bankruptcy and straining his relationship as he hid bills under his girlfriend’s bed. The turning point came when he forced himself into an intense 18‑day writing sprint, completing a book that instantly hit #1 on Amazon. This success snowballed into multiple best‑selling titles, a massive empire of courses, memberships, and eight annual seminars over fifteen years. Burchard concludes with a motivational insight: true breakthrough comes when you fight for someone else, not just for yourself.

Chapters

There was probably two or three years I was faking being a writer, all the famous places the writers went. I would go there and I'd order a croissant. And I look around. Everyone has laptops and they're all typing and drinking their coffee. And I was like, I'm here, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. And then I just kind of add myself. This goes on week after week, month after month. I can no longer afford my rent. I move in with my then girlfriend. She would go and work so hard every day, knowing that I was at home writing this book and I'd been faking it for several weeks. She comes in to go to bed that night, and I hadn't cleared off the bed, and that's where my bills were. And she didn't know I was going in bankruptcy. I see the woman I love sleeping under the weight of my bills. It hurt so much. I was like, you know what? I gotta get this done. So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. 18 days later, boom. Book is done. Bam. Number one on Amazon. Write another. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Six books. Number one on every list imaginable. Millions of copies. Build this huge empire of courses and memberships and eight big seminars a year all around the country for 15 years straight. And here's why. You need to find someone to fight for. If you're broke, you're fighting for survival. If you're going to break through, you're fighting for somebody else.