Get Rich Or Die Trying...

As a great poet once said, get rich or die trying. I would say over the last few years that has been a mantra that I have probably unintentionally ended up living by. Has it made me wealthier? Yes. But has it made me happier? I would argue no. So for 2026, I made an active decision that I would try something different. Instead of forecasting revenue and worrying about how much money I'm going to make, I worried about a couple of different numbers. One is lose 13 kilos, roughly 28 pounds, get to 1500 Elo in chess. Chess and stop sucking at guitar. That was my plan. It's my plan for the whole year. That's it. That's the whole thing. I'm 42 years old. I've built multiple companies to 8 figures. I have done just a bit over $100 million in revenue in my companies, and my entire strategic plan for the year was to get smaller, get slightly better at a board game, and learn to play some chords. Now, the funny thing is, this is the least amount that I have ever worked in my entire adult life, and this is the best financial year I've ever had. I spent the last few months trying to try and work out how this has actually happened because the answers were not exactly obvious. After deep diving on YouTube, I didn't really get much help. So I'm not going to tell you that the universe is rewarding me. I'm just going to give you the 5 what I would consider to be quite boring mechanical reasons that the money's gone up even though I kind of took my hands off the wheel. Number 5 is probably the hardest one for me to actually admit, but I'm going to give you a brief synopsis. All right, for quick context, this is kind of where I'm coming from. I've had multiple businesses. So I started off with gyms and then I started off with the sales agency, grew that to very large. We've had about 180 or something like that. And we got to $30 million a year in about 2, 2.5 years. And then I had also a coaching company at the same time. We got that to around $3 million a month in about 2, 2.5 years. I've done well over $100 million in revenue. I've also been a 7-figure earning sales rep. That's a great CV, right? Having multiple successful businesses, employing hundreds and hundreds of people, paying a crazy amount in tax. And over the last few years in personal income, I've probably made just a shade over $10 million. I think financially successful human being all around. But the parts about that they don't really tell you is that the enormous amount of sacrifice that you have to give. You can be a great business owner, a great husband, and a great father, but you can't be all 3 of those. And so you have to learn that there are times when you have to make a sacrifice. You see yourself over the course of time becoming a better business owner, but a worse father, and a worse husband, and a worse friend, even though you're making more money. But, you know, you have fewer and fewer people to share that with. I wouldn't say I went crazy far down that rabbit hole. I don't have a wife that hates me and kids that resent me or anything like that, and I still have friends and I I'm very lucky that I think I pulled myself back on when I was on the precipice of becoming that person because I was surrounded by a whole bunch of internet marketing douchebags and misery loves company and most of those people are absolutely fucking miserable. The trade that was being made was time with friends, family, and things that are important in life for money in the hopes and that you tell yourself that you'll have more of that time in the future, whereas like, you know, the time now we seem to trade in like tokens in order to get What we consider to be better time later, which, you know, as you get older starts to make less and less and less sense. For a long time, you sort of tell yourself that you're doing it for the family, you know what I mean? You're doing these things, but in reality, just like winning. So I think it's really, really important that you realize that, and that I realize that, and I'm just going to talk about me, is that, you know, I like winning. I probably was never chasing money, but I think like a lot of people chasing the feeling of being enough. Right? And one of the ways to score life is with money. So what made me wanna try something different? I'm a data-driven person. I like analytics. And I got to, I would say, the end of 2025. Dialer was doing well. Everything was kind of happening. I was sort of starting to, I think, get a semblance of work-life balance, but I was still definitely very much, I think, driven by the success of the business that I was running. The real data was, I hadn't picked up a guitar in years. I hadn't been to the gym consistently for maybe 4 or 5 years at that point. I've been going to the gym off and on, but never consistently. Didn't track my food. I was about 103 kilos. I'm a pretty big dude anyway, but 103 kilos is definitely— I was definitely fat or fat-ish or fat adjacent, whatever you want to call it. Being 41, fat, having money, You know, it was a bit of a trope, but I didn't want to be that guy. I also felt like I was becoming somewhat boring and one-dimensional, because the only thing that I had was work, because all I did was work. And then if I wasn't at work, I was hanging out with my family and kids on the weekend. But when I was with them, I was thinking about work. So was I really there? You know, you could kind of argue that. I wanted to set some goals and start to become a more well-rounded person, and then that meant that I had to be okay with potentially sacrificing some of the financial gains and things that I had done in work, and I was gonna have to be okay with that. Otherwise, I was gonna continue down this sort of never-ending hamster wheel of trying to get more money so you can spend more money on things that you don't really care about. There's no rock bottom to this story, I would say. Like, I was not in a particularly terrible place. I wasn't like on the verge of collapse and everything was burning down. It's just sort of like I did some math and I was like, I don't like the way that this is going. If I'm getting fatter as I get older, Um, then I'm just gonna continue to get fatter. If I'm getting less healthy, then I'm not gonna be around as long. The whole point of Dialer is to sell it, and, and I had some real introspective thoughts, like, what happens when I sell it? And I hear all these talks about people becoming absolutely fucking miserable, and I really didn't want to be that guy that had nothing else but work and then became a miserable wreck when he sells his business for $200 million, because that just seemed like a stupid outcome for everybody. And so I made a decision that I was going to start to focus on things that made me more well-rounded, made me a better person overall, more interesting, I think, and gave me some things to focus on that weren't just work. Now, I think all of this probably came around because of faith, right? I came to Jesus probably about 2 years ago now, and it made me smaller in what I would consider to be a better way. Being able to realize that You ain't shit without Jesus is a come-to-Jesus moment, right? That allows you to realize that you're given gifts, but they can be taken away, and that the things that you hold aren't really yours. And so what's the point of, you know, trying to accumulate all this wealth and all this stuff? I say the irony with a three thousand dollar fucking blanket there in front of a wall that cost me thirty thousand dollars to put up. I understand the irony of some of these things. However, realizing that without him I'm nothing. Was a profound letting go that I needed to experience in order to be able to, I think one get better at business, but also just get better at life in general. I also wanted to become closer with my family and spend more time with family, and but I realized that I would go literally insane if I didn't have goals. So here are my three goals, right? The first is to get from 103 kilos down to 90. So I started off at 103. As of shooting this, I'm about 95. 96, and I've gotten till the end of the year to to drop the full 13 kilos to get down to about 90. If Aiden wants to put a fat photo of me there, then he's he's sort of more than welcome. Right, fat me. There's there's plenty of Instagram reels around there of me being fat. What it's taught me is that you know it's been it's been humbling. It's been a little bit like humiliating, but I've spent you know the last decade of my year basically learning how to outsource and delegate finance ops hiring, and and I've got good at handling all of those particular things, and I've understood them. I sort of Learned how to delegate everything, and— but the one thing that no one can do for me, or that I can't pay somebody to do, or I can't teach someone to do, is actually get fit. So it's like 100% on me. And what I've realized is that, like, you know, when you run a business, your body isn't like— it's not a vanity project. Like, I don't particularly care if I get jacked and swole and have a 9-pack. Like, I don't really care too much about that. What I want is to be fit, healthy, and be a really good example for my daughter and for my son. My wife is a smoke show. She's super hot and she's super fit. And I want to live up to that as well so that my kids grow up thinking like, oh, moms and dads are fit. I don't just want to be another fat millionaire business owner. It's like better than being fat and broke, but obviously losing weight and getting fit and feeling so much better is just massively beneficial. Now, 1500 Elo in chess— for those of you who don't know, Elo is the rating in chess. I've been dabbling in chess for like 2 years. Chess, I think, is a super interesting thing because you never There's no luck in chess whatsoever. And I was kind of at this, like, you know, I just dabbled and I was like 700 Elo. Like, you know, better than like shit people, but like shit at chess, right? Chess is not like an intelligence thing, it's a pattern recognition thing. You have to study it, you have to understand it. And so I was like, you know what, I want to get better at chess. So I hired a chess coach. So my chess coach, he's WillTaylorChess on YouTube. He's a great YouTuber. I started watching his YouTube videos, reached out, joined his Patreon. And then got one-on-one. I even pitched him a business model that had me pay him more. I kind of came up with the idea and then he was like, that's a good idea. So I paid him more money. So I do that and I have a weekly session with him and I'm up to, I think, around 1300 now, right? So by the end of the year, if I kind of do some grinding, I can probably get up to 1500 if I sit down and study. But one of the things I really like about that is that like it really puts the onus on me and I can't have anyone else do it for me. And it is a pure skill set thing. When you lose at chess, it's because you made a mistake. When you win, it's because the other person made a mistake and you capitalized upon it. And I just think chess is an interesting game that is great for your brain, and that I can play forever because, you know, you can play that when you're 90, right? That just seemed like a really good thing that I've I've been a beginner at chess for like two years now, and I was like, okay, it's actually time to take this a little bit seriously. I would like to get to 1500 Elo, which is like you're a good chess player. You're not phenomenal, but you're good. Takes years and years and years to get phenomenal. And at 42, the chances that I could even get that high is probably low just because. your brain speed isn't there anymore. And then there comes to guitar. So now, I love guitar. I've played guitar on and off for like a very long time, but it was more like cowboy chords. And I would say like nobody is impressed with someone just kind of strumming cowboy chords. Not that I'm in it to, to be impressive. However, um, I really, really, really wanted to like have a musical outlet because, um, I, I'm very creative in business, but as I pull back from business and as I have a software company, I can't utilize all of that creativity. And so Like I don't want to start. Like I have no interest in writing or anything like that. So I was like, okay, cool. I need a creative outlet, and guitar and music gave me that outlet. Not only that, but you have to learn theory and a bunch of other things. And so it seemed like a really good, like long-term brain beneficial way of having a creative outlet that you can never finish. Like you can never finish a musical instrument, and you have to learn theory. There's a practical element. And under MRI, it basically lights up every single part of your brain simultaneously. So it's a very, very good. For overall brain health and function. And I was like, you know what, I want to rip on guitar. So I went and got myself a guitar coach. His name is Caio, right? Um, he's an absolute savage. And I joined Brandon Dion's 52-Week Guitar Player and also Andre Flood's school group. And so these are all people that have been super influential, but I meet with Caio every single week and he gives me a personalized training plan where I practice for 45 minutes to an hour every single day with a structured regime. And I do as I'm fucking told because I am a good student. When someone tells me exactly what to do, I do it because I want to get as good as them. I did the same thing with sales coaching and everything else. I just hired someone, tell me exactly what to do, and I'll do it. The results are that, you know, I've lost a good chunk of weight. I've gone from 700 to around 1300 Elo in chess, and I can now confidently improvise and solo over a number of different keys. I know a fair bit of theory. I have some very fucking cool guitars because I do have money, so I can kind of go out and buy guitars that I probably have no No, you know I'm not good enough for these guitars. I can tell you that right now, especially this one. This is a Custom Shop ESP, and it is my third child, and I'm in love with it, and we're gonna run away and get married, and there's nothing you can do about it. You're not my dad. Leave me alone. Now that's a big preamble because the funny thing about it is that, as you can see. I'm going to gym for like an like an hour a day, right? I'm studying chess for probably thirty minutes to an hour a day, and I'm doing forty-five minutes to an hour guitar guitar. And I have two kids. I also have a school community which has about twelve hundred people in it now, and it's called Fuck the Gurus, and you can join it down below for a seven day free trial. It has twenty-five coaching sessions a week. If you want to get better at sales, sales management, all that kind of stuff, go down there below, check it out. It's awesome. It's like sixty nine dollars a month, and I have a growing software business called Dialer. And my personal income in this year is the highest it's ever been. I make significantly more than when I was running Sales Sniper and 7th Level, and I was running that combined. So I was doing about $60 to $70 million a year worth of revenue between those 2, between those 2 companies, and I make more now. And that's a weird one. So it's like, how the fuck did that happen? The first one I think is that I have a lot fewer decisions to make. So the ones that I do make are significantly better. Instead of like being on meetings back to back all day. Like, I have a few. I probably have 5 to 6 set meetings every single week. And so I am rested, I am unhindered, I am unhurried, and the decisions that I have to make are important and well considered. And so, you know, it comes back to that thing like, you know, why did Steve Jobs only wear the same thing? It's to make less decisions. I have sort of by accident Have to make significantly less decisions. That's also one of the reasons why I get coaches, is because I don't have to decide what I do to get better. I have someone do it for me, and I go out there and I get better. And I have gotten way better at guitar since I started with a coach, and I've gotten way better at chess. And so, like, you know, this is the funny thing about having a coach and having someone to listen to. But also in business, I've been able to hit projection every single month. I've been able to win the school games. I've been able to grow Dialer to We're— we just hit just under $700K for the month last month, and this is a completely bootstrapped software company. And, and we're growing and growing and growing, and we're on track to beat $1 million a month by about February, which is fantastic, right? And so I'm not making many decisions when it comes to business, and so my brain is very, very clear. Reason number 2 is because my absence forces people to do things without my input. So every founder wants to build a team That sort of runs without them. But almost none of us actually create the conditions where the organization can actually have the opportunity to do that, because there's always this just stench of founder looking over everybody's shoulder. And I kind of did it by accident. So not being available has made the team step in and fill the gaps, and, and they've been waiting to do that. They're all capable, smart people. I just kept turning up and making things more difficult than what they had to be. Number 3, desperation is a repellent and being calm is magnetic. This isn't like mystical, it's not even like a negotiating position, this is just reality. People can smell it from across the table if you really need or really want them. And I'm, and I'm at a point in my life where I just don't really give a fuck. And so that is magnetic to a lot of people, even when I'm like doing big deals, because I still do all the larger deals at Dialer and stuff like that. And you know, A long sales cycle. I just closed a deal. It took like a year, year and a half to close, but that was probably 10 hours of work. Like, that's not— it's not difficult. And the fact that I am completely financially independent, I'm doing things that I enjoy every single day, and my priority is not work. If it's between my practice routine for my guitar and a meeting or a sales call, guitar wins, right? This is the season I am in. People want things they can't have, let's put it that way. Number 4 is that I stopped confusing motion with progress. You ever been to the airport and there's like those escalators? There's like the travelators, do you know what I mean? You can stand still on them and be moving faster than the people who are walking. It's sort of like a, you know, a duck under the water. They're doing these ones, but they're cool and calm on top, right? I think I've realized how to casually stroll whilst on a travelator. I used to have this frenetic motion about me where I was uncomfortable if I wasn't working, because one, I identified as someone who worked hard, and so I felt like I was being lazy, and I felt like I was letting everybody down if I was not working for 18 hours a day. And so I found shit to do. Some of it was productive, most of it was retarded. And so I think over the last year, what I've figured out is that it's okay to be calm and still and quiet, especially when you're the person in charge. If you're making the decisions for your family, you need to have a calmness about you, and it's okay to be still. I remember I used to train this guy. He was the the the when I was a PT, he was the head of a bank, and I remember I came down after I finished training him one day, and he was sitting there kind of reading the paper in the park, and I was like, "Oh, big boss man does his work." And he goes, mate, they don't pay me to be busy. He goes, how is my staff gonna get help from me if I'm always back-to-back in meetings? And I was like, well, that's a good point. I think I just called him a pussy, uh, because I was like 20-something and a retard. If the weather's really bad on the ship and you look up and the captain is just stoically still and calm, then everybody will be calm. You can't do that if you're on meetings back-to-back being frenetic and being crazy all the time. People can't get a hold of you. And so all the things that I do in the business are required And I stay out of people's way, and I only do the things that I'm best at that I have to do. So like in Dialer, I run the marketing and I run the sales. I don't do the sales, but I run the sales. And most of that's done by Frankie because he's been doing it for a while and he's more than capable. And then I do all the marketing strategy, and we have button clickers to click the buttons, and I trust them too. And so I've stopped getting in everybody's way and just realized that like I can be calm and still And I can be of service to people like when they need me. And number 5 is like a culmination of all those things. And this one took me a while to like actually like come to realize and say out loud. The compounding factors were already there. Like the business was built. We have good people, good systems, real momentum, and they just don't need me. It's one of those things like we become entrepreneurs because we're You know, like, we are striving for more, and we— I'm allergic to having a boss, and we think that we're this, like, visionary that's required. But, like, in reality, like, a lot of what you do once the business is running, you're actually just interfering, and you are the bottleneck. And when you can realize that and you can take a step back and go, like, all of these people here are better than me at what they do, I can do every job, which is the unique part about me, right? Obviously I can't dev, but I can do the sales, the marketing, the ops, the CS, all that kind of stuff. I can do all of that. Um, but like, all those people do that better individually, and if I need to step in and help, I will. But like, you know, the reality is a lot of the time we're just getting in the way. I don't want to be dishonest in this video. This worked for me because I've already done the You're not gonna be able to cut your work hours by 80%, start playing guitar, and make more money. Like, that's not a reality for most of you. I had the team, I had the companies, I've done the 18 hours a day, and I've done a lot of years of grinding it out. Like, if you're 24 with an idea, no business, no revenue, and you're like, you know what, Matt said that I can just play guitar and get rich, like, don't be a retard. The reality is that I spent years and years and years of my life trying to make more and more and more money, and I was not I was not happier. In fact, I would say there were times in which I was significantly less happy than when I was broke. So that doesn't mean that I choose being poor over being wealthy, because I am a wealthy person. I'm doing this thing about how money doesn't matter in a house that's worth $6 million. Yeah, I mean, with $30,000 worth of guitar behind me. Like, I understand that there's an irony to not having done the work. But what I do want to say is that you have to understand what it is you're chasing. I'm someone that without goals and without all that kind of stuff, I will go properly insane. But through realizing that family is more important, that faith is more important, and that like we are all limited in some sort of way, and that like there is a life after work— all work and no play makes you miserable, right? Um, but I think it's interesting that when you actually step back and, and you start to focus on being a well-rounded person, that you are still able to make good money, great money, whatever money, as long as you have those foundational skills in place. And so don't go chasing the watches, don't chase the luxury cars. Chase the skill sets for sure, but then once you attain them, Work hard, put your head down, put yourself in a position to where you can start to slow the work down and you can start to focus on being a well-rounded person. And I truly believe that once you hit that point, you can make the same money without having to kill yourself. So I don't know if this is helpful, but it was cathartic for me. So like, subscribe, hit notification bell, all that kind of good stuff, and I'll see you on the next video.