The Copycat Trap - Why Copying Rich People WON'T Make You Rich. Do This Instead

Most people think that if they just copy what rich people do, the same habits, same routine, same schedules, that they will become rich too. But here's the hidden truth that rich people will never tell you. You need to copy the source and not the surface, because this is the thing that will make you rich. And that's what I call the copycat trap. And so how do I know it's a trap? Because millions of people copy rich people every single day, yet you don't get millions of millionaires created every single day. And so in this video here, I'm gonna show you why copying rich people won't make you rich, but what you need to copy instead if you wanna escape the rat race. Because this isn't about habits, it's about standards. The first thing I wanna discuss is money is a standard. Nothing more, nothing less. And I'll give you a real-life example of this. Think about it this way. I want you to think about your current weight. How many pounds do you weigh? How many kilos do you weigh? And really think about that number. But then I also now want you to think about what's the maximum you've ever weighed in your life. Now, for example, my weight right now is about 75 kilos, which is around about 160 pounds. And this is the most I've ever weighed, but because I've been putting on a lot of lean muscle mass. But in my mind, the maximum I would ever allow myself to get to is 78 kilos. Because I have a thermostat in my mind that says if I go above 78, I'm gonna feel disgusted. I also have a minimum that I'll ever allow myself to get down to, and the minimum is 71, because I know that under 71 kilos, I have a thermostat in my mind that says I'm too scrawny, I feel disgusted. So my range is between 71 to 78, and right now I'm at 75. And you too also have a thermostat, whether you weigh 80 kilos, 50 kilos, 60 kilos, 100 kilos, 200 pounds, 150 pounds, whatever the weight you are right now, you also have an unconscious thermostat where this is the max you will allow yourself to get to before you feel disgusted, or this is the minimum you will ever allow yourself to get to before you feel disgusted. Think about it. If you're the heaviest you've ever weighed right now, why aren't you heavier? Or in the past, if you used to be, say, 200 pounds or 110 kilos, why didn't you get to 250? Why didn't you get to 300? Why didn't you get to 400? Because you have a thermostat in your mind that says, that number makes me feel disgusted. That number I'll never get past. And you set a standard in your mind that that's the most or the least that I'll ever let myself get down to. That's what I call your weight standard. And you set that for yourself. No one else. And this is what I mean when I say that money is a standard, nothing more, nothing less, because you too have a standard unconsciously of how much you're willing to make before you say, oh my gosh, too much fear of success, people are going to judge me, the tall poppy syndrome. And you know unconsciously that if you get to that much, you may lose some friends, or things may change, or people may judge you, or maybe you'll lose some relationships. But you also have a minimum that says, you know, no way am I ever going to go to that low or that level of per hour. So for example, when I was an optometrist, I used to be an optometrist for 10 years. I was making $120,000 a year, which is okay income for, you know, a health professional. It's not terrible, it's not great. These days, if you're earning $120,000 and you live in Sydney, it's definitely not enough, especially when you have 3 kids. And so For me, when I used to find work and someone put an offer in, oh yep, you know, you can work for us for $110,000. I would consider that. Even $105,000 I'd consider, but when someone said, yep, we're only gonna pay you $94,000, I'd be like, no way. No way when I used to be earning $120,000 that I'm gonna accept a job for $94,000, 'cause I had a standard in my mind of what's the minimum I'm willing to earn. So I want you to think about what are you earning right now It may be $60,000, it may be $100,000, it may be $250,000, but if you left your job and worked for someone else in the same industry, same job, there's a minimum that you're willing to accept. This is what I mean when I say money's a standard. But there's also a maximum too. You may think, oh my gosh, if someone offered me $1 million, I'm gonna take it. But the only reason why you're not going for it is because there may be unconscious fear of if I take it, then what does it mean about my life? What does it mean about my relationship? Who's gonna judge me? Is it a scam? All these things will happen. And so you also have a standard for the maximum that you're currently earning because what you're earning right now is exactly like the weight that you are right now. It is a standard that you set for yourself. And what determines that standard? Write this down. If there's one thing that you got away from this video, it is this. It's who you spend time with. Your expectations of how much you earn or how much you weigh or everything in your life is dictated by this invisible force which I call the 8th wonder, which is who you spend time with. Think about it. Why is my standard about 75 kilos and the max is 78? Because all of my friends are around that weight. Why is my standard at 7 figures or more earning every single year? Because all of my friends are at that weight. Now last year we were very fortunate enough to finally crack 8 figures in our coaching business cash collected. That's over $10 million cash collected in our business. This is all verified by Stripe. You can check out my YouTube channel And I verify it. Now, why did that happen? Because last year I decided that my top 5 in my peer group will only be 8 and 9-figure earners. And guess what happened? Because I was only spending time with 8 and 9-figure earners, that became the standard. So this leads me to the very first principle of the copycat trap is that you must, you must, you must, you must, you must spend time with the right people. Who, where if you said to them and you shared with them that I make $100,000 a year, you will feel judged. I call this reverse judgment. If you want to break through of the rat race and become wealthy and rich and make $1 million a year or $10 million a year or even $500,000 a year, you need to start spending time with people who are making that much. And so what you don't see that successful people do is who they spend time with. You may see that they're doing this marketing, they're building their brand, they're doing these YouTube videos. You may see what they're promoting online. You may see, you may see the front end, but you don't see their social circle. You don't often see who they're having dinner with. You don't see who they're talking on the phone with. You don't see who they're texting every single day. You don't see who's going in their inbox. You don't see those things. That's The hidden source. And if you want to copy successful people and copy rich people, copy who they spend time with. But that's something you need to figure out for yourself and understand that the most important force in your life that dictates everything in your life— tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you your future— is who you spend time with. And you need to be in a room where you feel judged, that you're earning the smallest amount. So for example, with my peer group right now. I spend a lot of time, a lot of time with Russell Brunson, who's making over 9 figures a year, and Myron Golden, who makes about $20 million a year. And then most of my entrepreneurial friends are making high 7 figures, like $7, $8, $9, $10 million. And then a lot of them making over $10 million a year. And that became my peer group. And if I was to share with them— and this was before I hit $10 million— When I used to share with, oh yeah, I, I made $300,000 this month, or I only made $4 million this year, I would feel embarrassed because all of them are making so much. And so you need to be in a group where you have reverse judgment, where you feel embarrassed of how much you earn. Not that they're judging you, but you feel embarrassed. This is going to allow you to level up your standards. Which is your financial set point. And when you're in the room where you feel embarrassed like that, you become the smallest fish in the big pond. And most people are the biggest fish in their pond, where if they say, yep, I earned $250K a year, and they feel proud about it because their peers are earning $150K, that's not the right way to think, and that's not the way you increase your standards. You need to put yourself in a room where you have reverse judgment, where you feel embarrassed that saying $250,000 is, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm saying that. I feel terrible. I feel embarrassed." So that's principle number 1: model P group. Model P group so that you get reverse judgment, so that you feel embarrassed saying how much you earn, and that you raise your standard and your financial set point. Here's the second principle of the copycat trap. The menu is not the meal. I'll say it again, the menu is not the meal. When you go into a restaurant, you have a menu. Sometimes they have pictures, sometimes they have descriptions, they have the price there, and you order it. And then 10-15 minutes later, the meal comes out. If the menu was the meal, then you'd be eating the menu. So what does this mean? Cold showers are not the meal. Journaling is not the meal. Waking up at 5 AM is not the meal. Affirmations are not the meal. People think, "If I copy the menu, I'll have the same meal." No! What creates the meal is the chef, is the ingredients, is the recipe. The menu is not the meal. People think, "If I have cold showers, like successful people do, then I'll be successful. No, because cold showers is not the meal. If I journal and I do my morning routines and if I wake up at 5 AM and beat the sun every single day, then I'll be successful. No, because the journaling and the waking up at 5 AM is the menu, it's not the meal. What does this mean? It means that if you want to create a great meal, you need to model the chef. What are they doing? What are they putting in? You need to be in the kitchen, not modeling what's actually on the menu. And so the reason why cold showers work for some people and they don't work for the vast majority is because they're trying to copy the menu and not the meal. I'll give you a real classic example. I've been doing cold showers every day over 4,000 days straight now. Straight. That's a lot of time. Now, the reason why I do cold showers is simply because of this. It's not because— primarily, it's not because I do it because it's healthy. Yes, it is healthy, but because I want to train my mind. I want to train my mind that when I don't want to do something, or when I want to talk myself out of something, or when I feel uncomfortable, that I don't listen to my mind. I just do it anyway. That I'm in charge of my mind. And that's like that when if you have a fear of rejection or fear of being seen, if you're just starting out, if you're posting content, the fear of failing, the fear of success. Like anytime you tell yourself a story, oh my gosh, I don't want to post that, I don't want to do that tiny challenge, I don't want to do that coaching session, I don't want to do that webinar, I don't want to do that thing, I don't want to do that YouTube video because I'm scared it's going to suck, I'm scared it's not going to be great, I'm scared it's not going to be perfect, You have all these stories, but you know you need to do it to become successful. Well, you train your mind to not talk yourself out of doing the thing that needs to be done to be successful. And I know that every single time I do a cold shower, my mind is racing saying, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, it's going to be cold. Oh my gosh, especially in winter, it's going to be freezing. But I've trained my mind to not negotiate myself out of doing the things that I know that's going to be good for me. And yes, there's a lot of research now Cold showers are amazing for you. There's a lot of health benefits, but I don't do it for the health benefits. I do it because I want to train my mind to not negotiate with the things I need to do that's going to make me become successful. And so that's the meal. And so the cold shower is just one thing that you can do to represent the meal, but it's the— it's not the thing that creates the meal. So for example, For example, I know that by doing cold shower, I'm putting myself in an uncomfortable situation. But you don't have to do a cold shower to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. You can have a difficult conversation with your spouse. You can do cold calling. You can, you, you, you can post content. You can say, you know, I'm going to post content and do a Facebook Live every single day. One of my 6-figure students, Caitlin Winch, decided, I'm going to get good at Facebook Lives and and do something that's uncomfortable. And she decided to do a Facebook Live every single day for a whole year. That's 365 days straight. That's her version of cold shower, because that was something that she could do to, to really support the belief that if I'm going to say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it regardless of how I feel. And so then for her, doing the Facebook Live becomes the menu, but the meal is the same because it's overcoming the self-talk that says that I am doing this to really strengthen my mindset. And people don't realize that. They don't realize the meal is doing it because of the beliefs that you have of why it works. And people just do cold showers, they do cold journaling, they just wake up at 5 AM because they think that the habit creates the success. But it's the thinking that creates the habit. I'll say that again. The habit doesn't create success. It's the thinking that creates a habit, and it's the thinking that creates the success. And so if you want to model people, model the beliefs as to why they do the thing, because the thing is not the thing that makes them successful, it's the beliefs that make them successful. And if you model the beliefs, you can do 100 different things, but you actually support the same beliefs. Is this landing for you? And so when I say don't model what you see on the surface, model the source, model the beliefs, Let me give you a real-life example. About 7, 8 years ago, I had the privilege of getting a personal invitation to Arnold Schwarzenegger's house for a big charity— not a big charity event, it was only about 100 people there. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger, his house in Brentwood, LA. Now, to give you some context, Brentwood, LA is one of the most expensive suburbs in LA, and if you If you Google Maps all the houses there, they're all mansions. Like, you know, you can see the big pool, the driveway, everything like that. Then you got these, all these mansions everywhere. And then you see this mega mansion, which is the size of 5 or 6 other mansions next to it. And that's Arnold Schwarzenegger's house. I remember when I Google Maps his house, 'cause I had the address, I'm like, oh my gosh, I see all these mansions there. And then I see this mega mansion, that's his house. Now I had the privilege of attending a private, charity event in his house. Sylvester Stallone was there, Jason Statham was there, billionaire producers were there, the who's who was there, and I was there. And I knew that they had certain habits and I could model the service, but every conversation I had, I was asking myself, what are they believing? What are they believing? What are they— because I know that in order for me to become successful, I need to model beliefs. That's the meal. I didn't want to model the menu, I wanted to model the beliefs. And so what I would do was when I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger, when I talked to Stallone, when I talked to all these, I would literally like have my bathroom break. I go to the bathroom, pull out my phone, and I write down my notes. I literally, in my phone, I had a section that said, okay, this is what they believe, this is what they believe. And now I have a list of beliefs And that's what set my trajectory to build up a successful coaching business because I would model beliefs and those beliefs translated in action steps in me doing Facebook Lives. And I was an optometrist, I would never have the courage to go live and public speaking was my biggest fear. It allowed me to become consistent, it allowed me to overcome stepping stones of how much you charge and how you run a business and how you, how you build your team and how big you think. And so I was modeling beliefs very early on because I knew that that was the source and that the menu is not the meal, and the belief is the meal. Write this down: cold showers do not create discipline. It's the discipline that creates the cold showers. That's a big sentence. And so people think if they just do the thing, it's going to help them become disciplined. No, you need to decide to become disciplined first, and the cold showers will come. Here's the third principle of the copycat trap, is this: you need to understand the law of 11 and 12. What's the law of 11 and 12? This is where the rich live, and this is what you don't see in the surface. I'll give you an example. Now, I have been going to the gym consistently for the last 26 years, 2 to 3 times a week. I have a personal trainer. My goal is not to become a bodybuilding champion or anything. I'm very happy with my current size and my muscle mass and all that kind of stuff. And naturally, if you see pictures of me, of me 10 years ago, I'm this skinny Asian kid In fact, my bone structure is very petite, very small. I'm not meant to— like, for me to get this size is very difficult. And if you are a skinny guy, you know what I'm talking about. It's very hard for you to build muscle. And some guys build muscle very easily, not for me. But in order for me to build muscle, you don't go to the gym to do 10 reps. If you're going to the gym to do 10 reps and you're thinking reps 9 and 10 are the ones that count, it's not. It's reps 11 and 12. Reps 11 and 12 are the ones that count. Reps 11 and 12 are the ones that do all the work. Reps 11 and 12 are the ones that build all your muscle and tear things so you can heal and become bigger. And so successful people live in the world of 11 and 12, and that's what you need to model. But that's what you don't see. You just see people going to the gym doing the first couple of reps, and maybe they show you up to do a 10, but you don't see 11 and 12. You don't see the last 2. It's the last 2 reps that create all of the results, everything. And this is what people don't see, and this is what you need to copy. What does it mean if you're a beginner coach? What does it mean if you're starting out your entrepreneurial journey? It means that you can't just, you can't just copy content styles, you can't copy language, you can't copy how people do YouTube videos, you can't copy how they do the reels or write their content or what they post online or their call to actions. You can't copy their offers if you don't understand the thinking behind it. What created, what created their success or their brand is because they 10x their rejection. That's the reps 11 and 12. You don't see the amount of times successful people get nos. In actual fact, if you have to ask me how many nos I needed to get in order to get my first $100K? It's probably 100 times more than you think. How many nos did I have to get in order to get my first million? Probably 1,000 times more than you think. How many nos did I have to get to hit $10 million in 2025? It's probably 10,000 more times than you think. That's the reps 11 and 12. That's the times when you post content and you get crickets and you wonder whether you're good enough. That's a time when you get hate online and you have to resolve within yourself that what you're doing is actually good. That's a time where maybe you do a challenge or webinar or a tiny challenge and it flops and no one sees what you're feeling in the background because no one knows how bad it was. The times where you actually had to ask, ask and hustle to get on podcasts. The times where you have to ask and work your butt off to get someone to guest speak for your event. The time where you had to put out the offers and offers and offers, get discouraged again and again and again and again that no one else sees. That's living in the world of 11 and 12. The stuff that people don't see, but the stuff that makes all the difference. And in case you're wondering, if you want to 10x your results, you need to 10x the amount of times you get rejected and get nos. That's the truth of it. I'll give you a real-life story. And I say this because I came from a strict Asian background, and I'm never meant to put up my hand for help. I'm never meant to ask. I'm never meant to seek attention. Like, be a good boy. You know, I was in Mexico at Russell Brunson's mastermind event, and they had this big-name guest speaker there, and his name was Pedro Odeo, the challenge guy. And in case you don't know who he is, he helped build out Tony Robbins' challenge, Dean Graziosi's challenge, he did a challenge with Russell Brunson. He's a very well-known guy in the challenge space, and he spoke on stage for about 30 minutes, and it was mind-blowing. And there was about 600 people there, and at the end of his talk, he said, hey, I'm gonna stand back to the side, and if you guys got any questions, you can come come up and, and ask me. Straight away when he got on stage, there was a line of 100 people, and I thought, oh my goodness. But I, I knew that because I flew all the way to Mexico and there was such a rigorous process to get there because of COVID laws and all that kind of stuff, uh, I, I, I really wanted to ask him a question. I really wanted to get his attention, but I knew that if I waited in line with 100 people, there's no way I'm going to get get to be able to ask a question. And so I thought of this crazy idea that I would never do to get his attention. Because we were in Mexico at this resort, I ran back to my hotel room, which was only a couple of minutes away, and I grabbed something that I had brought to Mexico. And I came back to the hotel room and there was still 100 people lined up trying to ask him a question. And, uh, and I carried my thing and I risk rejection. I went up to Pedro and he was talking to one of the people there, and I said, I'm so sorry to interrupt, I don't mean to interrupt Pedro, I just got this thing for you, I just wanted to give this to you, say thank you, and then I walked away. And as I'm walking away, he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's this? I said, oh, I think this will really help you with challenges. He looked at it, he was like, "That's amazing. Okay." And then he wrote his number down, he wrote his email, private email down. He said, "Contact me, we need to talk." That's how I got his attention. But I had to face rejection. That was the reps 11 and 12. And so if you want to become rich and successful, you need to live in the land of 11 and 12. Do the things that people don't expect you to do. And I'll say one more thing about this too. Here's the land of 11 and 12. Consistency compounds. And so if you're discouraged of putting offers out there or posting content and getting crickets, you know that old metaphor where that guy's digging for gold and he's so close and the gold's just behind there and he gives up and turns around without realizing if he just dug for another minute or dug for another day or another week, he would have got the gold? That metaphor there That's like that consistency compounds. People don't realize that all the gold is at the end. And so in 9 years of doing this, I've never missed a post on social media. I only post 3 times a week and I've never missed a post. But the reason why, the reason why we've been able to monetize a very small list is because I've been consistent for 9 years. The reason why we've hit 8 figures last year is I've been consistent for 9 years, and it's the consistency that compounds. And that's living in the world of 11 and 12, and that's what you need to model. If this has been useful, just let me know in the comments what have you found most valuable. I want to end with this final principle here: you need to stop asking what rich people are doing and start asking what problems do they solve And more importantly, what do they believe? Because when you model beliefs, you model identity, and that identity is what will make you rich. So if you're stuck right now, it's not because you're lazy, it's not because you're adverse to working hard. In fact, if you're watching this video, it tells me you're committed and you are a hard worker and you really want to better your life. It's because you've been copying the wrong layer of success. Escape the copycat trap. Stop copying rich people and start thinking like one. Ladies and gentlemen, keep believing and never settle.