Key Principles for Achieving Success

I'm going to share with you the 21 principles of success. These principles are what make the top 0.01% of people successful. Some of these principles are what I've used to make my first million dollars at 27 years old, and others are from what I've observed rubbing shoulders with some of the richest people you know. Now, I do attribute a lot of success in life to luck or grace of God and timing, but there are principles you can implement every day to fast track this luck and attract wealth into your life. So without further explaining it, These are the principles of success. The first principle is to be misunderstood. The other day I was talking to one of my clients and he said, my wife doesn't support my growth. And he got frustrated that every time he'd do something to try to grow, his wife said something. He felt like she didn't support his growth. And my feedback was very simple. The people closest to you are sometimes too close to see your own greatness. And the reason why is because they know you the best and they've seen you try and fail and say you're going to do something and don't follow through. They're literally the people that have seen you at your worst. And now you're trying to grow and expand and you're upset that they don't support your growth. Jeff Bezos said it best. If you want to be successful, you have to go long periods of time being misunderstood. And the reason why is because if you know something, very few people know. and you're trying to demonstrate progress and success, you'll go a long period of time not being successful, not showing that you know how to do that and expecting other people to see what you see inside your mind is not gonna work. So here's my big philosophy. This is what I explain to my clients. No one needs to change for you to win. Nobody. Sure, it'd be easier. It would feel better. It wouldn't feel so lonely sometimes, but nobody else has to do anything for me to win. That is my philosophy and my invitation to you. So don't expect them to understand. And the other thing is like not being understood. That's weird. Guess what's weird? Rich. People that are weird are actually richer. Why? Because they're doing things that other people would never do. That's why they're weird. They're the people that wear the same clothes every day. They're the people that drive around and do the things they want to do. They don't mind being clear about what they want. Some people are like, man, you're too much. Man, if I'm too much, go find less. And people don't understand this, but to have a life that other people want, it means you have to be extraordinary. Ordinary. It means you have to be extra. And being extra will mean you're going to be misunderstood. So you do you, because it's what you've always loved about every celebrity out there. The people you admire, what you love about them is they are authentically them. This is who they are. This is how they want to live. And because they've allowed themselves to do that, you admire them. Why don't you take a cue from how they're living and go be that person? Which brings us to our second principle, which is to ask better questions. Anytime I'm coaching a business owner or CEO, I always like to ask this one question. If somebody bought your business tomorrow that knew your industry, what's the first thing they would change? Most people can immediately go to that. They're like, well, they probably do this, this, and this. My follow-up is, why haven't you made that decision yet? See, most people know what they need to change, but they all have these backstories for why they haven't made that decision. So I just like using questions to give people the clarity of where they should focus their time and attention. You know, if you ask a better question, you'll live a better life. So for example, my one, three, one rule, it's a very simple premise. What's the one problem you're dealing with? What are the three options you evaluated? And what's the one recommendation that you have for your life? I can use that framework to have anybody reporting to me, make decisions on my behalf, and 98% of the time, they're awesome. Another question I love to ask people is what are you pretending not to know? I had a friend the other day and he was building out a sales team and he hired a VA in the Philippines for 1500 bucks a month, plus 4% of the sales commission. And this is interesting because this is a person that knows how to grow a business. But for some reason he decided I'm going to go hire somebody in another part of the world, paying them very little and only 4% of the sales. For what? So that you don't get sales? When it didn't work out and he asked me what was going on, I said, dude, hire a killer. Go find somebody that actually knows how to sell. Give them 20% of the sale and get back to building the business. I said, truthfully, what are you pretending not to know? He's like, you're right. I knew better. I know. Stop doing that. A lot of people think if this is true, this is true, this is true, then I'll do the business. Whereas that person, every other time they've had success in their life, know that it doesn't work that way. And I always ask them, what are you pretending not to know? One of my favorite questions I ask myself, it's the primary question every day, dozens of times a day. Anytime I'm frustrated or I'm angry or I'm upset a little bit, I always go back to this question to help give me clarity and focus. How can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment? Every time I ask myself that question, I don't know why, but I take a deep breath in. I look around and I get super appreciative. Gratitude fills me up for the fact that I'm here. I'm shooting this video for you. I'm having a conversation. I get to connect with you guys in the comments. I get to meet people out that have seen my work. I get a chance to reflect on that and understand that it's all part of this beautiful world we live in. The technology that enables this, that's where I go with that question. But think about it. Power of question. See, what questions do is they focus our mind. Questions cut through all the noise and give us clarity of what we need to do next. I love asking my team questions to help guide them. because telling them means I always gotta tell them. If I ask them a question that gives them clarity and direction, then they can ask themselves the exact same question when I'm not around. So my philosophy is very simple. A problem well-defined is a problem half solved. And if you ask the right question, you'll get to the defined problem. The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot winning questions. I think a lot of people don't realize that our lives are dictated by the questions we continue to ask ourselves. Am I enough? Am I doing the right thing? Am I successful enough? Literally the question is to find their life, but they don't actually go and research other questions that could help them come up with better answers. And that's why this is such a powerful principle. Which brings us to the third principle, which is to be resourceful. In all my companies, I have this thing called the 50 to fix it. It's kind of cool principle. It's 50 to fix it if you're just a frontline worker, 500 if you're a leader, 5,000 if you're a manager, and 50,000 if you're an executive. But essentially, I've given a budget. I've empowered people to be resourceful, to solve problems. Why would I be the only person that can solve problems in an organization? That's really slow. I believe it's not the people that have a title or have a lot of money that are successful. It's the people that are resourceful. They find opportunities to do things. Even when everybody else doesn't believe that there's a path forward, they get resourceful. Think about Elon Musk, okay? He said, my mission is to colonize Mars. He believes being a multi-planetary species is a smart move. Now, to actually go to Mars, it's gonna cost a bazillion dollars. So where does he find the money? Starlink. See, most people don't realize that the telecommunications space on planet- earth that market is huge it might be a couple trillion dollars so what does he do he comes up with some innovation to send satellites into space so that he can connect the whole world and eventually skipping over all the telcos isn't that crazy most people don't realize this he's funding his mission to mars through starlink he's essentially gonna colonize mars through the money he makes from starlink that is resourceful right when i was building my company flowtown we had to pivot the whole product Essentially, we found out one day our product only had two months to live because they were changing an API for the way it worked. And we were working with third party data and it became an issue. Did we fail? No. I called up my co-founder, Ethan. I said, hey, dude, let's go to the office. Let's try to figure it out. Let's be resourceful. I don't know the answer today. I don't know the path forward. I just know a process for winning. And that is deciding there is a path and eventually just execute a plan of discovery and search for a solution till we find it. Once we got it, we go all in. So my question to you is, is in what you're doing, is there any sawdust? Is there opportunity? It could even be like the by-product of what you're doing where there might be some other opportunities right there, some sawdust in your life that you could take advantage to actually move things forward. Can you tap into it? Can you be resourceful? See, most people, unfortunately, they pretend they don't have the resources. They sell themselves on this story of not. enough. Like I would love to do that, but I'm not that person. I'd love to do this, but I don't have that kind of money. Nobody said you needed the money. Have you even asked, is there another way? Have you ever reached out to people and said, Hey, I don't have the money today, but is there a different way that I might be able to add value to, I could be able to go on that thing or join that community or drive that car. You never know. Like I'm always fascinated by people that just decide, Hey, I know on the surface, it doesn't look like this will work for me. but I'm so determined to end up in this outcome that I would do anything to make it happen. And I just wanted to call and just find out what would need to be true for me to make that happen. That is resourcefulness. I remember one guy wanted to coach with me and he couldn't afford it, couldn't afford my fees, but he reached out and he looked at my YouTube videos. This was about seven, eight years ago. And he went through all my videos and he sent me a Google doc with all of the tweaks, all the last dozen videos. When I got that Google doc and the depth of attention and energy he put into it, I immediately reached back out, asked him for a cell number, got on a phone with him and found a way to work with the guy. I mean, here's somebody that demonstrated his value ahead of time, even though we didn't need it. And I was just like so grateful. I was just like, man, I will do that. That is resourceful. Most people think, oh, don't have the money. Job's not there. Can't get it. No, no, no, no, no. Don't be that person. Decide what needs to be true for me to get this opportunity. Which brings us to number four, which is give to get. When I was 17, I ended up in rehab. I was hanging around with the wrong people, doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. And I ended up a drug addict. And I went through this 11-month program, this place called Portage. And it literally saved me. my life. I was not going to continue walking on this earth prior to going to this place. I just didn't have any self-worth and it helped me really understand my value and the best part is helped me rebuild the relationship that I'd broken with my family. And one of the biggest ideas that I got from being in rehab is this philosophy that if you want to keep your sobriety, you get to help other people stay sober. It's such a simple idea. The more you help other people achieve something, the more you'll have it for yourself. And it's one of kind of the 12 steps, the whole idea of being a mentor to somebody else, being somebody else's sponsor. And I think that philosophy, when I look at all the most successful people in my life, people I look up to, my mentors, my coaches, these are people that have a desire to help other people in a way that very few understand. A long time ago, I realized you receive what you desire for others. Think about that. If you want to be rich, you should desire other people to get rich. If you want to be healthy, you should desire the people to get healthy. and you can only keep what you give away. So if you want more love, don't wish. Why don't people love me more? I'm actually gonna tell you, go give more love. If you're like, hey, why don't I have more opportunity? How much opportunity have you given somebody else lately? When's the last time you took a shot on a random person? Do you understand that? It's the law of reciprocity. In many ways, because you don't have this approach that's more giving, you're hoarding back opportunity on yourself. That bad behavior, that bad belief, that friction you're creating for other people, it's coming back to you. You don't even see it. See, the law of reciprocity, it allows us to receive in proportion to what we give or do for others. Think about that. If we want more, we have to give more, which makes it really hard for people to understand that don't have a lot because they're like, I have no money. How do I give money to get money? It's not about the money. The scripture makes it clear. We receive the same thing we give, such as mercy, tithing. 10% of our money. I would actually go further. It's not 10% of our money. It's also time, right? It can be money or time. See, I think there's a big opportunity that if you want to show abundance, show up with your time, help other people that are in need. If you want to get in the best shape of your life, why don't you go help two or three other people, your friends get in the best shape of your life, go to the gym, be kind to other people. Guess what's going to come back? Kindness. It is this beautiful concept. Now you should never do it to get because then it's very transactional. But I think it's just this belief, this principle that if you can get behind, it'll serve you in the biggest ways. Which brings us to number five, which is to have extreme ownership. During COVID, I was training for an Ironman. And because of all the things that went on in the world, which makes total sense, our race got canceled. And in that moment, after training a year and a half, I had to make a decision. Do I accept that the race got canceled and I just put off maybe a year or two years? Or Do I focus on what I can control, what I call controlling the controllables, and really focus on how I responded to that situation? And after reviewing our options and consideration, we decided to race. And we kept training. And six months later, we ran our own unofficial Ironman. We called it Corona Man. And that race became the cornerstone of my Ironman career. For the next few years, not only did I do a half, I ended up doing a full. Then I did another couple halves. Then I ended up doing... an official half and an official full at Mont-Tremblant Ironman. And I look back at this moment where I could have decided to not continue training, not race our own race. And in that moment, I wouldn't have taken extreme ownership for that situation. And what I share with people is that it's not about what happens to you, it's how you respond. See, it sounds crazy, but even if you're walking down the street and a car just happened to jump over the curve and hit you and then run off, Obviously, let's assume everybody's healthy and safe and all that stuff. What I would ask myself is, how did I contribute to this situation? I know this is so hard for people. Some of you guys want to blame everybody else in the world for how your life looks, and I'm telling you, you can do that, or you can be 100% accountable for your situation. For example, why was I walking on that sidewalk in that moment? Why didn't I stay home? Why didn't I take a car? Why didn't I take a different path? Like, even though I have no control over somebody else hitting me, I do have control over how I respond. Even if it's in a breakup, in that moment, you can blame them. They did this. This happened. It's not my fault. I can't believe they did this to me. Or you could say, how did I contribute to this situation? You pick them. You might have accepted some red flags. You might have allowed them to say or do things that in hindsight, you probably should have put your foot down. But you didn't. And I think what's powerful about that is that you then take control back to the situation. You bring power back to you. You control the controllables. Then you hold the power. See, I don't want anybody else to control my situation. I don't want the government to control it. I don't want another person to control it. I don't want the bank to control it. I want to say, hey, I'm accountable 110% for my situation I'm in today. day. One of my biggest philosophies in life is that the world will show me where I'm not free. Anytime I feel something and I go against that or I get upset, you know, I just don't feel like that's right or somebody did something wrong. I always ask myself like, well, how did I create that situation? I know it's a big one, but extreme ownership is probably one of the most powerful ways for you to take control of your life and not give the power to somebody else. Which brings us to number six, which is learn, do, teach. See, I have this overarching philosophy in my life, which is I believe everyone is here to become the person God made you in his image. You know, if you have a higher power, higher faith, you have a future you. Let's call it the 10.0 version of you that you have the potential to become. You know who that person is because it's like take all the best moments you've ever shown up in a day. Most courageous, empathetic, direct, driven. And you put them all together. What if you could live like that all the time? That's part one of this. Second part of this is that share that process with the world. Share what's worked with you with the world. That's where learn, do, teach comes from. See, I think that if you learn something that makes your life better, that helps you overcome something in the past, then it's your responsibility to share it with other people. My philosophy is that if you've made it to the top, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down. If you don't share what's worked for you, I consider that incredibly selfish. Think about this. If you want more abundance in your life, then you should have an abundance mindset. Don't have an abundance blocker. If something's worked for you, don't gatekeep. It was like, well, what if I share my secret plan? Your plan ain't that secret. You learned it. There's probably a hundred thousand other people that know it. And if you think that's the thing that's going to stop you from winning because somebody else won, that is a scarcity mindset. You know, but what if I share it and people don't like it? You know, they say, I'm scared of what other people think. This is way bigger than you. This is an opportunity for you to shine your light, to not only help the people that you were once like, but even more importantly, to have the people that are looking for you to find you. So I think a lot of people are being quiet because they don't want the responsibility of shepherding, helping, coaching, guiding somebody else. But the truth is, is I don't want you to let your insecurities rob you of helping the world. A lot of people, their world is their kids, their community, their CrossFit gym, maybe their city. And they're like, that's about as far as I'm going. I don't wanna share with the world. You know, I was saying this to Alan, my coach the other day. I was in his gym and I was like, hey, man, why aren't you posting more? Why aren't you sharing more? The guy has the body of a superhero. He's 250 pounds lean and he looks the part. And I was like, you're not even sharing on Facebook, on Instagram, you're not sharing anything. And he's like, ah, it's just not my thing. And I looked around the gym and there was pictures of all the greats on his wall, like literally their physiques, their poses on all the walls. And I said, what if? All these people had that same mentality. Are these people that inspired you? Yeah, they inspire me. Arnold, et cetera. Yeah, these people inspired me to become who I am. What if they never allowed another person to take a picture of them? Where would you be? I could tell in that moment, he got it. This isn't about him. It's his opportunity to help the people that are in his position where he was when he first discovered their physique. Isn't that cool that we live in a world and that's kind of our purpose, all of us? I can tell you from personal experience, your life will feel full of the- fulfillment when you start shifting to learn, do, and teach other people. Which brings us to number seven, which is to invest in your priorities. See, there's this incredible book called High Performance Habits by Brendan Bouchard. It's the book I recommend to my high performers. And his whole philosophy is helping people obviously understand where they want to go and what they want to achieve, but then really understand how to invest in developing the skills, acquiring the resources, the network, or whatever you need. to accomplish those outcomes. See, a long time ago, I learned if I wanna achieve anything, I could ask myself two questions. Where in my calendar is there time dedicated to that goal? And where in my bank account can I see transactions investing in that goal? To your calendar and bank account, tell me what's important to you. So if you say my family and my health is important, then show me in your bank account and in your calendar where you've invested in it. Show me that you've blocked the time out and you've been deliberate about what you're gonna do with that time. See, money and time is a clear indication of what's important to you because what you invest in grows. A lot of people believe the grass is greenest in the other yard. I believe the grass is greenest where it's watered and fertilized. Which brings us to number eight, which is to ask for bigger problems. I know you're like, what? Why would I want bigger problems? Here's my philosophy. If we want a bigger life, we have to have bigger problems. One time Oprah was getting sued for a billion dollars. The mad cow industry was mad at something she said about the meat quality or something like that. And somebody asked her like, oh my gosh, Oprah, aren't you upset that you're getting sued for a billion dollars? And her response was actually, I'm grateful to be sued for a billion dollars because it means I'm the kind of person that has a billion dollars. So my question to you is, are you grateful for your problems? Because the The bigger the problem, the bigger the life. You don't have $10 million problems in your life if you're still trying to make your first 100 grand. Would you rather be a gardener in a war or a warrior in a garden, right? Would you want to become the person who can deal with bigger issues or always play a small life? The easy path today makes for the hard path tomorrow. See, most people are always looking for easy. They're like, if I had the money, if I won the lottery, I would just go on vacation and I would live on a beach and I'd call it a day. It's actually because of that, that those things will never come to you because you're not preparing to receive. You're saying, I don't want challenges. I don't want hardship. I want things to be easy. The challenge is that anything you want in life, it will challenge you because in the challenges where you develop and grow. It's kind of crazy, but understand this. The reason it's a challenge for you and not for somebody else is because the other person has grown past it. See, some of you guys can't even manage $100,000. I'll tell you, because you can't do that, you ain't going to be given a million. A long time ago, Jim Rohn said, you better hope nobody gives you a million dollars until you become a millionaire because getting a million dollars is not the same as becoming a millionaire. A millionaire knows how to create a million dollars. He also said something I loved. He says, don't wish life was easier. Wish you were better. Don't wish for easy opportunities. Wish for the skill to overcome any opportunity. You should be grateful for bigger problems. You should seek bigger problems because bigger problems equals bigger life. Which brings us to number nine, which is everything is a blessing or a lesson. When I was 18, I started my first company. I worked my butt off. I went all in. I worked hard. And even after all of that effort, a year and a half of focus and energy and trying to build this and figuring it all out, I got my butt kicked. Somebody. else competed against me and took all of my customers. Why? Because they decided to build a product for a bigger market. And I was trying to build a product for a small market. And in that moment, I realized that I was playing way too small. That was the lesson. And now at the time, it sucked because I worked my butt off to try to get all these customers and they all went to this bigger company. But I use that for the rest of my life to always play bigger. Why was I only focusing on Canada as a country? Why wouldn't I focus on... the US or even better, which is today global. Why should you ever say, well, I can only sell these small group of customers. No, no, no. Think massive. You know, John Maxwell has this incredible book called sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. It's the same concept. Everything you do in life is going to bring you closer to your goals. You'll either win and make some leaps forward or you won't and you'll learn and you'll make some leap forward. Those challenges or setbacks, they're there to guide you to your higher self. If you learn, otherwise you'll repeat yourself. I have a friend, he's almost 50 years old. His whole life, he's been dealing with the same problems over and over, every business, 15 businesses now, up and down, up and down, up and down. Why? Because he does not see the lesson in the challenges. And because of that, he'll never find the blessing. So you have to make sure you learn from your mistakes. Do not move on from it until you find that seed of opportunity, as Napoleon Hill said. to then reinvest it and plant it in something that could be even bigger than the thing you just failed at. Brings us to number 10, which is to scare yourself every day. If you follow my stuff for a while, you'll see that not only have I done half full distance Ironmans, I've done Project Visible Abs where I went from 231 pounds down to 197 pounds in 90 days. I've done 12 hour walks. I've done ultra marathons. I've said yes to creating content. full time with a whole team of people following me around to put out stuff to help other people. Like all these opportunities that at the time I made these decisions scared me. It was in those moments that I realized that's actually what I should be doing. See, I believe you should set goals to grow you. People go, how do you just choose what business to do next? It's kind of simple. Which one is going to develop me the most? One of the big lessons when I did the 12 hour walk is I pondered a very important question. And it's a quote by Joseph Campbell. And it says the cave you fear to enter most holds the treasure you seek. So I kept asking myself, what is the cave I fear to enter? You know, and having been doing personal development now for 27 years, I feel like I've worked on a lot of stuff. But as I kept asking myself this question, there were conversations with certain people I hadn't had that I knew I had to have. And I wrote their names down. And it's just, it could be as subtle as that conversation. It could be as important as deciding where you're going to live. It could be even more important. as deciding to change your career and go start a business. I don't know what it is for you, but there's something that you haven't made a decision around that is scaring you. That is your comfort zone, staying where you're at, even if it's not positive. The devil you know is a lot less scarier than the devil you don't know. So some people just stay in the same place, even though it's not positive, because they're scared. Sometimes people don't make decisions. because they're worried to have imposter syndrome. I actually think it's a good thing. If I have imposter syndrome around what I'm about to do, it tells them I'm on the right path. You know, another philosophy is exposure therapy. A lot of phobias out there. One of the easiest ways to help people get over that is to literally get them in that environment where they just gotta allow their central nervous system to regulate. And eventually they will get over that phobia. Another one of my favorite frameworks is the rule of a thousand or the expert frame by my buddy, Alex Hermosi. His philosophy is this, is that if you're scared to make a decision, pretend you've made this decision a thousand times. What if you just did this thing a thousand times? Firing somebody, dating somebody, raising capital from somebody. How would you feel the thousandth and one time? It would feel pretty normal. And that's kind of the whole idea is sometimes you have to do things over and over again until it just becomes the norm so that you can expand your exposure. You can expand what scares you so you can kind of keep pushing at the edges. Because once a mind is expanded, it cannot contract so that you keep growing and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. Which brings us to number 11, which is to be a river, not a reservoir. See, when I started my last company, SaaS Academy, which is today's become the number one coaching organization for software CEOs. I created this flywheel concept and I got this from Amazon and the book, Good to Great. which is how do we create value in the market? What are the key movements we want to perfect? And one of them was to give away a hundred percent of everything we knew how to do. No gatekeeping, for free, public, not hidden behind a paywall. We wanted to demonstrate that we knew how to do stuff by just giving it away. And I remember my team pushed back. They were like, how about we do 98%? And I said, no, the whole philosophy is if we give our best stuff away. We attract our best clients that resonate. We help a lot of people. People talk about us and then that gets us the best clients. The clients get the best results and then track the top talent that helps us create better content that then we give away to the world and the whole flywheel works away. So my whole philosophy is give away your best stuff. Let the information flow through you. My buddy Taki said it best once. He says, information is free. Implementation is paid. Give away your best stuff to attract people. Then they'll pay you to help implement that. Here's a big idea. If you do it right, your marketing will help more people than your product or service ever will. I think that is a cool concept. Give it all away for free. Help people and trust me, it'll come back 10 times in opportunities for your business. Which brings us to number 12, which is to praise in public and criticize in private. Trust me, this one was the hardest for me to adopt because I'm the kind of person that loves feedback. I love people being direct with me. No holds barred. You can't hurt my feelings. Just tell me. The challenge with that is that other people, turns out, They don't like that, especially in a group setting. So I was always going around giving public feedback to people, giving them cues and opportunities to improve it. But in my one-on-ones or other people's one-on-ones, I would get the feedback that I was hurting people's feelings or I was embarrassing them in big meetings. So here's what I tweaked. I eventually created this list called Ad Agenda. It's all my direct reports. And anytime I saw anything that wasn't being done right, I would just write it on the list. I did it today with my assistant. She actually said at the end of the meeting, she goes, thank you for not texting me on the weekend. 14 things that were broken instead using the agenda list structure. And I said, no, 100%. I used to believe that doing that was slow. Now I've learned it's actually faster and it feels way better for somebody. So a few things that I believe. First off is catch people doing good. It's like I was watching my son play soccer this weekend. A lot of the people, the other parents, were screaming at their kid when they weren't doing the right thing. Pick it up the line. Why are you throwing it that way? And I'm just like. Okay, you go play the game and let me criticize and scream at you from the sidelines. So what I do instead is when I saw my son do something great, I would then tell him, nice kick, way to run up the field. Why? Because it's accomplishing the same thing, but it's reinforcing the positive behavior. And I just think it's a lot better strategy to praise in public and criticize in private so you don't undermine your team in front of their peers. So if you got to give them feedback, do it in a one-on-one. If you want to give them a praise, do it in the group setting. Which brings us to number 13, which is to understand the four C's of leverage. So when I was 20, I moved to San Francisco and I met some incredible people, some billionaires and really successful entrepreneurs and investors. But one of the people that really stands out is this guy named Naval Ravikant. A lot of you guys have seen his stuff online. He was on Joe Rogan. He's arguably one of the best angel investors to ever come out of Silicon Valley, invested in Uber and many other companies. One of the things that I learned from him was this concept of leverage and the four Cs specifically, because his philosophy is that if you can master these skills, then you can accomplish anything. So I consider these the four master skills of doing more. Because a lot of people say, well, I would do more if I had more resources. No, you could do more if you understood these four master skills. The first one is content, but content is two parts. Content for me is internal systems and playbooks. Like how do I document the way we do things? And the other one is media. If you have leverage of pieces of content you put out into the world, you can go viral and get hundreds of millions of views on your stuff. So what's cool about content is if I build a playbook, then I can take something that works for one person and replicate it a million times. And if I create a piece of content, like a podcast with this video, it could be seen by a hundred million people and there's no extra cost to the organization. huge leverage. The second one is capital. It takes money to expand quickly. But if I take a dollar and I can turn it into 10 within 30 days, how much money do I have access to in the world? Unlimited. See, most people don't look at their business through that lens. So they're always thinking, well, I need money to make money. No, you need an engine that can produce capital to borrow capital to repay it. And to the degree you can do that, you have amazing amounts of leverage. The third C is code. This is the one I fell in love with. This is learning how to code at 17 literally saved my life. It became my new addiction coming out of rehab. Code is building a system that repeats and will always do that thing through automation, through AI. That's all code. And it will allow you to get massive amounts of leverage, right? Just information systems that are written through software so that you can just build automation and workflows into your business. That's the biggest amount of leverage. The fourth one is collaboration. And it's really about having other people support you. in your journey. If you want to go super fast, go alone. But if you want to go far and build something massive and have leverage, you need to invest in labor dollars and collaboration and people. It's your team. Those four C's, content, capital, code, and collaboration. If you've mastered those four skills, you have unlimited amount of scale for what you can do ahead of you. Which brings us to number 14, which is the buy back time. This is obviously one of my favorite topics. It's why I wrote a book on it. See, where most people get it wrong is they think that time is infinite. They got all this time, but it's not. Money is infinite. There's unlimited amount of capital for creativity and resourcefulness. Time, we all got the same amount. Everyone has the same 24 hours. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, you do not manufacture more time. What most people do is they spend time to save money, but what rich people do is they spend money to save time. If we've got more time back to then reinvest it in our skills to become more valuable, well, to the market, then we will be compensated at a higher level for those increases in skill. It's easy for you to be your cleaner, your laundry person, your grocery delivery person. But if you actually step back and say, how do I buy back more time? Why don't you have somebody else clean your house, do your laundry or deliver your groceries? These are simple apps in today's world. You don't need to be doing everything yourself just because you can do it. See, most people have a hard time giving anything to somebody else because there's fear around it. What if they do it wrong? That's the skill that you need to go develop is how to delegate. Why does everything need to happen yourself? My belief is you want to figure out what you do that creates the most value in this world that you actually enjoy doing and then delegate everything else to other people so you can get the time back to do the thing that makes you the most money that you actually enjoy. Which brings us to 15, which is the 10-80-10 rule. This is for people that have creative positions and they're like, there's no way somebody else can help me. It requires a very unique mind and I am a artist or a creative and it's hard to get other people to help me. If you didn't know this, all the top, top creative people that you know about have done this at scale. People like Steve Jobs, you know, when he would go into the design studio, he would sit down with Johnny Ives and they would collaborate on that first 10% of a new product idea. And then Johnny and his team would go out and spend 80% trying to prototype stuff. And then Steve would come back a couple weeks later and they'd spend the next 10% of that project's life trying to figure out how to integrate and perfect it and really make it work. Gary Vaynerchuk, that's how he does team. Gary, he's got a bunch of people that he collaborates with that then take those ideation phases and creates different ideas and content and then sends it back to him so that he can publish it on all his different social media. So I've broken this down into those three parts. The first phase is ideation. The 10% where you sit down and you collaborate on what does this look like when it's done? And here's the different resources and ideas I have around getting it done. The second phase is execution. It's the 80% done by somebody else. Having somebody else support you so that you can go and do a bunch more of those other 10% with other creatives. And then when you get that back, you are an editor, not an author. The third phase is integration. Take the final product and give feedback to tweak it so that you can then present it or use it. But you don't have to be the person that does the whole thing. It is way easier to be an editor than an author, and it gives you scale, especially in creative projects. Which brings us to number 16, which is the 10x mindset. My philosophy, I call it add a zero strategy. Anything in your business that you're working on, maybe it's lead. generation sales onboarding customers what would happen if you added a zero to the number of things going on in that department what would break in dan sullivan's book 10x is easier in 2x he argues is actually easier for you to build a 10x vision and execute against it versus just a 2x why a 10x vision requires you to fundamentally shift the way you've been thinking about solving the problem it allows you to attract talent that wants to work on you big meaningful problems and those people are usually a lot more fun to work with and the whole philosophy of just adding a zero to stuff it just makes your dream and your execution and the energy just more fun so it is in many ways easier than 2x now to do that you have to have a b-hag a big hairy audacious goal you have to have a huge vision and if you do then the team can grow within it what i love about this strategy is that it requires you to change your calendar every year If you want to 10X your business in 12 months, 80% of your calendar has to be different. So it really forces you to figure out like, who do you hire and give it to? Mr. Beast talked about this the whole time he was building his YouTube channel. He would hire people and he would just like give people swaths of work that was taking up his time so that he could just focus on the most important and creative projects. See, most people just aim for a little bit more. And what happens is a little bit more gives you linear growth. What you want is exponential growth. You want to build a business. business to expand, not a business not to contract. You want to play to win. You don't want to play not to lose. And it focuses on quantity of scale, not quality. Some of you guys are perfectionists, which is essentially a closet procrastinator. Okay. What are the main things you need to be doing right now to add a zero to your business so that you can then really force yourself to innovate and expand way outside your comfort zone to achieve your dreams, which brings us to number 17, which are the four levels of luck. I first read about this on Naval's blog back in the day where he was talking about Warren Buffett. These four levels of luck work this way. You have pure luck, which is people that buy lottery tickets. It literally is random. It's pure luck. You might win a bunch of money, but there's no skill. There's nothing involved, just pure luck. Second level is grit luck. This is where because you're showing up and you're being determined, eventually you take enough shots on goal, one of the shots are gonna go in. That's just grit luck because you show up. The third level of luck that's better luck is skilled luck, where you are so skillful that other people wanna partner with you because you are the tip of the spear at what you do. The highest level of luck is prepared luck. This is where preparation, skill level, being in the market and just deciding to be at the top of the game brings you prepared luck. That's Warren Buffett type luck. What does that mean? It means all of a sudden now other people's luck, people that have grit luck and skilled luck bring you their luck, their opportunities to you because you're the best at what you do. So Warren Buffett luckily gets access to deals that are never on market. He has people that wanna sell to him and only him. because he's been doing this forever. He's demonstrated his character. He's got the skills and people wanna work with him. So he's getting advantage of their luck and their situation, just like me. I get access to buy software companies that nobody else will ever see because I've been doing this for almost 30 years and people wanna sell me their company because I have a track record for what I do with those companies. Which brings us to number 18, which is to be blissfully dissatisfied. I first heard this from one of my coaches, this guy named Ed Milet. He's one of... the most successful people I've ever met. I've spent time with him at his home. I've interviewed him for my YouTube channel and he's somebody that I speak to regularly about strategy in life. And his philosophy is that just because you want more, it doesn't mean you don't appreciate what you have. A lot of people can't allow themselves the permission to desire anything more in their life because they tell themselves a story that if I want more, that means I don't appreciate or I'm not grateful for what I have. And his whole philosophy is like, no, you have to be blissfully happy. dissatisfied. You have to acknowledge that what you have is absolutely incredible and beautiful and have gratitude for it. And in the same breath, acknowledge that there is more that you can become because that's the truth. God won't give you more if you can't handle what you got. See, God created you as a creator. He wants you to create. You have to have desire because it's required to have a vision on what's possible. Imagine, and I truly believe whatever you desire in life, whatever you want, whatever car you want, house you want, relationship you want, anything, if it's on your heart, it's because he thinks you can have it. The key is to prepare to receive. If you were finding out that in eight, seven months, you were gonna have a baby, wouldn't you get ready? Wouldn't you maybe talk to other people that have babies or get the room ready or read a book or buy some clothes? You will get ready to receive. Most people have goals they want to achieve and they don't get ready. They don't prepare because they don't even allow themselves to desire more. You can be both. Both can be true. You can have Have absolute bliss for everything you have and be dissatisfied for where you're at in life because you know there's more for you to become. Which brings us to number 19, which is to make it about other people. One of my favorite stories to share is the one around Oliver Anthony. Maybe you've heard his song before, Richmond, North of Richmond. It became a number one top billboard charting song. Came out of nowhere. People thought he was an industry plant. He was on Joe Rogan and here's what he said that I absolutely loved on this topic. He said, the day I gave my life to God and stopped making about himself and start making about other people, my life changed. Here's what I believe. The moment you dedicate yourself to being successful, not for you, but to help other people, that's the moment when everything gets activated. It requires energy of doing it for others. The energy of doing it for others is what's going to activate all your dreams. So stop thinking about you. Stop thinking about making yourself rich. Start asking yourself, how can I help other people get rich? Because it's not about you. Think about your customers. Do you read books for your customers? Or do you just read books for yourself? Do you listen to your audience if you're creating content? Or do you just pretend like they're not there and just keep creating for yourself? Do you create from a place of service? Or do you create from a place of what will I get? See, a lot of you guys are so focused on achievement, you forget that it's about contribution. Nobody's ever became broke by helping other people. Nobody's ever been sad when they're in a position to serve. Yet most people never learn this lesson. They make it about the I, the me. What will I get out of this? I'm always asking myself, how do I create more value for anybody else in the world than anybody else in their world? That's the question. That keeps me focused. That makes it about all of you. That's how you win. You could be one creative project away from absolutely changing your life, your whole life. One, but it's gonna have to come from a place of serving other people. Which brings us to number 20, which is to think in decades, not days. See, the other day I was on the phone with John Maxwell. He's the GOAT, the greatest of all time when it comes to leadership. I couldn't even believe I was on this phone call. And I thought it was going to be a quick call. It turned out to be 45 minutes. The whole time I'm just asking him questions like, why do you want to talk to me? And, you know, oh my gosh, you've done all these things in your life. I was just crazy impressed. And he says to me, Dan, don't be that impressed. I've been doing this for 53 years. I've been doing one thing. for 53 years. I said, well, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, what book number was that? Because that was number 13. I was like, what? I literally right there, I have his platinum edition signed by John Maxwell himself, collection of books. He gave me this as a gift. Crazy. Many people are impressed with others who've had crazy amounts of success, but what they don't see is all the years of trying, all the years of failure, all the times they got pushed down and got back up. I've been doing what I've been doing for 27 years, real meaningful entrepreneurship. And anybody that's going to compare their chapter three to my chapter 27 is silly. Just like trying to compare your first book to John Maxwell's 13th book. What I would encourage you to consider is what could you do for a decade? Instead of beating yourself up after six months of trying, three years of trying, five years of trying, actually start at the beginning and say, I'm going to do this for a decade. I'm going to commit to this for the next 10 years. Just like when I started my YouTube channel, I said, I will publish every week for the rest of my life. And I've done it now for almost nine years. Here's the reality. You can tell how successful someone is by how far in the future they are thinking. If you're planning in years or months, you're just not thinking big enough. You want to dedicate a decade to a goal. that is, I don't know how I'm going to achieve it, but I know if I showed up every day for a decade and dedicated myself that I would win. I would encourage people to give themselves a life sentence because then it's a way of being and who they are, the identity, not something you do. See, a lot of people are like, oh, I don't really want to go to the gym for the rest of my life. Or you just decide you're an athlete or you just decide you're somebody that lifts weights and that's just who you are. And then it's not hard. See, if every time you go to the gym, you have to have a negotiation with yourself to get off your butt to go to the gym because it's not something that's easy to you and you keep telling yourself it's hard, guess what? It will be hard. But if you say, hey, this is just what I've dedicated myself to for the rest of my life. I've got a life sentence. I want to be in a great shape. I want to have energy. I want to have focus. I want to feel good. And that is my life sentence. So here's the standard, the routine, the habits, the rituals that I'm committed to. And because of that, you will live the rest of your life at a high quality life, but not if you do these short. six-month sprints, three-month things, or whatever it is. No, dedicate a life sentence to achieving, which brings us to number 21, which is there's no place to get to. I was coaching one of my clients once, and she was a very successful entrepreneur, doing about six or seven million. And I asked her, what's the big goal? What are we going to accomplish together? And she said, 100 million exit within the next three years. I said, Cool. Easy. I'm just curious why. Why that number? Why that timeline? And she says to me, so that I can finally tell them all, F you. And I was like, interesting. I said, have you ever Googled what percent of entrepreneurs, women-led businesses founded by women actually, have achieved 7 million in revenue, top line? Especially in the last, she did it in five years. She's like, no. Turns out it's 0.02%. I then asked her, what are you waiting for? You've actually already achieved the thing you've been wanting to do. You created this arbitrary rule that unless it's a hundred million dollar exits within the next three years, that you're not allowed to feel good about yourself. To tell them, F you. See what I learned a long time ago is that if I asked you what are your dreams and goals in life and you told me we made a list of those things, essentially what most people do is that list are the rules that need to be met for you to feel happy, for you. to feel enough, for you to feel successful. It's actually a trap. It's the biggest trap of success. It's why most people that get to the mountaintop immediately look to the next mountain to climb. And I'm no different. The difference is I've learned a long time ago that my self-worth is not tied to external success. My self-worth is not tied to possessions, is not tied to recognition, it's not tied to anything external. I can decide, you can decide in this moment, just like my client, to feel enough. And when I shared that with her, she broke down. She got emotional because she realized there was no place to get to. See, I want you to design a life that you want to live, not this future place that someday maybe you get to and in that moment, you'll feel successful enough to vacation, to tell people how much you appreciate them. See, if you had to take one principle away from these 21 principles, it would be this one. There's no place to get to. The process is to learn to enjoy the journey. to actually fall in love with the work, to be excited that you get to do what you get to do every day. But there is no place to get to because you attract who you are. And the more you realize that you already are enough, you get to attract more of that into your life. Those are the 21 principles of success. If you want to learn my 15 laws of success, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

So without further explaining it, These are the principles of success. The first principle is to be misunderstood. The other day I was talking to one of my clients and he said, my wife doesn't support my growth.

And he got frustrated that every time he'd do something to try to grow, his wife said something. He felt like she didn't support his growth. And my feedback was very simple. The people closest to you are sometimes too close to see your own greatness.

And the reason why is because they know you the best and they've seen you try and fail and say you're going to do something and don't follow through. They're literally the people that have seen you at your worst. And now you're trying to grow and expand and you're upset that they don't support your growth. Jeff Bezos said it best. If you want to be successful, you have to go long periods of time being misunderstood.

And the reason why is because if you know something, very few people know. and you're trying to demonstrate progress and success, you'll go a long period of time not being successful, not showing that you know how to do that and expecting other people to see what you see inside your mind is not gonna work. So here's my big philosophy.

This is what I explain to my clients. No one needs to change for you to win. Nobody. Sure, it'd be easier.

It would feel better. It wouldn't feel so lonely sometimes, but nobody else has to do anything for me to win. That is my philosophy and my invitation to you.

So don't expect them to understand. And the other thing is like not being understood. That's weird. Guess what's weird? Rich.

People that are weird are actually richer. Why? Because they're doing things that other people would never do. That's why they're weird.

They're the people that wear the same clothes every day. They're the people that drive around and do the things they want to do. They don't mind being clear about what they want. Some people are like, man, you're too much. Man, if I'm too much, go find less.

And people don't understand this, but to have a life that other people want, it means you have to be extraordinary. Ordinary. It means you have to be extra. And being extra will mean you're going to be misunderstood.

So you do you, because it's what you've always loved about every celebrity out there. The people you admire, what you love about them is they are authentically them. This is who they are. This is how they want to live.

And because they've allowed themselves to do that, you admire them. Why don't you take a cue from how they're living and go be that person? Which brings us to our second principle, which is to ask better questions. Anytime I'm coaching a business owner or CEO, I always like to ask this one question.

If somebody bought your business tomorrow that knew your industry, what's the first thing they would change? Most people can immediately go to that. They're like, well, they probably do this, this, and this.

My follow-up is, why haven't you made that decision yet? See, most people know what they need to change, but they all have these backstories for why they haven't made that decision. So I just like using questions to give people the clarity of where they should focus their time and attention.

You know, if you ask a better question, you'll live a better life. So for example, my one, three, one rule, it's a very simple premise. What's the one problem you're dealing with?

What are the three options you evaluated? And what's the one recommendation that you have for your life? I can use that framework to have anybody reporting to me, make decisions on my behalf, and 98% of the time, they're awesome. Another question I love to ask people is what are you pretending not to know?

I had a friend the other day and he was building out a sales team and he hired a VA in the Philippines for 1500 bucks a month, plus 4% of the sales commission. And this is interesting because this is a person that knows how to grow a business. But for some reason he decided I'm going to go hire somebody in another part of the world, paying them very little and only 4% of the sales. For what?

So that you don't get sales? When it didn't work out and he asked me what was going on, I said, dude, hire a killer. Go find somebody that actually knows how to sell.

Give them 20% of the sale and get back to building the business. I said, truthfully, what are you pretending not to know? He's like, you're right. I knew better.

I know. Stop doing that. A lot of people think if this is true, this is true, this is true, then I'll do the business.

Whereas that person, every other time they've had success in their life, know that it doesn't work that way. And I always ask them, what are you pretending not to know? One of my favorite questions I ask myself, it's the primary question every day, dozens of times a day.

Anytime I'm frustrated or I'm angry or I'm upset a little bit, I always go back to this question to help give me clarity and focus. How can I appreciate even more God's grace and guidance in this moment? Every time I ask myself that question, I don't know why, but I take a deep breath in. I look around and I get super appreciative. Gratitude fills me up for the fact that I'm here.

I'm shooting this video for you. I'm having a conversation. I get to connect with you guys in the comments.

I get to meet people out that have seen my work. I get a chance to reflect on that and understand that it's all part of this beautiful world we live in. The technology that enables this, that's where I go with that question. But think about it. Power of question.

See, what questions do is they focus our mind. Questions cut through all the noise and give us clarity of what we need to do next. I love asking my team questions to help guide them.

because telling them means I always gotta tell them. If I ask them a question that gives them clarity and direction, then they can ask themselves the exact same question when I'm not around. So my philosophy is very simple.

A problem well-defined is a problem half solved. And if you ask the right question, you'll get to the defined problem. The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot winning questions. I think a lot of people don't realize that our lives are dictated by the questions we continue to ask ourselves. Am I enough?

Am I doing the right thing? Am I successful enough? Literally the question is to find their life, but they don't actually go and research other questions that could help them come up with better answers.

And that's why this is such a powerful principle. Which brings us to the third principle, which is to be resourceful. In all my companies, I have this thing called the 50 to fix it. It's kind of cool principle. It's 50 to fix it if you're just a frontline worker, 500 if you're a leader, 5,000 if you're a manager, and 50,000 if you're an executive.

But essentially, I've given a budget. I've empowered people to be resourceful, to solve problems. Why would I be the only person that can solve problems in an organization? That's really slow. I believe it's not the people that have a title or have a lot of money that are successful.

It's the people that are resourceful. They find opportunities to do things. Even when everybody else doesn't believe that there's a path forward, they get resourceful. Think about Elon Musk, okay?

He said, my mission is to colonize Mars. He believes being a multi-planetary species is a smart move. Now, to actually go to Mars, it's gonna cost a bazillion dollars. So where does he find the money?

Starlink. See, most people don't realize that the telecommunications space on planet- earth that market is huge it might be a couple trillion dollars so what does he do he comes up with some innovation to send satellites into space so that he can connect the whole world and eventually skipping over all the telcos isn't that crazy most people don't realize this he's funding his mission to mars through starlink he's essentially gonna colonize mars through the money he makes from starlink that is resourceful right when i was building my company flowtown we had to pivot the whole product Essentially, we found out one day our product only had two months to live because they were changing an API for the way it worked. And we were working with third party data and it became an issue. Did we fail? No.

I called up my co-founder, Ethan. I said, hey, dude, let's go to the office. Let's try to figure it out. Let's be resourceful.

I don't know the answer today. I don't know the path forward. I just know a process for winning.

And that is deciding there is a path and eventually just execute a plan of discovery and search for a solution till we find it. Once we got it, we go all in. So my question to you is, is in what you're doing, is there any sawdust? Is there opportunity? It could even be like the by-product of what you're doing where there might be some other opportunities right there, some sawdust in your life that you could take advantage to actually move things forward.

Can you tap into it? Can you be resourceful? See, most people, unfortunately, they pretend they don't have the resources.

They sell themselves on this story of not. enough. Like I would love to do that, but I'm not that person. I'd love to do this, but I don't have that kind of money. Nobody said you needed the money.

Have you even asked, is there another way? Have you ever reached out to people and said, Hey, I don't have the money today, but is there a different way that I might be able to add value to, I could be able to go on that thing or join that community or drive that car. You never know. Like I'm always fascinated by people that just decide, Hey, I know on the surface, it doesn't look like this will work for me. but I'm so determined to end up in this outcome that I would do anything to make it happen. And I just wanted to call and just find out what would need to be true for me to make that happen.

That is resourcefulness. I remember one guy wanted to coach with me and he couldn't afford it, couldn't afford my fees, but he reached out and he looked at my YouTube videos. This was about seven, eight years ago.

And he went through all my videos and he sent me a Google doc with all of the tweaks, all the last dozen videos. When I got that Google doc and the depth of attention and energy he put into it, I immediately reached back out, asked him for a cell number, got on a phone with him and found a way to work with the guy. I mean, here's somebody that demonstrated his value ahead of time, even though we didn't need it. And I was just like so grateful.

I was just like, man, I will do that. That is resourceful. Most people think, oh, don't have the money.

Job's not there. Can't get it. No, no, no, no, no. Don't be that person.

Decide what needs to be true for me to get this opportunity. Which brings us to number four, which is give to get. When I was 17, I ended up in rehab.

I was hanging around with the wrong people, doing stuff I shouldn't have been doing. And I ended up a drug addict. And I went through this 11-month program, this place called Portage.

And it literally saved me. my life. I was not going to continue walking on this earth prior to going to this place. I just didn't have any self-worth and it helped me really understand my value and the best part is helped me rebuild the relationship that I'd broken with my family. And one of the biggest ideas that I got from being in rehab is this philosophy that if you want to keep your sobriety, you get to help other people stay sober. It's such a simple idea.

The more you help other people achieve something, the more you'll have it for yourself. And it's one of kind of the 12 steps, the whole idea of being a mentor to somebody else, being somebody else's sponsor. And I think that philosophy, when I look at all the most successful people in my life, people I look up to, my mentors, my coaches, these are people that have a desire to help other people in a way that very few understand. A long time ago, I realized you receive what you desire for others. Think about that.

If you want to be rich, you should desire other people to get rich. If you want to be healthy, you should desire the people to get healthy. and you can only keep what you give away.

So if you want more love, don't wish. Why don't people love me more? I'm actually gonna tell you, go give more love.

If you're like, hey, why don't I have more opportunity? How much opportunity have you given somebody else lately? When's the last time you took a shot on a random person? Do you understand that? It's the law of reciprocity.

In many ways, because you don't have this approach that's more giving, you're hoarding back opportunity on yourself. That bad behavior, that bad belief, that friction you're creating for other people, it's coming back to you. You don't even see it.

See, the law of reciprocity, it allows us to receive in proportion to what we give or do for others. Think about that. If we want more, we have to give more, which makes it really hard for people to understand that don't have a lot because they're like, I have no money.

How do I give money to get money? It's not about the money. The scripture makes it clear. We receive the same thing we give, such as mercy, tithing.

10% of our money. I would actually go further. It's not 10% of our money.

It's also time, right? It can be money or time. See, I think there's a big opportunity that if you want to show abundance, show up with your time, help other people that are in need. If you want to get in the best shape of your life, why don't you go help two or three other people, your friends get in the best shape of your life, go to the gym, be kind to other people. Guess what's going to come back?

Kindness. It is this beautiful concept. Now you should never do it to get because then it's very transactional. But I think it's just this belief, this principle that if you can get behind, it'll serve you in the biggest ways. Which brings us to number five, which is to have extreme ownership.

During COVID, I was training for an Ironman. And because of all the things that went on in the world, which makes total sense, our race got canceled. And in that moment, after training a year and a half, I had to make a decision.

Do I accept that the race got canceled and I just put off maybe a year or two years? Or Do I focus on what I can control, what I call controlling the controllables, and really focus on how I responded to that situation? And after reviewing our options and consideration, we decided to race. And we kept training. And six months later, we ran our own unofficial Ironman.

We called it Corona Man. And that race became the cornerstone of my Ironman career. For the next few years, not only did I do a half, I ended up doing a full. Then I did another couple halves. Then I ended up doing...

an official half and an official full at Mont-Tremblant Ironman. And I look back at this moment where I could have decided to not continue training, not race our own race. And in that moment, I wouldn't have taken extreme ownership for that situation. And what I share with people is that it's not about what happens to you, it's how you respond.

See, it sounds crazy, but even if you're walking down the street and a car just happened to jump over the curve and hit you and then run off, Obviously, let's assume everybody's healthy and safe and all that stuff. What I would ask myself is, how did I contribute to this situation? I know this is so hard for people.

Some of you guys want to blame everybody else in the world for how your life looks, and I'm telling you, you can do that, or you can be 100% accountable for your situation. For example, why was I walking on that sidewalk in that moment? Why didn't I stay home?

Why didn't I take a car? Why didn't I take a different path? Like, even though I have no control over somebody else hitting me, I do have control over how I respond. Even if it's in a breakup, in that moment, you can blame them.

They did this. This happened. It's not my fault. I can't believe they did this to me.

Or you could say, how did I contribute to this situation? You pick them. You might have accepted some red flags. You might have allowed them to say or do things that in hindsight, you probably should have put your foot down. But you didn't.

And I think what's powerful about that is that you then take control back to the situation. You bring power back to you. You control the controllables. Then you hold the power.

See, I don't want anybody else to control my situation. I don't want the government to control it. I don't want another person to control it. I don't want the bank to control it.

I want to say, hey, I'm accountable 110% for my situation I'm in today. day. One of my biggest philosophies in life is that the world will show me where I'm not free.

Anytime I feel something and I go against that or I get upset, you know, I just don't feel like that's right or somebody did something wrong. I always ask myself like, well, how did I create that situation? I know it's a big one, but extreme ownership is probably one of the most powerful ways for you to take control of your life and not give the power to somebody else. Which brings us to number six, which is learn, do, teach. See, I have this overarching philosophy in my life, which is I believe everyone is here to become the person God made you in his image.

You know, if you have a higher power, higher faith, you have a future you. Let's call it the 10.0 version of you that you have the potential to become. You know who that person is because it's like take all the best moments you've ever shown up in a day.

Most courageous, empathetic, direct, driven. And you put them all together. What if you could live like that all the time?

That's part one of this. Second part of this is that share that process with the world. Share what's worked with you with the world.

That's where learn, do, teach comes from. See, I think that if you learn something that makes your life better, that helps you overcome something in the past, then it's your responsibility to share it with other people. My philosophy is that if you've made it to the top, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down.

If you don't share what's worked for you, I consider that incredibly selfish. Think about this. If you want more abundance in your life, then you should have an abundance mindset. Don't have an abundance blocker.

If something's worked for you, don't gatekeep. It was like, well, what if I share my secret plan? Your plan ain't that secret.

You learned it. There's probably a hundred thousand other people that know it. And if you think that's the thing that's going to stop you from winning because somebody else won, that is a scarcity mindset. You know, but what if I share it and people don't like it?

You know, they say, I'm scared of what other people think. This is way bigger than you. This is an opportunity for you to shine your light, to not only help the people that you were once like, but even more importantly, to have the people that are looking for you to find you. So I think a lot of people are being quiet because they don't want the responsibility of shepherding, helping, coaching, guiding somebody else.

But the truth is, is I don't want you to let your insecurities rob you of helping the world. A lot of people, their world is their kids, their community, their CrossFit gym, maybe their city. And they're like, that's about as far as I'm going.

I don't wanna share with the world. You know, I was saying this to Alan, my coach the other day. I was in his gym and I was like, hey, man, why aren't you posting more?

Why aren't you sharing more? The guy has the body of a superhero. He's 250 pounds lean and he looks the part.

And I was like, you're not even sharing on Facebook, on Instagram, you're not sharing anything. And he's like, ah, it's just not my thing. And I looked around the gym and there was pictures of all the greats on his wall, like literally their physiques, their poses on all the walls. And I said, what if? All these people had that same mentality.

Are these people that inspired you? Yeah, they inspire me. Arnold, et cetera.

Yeah, these people inspired me to become who I am. What if they never allowed another person to take a picture of them? Where would you be?

I could tell in that moment, he got it. This isn't about him. It's his opportunity to help the people that are in his position where he was when he first discovered their physique. Isn't that cool that we live in a world and that's kind of our purpose, all of us? I can tell you from personal experience, your life will feel full of the- fulfillment when you start shifting to learn, do, and teach other people.

Which brings us to number seven, which is to invest in your priorities. See, there's this incredible book called High Performance Habits by Brendan Bouchard. It's the book I recommend to my high performers. And his whole philosophy is helping people obviously understand where they want to go and what they want to achieve, but then really understand how to invest in developing the skills, acquiring the resources, the network, or whatever you need.

to accomplish those outcomes. See, a long time ago, I learned if I wanna achieve anything, I could ask myself two questions. Where in my calendar is there time dedicated to that goal?

And where in my bank account can I see transactions investing in that goal? To your calendar and bank account, tell me what's important to you. So if you say my family and my health is important, then show me in your bank account and in your calendar where you've invested in it. Show me that you've blocked the time out and you've been deliberate about what you're gonna do with that time.

See, money and time is a clear indication of what's important to you because what you invest in grows. A lot of people believe the grass is greenest in the other yard. I believe the grass is greenest where it's watered and fertilized.

Which brings us to number eight, which is to ask for bigger problems. I know you're like, what? Why would I want bigger problems?

Here's my philosophy. If we want a bigger life, we have to have bigger problems. One time Oprah was getting sued for a billion dollars.

The mad cow industry was mad at something she said about the meat quality or something like that. And somebody asked her like, oh my gosh, Oprah, aren't you upset that you're getting sued for a billion dollars? And her response was actually, I'm grateful to be sued for a billion dollars because it means I'm the kind of person that has a billion dollars.

So my question to you is, are you grateful for your problems? Because the The bigger the problem, the bigger the life. You don't have $10 million problems in your life if you're still trying to make your first 100 grand. Would you rather be a gardener in a war or a warrior in a garden, right? Would you want to become the person who can deal with bigger issues or always play a small life?

The easy path today makes for the hard path tomorrow. See, most people are always looking for easy. They're like, if I had the money, if I won the lottery, I would just go on vacation and I would live on a beach and I'd call it a day.

It's actually because of that, that those things will never come to you because you're not preparing to receive. You're saying, I don't want challenges. I don't want hardship.

I want things to be easy. The challenge is that anything you want in life, it will challenge you because in the challenges where you develop and grow. It's kind of crazy, but understand this.

The reason it's a challenge for you and not for somebody else is because the other person has grown past it. See, some of you guys can't even manage $100,000. I'll tell you, because you can't do that, you ain't going to be given a million. A long time ago, Jim Rohn said, you better hope nobody gives you a million dollars until you become a millionaire because getting a million dollars is not the same as becoming a millionaire. A millionaire knows how to create a million dollars.

He also said something I loved. He says, don't wish life was easier. Wish you were better.

Don't wish for easy opportunities. Wish for the skill to overcome any opportunity. You should be grateful for bigger problems. You should seek bigger problems because bigger problems equals bigger life.

Which brings us to number nine, which is everything is a blessing or a lesson. When I was 18, I started my first company. I worked my butt off.

I went all in. I worked hard. And even after all of that effort, a year and a half of focus and energy and trying to build this and figuring it all out, I got my butt kicked.

Somebody. else competed against me and took all of my customers. Why?

Because they decided to build a product for a bigger market. And I was trying to build a product for a small market. And in that moment, I realized that I was playing way too small. That was the lesson. And now at the time, it sucked because I worked my butt off to try to get all these customers and they all went to this bigger company.

But I use that for the rest of my life to always play bigger. Why was I only focusing on Canada as a country? Why wouldn't I focus on...

the US or even better, which is today global. Why should you ever say, well, I can only sell these small group of customers. No, no, no.

Think massive. You know, John Maxwell has this incredible book called sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. It's the same concept. Everything you do in life is going to bring you closer to your goals. You'll either win and make some leaps forward or you won't and you'll learn and you'll make some leap forward.

Those challenges or setbacks, they're there to guide you to your higher self. If you learn, otherwise you'll repeat yourself. I have a friend, he's almost 50 years old. His whole life, he's been dealing with the same problems over and over, every business, 15 businesses now, up and down, up and down, up and down. Why?

Because he does not see the lesson in the challenges. And because of that, he'll never find the blessing. So you have to make sure you learn from your mistakes.

Do not move on from it until you find that seed of opportunity, as Napoleon Hill said. to then reinvest it and plant it in something that could be even bigger than the thing you just failed at. Brings us to number 10, which is to scare yourself every day. If you follow my stuff for a while, you'll see that not only have I done half full distance Ironmans, I've done Project Visible Abs where I went from 231 pounds down to 197 pounds in 90 days. I've done 12 hour walks.

I've done ultra marathons. I've said yes to creating content. full time with a whole team of people following me around to put out stuff to help other people.

Like all these opportunities that at the time I made these decisions scared me. It was in those moments that I realized that's actually what I should be doing. See, I believe you should set goals to grow you. People go, how do you just choose what business to do next?

It's kind of simple. Which one is going to develop me the most? One of the big lessons when I did the 12 hour walk is I pondered a very important question. And it's a quote by Joseph Campbell. And it says the cave you fear to enter most holds the treasure you seek.

So I kept asking myself, what is the cave I fear to enter? You know, and having been doing personal development now for 27 years, I feel like I've worked on a lot of stuff. But as I kept asking myself this question, there were conversations with certain people I hadn't had that I knew I had to have.

And I wrote their names down. And it's just, it could be as subtle as that conversation. It could be as important as deciding where you're going to live. It could be even more important. as deciding to change your career and go start a business.

I don't know what it is for you, but there's something that you haven't made a decision around that is scaring you. That is your comfort zone, staying where you're at, even if it's not positive. The devil you know is a lot less scarier than the devil you don't know.

So some people just stay in the same place, even though it's not positive, because they're scared. Sometimes people don't make decisions. because they're worried to have imposter syndrome. I actually think it's a good thing. If I have imposter syndrome around what I'm about to do, it tells them I'm on the right path.

You know, another philosophy is exposure therapy. A lot of phobias out there. One of the easiest ways to help people get over that is to literally get them in that environment where they just gotta allow their central nervous system to regulate.

And eventually they will get over that phobia. Another one of my favorite frameworks is the rule of a thousand or the expert frame by my buddy, Alex Hermosi. His philosophy is this, is that if you're scared to make a decision, pretend you've made this decision a thousand times. What if you just did this thing a thousand times? Firing somebody, dating somebody, raising capital from somebody.

How would you feel the thousandth and one time? It would feel pretty normal. And that's kind of the whole idea is sometimes you have to do things over and over again until it just becomes the norm so that you can expand your exposure. You can expand what scares you so you can kind of keep pushing at the edges.

Because once a mind is expanded, it cannot contract so that you keep growing and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. Which brings us to number 11, which is to be a river, not a reservoir. See, when I started my last company, SaaS Academy, which is today's become the number one coaching organization for software CEOs.

I created this flywheel concept and I got this from Amazon and the book, Good to Great. which is how do we create value in the market? What are the key movements we want to perfect?

And one of them was to give away a hundred percent of everything we knew how to do. No gatekeeping, for free, public, not hidden behind a paywall. We wanted to demonstrate that we knew how to do stuff by just giving it away.

And I remember my team pushed back. They were like, how about we do 98%? And I said, no, the whole philosophy is if we give our best stuff away.

We attract our best clients that resonate. We help a lot of people. People talk about us and then that gets us the best clients.

The clients get the best results and then track the top talent that helps us create better content that then we give away to the world and the whole flywheel works away. So my whole philosophy is give away your best stuff. Let the information flow through you. My buddy Taki said it best once.

He says, information is free. Implementation is paid. Give away your best stuff to attract people. Then they'll pay you to help implement that. Here's a big idea.

If you do it right, your marketing will help more people than your product or service ever will. I think that is a cool concept. Give it all away for free. Help people and trust me, it'll come back 10 times in opportunities for your business. Which brings us to number 12, which is to praise in public and criticize in private.

Trust me, this one was the hardest for me to adopt because I'm the kind of person that loves feedback. I love people being direct with me. No holds barred. You can't hurt my feelings. Just tell me.

The challenge with that is that other people, turns out, They don't like that, especially in a group setting. So I was always going around giving public feedback to people, giving them cues and opportunities to improve it. But in my one-on-ones or other people's one-on-ones, I would get the feedback that I was hurting people's feelings or I was embarrassing them in big meetings. So here's what I tweaked.

I eventually created this list called Ad Agenda. It's all my direct reports. And anytime I saw anything that wasn't being done right, I would just write it on the list.

I did it today with my assistant. She actually said at the end of the meeting, she goes, thank you for not texting me on the weekend. 14 things that were broken instead using the agenda list structure. And I said, no, 100%.

I used to believe that doing that was slow. Now I've learned it's actually faster and it feels way better for somebody. So a few things that I believe. First off is catch people doing good.

It's like I was watching my son play soccer this weekend. A lot of the people, the other parents, were screaming at their kid when they weren't doing the right thing. Pick it up the line.

Why are you throwing it that way? And I'm just like. Okay, you go play the game and let me criticize and scream at you from the sidelines. So what I do instead is when I saw my son do something great, I would then tell him, nice kick, way to run up the field.

Why? Because it's accomplishing the same thing, but it's reinforcing the positive behavior. And I just think it's a lot better strategy to praise in public and criticize in private so you don't undermine your team in front of their peers.

So if you got to give them feedback, do it in a one-on-one. If you want to give them a praise, do it in the group setting. Which brings us to number 13, which is to understand the four C's of leverage. So when I was 20, I moved to San Francisco and I met some incredible people, some billionaires and really successful entrepreneurs and investors. But one of the people that really stands out is this guy named Naval Ravikant.

A lot of you guys have seen his stuff online. He was on Joe Rogan. He's arguably one of the best angel investors to ever come out of Silicon Valley, invested in Uber and many other companies. One of the things that I learned from him was this concept of leverage and the four Cs specifically, because his philosophy is that if you can master these skills, then you can accomplish anything. So I consider these the four master skills of doing more.

Because a lot of people say, well, I would do more if I had more resources. No, you could do more if you understood these four master skills. The first one is content, but content is two parts. Content for me is internal systems and playbooks. Like how do I document the way we do things?

And the other one is media. If you have leverage of pieces of content you put out into the world, you can go viral and get hundreds of millions of views on your stuff. So what's cool about content is if I build a playbook, then I can take something that works for one person and replicate it a million times.

And if I create a piece of content, like a podcast with this video, it could be seen by a hundred million people and there's no extra cost to the organization. huge leverage. The second one is capital. It takes money to expand quickly.

But if I take a dollar and I can turn it into 10 within 30 days, how much money do I have access to in the world? Unlimited. See, most people don't look at their business through that lens.

So they're always thinking, well, I need money to make money. No, you need an engine that can produce capital to borrow capital to repay it. And to the degree you can do that, you have amazing amounts of leverage. The third C is code. This is the one I fell in love with.

This is learning how to code at 17 literally saved my life. It became my new addiction coming out of rehab. Code is building a system that repeats and will always do that thing through automation, through AI. That's all code.

And it will allow you to get massive amounts of leverage, right? Just information systems that are written through software so that you can just build automation and workflows into your business. That's the biggest amount of leverage. The fourth one is collaboration.

And it's really about having other people support you. in your journey. If you want to go super fast, go alone. But if you want to go far and build something massive and have leverage, you need to invest in labor dollars and collaboration and people. It's your team.

Those four C's, content, capital, code, and collaboration. If you've mastered those four skills, you have unlimited amount of scale for what you can do ahead of you. Which brings us to number 14, which is the buy back time. This is obviously one of my favorite topics. It's why I wrote a book on it.

See, where most people get it wrong is they think that time is infinite. They got all this time, but it's not. Money is infinite. There's unlimited amount of capital for creativity and resourcefulness.

Time, we all got the same amount. Everyone has the same 24 hours. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, you do not manufacture more time.

What most people do is they spend time to save money, but what rich people do is they spend money to save time. If we've got more time back to then reinvest it in our skills to become more valuable, well, to the market, then we will be compensated at a higher level for those increases in skill. It's easy for you to be your cleaner, your laundry person, your grocery delivery person. But if you actually step back and say, how do I buy back more time?

Why don't you have somebody else clean your house, do your laundry or deliver your groceries? These are simple apps in today's world. You don't need to be doing everything yourself just because you can do it. See, most people have a hard time giving anything to somebody else because there's fear around it. What if they do it wrong?

That's the skill that you need to go develop is how to delegate. Why does everything need to happen yourself? My belief is you want to figure out what you do that creates the most value in this world that you actually enjoy doing and then delegate everything else to other people so you can get the time back to do the thing that makes you the most money that you actually enjoy.

Which brings us to 15, which is the 10-80-10 rule. This is for people that have creative positions and they're like, there's no way somebody else can help me. It requires a very unique mind and I am a artist or a creative and it's hard to get other people to help me.

If you didn't know this, all the top, top creative people that you know about have done this at scale. People like Steve Jobs, you know, when he would go into the design studio, he would sit down with Johnny Ives and they would collaborate on that first 10% of a new product idea. And then Johnny and his team would go out and spend 80% trying to prototype stuff.

And then Steve would come back a couple weeks later and they'd spend the next 10% of that project's life trying to figure out how to integrate and perfect it and really make it work. Gary Vaynerchuk, that's how he does team. Gary, he's got a bunch of people that he collaborates with that then take those ideation phases and creates different ideas and content and then sends it back to him so that he can publish it on all his different social media.

So I've broken this down into those three parts. The first phase is ideation. The 10% where you sit down and you collaborate on what does this look like when it's done?

And here's the different resources and ideas I have around getting it done. The second phase is execution. It's the 80% done by somebody else.

Having somebody else support you so that you can go and do a bunch more of those other 10% with other creatives. And then when you get that back, you are an editor, not an author. The third phase is integration.

Take the final product and give feedback to tweak it so that you can then present it or use it. But you don't have to be the person that does the whole thing. It is way easier to be an editor than an author, and it gives you scale, especially in creative projects.

Which brings us to number 16, which is the 10x mindset. My philosophy, I call it add a zero strategy. Anything in your business that you're working on, maybe it's lead. generation sales onboarding customers what would happen if you added a zero to the number of things going on in that department what would break in dan sullivan's book 10x is easier in 2x he argues is actually easier for you to build a 10x vision and execute against it versus just a 2x why a 10x vision requires you to fundamentally shift the way you've been thinking about solving the problem it allows you to attract talent that wants to work on you big meaningful problems and those people are usually a lot more fun to work with and the whole philosophy of just adding a zero to stuff it just makes your dream and your execution and the energy just more fun so it is in many ways easier than 2x now to do that you have to have a b-hag a big hairy audacious goal you have to have a huge vision and if you do then the team can grow within it what i love about this strategy is that it requires you to change your calendar every year If you want to 10X your business in 12 months, 80% of your calendar has to be different. So it really forces you to figure out like, who do you hire and give it to?

Mr. Beast talked about this the whole time he was building his YouTube channel. He would hire people and he would just like give people swaths of work that was taking up his time so that he could just focus on the most important and creative projects. See, most people just aim for a little bit more.

And what happens is a little bit more gives you linear growth. What you want is exponential growth. You want to build a business.

business to expand, not a business not to contract. You want to play to win. You don't want to play not to lose. And it focuses on quantity of scale, not quality.

Some of you guys are perfectionists, which is essentially a closet procrastinator. Okay. What are the main things you need to be doing right now to add a zero to your business so that you can then really force yourself to innovate and expand way outside your comfort zone to achieve your dreams, which brings us to number 17, which are the four levels of luck. I first read about this on Naval's blog back in the day where he was talking about Warren Buffett. These four levels of luck work this way.

You have pure luck, which is people that buy lottery tickets. It literally is random. It's pure luck. You might win a bunch of money, but there's no skill.

There's nothing involved, just pure luck. Second level is grit luck. This is where because you're showing up and you're being determined, eventually you take enough shots on goal, one of the shots are gonna go in. That's just grit luck because you show up.

The third level of luck that's better luck is skilled luck, where you are so skillful that other people wanna partner with you because you are the tip of the spear at what you do. The highest level of luck is prepared luck. This is where preparation, skill level, being in the market and just deciding to be at the top of the game brings you prepared luck. That's Warren Buffett type luck. What does that mean?

It means all of a sudden now other people's luck, people that have grit luck and skilled luck bring you their luck, their opportunities to you because you're the best at what you do. So Warren Buffett luckily gets access to deals that are never on market. He has people that wanna sell to him and only him. because he's been doing this forever. He's demonstrated his character.

He's got the skills and people wanna work with him. So he's getting advantage of their luck and their situation, just like me. I get access to buy software companies that nobody else will ever see because I've been doing this for almost 30 years and people wanna sell me their company because I have a track record for what I do with those companies. Which brings us to number 18, which is to be blissfully dissatisfied. I first heard this from one of my coaches, this guy named Ed Milet.

He's one of... the most successful people I've ever met. I've spent time with him at his home. I've interviewed him for my YouTube channel and he's somebody that I speak to regularly about strategy in life. And his philosophy is that just because you want more, it doesn't mean you don't appreciate what you have.

A lot of people can't allow themselves the permission to desire anything more in their life because they tell themselves a story that if I want more, that means I don't appreciate or I'm not grateful for what I have. And his whole philosophy is like, no, you have to be blissfully happy. dissatisfied.

You have to acknowledge that what you have is absolutely incredible and beautiful and have gratitude for it. And in the same breath, acknowledge that there is more that you can become because that's the truth. God won't give you more if you can't handle what you got.

See, God created you as a creator. He wants you to create. You have to have desire because it's required to have a vision on what's possible. Imagine, and I truly believe whatever you desire in life, whatever you want, whatever car you want, house you want, relationship you want, anything, if it's on your heart, it's because he thinks you can have it. The key is to prepare to receive.

If you were finding out that in eight, seven months, you were gonna have a baby, wouldn't you get ready? Wouldn't you maybe talk to other people that have babies or get the room ready or read a book or buy some clothes? You will get ready to receive. Most people have goals they want to achieve and they don't get ready.

They don't prepare because they don't even allow themselves to desire more. You can be both. Both can be true.

You can have Have absolute bliss for everything you have and be dissatisfied for where you're at in life because you know there's more for you to become. Which brings us to number 19, which is to make it about other people. One of my favorite stories to share is the one around Oliver Anthony. Maybe you've heard his song before, Richmond, North of Richmond. It became a number one top billboard charting song.

Came out of nowhere. People thought he was an industry plant. He was on Joe Rogan and here's what he said that I absolutely loved on this topic. He said, the day I gave my life to God and stopped making about himself and start making about other people, my life changed. Here's what I believe.

The moment you dedicate yourself to being successful, not for you, but to help other people, that's the moment when everything gets activated. It requires energy of doing it for others. The energy of doing it for others is what's going to activate all your dreams. So stop thinking about you.

Stop thinking about making yourself rich. Start asking yourself, how can I help other people get rich? Because it's not about you.

Think about your customers. Do you read books for your customers? Or do you just read books for yourself?

Do you listen to your audience if you're creating content? Or do you just pretend like they're not there and just keep creating for yourself? Do you create from a place of service? Or do you create from a place of what will I get? See, a lot of you guys are so focused on achievement, you forget that it's about contribution.

Nobody's ever became broke by helping other people. Nobody's ever been sad when they're in a position to serve. Yet most people never learn this lesson. They make it about the I, the me. What will I get out of this?

I'm always asking myself, how do I create more value for anybody else in the world than anybody else in their world? That's the question. That keeps me focused. That makes it about all of you.

That's how you win. You could be one creative project away from absolutely changing your life, your whole life. One, but it's gonna have to come from a place of serving other people. Which brings us to number 20, which is to think in decades, not days.

See, the other day I was on the phone with John Maxwell. He's the GOAT, the greatest of all time when it comes to leadership. I couldn't even believe I was on this phone call. And I thought it was going to be a quick call.

It turned out to be 45 minutes. The whole time I'm just asking him questions like, why do you want to talk to me? And, you know, oh my gosh, you've done all these things in your life. I was just crazy impressed.

And he says to me, Dan, don't be that impressed. I've been doing this for 53 years. I've been doing one thing. for 53 years.

I said, well, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, what book number was that? Because that was number 13. I was like, what? I literally right there, I have his platinum edition signed by John Maxwell himself, collection of books. He gave me this as a gift.

Crazy. Many people are impressed with others who've had crazy amounts of success, but what they don't see is all the years of trying, all the years of failure, all the times they got pushed down and got back up. I've been doing what I've been doing for 27 years, real meaningful entrepreneurship. And anybody that's going to compare their chapter three to my chapter 27 is silly.

Just like trying to compare your first book to John Maxwell's 13th book. What I would encourage you to consider is what could you do for a decade? Instead of beating yourself up after six months of trying, three years of trying, five years of trying, actually start at the beginning and say, I'm going to do this for a decade.

I'm going to commit to this for the next 10 years. Just like when I started my YouTube channel, I said, I will publish every week for the rest of my life. And I've done it now for almost nine years. Here's the reality. You can tell how successful someone is by how far in the future they are thinking.

If you're planning in years or months, you're just not thinking big enough. You want to dedicate a decade to a goal. that is, I don't know how I'm going to achieve it, but I know if I showed up every day for a decade and dedicated myself that I would win.

I would encourage people to give themselves a life sentence because then it's a way of being and who they are, the identity, not something you do. See, a lot of people are like, oh, I don't really want to go to the gym for the rest of my life. Or you just decide you're an athlete or you just decide you're somebody that lifts weights and that's just who you are. And then it's not hard. See, if every time you go to the gym, you have to have a negotiation with yourself to get off your butt to go to the gym because it's not something that's easy to you and you keep telling yourself it's hard, guess what?

It will be hard. But if you say, hey, this is just what I've dedicated myself to for the rest of my life. I've got a life sentence. I want to be in a great shape. I want to have energy.

I want to have focus. I want to feel good. And that is my life sentence.

So here's the standard, the routine, the habits, the rituals that I'm committed to. And because of that, you will live the rest of your life at a high quality life, but not if you do these short. six-month sprints, three-month things, or whatever it is. No, dedicate a life sentence to achieving, which brings us to number 21, which is there's no place to get to.

I was coaching one of my clients once, and she was a very successful entrepreneur, doing about six or seven million. And I asked her, what's the big goal? What are we going to accomplish together?

And she said, 100 million exit within the next three years. I said, Cool. Easy.

I'm just curious why. Why that number? Why that timeline?

And she says to me, so that I can finally tell them all, F you. And I was like, interesting. I said, have you ever Googled what percent of entrepreneurs, women-led businesses founded by women actually, have achieved 7 million in revenue, top line? Especially in the last, she did it in five years.

She's like, no. Turns out it's 0.02%. I then asked her, what are you waiting for?

You've actually already achieved the thing you've been wanting to do. You created this arbitrary rule that unless it's a hundred million dollar exits within the next three years, that you're not allowed to feel good about yourself. To tell them, F you. See what I learned a long time ago is that if I asked you what are your dreams and goals in life and you told me we made a list of those things, essentially what most people do is that list are the rules that need to be met for you to feel happy, for you.

to feel enough, for you to feel successful. It's actually a trap. It's the biggest trap of success. It's why most people that get to the mountaintop immediately look to the next mountain to climb.

And I'm no different. The difference is I've learned a long time ago that my self-worth is not tied to external success. My self-worth is not tied to possessions, is not tied to recognition, it's not tied to anything external.

I can decide, you can decide in this moment, just like my client, to feel enough. And when I shared that with her, she broke down. She got emotional because she realized there was no place to get to.

See, I want you to design a life that you want to live, not this future place that someday maybe you get to and in that moment, you'll feel successful enough to vacation, to tell people how much you appreciate them. See, if you had to take one principle away from these 21 principles, it would be this one. There's no place to get to.

The process is to learn to enjoy the journey. to actually fall in love with the work, to be excited that you get to do what you get to do every day. But there is no place to get to because you attract who you are.

And the more you realize that you already are enough, you get to attract more of that into your life. Those are the 21 principles of success. If you want to learn my 15 laws of success, click the link and I'll see you on the other side.

Transcript for:Key Principles for Achieving Success

Transcript for:
Key Principles for Achieving Success