https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLGqnXkjfsQ

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 and when we make these choices i think
just as important if not more important is the story that we are telling
ourselves about why we made the choices and what that tells us about who
we are \[Music\] what's going on everyone i want to tell you a story
that may be applicable to you if you're an existing entrepreneur a new
entrepreneur or someone who's about to make a big decision in life uh
yesterday uh i had a conversation that transpired between me and an 18
year old who's now a freshman in college and i think there i wish i
could have recorded it but there were a lot of kind of decision points
and lessons and thought processes that we walk through together that i
think will be valuable for for many because it's the same it's honestly
the same decision-making process whether you're making a multi-million
dollar decision or you're making a you know relationship decision or
whatever it is and so

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 um this 18 year old kid is uh my
neighbor i think i've referenced them before and he's entrepreneurial he
did a little car washing business he's done a little uh e-commerce
business that he started on his own and and it's and it's worked out you
know pretty decently well for him but because of the pressures that he's
had on himself and from outside he decided he had to do college and so
he started his first semester in college and to make a long story short
he did something he wasn't supposed to do and now he's in trouble and
that may jeopardize his future in college and so he's obviously really
wrecked about this and so i i said hey let's go for a walk and so on
this walk i said you know what's what's your plan he's well i think i'm
i you know i think i'm gonna try and fight this thing um and you know
give college another shot and um i i wanted to walk him through this
because i wanted him to make any decision for the right reasons right
and so i said you know do you think like what do you

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 what's the outcome you want to have
from giving another shot at college right because he didn't really like
high school that much he's like well you know i just want to i want to
give it a try i was like okay again what do you want to have happen or
what do you think is going to happen what is the positive outcome that
you're potentially looking forward to the negative outcome that you
think could happen he's like well honestly i don't know and i was like
okay now we're getting somewhere so do you think that taking you know
genders literature studies and history of aztec culture whatever is
going to be more interesting to you now than the stuff that you studied
in high school which was again general literature is that going to be
interesting to you it's like well probably not i was like okay then
what's the real reason that you want to go to college it's like well you
know i feel like i you know i'm a kid and i should experience you know
having fun and all that kind of stuff and i was like okay having fun's
fine do you feel like you

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 can have fun without going to college
do you think that you could not spend two hundred thousand dollars in
four years of your life and still have fun in that same period of time
if you weren't at college but still with other people who are your age i
was like well yeah i guess so i was like okay cool then i'm assuming
that's not the only reason you want to go to college what else is there
he started thinking he's like honestly i don't really know and so to
give you a little bit more context before what i told him next i asked
him what do you think because he's doing his entrepreneurs he's starting
a new entrepreneur thing right now with real estate and he hasn't he
hasn't cracked it yet right and so i said do you think it's possible
that you want to go to college because it's in a it's a it's a socially
acceptable shield for you not being successful in entrepreneurship do
you think do you think that that might be a reason because if you're in
college then you you're not seen as a failure if you're

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 not winning at the thing that you're
doing right it's your side hustle it's your side gig he's like well
maybe yeah and i think first off you know kudos to him for being able to
realize and admit that but i think that that was is such a core issue
for many of us is that we present these socially acceptable solutions to
ourselves when deep down the reason that we're doing them is not for the
right reason and so in this instance he's using it as a foil to protect
himself against having to confront the realities of life of business of
the marketplace of not being good enough right yet and so i said all
right well what do you want to have happen in your life do you think you
want to have a job and he was like no i don't want to have a job like
what do you want to do he's like i want to have my own business and i
was like what do you think business school looks like in the real world
he was like well probably doing business i was like okay so if you have
four years and two hundred thousand dollars if you

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 invest that in college versus investing
two hundred thousand dollars in four years into learning into trying to
start your own business which of them after four years do you think will
get you closer to your goal he was like well probably the business one i
was like okay so then right now what you have is a clear logical logical
outcome in terms of which decision path to make but then now we have to
start looking at what's the emotional driver that's preventing you from
doing it right and so for him going all in means making the first real
trade-off he's ever made in life right because if you're newer or you
have a job or you're you know it doesn't matter where you're at in your
life there a lot of times especially when we're younger there's there's
fewer big branch points right but as we get older we have to commit and
trade off something else right it's this for that and i think excuse me
sorry um i think that a lot of times we have to

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 frame these things in terms of the
things that we're willing to sacrifice and so i told him the story of uh
when i was starting my gym the mindset that i approached it with was i
will not outwork everyone but instead i will out sacrifice anyone and so
what i meant by that is i'm willing to put everything and anything that
i have on the altar of my success and that's what i started from a
mindset standpoint so i wasn't like i'm gonna be smarter or i'm gonna do
something else i just knew that anytime my competitors or other people
were going out or they were you know seeing friends or playing video
games or watching football games which i used to do all the time before
i started a business or or sleeping in or just all the many things you
know even honestly my fitness even suffered during that period of time
i'm not saying it's perfect but i'm saying i was willing to do i was
willing to sacrifice anything to get to where i wanted to go and i
introduced that kind of concept to him of like

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 you tell me you want these things and
yet when it comes time to sacrifice to pay the piper to make the
trade-offs that are that are necessary to have that outcome that's when
you're faltering and so do you are you willing to sacrifice for the
things that you want in the long run i was like because he's my neighbor
and we live in a nice neighborhood i said like i'm the age i am and we
live here i was like i sacrificed my 20s straight up i sacrifice them
and i'm not saying it's the right path but i want to make sure that
whatever decision you make you make it for the right reasons if you want
to go for four years in college do it by all means but understand the
reason you're doing it is because you believe that four years of college
and spending 200 000 is the best use of your time and then having the
story that you'll have to tell yourself about the type of person who
makes these types of decisions

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 and then you'll have to live with that
because the thing is is the stories that we tell ourselves create the
identity that we that we have right my favorite scenes in the matrix is
in the third one i know people don't like the second and third i like
all three um is when morpheus is standing in front of all of humanity
and he says i can tell you that i stand here truthfully unafraid not
because of the path that lies before us but because of the path that
lies behind me and i think that's such a such a such a deep message
because where we are is because of the stories that we have that have
led us to be who we've become and when we make these choices i think
just as important if not more important is the story that we are telling
ourselves about why we made the choices and what that tells us about who
we are and so i wanted to clarify the decision for him in terms of is
this what you want yes or no of these two paths which one will get you
closer to that thing yes like this one or this one cool now

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 why are you not making it which now
goes from logic to emotion and then at that point saying okay i think
we've discovered the root issue which is that you're afraid is being
seen as a failure if you're not immediately successful and so what i
wanted to give to him was if you fail it does not make you a failure it
means that you failed and part of entrepreneurship is failure and being
able to deal with failure and how you come back from failure and i said
right now you're in this instance where this is the first real big hit
life has ever given you right everything's relative but in his life at
this moment this is the biggest thing worst thing that's ever happened
right this bad issue that he had with his school and so i said the story
that you now get to tell is what you do from here right do you use this
as the catalyst to realize that you actually don't aren't interested in
the school stuff and you never have been and have always wanted to do
the entrepreneur thing but it's been a side hustle and you've never
fully committed to it i was like is that is that the story you want to
tell

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 or do you want to go and try and fight
this thing and try and beat it and then spend you know another three and
a half years spending more money and then be another 3.1 student that
graduates from pepperdine right which one is the story that you want to
tell and so i think i wanted to share this story with you because i
don't know where you're at or what decisions you're facing but i think
there was a lot of many things that we kind of covered in that
conversation and unearthed and so many of us know what we need to do but
have some emotional trigger that's stopping us from doing it and i think
digging deep and saying like what am i afraid of happening what's my
biggest fear because if i know this is what i need to do then why am i
not doing it and i think if you can simply name the fear of what you are
afraid of it allows you to face it and it removes the power it has over
you because then you you have clarity and then it's simply am i willing
to let my fear of failure stop me from having what i want to

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 eventually have in my life or would i
rather let that have me walk down a path that never actually helps me
realize my potential and so when you think about a maybe versus a never
then i'll take a maybe over and never any day of the week and so like i
said i don't know where you're at i don't know what trade-offs are
facing i don't know what sacrifices you may have to make in order to get
to where you want to go um but i think literally listing those things
out of what you are willing to give up there was a point in my life
where i i wrote down all the things that i had to additionally give up
because i was at a point of just rubber meeting the road and i had to
push harder and this was probably three or four years into my
entrepreneurial journey and i remember making this video about that
where i i actively gave up football on sundays which was like a thing
that i enjoyed you know watching um i know that i gave up all tv of all
kinds even like the wind down tv i gave up any kind of going out and i'm
not saying that you have to do

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 that i'm just saying that that's what
i did and i know that this kid's father was like hey you need to have
balance you need to you need to be able to enjoy life you're still young
and my father when i was younger really hit on that really hard and i
really pushed back and i still pretty much do because i don't believe
that anything great was ever accomplished by someone who is balanced i
think that it takes extremes it takes extreme effort it takes
unreasonable sacrifice in order to achieve things that are unreasonable
and so you know and i was telling him yesterday the kid not my dad if
you were competing against someone else who was a coder you guys are
both coding software right i was like and you're going to college you're
having fun you're going out on weekends and you know you code a couple
hours a day versus the kid who drops out of college codes 16 hours a day
doesn't go out doesn't see his friends just codes for three and a half
years it's like who do you think will be further along he

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 was like well the other kid and i was
like right like how much further along he was like probably a lot
further i was like right do you think it's reasonable or unreasonable
that he would be further ahead than you it's like reasonable and i was
like so why would you not want to take the reasonable bet that you will
be so much further ahead by making that choice and so all that to say i
don't know any people who are really successful who don't approach
things in an unbalanced way and i think that there's a differentiation
between seasons and your entire life what you do for a season of life
doesn't have to be forever but sometimes it does have to be for that
season and sometimes you are uneven and so sometimes it's difficult to
look you know at what i do now versus what i did to get here right if i
you know i sacrificed my fitness for periods of time right i'm not
saying it was good i'm just saying i did um there were times where i did
not sleep as much as i probably should have uh there were times where i
did not see i didn't do anything social at all four months

15 00:14:00.000 --\> 00:15:00.000 i'm not saying it was right i'm just
saying that's what ended up happening and when i hear stories of many
people who kind of go through the who go through their rocky balboa
period uh the rocky cut scene almost every hyper-successful person that
i've seen goes through a three to five year period where they just get
hit in the face day after day after day after day you know some of the
some of the great marketers some of you guys may have heard of you know
russell brunson pitched for five straight years on stages unknown before
he became russell brunson you know billie jean did cold calling for two
three years dan kennedy did face to face door-to-door sales for three
years right i did four thousand one-on-one consultations over a
four-year period selling fitness doing 15 20 appointments a day right
and the thing is is like i wasn't alex ramosey then i was just a dude
who was selling and just getting better and better and the thing is that
there's this unreasonable amount of effort this unreasonable amount of
sacrifice that usually has to go in to get the unreasonable goal and yet
people are not willing to make the sacrifice to do it and so i think if
we can simply look

16 00:15:00.000 --\> 00:16:00.000 at what is the decision that's going
to get me to where i want to go which of these do i think will be better
and then what is the sacrifice that's required and am i willing to make
that sacrifice then i think it makes much simpler decisions and we know
why we're making the decisions we are so that the decisions are not made
for us by life so anyways i hope that was valuable for you um it was
just top of mind because i had the conversation yesterday and i thought
man i wish i had recorded this um but i don't know where you're at in
your life and i don't know what decisions you're facing but hopefully
this provides value for you so lots of love keeping amazing and i'll
catch you next vid bye \[Music\] \[Applause\] you
