https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahslH-8qoFY

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 at this point in my life i have enough
passive investments that i make multiple million dollars a year uh
without doing much and over the last nine months i struggled mightily
with this fact and it was because i had completely removed myself from
the portfolio of businesses that we own which do about 85 million
dollars a year in revenue and now i have nothing to sell you what i want
to talk about today is kind of what that nine to 12 month journey was
for me kind of living in pseudo-retirement and the single thing that has
gotten me out of it because i was candidly you know pretty depressed and
i couldn't find a way out because i kept looking for the next goal post
right the the second championship ring because the desire was that that
ring would somehow make the first one more valuable you know at the time
of this making you know we've now crossed about a nine figure net worth
i'm 32 my wife's 29 and it's hard for people to to conceptualize this
but like i really don't need anything like i need nothing

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 as much as that has been the goal for a
long time was to need nothing it also introduces a new variable of
needing nothing which means that there is nothing for me to do what i
want to walk through is the kind of single phrase that i've been
repeating to myself over and over again and has become the chorus in my
mental dialogue to myself it's around work and so what i realized after
pseudo retiring and not really being involved in the businesses and
having them continue to grow and continue to pump out cash flow is that
you know the first thing that god gave adam and i'm not religious but i
think that there's there's power in this in this story the first thing
that god gave gave adam was not eve it was a job it was work to do and
as humans we wither without adequate challenge we are formed against
something else right the hotter the fire the harder the steel as a
person who desires to continually grow i had removed the

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 challenges in my life and felt
stagnated or stagnant as a result of no challenge i had to re-examine a
lot of different pieces of my life which is why do i work and up to this
point the reason that i worked was for the outcome it was for me to
build up my net worth to create financial freedom to be able to have all
the time to do the things i wanted to do but in so doing i removed the
things that i actually wanted to do which was challenges which was work
that i found meaningful with stakes that are real the single chorus that
i continue to revert back to and i'll show you the background on my
phone is hard work that's it and i love this proverb in the bible i
can't remember which one it is i think it's i can't remember i think i
want to say 14-3 our work works on us more than we work on it that's a
loose paraphrasing but that's how i like saying it is that your work
works on you more than you work on it and so if i have the desire to
grow i must work

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 and the goal cannot be to stop working
that is what most people say and i think it's because the word work
still is has has terrible connotations in society the amount of people
who are like man you won't have to work ever again like dear god that
sounds horrible i just lived it i never want to do it again but hard
work is work worth doing the fact that it's hard makes it worth it when
you look back and when i look back at the times that i enjoyed most in
our entrepreneurial journey was the struggle was the times of lacking
was the times where the stakes were high and we had to perform anyways
not because of the outside circumstances because of what it told me
about myself we do not have values until they are tested you cannot say
you are loyal until you have a way to cheat on your spouse and know that
no one will catch you you cannot be honest until you have the ability to
steal money and know that you will not be caught and then choose

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 not to do it anyways and so to the same
degree i cannot grow unless i have something to match the ability to
conquer that i have now i can't hang up my my suit right my arms uh my
weapons just yet and so what's interesting is that as i've shifted my
course to this thing what a lot of people when i share it say oh yeah
because if you work hard all the other things will follow i'm like no no
no no you're missing it and i had to correct this in my own head because
that's how i started it if i do the hard work the things will follow and
that's the common thing like it's all about the process not perfection
it's it's not about the outcome it's about the journey like everyone
says this \[ \_\_ \] but deep down they still want the akka and i'm
telling you removing the outcome truly has been the most liberating
thing i've ever done and i i can't begin to tell you the joy that i am
feeling in being truly present because the work is the goal the work is

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 the goal doing a good job is the goal
and so when i find myself at the gym sometimes i would write you know i
did eight reps when it was really seven and a half but i'm like why the
hard work is the goal if i went up or it went down from last week it's
irrelevant how hard i chose to work is the goal when i'm editing a
paragraph for my next book i'm like oh that's pretty good and i'm like
you know it can be better and then i remember hard work is the goal and
so then i dive back in when i'm tired and i don't really feel like
giving layla the emotional energy to be the husband that i know i should
be or that rather i would like to be i remember the chorus hard work is
the goal and so it gives me this renewed energy to not only be better
but to be present and so i have the opportunity to work hard and that's
really the thing is that now i'm seeking opportunities to work hard
because the

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 work is the goal right now everyone's
trying to shy away society's trying to tell us you shouldn't work it's
all about passive it's blah blah blah but work is the goal and when you
make work the goal it allows the process itself to be meditative it
allows the process to get you into flow and for most of us flow is some
of the best feelings that we can have in our experience because we truly
are in the moment and so we do not work or try our best so that we do
not work hard so that we work hard period because hard work is who we
are and this has been a credo that i have i'm just beginning to
internalize and it has it is giving me more presence than i've ever had
and it's amazing and i know that i will fall short of hard work

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 but i will be damned if i do not try in
the present moment to work hard and when i die if all anyone says is
that \[ \_\_ \] worked hard i don't know what else i would want anyone
to say because the outcome is irrelevant there's luck there's outside
circumstances right there's plenty of things that can affect how well
you do but if we can appraise our success based on how hard we worked
and the work itself and only you know if you could have done better and
if you chose not to and i'm telling you the more times i recite this
chorus in the present moment where i have the opportunity to not to to
finish and know that based on the standards of others it's excellent but
not on my own it gives you this it takes the power back from the world
and brings it in

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 because i'm not allowing them to tell
me how well i did i'm not allowing chance or luck or chaos or
circumstance or outcome to dictate how well i did i know because the
thing is is that that stuff is irrelevant the only actual thing that we
can control is the work we do now the hard work the work that we know
that energy by the way side note your ability to work itself is
improvable you can increase your capacity to work and to work hard and
to work well by working hard and working well and so the more work i do
the more work i become capable of and it's \[ \_\_ \] awesome and so i'm
telling you that i was so so driven by first the outcomes that others
that that i wanted to have to impress other people

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 and then i would say the second kind
of phase or season of my life was creating outcomes that would impress
me and i feel like the thing that i'm transitioning towards which this
last 12 months has helped me make this transition and i'm sharing this
with you because i've been to what most people consider the mountaintop
right we cross a nine-figure net worth mind you i'm 2 000 times poorer
than jeff bezos but i'm still probably wealthier than the guys on
instagram who are flexing right i've been to the mountaintop and i can
tell you that there's nothing there nothing you feel nothing so the same
way you feel right now truly about the amount of money or the amount of
outcomes that you have supposedly achieved up to this point everybody's
achieved something these things will be no more meaningful to you the
second ring does not somehow make the first more meaningful moving the
goal post does not make the thing more meaningful which transitions me
to the third chapter right the third season for me which is that the
hard work itself is the goal and that's it

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 and when i look at my wife and i think
uh i'm just gonna say hi rather than saying hey sweetie what's going on
how can i help right if just like it doesn't like it's just mental
energy of just trying harder just and then once i try hard over and over
and over again that will become the new baseline and then i will be able
to try harder still and so it's been this repeated chorus in my mind
when i'm at the gym when i'm talking to layla when i'm working on a
project when i'm making these videos try and work hard work hard hard
work is the goal and it feels amazing because there's nothing else
because at the end of my life at least if i look back and i had two
lives one life where i achieved everything that everybody thought

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 i would know that i would feel the
same way i do now which is not empty but just nothing i feel the same as
i did when i had 10 million dollars same as i felt when i had one
million dollars as soon as i had a hundred thousand dollars i felt the
same but if i look back and i can see that consistently over time i
worked to the limit of my capacity to work true and honest to myself and
so like i said at the very beginning of this you only have the value if
you have the opportunity to not exercise it and do it anyways so you
cannot be loyal unless you have the opportunity to cheat and not get
caught and then you don't do it that is when you have the gift of
knowing and having evidence that you have loyalty and so if i desire the
character trait of hard work and work ethic then the only way that i
will be able to have that is to do work and know that i could work and
stop

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 and everyone else would be satisfied
and i would have no negative status ramifications because most of us
work to the point where we would have we reversed the negative status
notifications that the outcome of the work delivers all right so you do
stuff just enough that your boss says it's good you do stuff just good
enough that your clients think it's good but that means that you have
the opportunity to work harder to work better to make it for its own
sake for the sake of the work and chose not to and so therefore you
cannot say or claim that you know how to work hard you work just enough
to escape the social negative consequences you are just loyal enough to
not cheat on your wife because you know you get caught and the negative
consequences outweigh it you are just honest enough that you won't steal
because you don't want to get caught and if you are only truly motivated
by the negative consequence then you do not have the value and so the
value that i am trying to grow in myself is the ability to work

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 and the beautiful thing about this is
that i get to test this every \[ \_\_ \] day is that i can have work
that is good enough that people will see it and think that's good stuff
and i would know that it wasn't as good as i could have made it but i
get that opportunity again tomorrow to try and raise the bar and that is
what i am focused on in this season and so i love you all mozy nation
appreciate you um keep being amazing and i'll see you guys in the next
videos bye
