https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBR4BwOVNvs

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 last year i sold a 12 million business
two businesses for just under 50 million and two cars that were both
exotic cars and a four million dollar house in austin and that left me
with really no i would say i mean i did have like equities and stocks
and stuff but i didn't really have like material belongings and i did
that because i wanted to have a reset and so what i want to do in this
video is talk to you about one um what life was like or why i made the
decision two what life was like after i made the decision what i learned
and then some of the realizations i had along the way and what i'm doing
now and so if you don't know who i am my name's alex mozy i own
acquisition.com we have a portfolio of companies that's about 85 million
a year and i have nothing to sell you i make these videos because i just
want to transfer whatever lessons i have learned along the way to
hopefully help some other people let's dive in so why did i go and sell
everything last year i think the biggest thing is it felt very heavy i
felt like i had all these material things that were weighing me down and
taking my attention and i have lived my life in seasons and what i mean
by that is like i look back on my

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 life and i've had like three to five
year seasons i had a season where i went to college and then became a
management consultant i had a season of running gyms i had a season of
licensing gyms and starting three kind of bigger companies which is what
we just sold last year and the season that we're in now which is now we
just full-time you know find uh service-based businesses or e-learning
businesses that are doing like one to ten million a year um in profit
and invest in them right that's what we do now i thought that i wanted
to have and i said this often my dream state going into this was i want
to have an unlimited credit card and just consume my lifestyle with one
bag and my wife and i more or less did that after we sold so i basically
got rid of all my clothing with the exception of like one bags worth and
we set off and spent a bunch of time in different areas and part of this
was because we wanted to figure out where we wanted to live and i have a
the the requirements for what i was looking for i have this big list
that i made uh before we did this journey and i'll tell you where we
went in a second but i

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 wanted something and this might be
useful for you to like you know think through i wanted things to be
walking distance from me so having lived in a handful of different areas
very expensive areas very cheap areas um i realized that 90 of like my
life is really just predicated on the things that are in my immediate
walkable distance and so i wanted nature to be in walkable distance
because we like layla and i walk probably an hour or two every day um i
wanted restaurants because we got to eat a lot and having the
convenience of just something that we can go eat regularly is really you
know useful and has high utility for us number three is i wanted to have
a very sick gym in like the immediate vicinity and that's because for me
i've realized that that's a very important part of my life in terms of
like things that bring me joy and then number four having a grocery
store really nearby that sounds silly but like it's actually very
convenient to have growth so those are like my big walking distance
things that either have to be inside the building or within like
walkable distance in terms of like things that the home that i wanted to
have requirements was a view of either the ocean lake or mountain like
that was important to me because at

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 least for me when i look out the window
like it's nice super fast wi-fi a hot tub slash pool with a view an
office and studio three bedrooms minimum ideally more um and a big
balcony or patio all right those are like kind of the house things and
then additional features were kind of like more area specific so it has
to be reachable by amazon prime i want it to be in a zero tax state
because for me the difference between two different areas is much more
dependent on the sub market that you are in so like for example people
like to say that they love a certain city but i think if you really
think about it there's just a handful of tiny little neighborhoods
because like you as one human probably are like oh i visited nashville
one weekend nashville is awesome and what you're making a judgment on
like nashville is the three to ten people that you spent time with and
the you know six places that you went when nashville has a thousand
places and so it's like we take these we make these snap judgments on
areas based on such limited data they're almost irrelevant you could
have a terrible experience in nashville because you had the wrong people
or the

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 wrong three to five locations that you
visited and an amazing one in cincinnati because you were in a very
wealthy area and that was the microcosm and you probably wouldn't even
know the difference if you were in the suburbs of cincinnati versus the
suburbs of whatever you know what i mean and so i've realized this
because layla and i actually spent two years on the road before we
settled down to start the three bigger businesses doing gym turnarounds
and so we actually were in 33 cities in 18 months and we spent like two
to three weeks in each one of them and so we got a lot of feel for what
america feels like and what's interesting is there was a couple times
where i was i was walking through like a target and i remember thinking
to myself i knew the target like the back of my hand because almost all
of them were set up the same way and i was like what city am i in again
and the thing is is like most cities especially in like the higher end
areas if that's what you're trying to get into they have the whole foods
they have a target they have the same chains of rust like it's all so
similar that we have these like super strong beliefs about like one city
versus another and they're almost identical when you get into like the
sub

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 markets right and so for me that's why
and i've made videos about why i don't think you should make decisions
based on tax i have no marginal difference in living and so since there
is no marginal difference i then say okay well if there's no difference
then i would rather pay less in taxes and so that is why zero percent
tax was one of the the requirements or preferences rather i wanted to
have a way to meet lots of neighbors that were interesting and so this
is one of those like i prefer to live in a wealthy area because then and
ideally ultra wealthy and i say that because i've lived in quote wealthy
areas and you get a lot of upper middle class and there's nothing wrong
with that it's just that those people don't necessarily understand like
my lifestyle or the things that i find important they just had very
different priorities than me and it it became very difficult to have any
kind of meaningful conversations or relationships in general because
there's just not a lot of common ground the next one is ideally and i
covered good entrepreneurs scene a central airport close by and so i'm
showing these things so that maybe these you can add them to your own
personal list as you're looking for houses and and where you want to set
up shop a central airport close by because i do travel a lot and or
people travel to me

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 you know if you're in a you know b or c
market sometimes you have to have always connections to get everywhere
and for me that's a massive pain and so i prefer to have a big airport
that i can get direct anywhere i want to go or people can have direct to
me i wanted to also lock it and leave it flexibility so because i travel
and because i like flexibility and that is what i kind of optimized for
i wanted to be able to lock the house and leave it and then come back
and not have like a ton of stuff that i had to like figure out i wanted
to also be in a market that i could attract talent so if i was going to
hire people which is probably certain i wanted to be in a market that i
could attract the best talent and if i was going to have a more an
office i would want the office to be within 15 minutes of my house and
part of that is predicated on the idea of if if you're going to have
something that you have a business where you have in-person employees
then that would be a function i currently don't have this and i think
that we made the decision um over the last year to go remote and i'll
walk through that in a second but sold everything these are the
requirements that i had and then layla and i spent basically the last
nine months living all over the place and so we went to

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 just for an idea we spent a month in
cabo which was awesome by the way really sick like really really like
cabo personally and maybe that's just the microcosm that i experienced
but the microcosm that i experienced in san jose and san lucas we spent
two weeks in each was really nice and i actually really enjoyed it a lot
it was totally americanized you could like you could get around not
speaking spanish with like zero problems and everything was really cheap
um which is also a nice benefit and like the real estate there like you
can get an ocean front infinity pool you know six thousand eight
thousand square foot mansion for like five million dollars which you
know in the us would probably be like 20. so i mean like there's still
just a massive price difference and if you did choose to live there six
months or more of the year you actually uh functionally pay no state
income tax as well as a fun side benefit so we went to cabo we went to
scottsdale we went to flagstaff we went to bear lake in utah which is
like a beautiful mountain lake set up highly recommend really nice and
then uh we went to vegas and there was a couple we went to southern
california for a

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 while we we went all over you know what
i mean and you're like that's a lot of pacific southwest and that's true
so i guess it's not that all over um but for us those are kind of a lot
of different it had a lot of different feels to it and so after going
through that where we basically owned nothing just had the bags and
traveled and just you know leased the lifestyle for for for lack of a
better term and i would say to give you an idea in terms of like the
scale of what we were renting we were probably renting stuff in the
neighborhood of like 50 to 100 000 a month in terms of cost so like they
were high-end places that were nice and this is kind of this is kind of
what i learned now a year later from that kind of process the first one
is that i i think the idea that i had of wanting to have an unlimited
credit card and just consume my lifestyle at least the lifestyle and
then walk away from wherever i was and just leave it behind the cool
part about it was like we could go we're like where do we want to go
next but i think that after having done it i really did miss the
elements of familiarity of having people who knew you all around having
social circles you know like you can't stay somewhere for a month and
then and really get to know people or build any

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 kind of meaningful relationships so
that was kind of not as expected i just didn't think through it the
other one that was kind of interesting for me was was i didn't have all
my stuff around me like i have gone very accustomed to having like my
little spot where i have all the stuff that i like and you're like well
alex you're in a closet right now and that's because i'm in a tiny condo
and i actually don't like windows where i work because for me i get
super easily distracted and i'll just start out the window and like 30
minutes will go by it i wouldn't even realize it um and so that is why
i'm in a closet for those who are like why do you have so much money and
why do you have such a shitty office that's why beyond that you can't
really make changes to long-term rentals the way you can a house you
will probably like things a certain way and i think the more the more
money you have and the more you learn about yourself the more particular
you sometimes become because you've just realized that these are things
that add attention back in your life so you get more bandwidth and so i
have a lot of particulars you know i mean in terms of like how i like i
like having a recording studio i don't have one right

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 now that's why we're here but i like
having a recording studio i like having a gym that's like in my house
that's commercial level or within walking distance from me because i
just like being able to work out when i want to work out and not have it
be like a thing i like i like the mess the you know the sweet views but
it's also like i like all my stuff in the kitchen you know what i mean
like i like my sauces and my my my supplements and just the stuff that i
there's just my stuff you know what i mean and in the least your
lifestyle thing like i think there's there's i over corrected for like i
don't like having stuff to going all the way the other way where i had
nothing and i think that it's probably more in the middle and so i'll
tell you what we ended up settling on i think that as you as you become
more you know ultra wealthy whatever you want to call it like as you as
you level up and the reason i'm making this is because like i didn't
know this as i was going into it so hopefully i can just help someone
avoid the over-correction that i made is that i think the ideal setup is
having two to three maybe four primary homes that you actually stock
with all your stuff in the meantime so you can just

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 basically pick up and leave so you
have the flexibility of moving but you have the familiarity of like your
things and then in the meantime you can still go travel but you still
have like a home base not having a home base uh was not advisable i felt
kind of like i felt like a nomad but like free-floating in a way that i
didn't like um and i realized that over time as we were kind of going
through this process one of the other realizations that i had was around
hedonic adaptation which is basically like as you get exposed to uh new
cool stuff eventually you get used to it and it no longer confers any
value and so like people get this you know can this can this can be real
for you in terms of like if you've ever bought a new car um it's really
cool for the first however long and then within like a month or two it's
just like that's the car i have right and some people are like car super
enthusiasts but even then they buy another car and buy other cars
because they kind of get used to hedonic adaptation the things that you
had and so um leila and i did this like uh pooled leasing thing where we
like can swap out our car whenever we want so it's like you pay a fixed
price i think it's like a thousand bucks a month and then you can like
swap your car whenever you want

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 uh but you pay for like you but you
commit to like a year so anyways kind of interesting you think that
you're gonna switch cards out but then you never want to do the pain in
the ass and so i've actually had the exact same car since day one um so
it's like some of these things you think you're going to do and then you
don't actually end up doing it which for me was like a fun uh
interesting thing and my uh my videographer was like hey man you should
answer this question so he sent me these questions for this video which
was like how do you how do you see materialism and so i having you know
having had the ability to buy pretty much whatever i want you know
including private jets and things like that i know that for me not only
do most of those things not bring me joy but i actually feel a certain
amount of like wastefulness and maybe that's just something that's
internalized to me uh but like i just i don't like waste in general and
so to me it just it actually it's almost net negative and buying things
for the sake of status i've gotten over that a long long time ago i
don't really the only thing i ever bought that would i think i would
consider like a status symbol was i got a bentley which is one of the
cars i sold last year it was a flying spur was brand new it was like 300
and

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 something thousand and i got it
because a lot of people like dude you never spend money like you should
live a little bit and so i was like okay i'll try it and i i used it and
i'll say the benefits of having the exotic car this is the only benefit
that i think functionally helped is that when you pull up to places
people do treat you better and so i enjoyed the higher level of service
but i think there was kind of a taint to it because i knew that i didn't
get that treatment when i would have just a normal car and then it made
me like see people in a worse way which is which is crappy i probably
shouldn't have made that conclusion but i like flying under the radar
and just doing my own thing um and that definitely attracted attention
so there's there's elements that were good there was elements that were
bad uh was it worth the money absolutely not i don't really care about
cars at all um and i did it definitely for the wrong reason but in some
ways i'm glad i did so that i can just say like i now know that for me
it's useless so maybe that'll save you three hundred thousand dollars in
a waste of a car and then you know what do i think about jets uh private
jet wise i think it's really nice for travel to be honest with you like
it's one of the few things that i still spend money on uh because
there's a there's a lot of

15 00:14:00.000 --\> 00:15:00.000 function for it right like and people
are like how can you not like waste and then do that well the jet is
already there and it's either sitting there or it's being used so in
some ways i'm actually less wasteful as i'm using it but the relative
cost and people really have to understand this is like i've taken home
more than a million dollars a month for the last half decade so like
just imagine like a million dollars hits your bank account and then a
month goes by and another million dollars hits your bank account and
then another month goes by and then another million dollars and then you
do that for years and then all of a sudden like the cost of things
relative to your income becomes very very low i'll give you a math
example to explain this but like let's say you just did 10 million which
is less than a million dollars a month fyi if you took on 10 million
dollars a year and the average american family takes home 50 000 a year
then everything so it's 200 times more money than the average american
family and so if something costs let's say 10 000 right divide that by
200 and you've got 50 and so it cost 50 bucks for me relatively to take
a private flight if you if you're not at that income level yet i'm
trying to make it

16 00:15:00.000 --\> 00:16:00.000 relative so it makes sense but like if
you had the option of immediately pulling your car up getting on the
plane having no one else on the plane getting to your destination having
a car there already packed with your stuff you get out of the plane into
the car on the runway so it's literally like you drive two hours and
then you drive again and so it's like literally just the transit time is
the transit time which makes all of the us way more accessible to you
and for me i don't waste days i'm not exhausted i don't have like a
recovery period and i'm more likely to travel because the hassle is low
and what it does do and this is the biggest thing that i can communicate
of flying private is that it it it shifts it transforms transport from a
negative experience to a positive experience it's not even like i would
say like traveling first class still overall a negative experience just
less negative but uh but flying private is almost i would say a positive
experience and so that is really the biggest transformation that happens
when you fly private which is why i still do it but i just wanted to
give you guys an example but like if that if you were able to transform
the experience from

17 00:16:00.000 --\> 00:17:00.000 negative to positive not have the the
the drain the men the mental and emotional drain the energy drain the
the recovery time that would have to occur the prep time the getting
your documents the defining the flights and all that kind of stuff if
you got if you got to skip all that um would you pay 50 for that rather
than paying a dollar right most people would make that difference right
it's like it's a buck for normal normal flight and 50 for the for the
private one like a lot of people i think would make that trade and so
that's the reason that people you know why people who have more do make
that trade is because like relative to income it makes more sense okay
so the the last piece i'm gonna hit on is kind of like my unifying
theory in terms of how i make decisions around material goods because
it's like okay i have i had a lot of stuff a lot a decent amount of
stuff sold it all lived almost a year on the road uh with just a bag and
now uh layla and i just bought a home a very nice home it's an
eight-figure house so i'll just believe that's really nice house and
it's on a mountaintop and it's really cool but i like it a lot why why
would i do that after this whole period

18 00:17:00.000 --\> 00:18:00.000 so number one is i do think it's
necessary or at least for me i don't want to speak that over you but
like for me i prefer having a home base a headquarters where all my
stuff is and so i think that from there we can do the travels we can do
the consumption but then we have some place to come back to and so
that's number one number two is that from a work season which is what
i'm entering again now because i'm we're building up acquisition.com
company so we're taking all the portfolio companies actively as we speak
right now that are in that you know e-learning and service space
business service consumer services and growing those companies actively
right now and it's a ton of fun and there's nothing that's more
interesting to me and so for me like i don't need any stimulation from
my exterior surroundings because i get so much stimulation from the work
that i do and so that is that is paramount that is the the biggest
priority and so that's where the home base becomes really helpful
because i'm just more efficient and more productive when i have all the
things that i already know that work well for me around me and so from a
unifying theory standpoint it comes down to form over function and so i
will spend money on things that are

19 00:18:00.000 --\> 00:19:00.000 expensive i'll use quotes here if they
have improved function and so i don't have one of my flannels with me
but like the flannels that i wear are actually really expensive and it's
just because they like fit me really well and i like them and so i buy
them this on the other hand i get five packs from amazon for like 10
bucks and so like because i've had the really expensive like lululemon
tank tops and stuff and like i like these cheap cotton ones better they
breathe better and they don't they don't bother me and i they're
interchangeable and they can get dirty when i go to the gym and if
something tears i don't care right um and so that's that's why i wear
these things right and so from from a form perspective or so from a
function perspective that is what i make all my decisions based on and
so i think that for uh having kind of lived the entire spectrum if you
can have a unifying theory around how you buy things i think it would be
incredibly helpful and from a clothing perspective

20 00:19:00.000 --\> 00:20:00.000 this is a nice one that i that i
picked up is i've realized that lots of clothing actually decreases my
quality of life and so when i walk into a closet and i see lots of
clothes or lots of t-shirts i feel guilty um and maybe i could fix that
about myself but for me it's much less effort to just fix the
surrounding and so i realized when i gave away 90 of my clothing and
just kept 10 for the bag that i actually felt better and i was like huh
okay so this is something that i'm keeping with me even though i'm going
to a headquarters that has all my stuff clothing is not among them that
are meaningful to me and so if i'm going to buy something i have to in
my mind i'll throw something else out so that way my my actual closet
stays around stays the same size but the quality always increases in
terms of like it's net utility to me and so i have to take out something
that's the lowest utility shirt or shorts and then replace it with
something that has higher utility overall and as a fun side note i have
found that for me if i find a shirt that i like i will buy six colors
that i like in that shirt and i will usually replace in bulk the other

21 00:20:00.000 --\> 00:21:00.000 t-shirts that i had prior to that that
didn't fit me necessarily as well as these ones did um and so you're
like are you really talking to me about these things well these are the
things that you that you think through as you're trying to optimize
different aspects of your life so that you can make better decisions and
have more headspace throughout the day so you can ultimately make more
money or at least that's how i function that is the that is kind of
where we landed was uh the one really really really nice home and we
will probably buy another place that will be in the summer and winter
and so weather which i should have mentioned earlier was a primary
driving factor and so i figure that between two and three climates i can
have the weather that i want year round with the novelty of change of
environment without having the nomad feeling of not having any of my
stuff and so that is kind of the plan that we are moving through right
now is having two to three homes in different areas with different vibes
so probably beach mountain and then probably lake uh would be like the
baby desert just have different vibes and then like in the summers when
it's really hot in you know like vegas then i'll go somewhere that's

22 00:21:00.000 --\> 00:22:00.000 really cool and so that way i can kind
of get the best of everything and not also have to be like on the track
you know on the road all the time because to me that is also somewhat
stressful now having done it for a year i made this video because i did
not know this as i was coming up and i thought first i should have lots
of stuff and i did that and that weighed me down and then i transitioned
to selling everything and just leasing my lifestyle and when i did that
i realized that i did like having some stuff maybe not all of it and so
i think that like buddha the middle path is the way and so you can have
the nothing and you can have everything and i think that everyone just
has to figure out what the just right is for you but for me my unifying
theory around it is form over function sorry function over form so what
it does for me and the net utility it provides me in my life is the
primary driving factor and then that gives me a decision-making process
that makes my life easier because like we make thousands of decisions
every day as an entrepreneur and if you can have a unifying theory it's
kind of a decision

23 00:22:00.000 --\> 00:23:00.000 algorithm like if this than that then
you can pre-make decisions and then you can always just run them through
the algorithm without having to like use mental bandwidth and so in
another video i'll walk you through like i've tons and tons of decision
algorithms that i've already made to just make my life easier um so that
i can only so that i can allocate all of my time to making new decisions
rather than remaking old ones um and so if you like this my name is alex
mosey again welcome to mozy nation i hope you enjoyed the video and i'll
see you in the next one bye
