How to Build Ruthless Focus and Discipline | 1 Hour

So you go over a lot of your successes and failures. What was that? And failures. Go ahead. Yeah. And so my question is more about your protecting your mental health and your ability with these extreme emotions because I've gone through both exits and acquisitions the

last two years. Yeah. And I've just never been more miserable. Main reason I'm here. Okay. Is just either getting resources or connections. I was just wondering how you've handled when you've had those major losses, when you've lost

everything or when you've had that failures face you in the face and also if you ever review an acquisition as a loss of community. Sure. And how you protect yourself. So, I will not spend a long time on this because

it gets into a very heady chunked up version of reality, which is just like I believe that when I die within 6 months, no one will give a [ __ ] And so, the fact that no one will care 6 months after I am dead for the most significant life event that I have, which is that I

am no longer alive, it makes a lot of the other stuff not matter that much. And so I also know that when I was poor and I had nothing, I was about as happy as I am now. And so if I was just as happy then as I am now, then I could go all the way back there and be

in the same thing. And I think in some ways when I really play it out, I get just as excited about the idea of having the comeback story. Now I'm going to try to not do that, but if I did it, I would get into the state that I think that I'd be like, "This is going to be my thing." And so like a lot of times the fears we

have are catastrophized. And so I like I want to have this like of the many list of books I have this big document of like Alex's list of books that he will someday write. but one of them is play it out. And so a thing that I say a lot on quarterlys and strategic is like

let's play it out like what happens next? What happens next? What happens next? And so like what happens next is not that bad. It's just the idea of it that seems very bad., Leila has this quote that's the fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. It's like you take a step out to it and you're like, ", this isn't that big of a deal."

Like, the worst case is I move back with my Well, I like my parents and, homecooked meal is not so bad., I'm only going to see them for 10 more years before they're just old as [ __ ] anyways. So, it could be a blessing in disguise. And like there's a lot of

research that's been done on like people who become paralyzed. And within like 3 to 6 months, they return to the exact same baseline of subjective well-being as they were when they had all their limbs. And so, as much as that's a terrible thing that could occur, losing

money is probably a lot less bad than losing limbs. And if it happened to them and they're just about as happy now as they were 6 months earlier, I just genuinely like Leila and I are sit on opposite poles. Like I struggle

to care. She cares so much. And that's how we yin and yang in business is that she'll get stressed and I'll be like, "We can die and no one will care." And like when you zoom out, you're like, ", there's the world." And like I'm a monkey on a little thing. Again, this is

a worldview thing. Some people don't agree with this. And I had I've had people get really upset about it. So that's how I deal with it. And so for me, I just don't have really big stakes because I just don't think anyone cares. That's all. All right. So you had 10 and something,000. You want to get to a

million issues hiring? 150. 150. Excuse me. You want to get to a million? Yep. And your biggest issue is hiring. Yep. What do you sell? I sell content. So content.

Yeah. So we do videos like marketing materials for real estate agents looking to market their personal brands and properties. So personal branding for them. Correct. Okay. Got it. What stops you from doing a lot more of that? So, [snorts]

I'm a young entrepreneur and I based my own brand off of being a young entrepreneur. And now you're just going to be a middle young white guy. So, my business partner is I know what you're dealing with because like when I came up I started making a lot of money at like 26 27 and they're like, "Alex is so young and now

I'm just like 36 and no one really gives a fuck." Yeah. Sorry. Keep going. The only problem is like clients find out my real age and I use my I technically use my age as a leverage to what I sell. So social media I grew up with social

media. So I know social media better than 60-year-old agents do. Okay. So my constraint What's up? What's the issue? Just the pitch is wrong. No people don't trust necessarily older people in my business. We based our brand off of being young.

Okay. So, you're still young. Yes. But when I hire someone like a new shooter Yeah. or a director of operations who's 25 and above, they don't necessarily folks. Yeah. They don't necessar I want to say too.

Just boomers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Boom. Boomers. What are you What are you saying though? Like it's it's more of a trust issue with clientele. This is like totally in your head man. Really? Yeah. 100%. You care. No one else cares. You even think they're old.

Hey, I don't think they're I don't think they're old. No, but like you do a little bit because you're bringing it up, right? So, like, like no one cares. Did you guys care that Jacob Hopkins is 22 at the same time? I got people who are in their late 30s and 40s.

People just care about how good you are. So, like people will care about your age for the two seconds before you open your mouth. And then as soon as you open your mouth, all of it's like that's like the absolute thinnest surface level judgment that someone will make in general.

Younger people know less than older people in general. Yeah. But there are also Mark Zuckerberg who's a billionaire at 21. So there's obviously people who know more at a younger age. So you just have to demonstrate expertise. I had so many like you're just gonna be

busting, bro. jokes. Ila, I'm gonna ask you this question. I'm 37. Is it too late? You're about to turn 37. I know. That's why it's so relevant. Is it too late? That's quite depressing that you're 37.

Let's just ignore that fact., no, it's not too late. Like, that's ridiculous., I think some of the, most successful people on earth started when they're 45, 50. Who was it? The founder of McDonald's. Was it him that was Ray Croc? Ray Croc. Wasn't he like almost 50 or 40

something when he started?, I just think to myself, you have so much life left. Why? I don't know why people ask that question . Is it too late? Too late for what? Like too late to live your life, too late to succeed, too late to have what

you want. Yeah, exactly. It's like why does this prohibit you? Like you're not at the point yet where your health is like rapidly declining either. So like I don't really understand what that means. Let me give you an interesting frame on

this. When you are 20, 30, 50, 100, you only have one thing which is the present. So there is fundamentally, as much as I made an argument at the very beginning of this that like you should go hard when you're young because you have a lot of advantages, it doesn't negate the fact that you should go pursue your

goals with whatever condition you have, it doesn't mean yes, there are advantages when you're younger. There's also advantages when you're older. Like you might have more experience, might have more wisdom, you might have more resources. But let's just assume for the purpose of this discussion that you have no resources and no experience because you wasted the first 17 years of your

life. Great. Think about this. Are there 20-year-olds who start at 20 and then at 24 are crushing it? Yes. So there's no reason that at 37 you can start at 41 you're crushing it. Like by saying it is too late is accepting that you will accomplish nothing between now and

when you die. That's what it turns into. And so tough, right? So, as long as you believe that you're going to stay alive, and you're going to do something with the time you have, you're go the time is going to get spent either way, you might as well spend it building something that you want to build rather than

running the clock out until you die. I also think it's you, you said this, but I think highlighting it is there are advantages to being young. There's also a lot of advantages to being older. So I can think about when we our first 10 years of work being in

our early 20s when we started like complete like you have so much energy you have I started the whole you have no pain what you started the whole life like that so much energy yeah [snorts] you don't have any physical pain you don't have any ailments you don't

have a lot of responsibility so like there's a lot of things there but then as you get older you have way better critical thinking you have I would say way better judgement emotional control, way better emotional control, more patience, you're typically wiser. So, there's a lot of advantages. And I think

that as you get older, you see ways to do things that you can get things done with more leverage. Like you don't have to use yourself to get everything done. You see a lot I would say smarter ways that you can get things done in business. So, if I were starting, and we have done this. I

know, and we have done this., on our third business, started it completely different than we did in the very beginning. first business it's like did everything myself first didn't hire anybody smart for a long time like duct taped everything together with brute force and then on our third business it's like all right hiring the entire

executive team first so and I think that's just judgment that's learning that's understanding I don't have the energy to do it all anymore it's reputation it's leverage with capital like there's a lot of things that go into it but yeah that's why it's a stepping stone what like we wouldn't been able to get the talent that we have on

this team if we didn't have the track record that got us And so if you want to beat someone, just try 10 times harder than them. And you only really need to try two or three times harder, but you probably don't realize how much harder they're trying than you are. So try 10

times harder just to make sure you win. People reject this idea that someone can work 10 times or 100 times harder. But I define work as output. And so for you to say that someone can't produce 10 times

more than you is just factually false. There's tons of people who produce 10 times more. There's tons of people who produce a 100 times more than you. I'll give you the easiest example in the world. A lot of departments run on weekly cadences. They say, "Do this thing by end of week." Often times, you

can ask that person, "How many hours will this really take you?" And then that person will say something like, "I don't know, 3 or 4 hours." You say, "Okay, well, why don't you just get it done by noon?" And then at noon, you say, "Okay, what's the next thing going to take?" And they'd say, ", probably another 3 or 4 hours." You say, "Cool,

get it done by the end of the day." Now, from those two cycles, that would have normally taken 2 weeks or 14 days, but instead it got done in one. And so, just right there, you got something done. You got 14 times more done than the

competitor who's doing things on a weekly basis. And so, this is how you drag the future to the present is that you're not focusing on how hard you're working. You're focusing how much you're getting done. You'd be amazed at how much better you get after you've done it

a hundred times. If you want to win, do it again. I want to be clear. You don't just post a hundred videos in a row and see what happens. You post one, see what worked, and then try and do more of that thing. And so, the idea isn't just raw effort. It's raw effort with an

improvement loop. And so, I remember one of my favorite words that I have to teach sales guys because it's a very repetitive task to teach someone how to sell is great, do it again, great again, great job again. And so it's that

repetition that breeds the nuance of skill. And you want it to be so drilled into you that you no longer have to consciously think about how to do the thing because you can then do it as a natural skill so that you can move on to putting your attention to the next

skill. So it's not just about learning how to do it once. It's about learning how to do it so many times that you don't have to think about doing it at all. Especially if you're starting out, your goal should not be passive income. Mainly because you don't have enough money for the passive income to mean anything. Instead, you should learn how

to make money while you're awake before trying to learn how to make it while you sleep. You crawl, then you walk, then you run. Once you have more money than you can possibly reinvest in education and acquiring more skills, then you can take the leftover and put that into your

passive income pool. And so, very, very tactically, this is what I'll walk you through. You should have an education investment budget. And so, just like you spend X dollars per month. So, let's say you we pull all of your expenses down and you're making an extra thousand a month. Okay? Now, if you're not eating

out, you're not buying new clothes, you're not going out with the boys, you're not spending money in stupid ways, that if that's what you're doing, then you're going to have $1,000 left. If you have that, then you can take that money and every month you can put it towards a bank account that you can

either choose to immediately spend or save up for something that is more expensive. And I can tell you that a lot of what I learned when I when I bought programs and seminars and conferences and things like that wasn't even from the content itself, but it was connections that I was able to make at

those types of events that I was then able to leverage the one skill I had, which I was good at sales and then start giving that away to every person I met so that I could collect those IUs and then learn skills for free. And so it's like I really just needed a ticket to

get in the room and then I could trade with everybody else with the skills I had to then get to learn theirs. And so as wild as this sounds, at the end of 2025, you could be dead broke but rich in skills. And so let's say at the end of next year, you have no more

money, but you now have the ability to make more money. And so just like my father had to start over from nothing after losing everything, he didn't lose everything. He still had the most valuable thing he had, which is that he was a surgeon. And so he knew a skill and he could make it work here like he'd

make it work there. And that is something that no divorce can take from you, no government can confiscate. And it's something that's with you till the day you die. And so that's how you get better. You keep going. You keep improving the feedback loops. You invest appropriately and you keep going all

this work needs doing. And there's just no way around it. And it's just it's just looking at the face of the work and it's like smiling back at me like no one else is going to do it., and like I

love that one. Like when we're recording content in the early days, we were doing like a hundred shorts every time we did it and it was direct to camera and it was the only time I could fit it in with all the portfolio stuff that we're doing. And so I was it was always like I will do what's required. And that's been a really helpful refrain for me when I'm

confronted with especially when what needs to get done. And the second one is but I'll know. And so like even if it does go well and even if everyone else says it's great,

but I'll know and it'll then rob me of all of the joy of all of those moments in that experience because I'll know that I could have done better. And the thing is like to quote myself from earlier like I've never regretted

working harder ever. Not once. And some people are like on your deathbed you're going to like no cuz I lived every moment of my day doing what I wanted to do. And I remember I had a boss when I my first boss after college. She said this thing. I had a particularly