8 Money Rules I Wish I Knew in my 20s
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Summary
When I was 20 years old, I was broke, overweight, and hated my job. Today, I run a $100M a year company in the best shape of my life and I love what I do. But if I had to give my 20-year-old self some advice to transform his life twice as fast, here's what I'd say.
Transcript
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When I was 20 years old, I was broke, overweight, and hated my job.
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Today, I run a 100 million a year company in the best shape of my life, and I love what I do.
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But if I had to give my 20-year-old self honest advice to transform his life twice as fast,
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here's what I'd say. The first piece of advice is you don't have to work harder,
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just work smarter. See, back when I started in business, I was working 80 to 100 hours a week
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and all they're doing is just working 16 hour days,
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they're not hustling because they're doing things
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If you wanna grow your life and you wanna grow your business,
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work on the business rather than in the business.
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Learn to build the machine, not be part of the machine.
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is actually gonna hold you back from achieving your goals.
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Most people just put their heads down and grind it out
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They go and respond to messages on social media.
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I'm just saying if that's what you've been doing
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Every time you wake up, you should ask yourself,
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What gives me anxiety about what I'm about to do today?
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If what you're doing is the same thing you did last year,
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then I can tell you, you're never gonna be able to grow.
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I was in my late 20s, I didn't have anybody else to impress
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than trying to expand my lifestyle to keep up to people
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to impress them with things that I didn't even need.
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So my whole philosophy now is to live on 10% of your income
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when you look at jeff bezos from amazon in his office he made his desk out of used doors there
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was no fanciness if they needed stuff they bought second hand there was nobody to impress there was
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work that had to get done there was skill sets to acquire there was the person that they needed to
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become most people want to spend the money as soon as they get it so then they don't have any cash
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available to take advantage of opportunities i mean i had literally a million dollars cash in
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my bank account i was still driving around in a 12 year old volkswagen jetta which i loved wasn't
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as nice as my friend that went to college and got a really nice job driving around in a fancy bmw
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3 series but the money i saved by not wasting on those things ended up making investments that
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paid a hundred times over which brings us to number three which is don't run away from problems
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face them head on i have a friend every time they run into an issue they ruminate on the problem
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they talk about it they go over it with anybody who's willing to listen it spirals literally out
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of control because they keep repeating the story over and over again and there's this great saying
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that says misery loves company and it turns out the people that are willing to listen to the story
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are also people that are negative that ruminate that just spiral out of control see most people
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make problems worse by ignoring them the game here for me is speed to decision if there's an
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issue you have to ask yourself what is the next action step that i can take to solve this problem
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that is it if you get clear on the next action even though you may not know how to solve the problem
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and then just do it it will literally resolve the emotions that are coming with it while everyone
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else is still thinking about how to solve it you've already moved on to the next one it's a
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massive upgrade in your life most people run away from problems because they love to tell them
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stories about why the problems exist i've seen people in love with setbacks in love with being
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held down in love with blaming other people for what's happened in their life and because they're
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they're literally sold on those stories their identity of who they are and the challenges they
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face they just sit with these problems over and over again because they feel normal they would
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actually the question to ask themselves is who would you be if you didn't have this problem
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who would you be it sounds crazy but a lot of people are not willing to literally let go the
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story that they've told themselves about who they are with that problem which brings us to number
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four which is no one cares about your story until you win so go win i see people coming up to me all
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the time and they're like dan here's what i went through here's the impact i want to have in the
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world here's what i want to go do and i'm like that's cool but you're not going to be able to
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help as many people as you just said if you don't go and succeed first just because you went through
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a setback and you haven't shown to the world that you've taken those lessons and those learnings and
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applied them to your life to go and win in life then you don't have the complete story nobody's
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gonna watch a superhero movie about a superhero that doesn't defeat the villain and until you go
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win massively you haven't become that hero yet when i left rehab i had one mission stay sober
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just stay sober everybody that was doubting me that was thinking i was going to relapse
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i just had to overcome the doubters so they couldn't doubt me anymore i had to stay sober
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for so long so that it was undeniable that that was just my new future that was how i was going
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to be and everyone goes through hard times and in those hard times i kept stepping forward i kept
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making better decisions i kept showing and proving to everybody around me that that was who i was
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going to be but that wasn't enough because then i'm just normal i may not be in jail anymore i may
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but I'm still not successful in the eyes of other people.
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The difference is, is upward spiral or downward spiral.
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if you realize you spiral downwards so far in your life,
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that narrative will be one of the most powerful tools
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you have to support and change other people's lives.
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but my experience has been is your purpose in life
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is literally hurting you and it's hurting them.
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then the most powerful thing you could ever do for them
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is to inspire them and people playing small never inspired anybody here's a crazy story when i
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finally gave myself permission to buy a supercar at 38 the reason i hadn't done it prior is because
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i was worried how it would make other people feel i didn't want anybody to feel less than
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or uncomfortable or feel like i was showing off and then i realized after i drove it for a couple
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weeks is that the truth is is my real friends were happy for me and the people that weren't just
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showed me who they were and that was an incredible lesson because what i've learned over the years is
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your good friends will be your biggest cheerleaders so don't dim your light to make other people feel
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brighter shine yours as much as you can to inspire a select few don't play small i i love saying this
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that if you're too much let them go find less because the too muchness is appreciated from
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other people that are on that journey i love your too muchness i want you to be that person
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and you have to be willing to go long periods of time being misunderstood see people that get
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upset with you it's because your truth shows them where they've been living a lie the way you show
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up in the world will demonstrate to them where they haven't stepped up you winning shows them
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where they gave up and that will hurt they will respond by taking shots at you but understand
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that's showing their character not revealing yours which brings us to number six which is
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don't blame anyone or anything go look in the mirror so here's what i've learned when i was
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growing up i grew up in a really challenging environment and for a long time i blamed my
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parents for that life i blamed them for the hardship for putting me on ritalin when i was 11
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diagnosing myself with adhd putting me in group homes foster homes crisis centers because they
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didn't know how to deal with me not visiting me in jail when i ended up there two times before i
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I was 17. And then at one point when I looked at my life and I realized all the good that was there
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that I had forgotten to blame my parents for the good. See, if who I am is a byproduct of who I was
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and my parents were the reasons I was blaming them for shaping my life, then I have to give
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them credit for who I've become, which sounds crazy. But the person in the mirror is responsible
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for the life. Take responsibility for everything. Have extreme ownership. And I know this sounds
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absurd but if i was walking down the street and i got hit by a car i would first off go why was i
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walking down the street because i could have decided to go on a trail i could have decided
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to drive i could have decided not to be out at that time and that for some people they don't
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understand if something happens to me i want to be a hundred percent control into my response
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i can't control what happens to me but i can control my meaning i give to that and what's
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cool is that if you do that people around you will change you know when i finally got sober
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in my 20s, I started looking around and my little brother, my other brother, my sister, they all
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started making different life decisions. Was it because of me? I don't know. But here's what I've
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learned. When you heal yourself, you heal other people around you indirectly. And you're the only
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person that can affect that change. It's easier to blame other people than to say I'm accountable
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for my situation. You know, it's easier to say I can't do this because of these reasons than to say
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and he's saying, well, why would I grow my business
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is you can have both, but you're just not good enough yet.
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He's trying to blame that, oh, I'd have to sacrifice
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And I'm saying, no, you just have to be accountable
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but 100%, you get to move a lot faster through the world.
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I realized comparing myself to other people was taking joy out of my life, was making me feel
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insecure, was making me feel unhappy. And then I decided, you know what? I'm just going to compare
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myself to one person. And that was me from yesterday. If every day I woke up today and said,
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am I a better version of me? If I look at myself compared to a week ago, a month ago, last year,
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can I say honestly to another person that I am better today?
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If I continue to compare myself to me from yesterday,
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And you see these people with overnight success
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not realizing that they've been doing something
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And I've been building businesses for 27 years.
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And honestly, what I've built is not that impressive
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So imagine what could you do in 10 years, 20 years,
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One is successful, the other one is distracted.
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and I realized that I wasn't able to make payroll.
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This is my third company, first two complete failures.
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I had customers ready to go building this software.
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without anybody else's help, especially my dad,
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But I gave him a call and he gave me some great advice.
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He said, you know, you can factor your receivables.
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So I had customers in the US who had bought some software,
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but the way the payment term works, it took a while.
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And he taught me that I could sell those invoices
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to somebody else that would take a big piece of this cut but at least i'd have the money to be
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able to make payroll so i listened to his advice swallowed my pride sold my receivables and was
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able to make payroll if i didn't ask for help i would have never known that was even a thing what
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i've learned over the years is most people will not ask another person for help they don't want
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to bother them they don't think they're worthy of it they feel like it would cost them money they
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make up all these reasons why they don't ask anybody else for help but what i've learned is
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people who've done it before will literally shave years off your learning curve finding somebody
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who's already gotten the result you want and getting them to give you the strategy will save
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a third of the time just think about anything you've done maybe you're a musician an athlete
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etc if you had to start from zero know what you know now how much faster could you teach somebody
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else that skill that exercise that business think about for yourself if somebody came to you starting
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from scratch and you're an expert at something how much faster could you teach them to get to where
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you're at knowing what you know now for most people it's three times faster so here's the deal
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if you want to just go as fast as possible and get a bunch of bumps and bruises then go alone
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just go as fast as but the problem is it's only going to get you so far it's going to be a small
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outcome but if you want to go far and you want to create something massive and you want to not
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have all these small little setbacks from things you could have learned from somebody else
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go find the people that have been there before and ask for help that was my honest advice to my
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20-year-old self that many of you need. If you want to learn my 17 rules of success,
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click the link and I'll see you on the other side.