The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why You Should Consider Quitting College | Ep 450

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

If you had the choice to go back, would you go to college again? Or make your own path? Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares with us the insightful talk he had with his 18-Year-Old about not going to college, giving him different perspectives on if he chose one path or the other. He also talks about the cost of college vs. the opportunity cost of going to college, choosing the path that gives you long-term success, investing in skills and learnings, skill-stacking, and accepting that failure is part of the process.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(4:47) - Restructure education: Majors based on business departments for job relevance.(11:08) - Choose paths for long-term success; embrace initial challenges for growth.(17:09) - Master your passion, self-teach, share learnings, build valuable skills.(21:12) - Alternatives to college: Apply to companies, invest in courses, seek mentors.(31:27) - Create access to mentors, appreciate imperfect advice, skill-stacking importance.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

which of these two paths will lead me closer to where I want to go. And if the goal is to make income, then you have to look at that $200,000. And all the things you could buy with that $200,000 in four years of time and think, is there another way that I could reverse engineer four years to get me to where I want to go? The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast, the game, is my attempt at documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to building acquisition.com into a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe someday soon, partner with

to get to $100 million and beyond. I hope you share and enjoy. This is for every 17-year-old, 16-year-old, 18-year-old, 19-year-old who's considering going to college or quitting college right now. Either they're going to do it, they're thinking about doing, they're in it, and they want to leave, or you're somebody who knows somebody who's in that situation, or you're the parent of somebody who's facing that decision. I want to give you context for the decision so that you can make one that's less emotional and less for the wrong reasons and ideally for the right reasons. Okay. So the reason I wanted to make this is because there is an 18-year-old. neighbor of mine who after going through his first semester of college and I had some rapport with

him came back home was like I don't know if I like this I don't know if this is for me and we went on a one hour walk that I think changed his life all right and he went from going to pepper down which is really expensive school in San Diego to dropping out all right his friends his family his friends parents started looking at him different he was like the troubled child he's like the I don't know about him right kid two years later he now has 250,000 dollars saved up as a 20 year old okay he makes just under $200,000 a year, it makes $200,000 a year right now as a sales guy. All right?

And what I want to do is break down the split in the road of two different lives that he could have lived or that you could live or that somebody that you know who's facing the decision could go through.

And I'll tell you how the conversation I had with him went. Okay? So I said, listen, you're at a crossroads right now. And we have crossroads every day in our lives. I was like, but some crossroads are bigger than others.

And when you're trying to make a decision, you have to think how reversible is this decision, right? And how much long-term impact is death? If I'm choosing between Chinese and Mexican for lunch, it's a split in the road, but it's not really irreversible in terms of the calories I got to eat. And it's really not going to affect much for me down the road. So I don't need to put resources towards it. But like choosing to go and commit four years of my life between $50,000 and $200,000 of money and the lost income that I would have made during that period of time, those are very big, very irreversible decisions, and they need to be treated with the same amount of respect. And a lot of people don't because they make that decision

because their parents are selling them too, which seems like the overused one, but realistically because they just, they don't want to be the kid who did it wrong, right, who didn't do what they were supposed to do and didn't do the next natural step, which is the same reason people have kids, same reason people get married, same reason people buy houses, because they think it's the next natural thing. They get, they're like, I guess this is what I do now. That's a terrible reason to go to college. What I want you to do, I don't care what you do, but in terms of, I would like you to approach it with a decision-making framework that makes sense. Okay. So it starts with, and this is me telling him this, I was like, what problem are you solving? Whenever you make a big decision,

you got to think, what problem am I solving? He's like, well, I want to make money. I was like, okay. So the question is, four years from now, if you have a degree, and that's what you have, and you lost the money and you lost the earning potential you had during those four years, I was like, is that you more able to generate income than an alternative view? Because what we have to analyze is not the cost of college, but the opportunity cost of going to college. I'll define it for you. The opportunity to cost is the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen. So when we choose to go to college, there's an opportunity cost that exists.

It's the cost of not doing of what you could have done in the meantime. And it is the single greatest cost that people do not take into consideration. If you spent four years versus starting a business and then four years later, the opportunity cost is the business you could have started and what you would have four years later. Okay. Does that make sense? All right. I'll give you more details. So I'm walking with him and this is like a one hour really in depth. Like this is probably deeper than he and I've been because I'm still this neighbor from across the street that like makes money on the internet. But his parents like trusted me enough to be like, you know, I know that you have a lot of influence over our son and like we just want you to know that like we know you do. And so like please be careful. And I was like, I'm aware. He's in good hands. Don't be afraid for. what I'm going to tell your son. And so it's like, listen, minute, if you want to make money, then you need income generating skills, okay? And do you think your philosophy degree, your sociology degree, your psychology degree, your economics degree, which is still a little more useful, is going to give you actual skills to make money? He was like, I don't know. And so I'm here to tell you what actually makes money. And so if Alex were redoing the education system, the majors would be

in accordance to the departments of a business. You'd have marketing and it would have the actual ways to market, which is creating the materials of marketing and then how to distribute it. You'd have sales, which is how to get people to, how to get strangers to give you money. You'd have the delivery portion, which would be the either physical products delivery or services delivery, which would be customer experience, customer success, customer support, like all around that. Or it'd be technical, specific as in like electrician, plumber, lawnmower, whatever it is. And the amount of time that it takes, to train it, like to teach someone to be an amazing, like, lawn care person probably takes only

four weeks. And if that, if you're, like, really offended by that, I'm sorry. But that's also why the marketplace pays what it pays for that skill, right? It doesn't take a long time to learn it. But if people deliberately learned it for four weeks, they'd probably be much better than the people that they're hiring off the straight. Interesting, right? So then you have the actual technical component of the services delivered. And then you have the supporting services, which is to do finance, HR, legal, banking, et cetera. So all of these things would be supporting, right, those business functions. And in my opinion, those are the things that people should major in because those are the things that you're going to get hired to do. Right. So if you're like, well, Alex,

there's a big disconnect between what they're teaching and what I actually need to do to make money. Great observation. If you're like, but there are things that like if I'm a doctor or a lawyer, you need a degree, sure, but for the 99% of people who don't fall in the six fucking careers that you have to have one, right, get over it. Google stopped requiring a college degree. All the major big tech corporations have stopped it because they realized it too that it's not value additive. All right. So, zooming back out, I'm walking in the street, we're talking together. I'm like, okay, so we know what this path looks like. And I told him this line. I said, the world doesn't need another 3-1 business degree from Pepperdine. Like another B student who graduates because he didn't really give a shit, right? He would just do good enough that he would get through? And this is what he brought up. He's like, but what about like the social experience of college? I was like, so do you think that if you don't go to college, you're not going to be able to party with people who are your age? I was like, real time. talk. And he was like, well, like, kind of. I was like, bro, I fucking promise you, if you want to go to Europe for four years, you know what I mean? Like, if that's the, if the problem to be solved is to socialize you,

there are way more efficient ways to socialize you than spending $200,000 and not making income. You can work all day and then make my objective for this period of time to have fun, then fucking work all day and then literally go out every single night. And you'll end up debt free with savings and have a hell of a crazy four stories. And that's fine if that's what you're, want to do. I was like, is that what you want to do? He's like, no. And I think at some point in the conversation, he's like, I kind of want to do what you do. And I was like, dude, I fucking ate shit. You know what I mean? And the thing is, and here's the, there's a crush of people like, Alex, you went to Vanderbilt. I graduated a year early. So I tried to get out as fast as I possibly

could. And one of the regrets that I have, right, is that I could have started sooner, right? I wish I could have done that. But I can't, right? I can't go back. And so, like, you don't need to live the mistakes in order to like you don't need the scars you just need the story right if i can give you the story you don't need the scar you can learn the lesson without having the experience all right and so when i see the guys who were starting at 18 i'm like man i wish i had started then rather than 23 i would have five more years i do five years ahead where i'm right right and so he's like well i kind of want to do what you do and i was like well then you got to learn the skills that it took that i had to start fucking five years older than you to start learning right

and the first thing was you to learn how to sell and so i was like let's just point let's just go down that path. And if you're like, well, I don't like sales, I told you all the other departments that you could focus on. You're like, you know what? I like being behind a camera. Then cool, what do you think behind a camera means in a business? Behind a camera means you're making content, you're making commercials. Pick one. That's it. Like, that's what you're doing. You're either making content or you're making commercials that interrupt content. That's what video is used for. Right? If you're like, I like writing words. What do you think writing words are used for in business? They're used to sell shit or deliver shit. That's it. Or legal to protect people from selling and

delivering shit. It's what it is, right? You're like, well, I don't know. I like dealing with people. It's like, well, it depends. Are you a little bit more aggressive? You might like sales. If you're a little bit more passive-ish, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, you might like more of like the HR, or you might like that side of HR, which is the talent side rather than the sales side of like the business. You might like selling people rather than selling products, different ways to thinking about it, right? And so you can take your skills and then bucket them into which of these departments make more sense, and then that's what I'm going to focus on. Okay. Zoom in back. out. So I said, now we need to look at your $3.1 degree, $200,000 of debt, four years later, versus

four years from now, you're going to have saved money this whole period of time. So he's living with four guys because I was like, dude, you're living cheap. That's how this works. And so he saves everything over $2,000 a month that he makes. All right. And homie's now making $200,000 a year. So he saves a lot of money, which is why he has $250,000 saved up at $20. Like, that's not from Alex doing anything. Like, he worked for it. He worked for it, and he saved every dollar that he made. He's got more money than some of the adults in that business. A lot of the adults in that business. Why? Because he saves everything.

And what do you think he's going to be able to do in four years? He's going to be able to start his own thing with a ton of capital and skills. Okay. So as we're walking through these four years, what do we think happens now? Right? So he's like, I really like sales. Now he happened to have liked sales. And the blessing that he got was he had a mentor, which obviously, he was me,

who I could see his personality. I was like, dude, I think you'd do well here. I think this is where you should start looking. I think you'll like it. And he did like he and did well. But if he was that camera guy and he really liked more of that stuff, or if he was really techy, I would have been like,

dude, go start coding. Like, if you're spending, you know, all night, like, you know, on GitHub, learning different, you know, little hacks and coding things. Like, I'm clearly not that guy. Whatever that is, right? Then I'd be like, all right,

well, you've got two directions here. You can either go on like the weaponized marketing side of tech or you go on the product side of tech, which is developing apps and developing for yourself or a big company. Like, those are your paths. So pick the one you like, or you can go, again, defense, cybersecurity, et cetera. And so all of like, you have this base skill. It's like, where do I want to apply it? If you're like, I don't know, you're never going to know because how would you know? You know by starting, and then you'll gain context to make the decision later, right? And the thing is people think that it's the fallacy of the right path.

There's no such thing because you can't go backwards. And so all you know is the experiences you have. And so all you have to do is just always look around every so often be like, have I learned everything that I'm going to learn from this path, from this branch? And if you've learned everything you're going to learn, then at that point, you can make the pivot. But if you're like, dude, there's still a lot for me to learn. Okay, do I want to learn that? Is it the direction I want to keep going? I remember when I did my first year as consulting, I looked down the road 25 years and I was like, I don't want that life. And so I pivoted and I was like, okay, I'm going to go to business school. But I was a little bit, a little bit wiser at this point. And I was like,

okay, business school is like 180 grand in opportunity cost in terms of just money that I wouldn't make, plus the money that it cost. And so my reasoning at that time, the reason I started a business was that I looked at that two years was like, man, for 180 grand, I know that two years from now, if I took that 180 and I started a business, again, I didn't have the 180 to be clear. I would have had to take a loan out to do it. I was like, if I had that same 180, two years from now, I'd probably have a business that was working and I'd still have the money. And so to me, I was like, even if I make no money, I'll be less than $180,000 in debt, and I'll have learned probably the same amount.

And so this was the conversation that I was having with him. And so ultimately, this is a hack that I will give you for very big decisions, is that you want to keep thinking on it, keep chewing on it, keep digesting it until you can get into a single statement, which is for him, do I think that four years from now, path A will get me to a place where I will be able to have more income generation than I have from path B. That is it. That is the decision. Four years from now, given the cost, which of these two paths

will give me the most potential for my future? And he was like, well, I think the other one. And I was like, then what are you going to do? So he decided to drop out and they ended up going to sales and he was terrified. And again, in the beginning, he sucked at sales because he had never done it before. Of course he would suck. And of course you will suck too because you haven't done it. But how do you think you get good? You start by sucking and then you suck less. That's how it works. until eventually you look back after hundreds and hundreds and thousands of repetitions and you're like, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this. And it's reasonable that you good be good because you've done it a thousand fucking times, right? And so anyways, he's going down that path. He likes sales. It's probably going to be

the direction that he takes directionally in his life. Now, what are the adjacent skills he needs? Because he asked me this question now. He's two years in. He's got two and fifty thousand saved up. He's like, what do I need to learn now? So I was like, okay, how do you move up? So I can start a business. I was like, yeah. I was like, what are you going to need to start a business? He's like, well, I got to know how to market. I was like, well, you already learned how to cold calls. Like, that's your first acquisition channels. We got that handle, which is why I put him there, right? Because I knew that's where he was going.

He's like, okay, so I have that. So I can get customers. All right. And I know how to sell, so I got that. And I was like, what are you going to deliver? It's like, well, I really do like teaching sales. I was like, well, who the fuck have you taught sales to it? He was like, I guess I have it.

And I was like, hmm, sounds like a skill you need to have. I was like, how do you think you could learn that skill within the current opportunity? Pause. It's like, well, I guess I could, I could, I could like train the other sales guys. I was like, that's a way. I was like, but they might not like it. They're all older than you. They're all adults with kids.

I was like, so maybe not. I was like, what else you got? I was like, how do you think you could do right by the company that helped you get to this point? I was like, go recruit other sales guys, go train them on your own time, and then bring them in pre-trained to that business to replace your output. That's how you leave on good terms. You find your replacement. You train them up. And by the way, if you're in any business, if you do that, I promise you will have the best recommendations.

you will not burn a bridge, you will strengthen a bridge, because that owner and the people who worked around you were like, he did it right or she did it right, right? And so now he's learning how to teach, right? Because by the way, if you're in business, you're teaching half the time. And so he had to learn, and he's current, this is what he's currently doing. He's got to learn the skill of how to transfer a skill from himself to somebody else. Because once he has that skill, then he will know how to get customers, he will know how to sell, and then he will know how to deliver. What are the other skills he's going to have to learn? Well, he's going to have to learn how to two finances, right? He's going to learn how to like get negotiate processing in place. You can have to

get contracts set up so you can have services agreements, things like that. But again, these are all Googlable things that you can do. You can figure those things out in, you know, a couple days. It's not a big deal. And if you're like, well, what do you mean? It's not a big deal. I'm like, you'll learn and you'll fuck it up. Of course you will. But you're not going to do anything illegal. And if you do, you're so small that no one actually cares. So don't worry about it. All right. So the big zoom out here, do I think that four years from now with 50 to $200,000 in absolute cost and probably, and probably higher than that in opportunity cost of the cost of the path not taken, which of these two paths will lead me closer to where I want to go? And if the goal is to make income, then you have to look

at that $200,000 and all the things you could buy with that $200,000 and four years of time and think, is there another way that I could reverse engineer four years to get me to where I want to go? And if you think like that, and you think within a departmental context of all the things that are required to run a business, if that's the goal you want, or if you just really like the technical expertise that you have, you go super deep on the technical expertise, and then you bolt on one additional skill. This is the one skill I will give you that you need to bolt on to instantly give yourself the lift in whatever career you have. You've got to learn how to deal with people. You've got to learn how to manage. You've got to learn how to lead. You're like, that sounds like the

soft tough. And it is, but it's also how you're going to get promoted. It's how you get respect. It's how you gain influence. And so if you're a really good video guy, there's upward trajectory, but there's a cap there. Because even if you're like, I want to start a video business, guess what you're not doing when you have a video business. Fucking video. You're running business. and you've got people who do video for you. Probably hasn't thought about that. Sorry, that was probably mean. But a lot of people don't think two steps ahead.

They're like, oh, I love mowing grass. I want to start a lawn money business. Well, guess what you don't do very quickly? Mo lawns, right? So, like, whatever the business is that you're going to start usually has nothing to do with the thing that you're actually doing every day anymore. I love fitness.

So I started a gym. Guess what I stopped loving once I got in the gym? Fitness. Because I stopped even be able to work out that much because I was so busy with the business, right? And so I was more in shape before I had a business, right? Anyways. And so the thing is, is that if you really love the thing, then go deep on the thing and bolt on one skill, which is managing and leading, because then you'll also learn how to teach other people that skill too. Right. And so then when you're in that position, you can teach others the skill and that makes you more valuable because you are no longer a video guy. You're a person who creates video guys. See the difference? How much more valuable is that skill? Significantly more valuable, probably two to three times more value, right? And so when we think about that for your career, you have to decide how you want your life to go. If you're like, I really love the business stuff, then you have to become a jack of all trades in the beginning

so you can understand just how to get the first dollar across the bridge. And you also realize that the technical thing that you're really good at is probably not the thing you're going to be doing in the business. You just got to know it well enough to teach it to somebody else, right? And so, assuming to my buddy here, he's still in the game, he's still in the grind, he's still figuring out, he still has his job, right? He's still saving every dollar he has because he knows that when he starts the next thing, it's probably to take time. And he might have to live on that, realistically, for a little bit to get it gone. And that's okay, right? And so to the parents His parents came to me after, like, I talked to him and they're like,

Alex, can you please just tell me again on why he should be your, like, telling him to quit college. I was like, I'm not telling him to quit college. I'm telling him to make the best decision for where he wants to be in four years based on him. I was like, do you think he's into college? They were like, no. I was like, do you think he's going to magically get into college? They were like, probably not. I was like, what does he want to do?

Well, he wants to, like, start his own business one day. I was like, what do you think the best way to learn how to start a business is? Going in academia, literally the least business-oriented thing of all time or being in a business. You're like, I mean, I guess being in a business, I was like, also bonus points, which one costs less? That one. I was like, which one do you think he'll have money to, like, deploy on his own behalf later for? She was like, the other one. It's like, to be clear, I'm not telling you not to get educated.

I'm telling him to get super educated in the thing that he wants to do. That's all I'm saying. And guess what? Let's say a year from now, he doesn't like that. He still has three more years to learn other shit. But he would have started that point four years from now in $200,000 of debt. He's making money while he's learning. learning, right? And the best part is that when he has that money, he can go in the office

and he can spend money in ways that actually generate income. Like if he wants to just like learn video on a whim, you're going to learn video at school? Probably not. Most of the videographers that I know learned it online. They're self-taught. And I'll tell you the last piece, which is that the people who are the best in the world at anything, and if that's what your goal is, which I hope it is, if you're part of Mosy Nation, I hope you want to be the best, right? The best people in the world to anything, learn for themselves. They are self-taught. And if you can adopt that mentality, then the world is your oyster because you realize that you can learn whatever you want, whenever you want. You don't need a certification or permission to do that. All you have to have

to do that is the desire to figure it out and use your fingers on Google. For example, yesterday, I was like, oh, I want to get better tracking on our video watch time on our website. I could have paid our dude, but I was like, I kind of want to figure this out. And so I had to get all the off of YouTube that we have unlisted on my website at Acquisition.com. They're free, by the way. And then I had to figure out which video platform made sense. I decided to use Wistia. So we went on Wistia. And then once I was on Wistia, I was like, how do I integrate Wistia with the analytics that we use on our CRM? So I Googled how to integrate Wistia with the analytics. And it was like, oh, you have to paste this embed code in. So I went to the thing. And then I went to that CRM. I was like, how do you paste an embed

code in? And then it was like, here's how you paste an embed code in. I paste the embed code in. I transferred all the videos over, I re-uploaded them, had the embed code on all the videos, and then I started getting real-time metrics on all the people who were watching. Where do you learn that in school? You don't. You just have to, and Layla loves using this. You got to work your fitfo muscle, which is figure it the fuck out. And how do you figure it out? You Google. Like all the skills worth learning are available right now on the internet. All of them are available for free to anyone who wants it. And so all you have to do is start. So if you're somebody who's facing this decision, that is that is.

my recommendation in terms of how to approach it. Which of these paths, four years from now, given the opportunity cost, is going to get me furthest towards my goal. Real quick, guys, you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything. And so the only ask that I can ever have of you guys is that you help me spread the words so we can out more entrepreneurs, make more money, feed their families, make better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast. So the single thing that I ask to do is if you, if you just leave a review, if it takes 10 seconds or one type of the thumb, it would mean the absolute

world to me. And more importantly, it may change the world with someone else. So if you want to get a job, here's the easiest way to do it. One is you expect to apply to a thousand places. One thousand, not 100, not 10, a thousand, okay? Number one. Number two, you personalize all thousand. When you're like, what do you mean I personalize all thousand? It means you take the time to read the actual description and you make a personal response when you submit your resume and you give reasons for why they should pick you. And you say, hey, so and so, I want to be a salesperson. It's what I, what I think that I'm best suited for. I know I'm out of high school. What I lack in experience, I will make up in work ethic. What I, I don't have kids. I'm not married. I don't have any

other obligations besides getting better at this skill. And I promise you, like, if you just give me the opportunity, you just give me the shot, I will outwork the other people. And I'm not even asking for the job. I'm just asking for a chance to get the job, which is, can you just get me on the interview? That's my only my only request of the person who's reading this. all right and so these are the things that are relevant like i was captive of my whatever team i like put anything here and like i know this sounds like kid stuff but it's the only thing i can pull from since i'm 18 all right when you are real with people and you're like hey and i did research on your on your business and i think that this is don't try and give them advice from the business you're 18

you probably have no fucking idea but what you can say is i did research on it i think the product's really cool from everything that i come from everything i see online so don't pretend like you know more about it but just like it looks really cool and i would love to be able to like help you guys promote it to more people, right? Put their needs first and then explain why you were qualified to do it. If you personalize and you apply to a thousand positions, I fucking promise you, A, you will get interviews. Now, if you're like, well, how do I get interviews? You can Google it and you can find it out of how to handle an interview. But that will get you your foot in the door. Also, reaching out through multiple channels. If you really want to like amp this up, don't just apply with the

personalized kind of cover letter. You also reach out to two or three people in the business and say, hey, I don't want to seem creepy. I just want to, like, I know that you guys probably, because you guys are a great business, you probably get hundreds of applications. I just wanted to see if there's anything I could do to just like at least lift mine at the top of pile so that I could get an interview. That's all I'm asking. Otherwise, hope I didn't bother you, like keeping awesome. If you do that in every one of these jobs, I promise you, you will get replies. People will always, like I've said this in the past. The number one currency of respect is work ethic across cultures, across age groups. Everyone respects hustle. Everyone. And so if you show hustle,

that is what you need to demonstrate. If you want the job, you demonstrate hustles. You don't have experience. You don't have skills. You demonstrate the one thing you can demonstrate. So I think the biggest thing is it's not even as much for the courses because the information is available online. What courses and communities do is they organize the information for you in a way that's faster to get through. That is when people are like, you can find all this information online. No shit. You can find out to do anything online. The question is the cost of time of consuming information that's not relevant and the cost of sifting through the stuff that's out there to find something that is the right thing for you to learn right now. All right.

So it's sequence and sifting. That's what you pay for. You pay for time when you buy courses and programs, all right? I want to be very clear. That's why you do it. You're not doing it because you think the information's not anywhere else. It's everywhere else. All right?

So understand the problem that's being solved. A community gives you insight into your future. You can see what other people who are just like you have been able to accomplish. It will break your beliefs about what is possible. Number one, if you were raised around people who everybody you know is poor, guess who you shouldn't hang out with? Other poor people. Like, how to stay poor. Get advice on being rich from poor people.

Don't do that. Get a rights from how to get rich from people who are rich. And if you don't deserve access to them because you haven't done shit yet, you buy access to them. And you buy access to the person who owns the community and the other people in the community. So you'll get some advisor, mentor, mentee relationship, but you also get people who are rubbing shoulders who, who at least have the same desire as you. Right? So if you feel alone right now, like you're the only one in your pack or your group that, like, wants more, A, that's normal, because the majority of people go through life wanting nothing and just being lost. And so if you feel like you've got that special something extra, then get around other people who are walking in that direction.

And those people, you will be able to see in them the deficiencies in yourself, because a lot of times it's easier to see other people than yourself. And they will also be able to see it in you. And so you guys can feed each other. And that's ultimately how you'll be able to compound your skills faster. The mentorship and the selection of information that might exist in a coaching program or a course is there to just give you the basics of what is required to get this job done. And so you're like, well, which one do I choose? I think a lot of times it's good to go for an all in opportunity where it's like I want to figure out real estate wholesaling or I want to figure out e-commerce. I want to figure out sales jobs or I want to figure out how to run a marketing agency.

Not because that's what you're going to be doing forever, but because all of those are self-contained businesses and you'll learn a ton of. about all the components of a business, even if it's not the ultimate opportunity you end up getting into. Because if you are an entrepreneur, look at every big entrepreneur that's out there. What do they all have in common? A ton of failures and a ton of first businesses that didn't matter. All right? And so you've got to get those businesses that don't matter out of the way. You got to get the failures out of the way. So you've got to start failing. So right now, if you're not failing, you're not moving forward. So you've got to start failing. Fail quickly. Fail as much as you can. Because if you make the goal to fail quickly, you will

start succeeding. But the goal is to get those Fs out of the way. It's just like in sales. You got to get the nose out of the way. So you're like, I'm afraid of getting no. Why would you be afraid of getting no? It means you're closer to yes. So you got to get the nose out of the way so you can start getting the yeses. All right? So get the shitty business out of the way. Just buy whatever one you want. And a different video I talked about this, buy them all. Buy as many as you can. Especially if they're all around the same niche, it'll give you different perspectives on how to pursue a single opportunity. And I promise you when you do that and you make the intention not to become super rich, but to learn more. and you compare it to the other thing you could have spent money on, which is four your degree,

it'll make a hell of a lot more sense and learning Spanish or Aztec literature. So the eating shit period is just you're not, you're spending all of your time and all of your money on investing in yourself and nothing. So the shift between consumption and investment is 100% investment. So as you get older, when you're 68, you're probably not spending 100% of your time and money on investing in yourself. You're probably consuming a little bit. You're maybe taking vacations.

you're seeing your wife, you're seeing your kids, whatever. And so the single most difficult decision in life or even entrepreneurship is where do you what, where do I fall in that spectrum of how much I'm going to invest in myself versus how much I'm going to consume? Most people consume 100% every day. They live hand to mouth, right? They live paycheck to paycheck, both literally and metaphorically speaking. They don't invest in themselves. Whatever they do, they eat immediately, right? Now, the flip side is you go 100% on everything I make. I save as much as I can and invest that back into me, right? You're compounding yourself rather than just spending money on cars, on a slightly nicer rent place, whatever. Like, I promise you, if you can give up and sacrifice 10 years, you can

live the rest of your life however you want. And the cutest girls, this is for the guys, usually date older guys anyways. So like, be that guy. You know what I mean? Like rather than wasting all your time trying to impress them with stuff, like you're not going to compete with, I'm married, but like, you're not going to compete with a guy who's got 20 years of experience on you in terms of success. Don't try. But what you can do is show that you're on the path to success, which is through investment. Because they actually did a study on this. Women prefer men who are resourceful over men who have resources.

So if you imagine a guy who inherited a lot of money, sure, he'll be able to get a girl. But the best girls will go to the guys who can make it again. That's the difference. You want to be that guy. Which, by the way, is why the Silver Spoon guys don't actually have the advantage. So for everyone who's like, you know, I want to buy nice cars, I like nice watches, I like nice clothing, I want to go on vacations and whatnot. not, that's totally cool. I mean, hey, so do most people. But it's just a question of what you want more. I think Abraham Lincoln said the quote, but it's basically what you want now versus what you

want more. And so the thing is, is which one you want more? Do you want the cars, the watches, the vacations more than you want the earning potential, the business, the outcome later? If you do, then do that stuff, but just then don't complain that you don't have it. That's the only piece. It's like, if you love all that stuff and you love your life, then like, why are you watching this? Like, keep being happy, right? But for everyone else, how do you? How do you? you break that habit, I've never been good at understanding that part, so I don't want to speak on something that I'm not great at. I've just so desperately wanted it that it was never a question for me. So maybe it might be like really getting into the future state of what it looks like

the life will look like when you have that. And then whenever you were struggling with that sacrifice in the moment, it's always envisioning that. But that's a gain way of doing it. For me, I was just so wildly insecure of being a failure that it just wasn't even a question because I felt so terrible about myself that I would do anything to get out of my current circumstance. But that's me. So Jacob was lucky as hell that he just happened to have been my neighbor. First off, I've met a lot of 18-year-olds, and I have had no desire to talk to most of them. I could just tell that he was incredibly hungry, that he just, I knew that he had this really deep desire to prove himself. And when I see something like that, I'm like, cool. And the way I tested that,

I was like, show up after school every day. We'll work out. and I wanted to see if he would show up. And like clockwork, no matter what, every day he would text me. It wasn't like me having to text him or remind him. So I knew that he had that desire and he would take as much as I was willing to give. And I was like, okay. And you know what's crazy? Some of you fucking idiots, don't do that, all right?

Like when you have the opportunity, you're like, you don't. You don't reach out. You forget. You get busy, whatever. Like, if he had missed one day, I would have said he doesn't want that much. And that would have been it. And it would have been fizzled. And you probably don't even know the opportunities that you have

squandered because you just didn't show you had it. Now, that being said, if you're like, well, you know, he had access to you, whatever, whatever, sure, but you can also create access because you get that by being hungry. And the way that you do that is you start working. And a lot of times when you start working, there are people around you, like you're not going to get, and I've said this before, like Jacob was very fortunate in that he had somebody who was a hundred steps ahead of him, who was willing to speak into his life. You're not going to usually have that. I'm just to be really, you're probably not going to have that. I don't think I've had that. But I have had people who've been a few steps out of me. And the problem with people a few

steps ahead of you is that they can only see a few steps ahead of you. And so you have to understand that then you're going to have some imperfect advice. I've gotten advice in my life from people who are mentors. That was bad advice. But more of their advice was better than what I had. And so it's not about having the perfect path. If there's one thing you take from this video, it's not about having the perfect path. It's about being on the right direction. Like if you're going north-ish, right? You're going this way, and then you'll course correct along the way. There's not a perfect path. It's a perfect direction, which is that way.

Right? And the only way you start going there is to start moving. So two people you want to look at. You want to look at people who are further ahead in the organization, just as high up as you can get access to. And the second is you want to look at the people who are the best of the individual role. So if you're like on a sales team, for example, look at the best sales guy, learn the skills from him, and then learn the skills from him. And then learn the strategy from the guys above. So that's why you've got to think about, like, who am I getting what advice from.

You might have the sales guy who's amazing at sales. I'm not necessarily going to ask him for marriage advice. right? So just because you looked up to somebody doesn't mean that all their advice is relevant. This is actually one of the hardest things to do as a human being is that you respect someone in a capacity. That's why people get investment advice from their hairdresser. Like just because you love them doesn't mean it's good advice. All right. So you want to make sure that where you're getting the advice from is specific to the skill you're trying to learn from that person that they've demonstrated success in that thing. So on the organizational side, I would be, you know,

messaging the people who are higher up and say like, is it in any way possible for me to get like 15 minutes a month. And you might not even want to ask for 15 minutes a month. It'd be like, would it be okay if I occasionally check in with you just to see if my career is on the trajectory? Because I'll tell you this. As I was saying, I was like, I would want anyone to ask me for 15 minutes a month. But if someone said, would it be okay if I checked in with you occasionally? People were like, yeah, you can check it with me occasionally about your life direction because it also gives them status. And so when you're doing that, you want to edify them, give them status, like, hey, you're further along in your life than I am. I really want to learn from people

who are ahead of me. And remember, not everyone's going to say yes, but some people will. And you only need them. So don't worry about the ones who say no. And also don't take it personally for the people who say no. Like they got wives, they got kids, they got family, and they got their own aspirations. So like you're asking for someone to give you something and basically get nothing back. So don't be upset that not everyone's willing to do that. But for the people who are willing to do that, try and give them something back, which you're not going to give them skills, but you're going to give them a feeling back, which is you want them to feel like what they're doing to help you matters. So you want to tell them how what they're helping you do is impacting your life in a positive way. And you want to edify them and give them status to saying like, how.

they are a mentor, how they've changed your life, and how they're helping you. You do those things, people continue to do it. And the reason why I didn't drop out of college is because I was too shit scared to disappoint my father. And it just took me two and a half more years to learn how to disappoint my father and be okay with myself. I would like to help you not have to wait four and a half years to do that. Because here's the thing. If you're going to do it eventually, you might as well do it now. Like really think about that.

If you think that you're going to follow what your parents say for the rest of your life, like really, like take this. do you think that you're going to be 45 in listening to your mom and your dad for your life advice? Maybe, but hopefully not, honestly, because they're human, and you'll realize that as you get old, right? So if you know that you're going to eventually take their advice with a grain of salt and probably not let them run your lives eventually, then you might as well start doing that now. So when I made the jump to disappoint my parents and then also the same jump that Jacob did to disappoint his parents, and mind you, his parents are actually really supportive. they're awesome, but mine were not. And so if you're in that position, all I thought of was, one, I have to be willing to die to them or I have to be willing to die to myself. And I said,

I'm choosing me. I'd rather die to them. And if they're disappointed me for the rest of my life, I'm good with that. And I had to get good with that, which is if they choose not to support me ever again, I'm good with it. And so, like, I had to be real with myself about that. And then in terms of like the fear, my reasoning was, I will never have a better time to do it. Because the younger you are, the less you have to lose, all right? Because you have a more time, B, you have fewer responsibilities. Like you don't have the kids. You don't have the marriage.

You don't have the mortgage. And that being said, if you are that guy, Colonel Sanders started KFC when he was like 64. Like, there's still time, right? But if you're younger, especially, and if you're older, what you have that they don't have is that you don't probably already listen to your parents that much anymore. So, like, they're struggling with different things. They just don't be a nini. All right.

But if you're the young guy or gal, like isolate the parents, death to me, death to them, hopefully, don't die to yourself, because you'll feel dead for the rest of your life. And then in terms of the fear, it's just the circumstances like, think about another time where you will have less risk than now. Just think about it. So if you want to do this eventually, then think of a time where it will be easier than it is now to do it from a circumstance standpoint. And if you can't think of a time that it's easier to do it than now, and you want to do it eventually, then yesterday was the best day to do it because it's only getting more risky with time as you get older and as you acquire more responsibilities and more assets and more fixed costs,

et cetera. And that was for me what made me make the jump. I was like, I guess if, I mean, I have no dependence. I know I want to start a business. I guess now, like it feels risky now. It's only going to feel risky or later when I have a wife and kids. So for him, how to find this replacement. So you're thinking about this. Again, think about this as a skill stacking perspective, right? So there's the skill of actually marketing to get a role. One. Two, is you have the skill of working those applications to get them to an interview, two. Three is how you actually do the interview, four, how you assess the other personally interview and grade who I think has higher likelihood versus not. Five is I now onboard these people and train them. And then six is I have to manage

them and continue to increase their performance. Seven would be that you ascend them, but that's not his responsibility. And so if you think about that as a broken down version of the skills he has to acquire, that's what he has to learn. If you're like, well, how do I figure that out? You figure it out. That's the point, is that there are a lot of nuanced skills that it takes doing to learn, right? And so you can read sales books, recruiting books, et cetera, and that's a good place to start. But like, think about this way. If I wanted to have a terrible salesperson, what would they have? They probably be really shy, really self-centered, not listen at all, be probably really aggressive, talk over you, and be dumb as shit, and have no work ethic,

and be unethical. This is what makes us terrible salesperson, just flip those. They probably listen, they're probably willing to talk, they care about other people, they're ethical, they work hard, Like you have this, all of a sudden you're like, okay, now if you want to take it a step further, how do I test for that? Well, you ask questions of situations where you want to see what the responses. So I'll tell you how I would test for like humility, right, or accountability. I would say, tell me about the biggest failure that you've had in your life or career, right? And so here's the thing. A smart interviewer is not asking you the question because they give a shit about your answer. They give a shit about how you answer, all right? And I didn't get this when

I was coming up. I thought that they actually were grading me on my answers in interviews, which is complete horseshit. They cares about how you think. And so if someone, like, you can, you can say the biggest mess up. It's not happening to them. It happened to you. They don't care. A humble person in that instance would say something like, I had this mess up. I should have communicated more. I didn't. And I honestly, I underprepared for this thing. And it was on me. And I should have done X, Y, and Z better. This is what I would have done different next time. The loser or the victim would be like, I didn't get any support. no one helped me out. They didn't give me the stuff that I needed to be successful, right? And so

if I'm interviewing, I'm going to ask, what's the failure? And then the follow-up is, why do you think you failed? And you say it that way, why do you think you failed? Because the person who's ego is like, I didn't fail. I was great, blah, blah, blah. The person who's humble is like, oh, this is like, I should have done this. I should have done that. And so if you want to test the traits, you ask questions that would illuminate the trait and make that person insecure about whatever trait we're looking for.