It Took Me 40+ Years to Realize What I’ll Tell You In 9 Minutes

I'm 46, and today I own a portfolio of companies that does over a hundred million dollars a year. But there was a time when I was dead broke. And if I could go back and sit down with my 20-year-old self and talk to him about money, here's the 20 things I tell. Never charge for your time. Always charge for the outcome. Time has a cap. Outcome doesn't. You can get paid a lot of money for a result, but you can only make so much money with your time. You don't pay for things with money, you pay for it with the time it took you to make the money. That $5,000 vacation isn't 5K, it's the hundred hours you put in to make that 5K. You probably would stop buying stupid if you knew how much of your life you gave up to have to pay for that thing. Broke people spend time to save money. Rich people spend money to save time. If you burn an hour to save 20 bucks, you value yourself at $20 an hour. Do you know how many people I've seen drive 45 minutes out of the way to save 7 cents on gas? Know what your time's worth and stop doing things that you could pay other people to do to buy it back to reinvest in yourself. Solve [snorts] bigger problems, make bigger money. The size of your income literally matches the size of the problems you solve in the world. Digging a ditch doesn't get you paid. Building a billion, you make millions. You don't have a money problem, you have a focus [music] problem. Where your attention goes, your money flows. If you don't focus on things that make you money, instead you get distracted, you're getting involved with the news and the and the girlfriends and the boyfriends, and that's the problem. Just show me your calendar and I will show you your bank account. Don't lean the ladder against the wrong wall. Can you make money doing that feels a little gray area? Yep. When you get to the top of that ladder, are you going to wish that ladder was leaning against a better wall? 100%. Climbing fast doesn't matter if you're climbing against the wrong thing that's just going to shatter once you get up there. Inspect what you expect. An expectation of making money without an inspection is just hope. If there's no money in the bank account, look at it. Understand it. And look, if you're a CEO and you want to learn the most important metrics to track in your business, I built a whole CEO scorecard for exactly that. Just DM me the word YouTube scorecard on Instagram and I'll send it right over for free. Speed is a competitive advantage. [music] Most people take too long to make a decision. By the time they do, the opportunity is gone. The fast people win. Money loves speed. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be done. Done at least gives you an opportunity to make money. Thinking about it never gets you paid. If you can't sell, you will always be working for a person who can. The person who can tell a better story always wins. Sales people tell great stories. And the closer you are to the money, the more influence you have. The more hands you shake, the more money you make. The more people you know, the more opportunities are going to fly into your life. You're going to be saying no more than you're going to say yes. Don't play not to lose, play to win. Default to trust in the fact that the future is going to be brighter. Trying not to lose is why people stay broke. Instead, convince yourself you're going to win so that you get ready. You have the expectation of winning and that changes your whole day. Be the smallest person in the biggest rooms. If you don't feel like an impostor around the people you're spending time with, find a bigger room. Surround yourself with people that are playing, thinking, acting way bigger. It's the fastest way to get richer. The best investment you can make is in yourself. See, skills compound faster than money every day. So, forget about mutual funds and the market and other businesses. The first place you should be investing your money is in yourself. Stop preserving wealth, start creating it. If the money doesn't flow out, it'll never be able to flow in. That hoarding nature of like, "I got this and this is mine and my house is mine." None of it's ours. Uh it's all just a resource. It's come and it'll go and if you know how to use it, it can grow. Wealth is a ratio, not a number. It's the difference between how much you have versus how much you need. If you keep increasing what you need based on how much you have, then you'll never be rich. If you spend a million and $1 and you only made a million dollars, you will be broke. Be patient with results, but wildly impatient with action. Most things will work out if you just stick with them. People give up all the time seconds before they were about to strike gold. I'm just the byproduct of doing the thing over and over again when everybody else would just stop. Set god-size goals. If you actually know how to achieve your goal, it's not big enough. And you got to get to the point where it's so big, it would be impossible for you to do it without somebody supporting you. My mentor John Maxwell taught me this. He said, "I need to create goals that surpass my human ability to achieve them." And in that collaboration, that's where the magic happens. That's what they call miracles. And miracles are nothing more than a shift in perception. 10X is easier than 2X. It's not only one of my favorite books, but the philosophy is just so true. Some people's problem with getting rich is their goals are too small. When you expand what you're after, all of the sudden you make a different series of decisions that makes making money way easier cuz it forces you to change everything. Most people just want to have like I just want to make 10% more money. Guess what? That's like doing the same thing you're doing but a little bit better. If you want to 10X your money, you're going to have to tear it down to rebuild it and that's where you get rich. You'll never attract a penny more than you think you deserve. If you feel like you deserve the money that you're worth it, you won't be afraid to ask for it. Some people have it all and should ask and never do and they wonder how the others get rich and they stay broke. If you feel guilty about getting rich, you just haven't given enough money away. Guilt is hoarding your money. Generosity dissolves it. I mean, the truth is if you don't give a little when you got a little, like maybe right now, then you won't give a lot when you've got a lot. The more you give, the more you get. Simple scales, complex fails. Most businesses are trying to sell to too many people too often do too many things. It's the ones that say, "We do this really well, and we do nothing else." I'm more impressed with what you say no to than yes. You can't scale complexity. Your business will die from indigestion before it will ever die from starvation. You take you with you for the rest of your life. So, that's why you want to invest in your skills, your reputation, your relationships, because those are irreplaceable. If you took everything from me, but left me with my reputation and my relationships, I'm back in business within 3 years. Pre-sell before you build, always. The biggest risk to your life is building something that nobody wants. You can do all the things, get the business ready, get things going, but the moment you ask for a credit card, that's when things get real. After you ask for the sale, shut up. I've seen so many people talk past the close because they're so nervous and they can't believe they just said the number and the person hasn't said yes, so they talk themselves out of a deal. The next person who talks loses. If your business stops the moment you leave, you don't own a business, you own a job. That's freelancing, that's self-employment, but that's not a business. The point of owning a business isn't to make a ton of money, it's to build an asset that's worth something someday to somebody else. So, that's where you create your real money. And you can't be the reason the thing runs. Build the people, the people build the business. You can only do so much, but if you invest in the people around you, you coach them, you teach them, you train them, then they will show up and do the work better. The customer's happier, [music] you make more money, rinse and repeat. My rule is I hire the soul, the right person, and I train for the role. This is from my buddy Mike Brown. You were born to be rich. The only question is whether you have the courage to remember. Most people spend their lives chasing the proof that they're worth it. You were born valuable. There's nothing you have to do to be worthy of receiving anything you want. Get rid of the shame, get rid of the need for achievement. You're allowed to just receive. Your biggest expense is not doing the thing that makes you the most money. A lot of people stay busy cuz it feels good. They don't do the thing that scares them that would make them the most money. Start your day by doing those things and you will get rich. And every second you're not doing those things, it's money down the drain. Here's the thing. When people pay me a lot of money to coach them, I know what they're buying. They're buying perspective. They're buying beliefs that they don't currently have and the way you can get them for free is to bathe in this information. If you watch this, I know you're the kind of person that can be rich and the only decision you have to make is how many times am I going to listen to this? Not just come once, but put it on repeat. That person is going to win. So, leave a comment and let me know out of the 28, which one resonated the most with you. And remember, if you want the CEO Scorecard, just DM me YouTube Scorecard on Instagram and I'll send it over for free. Now, if you want to learn the only 25 ways to make money, click here and I'll see you on the other side.