How I brainwashed myself to be rich

Here is a brief summary of the key points from the transcript: The transcript outlines principles for "brainwashing" yourself to become rich. The key points include: - Ignore advice from broke people. Don't take financial advice from those with less money than you. - Money loves speed and wealth loves time. Make money decisions quickly but build wealth patiently over time. - Money follows attention. Focus your attention on making money rather than pinching pennies. - Have an emergency fund. This provides a safety net so you can take financial risks. - Don't rush money decisions. Avoid emotional, rushed choices - make logical decisions over time. - See money as a game with rules you can learn. Making money doesn't require superior intelligence. - Remember money is a tool. Making money is useless unless you use it to achieve your dreams. - Measure money frequently. Tracking your finances helps them improve. - Make choices for the short and long term. Don't act rich before you are - build lasting wealth. The key point is adopting the mindsets and principles used by wealthy people to change your relationship with money and build lasting wealth.

Today, I want to share with you how I brainwashed myself to be rich and went from a broke personal trainer to the CEO of a multi hundred million dollar company in the span of less than a decade. If you don't know who I am, my name is Leila Hormozi. I'm the CEO and founder of Acquisition.com, which is a portfolio of businesses valued at about $500 million. I built and sold three of my own businesses by the age of 28, leading to a net worth of 100 million by the age of 28. And I did that by using these same principles that I'm going to share with you in this video. Listen, growing up, I did not come from a rich family, and I did not come from a rich area. In fact, most of my memories of my childhood are remembering how we didn't have money, how we had to save money, and all of the times where my parents were worried about paying the bills, the neighborhood that I lived in, the same problems went on there. Like, either you're bartending, you're waiting at one of the local restaurants, or you're working at a car dealership. And so for most of my life, when I thought about, like, what is the most unfathomable amount of money that I could make, I thought of $100,000. And then when I got to the age of about, I want to say between 17 and 18, and I actually ended up reading the book rich dad, poor dad. And as I read the book, I realized it wasn't even that I had a poor dad. It was that every single person I surrounded myself with, including everyone that lived in my town, all had the poor dad mentality. And I immediately was like, I need to get out of here. Because my beliefs about money are what are preventing me from making it. As soon as I graduated college, in fact, I think it was three days before my graduation ceremony, I packed up my car and I moved to California. Because I was like, if I'm surrounding myself with these people who don't have the right beliefs about money, it's very unlikely I'm going to make more. Which leads me to my first principle on making money and brainwashing yourself into being rich, which is ignore advice from broke people. If someone has less money than you, why are you taking their advice, even if it's your parents? Like, if they're not making the kind of money you want to make, why are you listening to them? Would you listen to a personal trainer who is 100 pounds overweight? Why do I think moving was the best decision I could have made for myself. I got around people who were richer, who were in better shape, who had better relationships, who were more ambitious. So what did I get by proxy? I started to become all those things. Can you succeed despite your surroundings? Yes. Does it make it harder? Yes. And so we want to make it as easy as possible to get rich. And the reality is, if you hang around broke people, you're more likely to stay broke. The second piece of that, I would ask myself is, what benefit does anybody around you get if you make more money than them? The reality is, is that it benefits them not at all. In fact, anything. It's probably worse for them, because then what? How do they keep up with you? Right. It makes them feel insecure. It's like it will change the relationship in a way that they don't want. It will make them feel insecure about their own selves. And it's more likely that given enough time, the relationship comes to an end because there's not enough in common. And so you also have to ask yourself, even if it's not hurting you to be hanging out with these people, are they subconsciously preventing you from growing? Because they know it's not going to benefit them in any way. So it actually would benefit them if you remained poor. You know, there's two times in my life that I think I realize I cannot take advice from people who have less money than me. The first time was I had a mentor, and this person was amazing. And listen, I think mentors in general are amazing and usually have them for phases of time, but it's very unlikely you're gonna have the same mentor forever. And this mentor I had, I remember taking advice from her for a long period of time. And then one day, I remember looking back at the last six months, and it was when I was at a point in my business where things started to stall, I realized that the advice that I was taking was not good. It was like an oh, shit moment. I was like, you know what? When I started working with her, she had more money than me and she had more success than me, and she had had a bigger business than me. But within a span of 24 months, I actually surpassed any revenue and any business size that she ever had. And then I realized, I was like, you know, I don't think this is the best advice for me anymore. I think I need to go find somebody who makes more money and has made more money than me. It makes sense why these problems are still occurring because she's actually never had to deal with them. So she's just guessing. The second time I realized that hanging around people who make less money, probably not the best idea was when I was talking to a friend of mine, and it took such a little period of time to make such a big amount of money that, like, in my mind, a lot of my friends who had made more money than me prior, I still was asking for advice. And I remember that we were having a conversation. I was telling her what my goals were, and I just remember, like, her question, which was like, well, don't you already have enough? It was in that moment that I was like, dude, it's not about this. Like, it's not. Money is the manifestation of the value that I'm creating and of the work I'm putting in. And so to me, is there ever enough? Like, probably not. And so it was really disheartening to hear. And that was in the moment when I realized I was like, I can't be hanging around. I have to be careful who I tell my dreams to. And at the end of the day, it's not necessarily about you having more money than the person. It's about you having bigger dreams than somebody. Following financial advice from somebody who has less money than you ultimately is like following a broken compass. It is going to take you in the wrong direction or no direction at all. In fact, super interesting. So the Federal Reserve has done a survey, and that survey indicated that individuals with higher income peers tend to eventually have higher income themselves. And so it may sound harsh what I'm saying, but just the truth is that it's just like anything in life. If you want to be more in shape, if you want to have more money, if you want to have a better marriage, get around people who have what you want. The second principle to help you brainwash yourself into getting rich is to understand that money loves speed and wealth loves time. Power is the time between a thought to an action. So the faster that you can act on something, the more powerful you are. You know what money loves? Money loves speed, money loves power. So in order to accumulate money, you want to move quickly on ideas. So if you look at somebody first starting a business, for example, and then within, you know, a month, maybe it's not working too well, and then they just try to see it out for like two years, just trying to make sure this thing works. But like the best people, they're going to try something iterate. Try something iterate. Try something iterate until it clicks. And the reason that this is important, that money loves speed, is because lots of these things that we're doing to make money are reversible decisions. Now, why does wealth love time? Because oftentimes when we are making decisions that accumulate wealth, they are irreversible decisions. And that is why you actually want to slow down on your decisions around making wealth, whereas with decisions around making money, we want to speed up. So an example of this is, I had this friend, he sold his business and got about $10 million. What I don't think he understood is that the same skills that you use to build a business are actually not the same as what you use to build wealth and invest. In fact, the skills that you use to build a business are often the exact opposite of what you use to invest. Like, completely different mindset. I don't think he knew this. And so he immediately was like, I need to invest all my money. And rather than taking the time to really learn investing and introspectively ask himself, like, do I have the skills to invest right now? Do I have the skills to two or three x or four X or five X my money? With investing, he just put all his money into a bunch of different investments. Well, four years later, he has 1 million left out of that 10 million. So he lost $9 million all on bad investments. Now, why was this? It's because he was applying the same principles to making money, to accumulating wealth. And the reality is that to make money, you need speed and you need power to accumulate wealth, you need patience and time. The third principle is that money goes where attention flows. A lot of people have it backwards. They're like, I need to save money before I can focus on making money. Okay, well, if you put all of your attention into saving money, you're gonna get more saving from the money that you currently have, but you're not gonna get more of the total pot. You take all that energy and focus you have on saving money. What if you took that and put it on and making more money? Which one would yield you a higher return and make you more? In the beginning, when I first started understanding money, the first thing I did was I tried to count every penny. You know what that was doing? That was stealing attention and time from all the energy I could have put into actually just making more fucking money. And so what did I do? When I first got my first job in sales, I never paid people to do anything for me. I would always do everything myself. And so cleaning my house, you know, that took 4 hours a week. Cooking my food, that took another three. And I remember I had a manager and he said, layla, you spend about 12 hours a week just doing things to save money. What if you just took that 12 hours and made three more sales, and then you just paid people to do that? I was like, huh, that's not such a bad idea. And ironically, what happened when I put all of my attention into making more money, I was able to buy back my time with the energy that I put into making the money rather than pinching every penny. There's no shortage of money. There's only a shortage of attention that you put on making it. And if all of your attention goes into saving money, you're literally training yourself to think small. And so the biggest secret to all these people who learn how to make money is they put their attention on making money, not counting pennies. An example of this is I even had a portfolio CEO over two quarters. Revenue was not going up. And then the first thing I thought was, where's his attention going? And so when I audited his time, I said, like, send me your calendar. I want to see a screenshot. Over the last six months, I looked, and 80% of his time was spent on revenue supporting activities rather than revenue generating activities. But the irony of that was that was not an issue with the business. It was just a perfectionist mentality he had of, like, I want to get it all to zero, so we lose nothing. And I was like, dude, you can lose nothing of a very small pie, or you can lose a little bit more of a freaking ten x pie. And so as soon as I said, your job is to generate revenue, there are other people who can do these things. The company actually started to grow in the next quarter. It actually grew 30% from that quarter to the next just by switching where he put his time and attention. The concept of making money sounds very complicated to people, but the reality is most of us, right, our attention is being taken by all these other things that don't make us any freaking money. And then we're like, I don't know why I can't make any money. It's like, well, I can go look at where you spend your time. In fact, there's a study done that shows that entrepreneurs that focus on revenue generation, rather than cost cutting, have revenue of 15% to 25% higher than those who focus on cost cutting. So at the end of the day, can you save money? Yes. But if you put your time into generating money, you're going to generate higher returns for yourself and your time. Trying to save yourself into becoming rich is literally like trying to run a marathon backwards. You might finish, but you won't win. The next principle is to understand that frugality drives innovation. When I first started in business and I first started making a lot of money, what you realize is that money's almost like an easy button. And even for people who haven't amassed a lot of wealth yet, maybe you're at a different point in your life. We still believe that because something is more expensive, it's usually a better solution. And oftentimes when we're being sold something or told what a solution is, we think that the most expensive option is always the best. But here's the thing. Just like a problem or a solution expands to the amount of time you give yourself to solve it, a problem also expands to the amount of money you give yourself to solve it. So an example of this is back when I was running gym launch and we were looking at selling the company, I had to think through, okay, I wanna make sure we're 110% compliant, not just with, like, federal, but like, with the FTC, with SEC, like, all of that stuff, right? I wanna make sure if we have a buyer looking at this, there's absolutely no cracks anywhere. And so I told my team, I was like, work with this legal team that I found through my friend, and I want to make sure that we get everything buttoned up. And about six weeks to eight weeks later, I got hit with a bill. It was like $870,000 in legal fees. And I went to my team and I was like, I don't even know where to begin. Why did we spend $870,000 on legal? And they were like, well, layla, you said to work with these lawyers, and we're trying to make sure we're compliant. So what we did was we gave them access to all of our portals, all of our content, all of our free groups, and we asked them to go through it all and then mark up everything that's not compliant. Then I said, cool, let me see it. And, I mean, it was probably over 1000 things that they commented on, you know, so much to the degree that it was absolutely useless, because how could we take any action on it? In fact, we had paid top dollar for quite literally the worst solution that could exist. And so I looked at it, and what I did was I said, great, let's use some first principles thinking instead. Why don't we just put together a one page sheet on the principles that we need to understand. What are the five most likely things to be non compliant in our business? And then we can take that and filter everything through it rather than ask them to, when they have zero context on our business. And so the irony of it was that they had picked this huge, crazy expensive solution. It didn't even solve the problem, but they just thought, oh, we're making so much money, let's just pay these lawyers to do it. When in one afternoon, me looking through all the material that the lawyers gave us, particular sheet, and guess what? I use that sheet to this day. I give it to my portfolio companies, because again, a lot of them almost make the same mistake. You start making money and you think, oh, the best solutions are the expensive ones, but it's not the truth. In fact, what the richest people do is they never try to pay top dollar to solve something. They still know frugality always drives innovation. And that, guess what the best solutions are. The simplest, simple scales, fancy fails, including with money solutions. And so just because it's the top dollar solution does not mean it's the best one. In fact, the biggest wallet doesn't always equate to the best solutions. Sometimes it just buys you the most expensive distraction. Frugality is not about having less. It's about learning to do more with less, aka leverage. And the richest people that I know, and the wealthiest people in the world understand the concept of leverage. And just because they have buckets of money doesn't mean that they don't apply that. Start with that in mind. You have to realize that getting more money isn't going to drive better solutions a lot of the time. In fact, it starts with how you think when you have less. The next principle is to always have an oh, shit fund. Something that I've learned and I've seen time and time again with people, is that most of the time, people make better decisions when there's a safety net. Don't get me wrong, I know some people who are like, fuck it if I don't feel like I'm going to lose it all tomorrow. I have no motivation. I'm like, you do you, brother? But that is not me. And I think a lot of people are not that way. And so what I have seen is that for myself and for like, most of the CEO's in my portfolio, them being able to know that they have their finances right and they have an oh, shit fund, helps them make better financial decisions. First thing that I did when I started making money was as soon as I paid off my debt. I said, you know what I would like? I would love to feel like I can take risks with my money to make more money. But I want to feel like I have, like, a nest egg, that if something were to happen, I have, like, a backup plan. And so the first thing that I did, I would say, like, the first one to two years of making real money was I put most of that money into what I call an oh, shit fund. A fund that's like, all right, never touching this money again. But if everything goes to shit and all the decisions I make from here on out fucking suck, then I still will have enough money to start over. And what a lot of people do when they start making money, they continue to invest it in making more money. But I think that you have to know yourself and understand, am I going to make better or worse decisions if I feel like my entire personal net worth and personal money is tied up in these decisions? And for me, knowing that decisions I were making in the business would also affect my personal status and income, made me make worse decisions. I took less risks, and I probably played it too safe until I had that oh, shit fund established where I was like, all right, I. I know that if everything else goes to zero, I've got this. Another example of this is I had a founder, and we wanted to open up a bunch of new locations for the business, but those new locations take personal investment, and he was incredibly stressed over this. And so I had a private conversation with him, and I was like, dude, like, you know, we've got to open up more locations. So, like, what's the issue? And he was like, honestly, layla, like, I think it's the right decision for the business to open up these locations. Like, we have all the metrics. We have the money. He's like, but, like, I have $40,000 in my personal account, and we're about to put, like, millions into these locations. Something doesn't go right, it's on me. And I was like, dude, we need to get your personal shit right so that you feel like you can take more risks to make more money in your business. And I know that there's a lot of advice out there that says, just risk it all. Like, you want to feel like everything's on the line so that you do whatever it takes. That works for some people, probably less than it works for more. I think for a lot of people, knowing that you're taken care of personally, that your family's taking care of personally, actually allows you to make better money decisions and make more money, ultimately, because the reality is making money involves taking risks. You don't just take one risk in starting your business. And starting one product and then, like, ride that out for forever, you have to continuously take risks. And so if you're going to do that, it's very comforting to know that you have in your back pocket, like your personal self and family taken care of. And so one thing that I have realized and seen in a lot of my friends that are the wealthiest is that they have absolutely made sure that personally they're set so that they can take risks to make more money in their business. The next principle, if you ever encounter a decision around money that requires you to rush to make it, don't do it. I have literally never had this work out in my favor. And the wealthiest people I know that make the most money, do not rush these decisions. So, for example, a couple years back, I was looking at buying a company. We were looking at buying the company. Another buyer came in and then I was like, oh, shit. You know, it's very seldom actually that we're competing against buyers because usually people are coming to us, aren't necessarily looking and shopping their business with the rest of the PE market. As soon as that happened, you know, myself, my team were like, oh, shit. Like, we have to act fast if we really want this company. You know, I didn't feel necessarily great because I was like, I don't really feel like I haven't done diligence on the company fully. I don't really have all full information. But, like, due to fear of missing out on it being a really great deal, I said, fuck it, and bought the company. And that purchase ended up being the worst purchase that I've made in my whole career. Because then when I got the company and I started doing diligence, I was like, oh, shit, this is not a company for me. It's not even that great of a company. And I don't think that I made a good decision at all. And it still to this day sucks to think about because it was millions of dollars that I don't know if I'm ever going to get back because the company was not even in a spot where I think it should have been purchased by anybody. You see, what the richest people understand is that you cannot be pressured by outside forces and FOMo to make the best money decisions. Look at the best investors of all time. You know, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett. They'll take years to make a decision about an investment. If you want to make more money, you need to be able to resist urges to spend or to give them money. An example of this is like, I go shopping I get texts from the people that are my personal shoppers at the stores, and they're always texting me with, like, hey, we've got this one piece, and I've sent it out to five people. And so if you want it, you need to buy it now. I did it about two times where I was like, oh, shit, I really want it. Like, what if I'm. I don't know if I really want it, but, like, I don't want somebody else to get it. And so I bought. And, you know, it's funny is those two things that I bought because I felt, like, fear of missing out, I felt rushed, are probably the two things that I feel most resentful for buying, because I don't even really like them that much. And that was what I realized. I just felt rushed, and I felt like, well, I don't want to miss out, so I got to do it quick. And what I've learned over time is that the wealthiest people don't do that. They don't make decisions out of fear. They make decisions out of their values, out of their principles, and they always make sure that they make logical decisions in a non emotional state. And when you're rushing, what are you doing? You're often making an emotional decision, which often isn't the best one, to make more money. There is a study done, actually, by the National Endowment for Financial Education that shows that 68% of people who make rushed decisions around finances regret those decisions. So that means that about two thirds of people, more than two thirds of people who make rush decisions end up making the wrong decision. And so, simply by giving yourself space and time and saying no to anything that is pressuring you to rush, you will make better financial decisions and make more money. And if you look at why people aren't able to keep making money, a lot of people make impulse decisions. You could look at the rush decisions. You can also look at impulse decisions. It's all the same thing. And the richest people that I know do not make impulse purchases. Something really interesting is that about 40% of all consumer spending is. Is due to impulse purchases. And so mastering your emotions around money is crucial in understanding how to amass wealth. You know, something I used to do when I was poor is I used to buy things when I felt like it. Like I really wanted that dress. I wanted to buy this accessory for my car. I wanted to buy that new bathing suit. I didn't think about the fact that it was gonna be hard for me to pay the bills next week. And, you know, what's funny is, like, now that I even have more money, I think more about how am I going to feel about this purchase in the future? And is this the right thing for me to do, and is it because I have more money? No, it's because I changed my mindset so that I could have more money. Making logical decisions around how you spend your money is what the wealthiest people in the world do. One of my favorite principles is understanding that money is a game. I did not understand this when I did not have as much money. I thought that you had to be this, like, superiorly intelligent, crazy, hardworking, amazing human of high character to make money and be worthy of having money. And it wasn't until I actually went to this mastermind in 2016 when I remember, it clicked for me that none of that was true. So I had just quit my job, started our first business, and went to this mastermind and wasn't really making much money at the time, was actually just in the, like, eating shit phase. And I remember this guy got on stage. I remember the first thing he said. He's like, ugh, you know, I've been stuck at, like, four hundred k a month for, like, three months. I can't seem to beat the 400k wall. Everything else he said, I just completely fucking forgot. All I heard was, like, this guy, this guy that I am clearly smarter than, this guy that I am clearly a nicer person than, this guy that I clearly work harder than. He's making 40 times as much money as me. And I remember I literally walked out of the room and I called my dad, and I was like, dad, I'm gonna do this. I am never looking back. I'm never gonna get a job again. I'm never gonna do anything again. This guy is a complete idiot and is making 40 times the amount of money as me. If he can do it, I can do it. And that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, because what I realized is that making money is not something that requires superior intelligence or hard work. It's understanding money. Money itself is a game, and you have to understand the rules of the game and how to play it to make it. You can look at that as a good or bad thing, because it doesn't mean that you have to be a good person to make money. There's lots of people who you could consider bad people that make money, but you could also look at it like, wow, money's available to anybody willing to learn the rules of the game. The second time, I remember realizing that money is a game. There was this guy, and I went to this meetup, and it was only about 15 of us, and it was all businesses that were doing close to 100 million. And at that time, my business was worth probably, like 150 million. His business was worth about 400 million. And I was like, I'm gonna figure out what the fuck it is that this guy's doing. Why is he making so much more money than me? And I was like, what is the unlock? Like, is he a better leader than me? Is he better at driving revenue than me? Like, what is it better? And I remember sitting with him and talking with him, and I asked so many questions, and it literally, there was nothing that he did better than me. And I'm not trying to, I'm saying this anonymously, but, like, I was smart, I worked harder, I had a better team, I had better. More resources, I had a better sales process, marketing process, product. What was it? Well, there's one thing I didn't realize, which is that in the game of money, you have the most opportunity when you have the biggest market. So what did he have that I didn't have? I served gyms. He served anybody that had real estate. And as soon as I realized that, I was like, ah, he has so much more room to make mistakes than me. That is when I realized, like, it's not about your character, how hard you work, or how smart you are. Sometimes it's just like, you get lucky by picking the right market. It helps to learn the rules of the money game. But a lot of people also just get lucky. They just stumble into it without even knowing the rules. And so what I wish I had understood when I was making less money is like, I don't need to get smarter. I don't need to work even harder. I don't need to like, gas, everything I'm doing, I need to learn the game of money. I need to understand how value translates to money and what is valuable, and more work and more effort and more time does not always equate to more value. In fact, funny stat is that the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that only 20% of somebody's income correlates to their iq. So what does that mean for you? If you're watching this, it means that you don't need to be smarter to make more money. Guys, I'm telling you, some of the dumbest people I know make way more money than me. And I always like to say, and I tell Alex, my dude, I think I gotta be a little dumber, because when you are less intelligent. What's the advantage? You believe it's possible. The more intelligent somebody is, the more they doubt things, the more pessimistic they can be, the more reasons they give as to why it won't work, I always remind myself, I'm like, you gotta be a little dumb, because in order to win the game of money, you have to be optimistic enough to try as if you could win. You see, money is not a game just for geniuses. It is a game for anybody who's willing to learn the rules and play. The next principle is understanding why you make it in the first place, understanding that money is a tool. So let's reverse engineer this. How do you make money? Most of the times you use or do something with your time, that then translates into money. So what precedes having money is learning how to create it with your time. But here's the thing, it can't stop there. Money is also a tool to get you something. And what I didn't understand when I didn't make a lot of money is I thought, oh, I use my time to make money, and then I have money. But money is just a tool as well. If you just have a bunch of dollar bills in your bank account, what does that do for your life? Think about it. How much power do you have? If you just have a bank account full of a bunch of dollar bills, how does it change your life? What happens next? You see, just like, imagine if you did nothing with your time, you would have no money. If you do nothing with your money, what happens? Nothing changes. You don't achieve your dreams because you don't understand this money is a tool. And the wealthiest people, I understand, want more money. Not so that they can say they have more money because they want more resources and they want more tools, and they understand that money gets them, that the only reason to make more money is to do something else with it. It's not let me make more money. It's what do I want to happen from making this money? The first time I really realized this was when I was going through the process and sold my business. It was about three and a half years ago. And in growing the business, I'd taken out around 45 million in dividends. And then when we sold the business, got about the same in cash. And a lot of people said, like, how does it feel having the money like that must be amazing, like all these things. And I was like, no, because that money isn't going to change my life right now. It's not like me getting $45 million hitting my bank account is going to change my life. What's going to change my life is what I do with the money. And so in my mind, that money was a resource, and I could trade that money for a building that I could start my next business. The first few investments I do and the businesses I buy, the team that I'm gonna have to hire ahead of time. And so what I do with the money is what leads to me achieving my dreams, because the money does nothing unless you learn how to use it. Another example of this, a lot of businesses get started, they make a lot of money, and then they just keep making money and they have no idea what to do with it. Right? They just stockpile cash. What value are you creating with the money? Because that's really what you wanna do. How do you take this money and create even more value with it? That is the game of money, and that is how it's a tool. And so an example of this is we have a portfolio company that spits out a ton of EBITDA. And that business specifically, when we look at the market, we said, what could we do with this money that would make this business even more valuable, that would make this business better and would help us achieve our vision of this business even faster. And the answer was software. And so what did we do? We started taking all the money that we were making from the business, plowing it, and making the software. You know what that did? Double, if not tripling the valuation of the business. So if those founders ever want to sell, now that they've taken that money and they've created this software, what has that done in return is it's made the business almost three times as valuable. And so what do they do? They learned that money's a tool, is a tool that can make their business even more valuable. So because of that, they're probably going to get three, four times as much as they would if they hadn't done anything. I'm a fan of when you don't have a lot of money, having an oh, shit fund and saving enough. But beyond that, what are you using your money for? And that is what I started to understand until I realized money's a tool. Money's a tool for me to build something that can make me even more money. And so you have to understand, how are you using your money and making it work for you? And a lot of people think when you say making your money work for you, that means putting it in all these investments that you have no fucking clue of no, no, no. It means, what do you want to do with the money? What's the use of having money if it just sits in a bank account beyond your oh, shit fund? Truly pointless. It does nothing to change your life. And so the question really is, how can I use this money to change my life for the better and help me achieve my dreams? Money is like a hammer. It is only as useful as what you build with it. The next principle is understanding that the more you measure, the more you make. So most of the times when people don't have the kind of money they want, they ignore looking at their money, they don't look at their bank account, they don't measure. They're not counting how much they're spending. And that is the exact behavior that keeps you poor and stuck. When you're poor, you want to be measuring more than when you have the money you want. Just like if somebody's overweight, are we going to say, yeah, don't step on the scale? No, we need you to step on the scale. We need you to know where you need to go. Right. We need you to know how bad it is so we know how far away from our goal we are. And the thing is, how can you improve anything if you don't know where it stands today? The more you measure, the more you make. This goes for anything. There's an example where there's a study, basically, it has a group of people over the Christmas holiday, it's over a six week span of the holidays. And those people, half of them weigh themselves every day. The other half doesn't weigh themselves at all. Guess what happens just by weighing. No change in diet, no exercise, nothing. The group that weighs themselves every day lost, on average, 3.9 pounds, not even trying. The group that didn't weigh themselves gained 4.9 pounds over six weeks. So what does that tell us? It tells us that if you measure something, it often goes in the direction you want it to. And if you want something to improve in either direction you're looking, then you want to measure it. I experienced this when I first started making money, because one of the best pieces of advice I got was, every day, look at your money. And so what I put together was essentially what I called, like, a net worth tracker that had all the financial metrics personally and of the business, and I would have my assistant update it every day. And this was when I first started making money. And what did it do? It kept it completely top of mind for me where my money was going. And so I was very diligent about it. And you know what? It did. As long as I had my net worth tracker, that money went in the direction I wanted it to, because what was I doing is constantly looking at how do I increase my revenue and my assets? How do I decrease my liabilities and my debt. In fact, Bain did a study on this, and they found that people who measure their money make two to three times as much. And they found that businesses that measure their money on a consistent basis make it two to three times as fast as those who don't. And so what you have to understand is just like, if you want a person to improve, you want to give them fast feedback, right? More feedback. More frequently. If you want your money to improve, you have to look at it more often. More frequently. To keep it more top of mind. If you want to make more money, you have to measure it more frequently. Avoiding measurement because you're scared of what the outcome is or what it looks like is like avoiding the doctor when you're sick. It only is going to prolong the problem, and so you need to keep it top of mind. Now, this is why I am a fan of a lot of those apps they have out there for people to monitor their income. Would I say, yes, focus on saving every penny and put all of your attention there and measure that? No, but I would say it's good to monitor it and instead put the measuring on how do I increase my income. So, for me, when I was starting off as a personal trainer and I first started having control over my income and generating revenue, one of the things that I did is I checked my bank account every single freaking day, because I wanted to understand how me working equated to me making more money. And I wanted to see how that went to the bottom line every day. And I do think the reason that I was able to go from broke to being one of the top performers was because I looked at it every day. I looked at how much money I was making, how many sales I was making, how many clients I had every single day. If you want more of it, measure it more often. The last principle is to understand that you need to buy for now and later. Money loves a long term mindset. If you make money decisions for the short term, you will often accumulate liabilities, debt. If you make money decisions for the long term, you will likely accumulate assets, more money. If you act rich quickly, you're going to likely be broke or stay broke. But if you act broke and remember, frugality drives innovation, you will likely stay rich. And so this can be on a micro scale, this can be on a macro scale, but it really has to do with making decisions that are best for the short and long term. And when you're making a money decision, you might be walking around and see something and be like, oh, I love that car. And you're like, oh, it would make me feel really good if I could be driving that car this weekend on my date. And then you buy the car. But was that the best decision to do for the next four to six months? Probably not. Or on the other hand, investing in a skill, for example, might be best for the short and long term, because in the short term, maybe it can help you get a different job because you have this new skill. In the long term, you probably make more money because you have more. What people who have a lot of money don't do is make stupid decisions. It's not that you have to make some genius investment decision to be rich. It's that you don't make a stupid one. Right? You don't make one that's just for the short term. An example of this is when I first started gym launch, Alex and I, even for the first two years, we still drove Mike Prius that had a crack in the windshield, right? And we would bring it to people's houses and they'd be like, I thought you guys made a lot of money. And I was like, I mean, yeah, but I don't give a shit about a car, man. Like, I don't have enough money to be acting rich. It's funny, because though we even did that, I saw behavior of people on our team that weren't even like that. In fact, in the very beginning, we had a sales guy. In his first month, he made $40,000 in commission. And that was right before we realized we needed to change our commission structure, because it was way overpaying our salespeople. Before we could even get to telling the team that we were going to change the commission, he bought a new house and a new car off of his first month, aka four weeks of making money. So what did he do? He bought for now, he didn't think about later. He didn't think about what was going to happen. He didn't think about the fact this is a small company, it's growing really fast one day. That always slows down. He just thought about what he wanted right now. And so, you know, funny enough, he ended up selling that car not even a year later and downsizing his house. And so what wealthy people do and what I've come to realize is they don't make those decisions. They don't make short term money decisions. Another example where I've seen this is, you know, we had a portfolio CEO, and as soon as he started making like a million dollars a month, he started flying private, staying at the nicest hotels, like legitimately, places nicer than me. And the first thing that I thought is I was like, he ain't keeping this money. Because what does that behavior indicate? It indicates poor decision making, short term mindedness. People who are short term minded are very unlikely to keep the money that they're making. And so one of the things that I've realized is that people who make a lot of money and people who are rich buy for now and later, not just with investments, but with every purchase they make. Because even the smallest things, like buying a ton of art for your house, it can become a liability because it takes your attention, it takes your time to keep things and upkeep things. Rich people are constantly thinking about how this is going to benefit them in the short and long term. And they're making money decisions that are going to give them attention back rather than take attention from them. So if you want to brainwash yourself to be rich, well, first off, stop listening to broke people about how to make money. Start listening to people who actually know how to make money and listen to how they think about money and apply the same frameworks and principles that they use to keep making more money, to start making more money.