I Got Fired for Reading Books All Day

0:00Um, many people don't know this but I got fired. And so you'd be like, who would fire Hermosi, the hard working maniac? Well, I just wasn't that good of an employee. Um, and so I basically just read books all day instead of working. Um, and I read most of the self-help books that you've heard of. Um, 100 million dollar offers, 100 million dollar leads. Those are the books I was I'm kidding. I wasn't reading those. >> [laughter] [gasps]

0:27>> No, but I was reading, you know, and and to be fair, I don't think any one of them I'd say like I can I can say a handful of them phrases and entire books stuck with me. Um, one phrase I heard in a book, I don't remember which one it was, was wantrepreneur. And the phrase disgusted me so much because it was like, oh yeah, all those people who just want to be entrepreneurs. And it just said it flippantly. It wasn't even decrying the term. It just said like, oh yeah, this is how we define these people who are like not there but like business interested.

0:56>> Yeah. >> And >> nonchalance is even more insulting. >> Exactly. And that's why and I was like, I'm that. I am this disgusting thing. I don't want to be this. But that still wasn't enough to motivate. It was a negative operating, you know, it it was negative but it still wasn't enough. Um, I listened to Arnold's ladder of success speech that he gave. This is obviously 15, 16 years ago. Um, it was this speech. I found it on YouTube and I listened to it like every morning before I go to work.

1:25Um, you cannot climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets, you know, um, and I listened to that every morning. I um, I read Relentless by Tim Grover and it was basically the first book that I think gave me permission to use call it the dark side to get things done. And I'd be like, I would say now I don't necessarily operate 100% from that same perspective but it was what I needed at the time. And I called a friend of mine, his name was Victor. He was considering quitting his job too. And so every night we basically just like planned and schemed about how we're going to our exit plan of how we were going to we just mentally masturbated the idea of like what freedom would be like if we actually left. And I would have this I you know I had to have an early Bluetooth thing which is a piece of now and I remember I had this cowhide carpet in my apartment that I got from IKEA that the path that I would walk on while he and I would talk started getting treaded. Um so there's this line in the middle of where I would pace.

2:22And and the And so the things that that and I and I and I would have the lunch with my dad the like hey I'm going to I'm going to quit my job and do my own thing. I didn't have that lunch one time. I had that lunch many times. And each time he would reasonably talk me off the cliff and say listen this is the boring chapter. You're just going to do your few years and then you're going to go to business school and like this is the plan. Um and so it was very clear that I was following a path that was trod upon and to be fair my dad absolutely did what he believed was best and I think his intentions are perfect. Um and so all of these things were happening with me for me during that period of time and I just remember having read as many self-help books as I could you know get my hands on and then I looked around my room and apartment and realized that my life hadn't changed at all.

3:13And that was when I Googled online and decided that I was going to start a business. I narrowed it down to three and then one guy got back to me who had a gym. And even then when I had my first conversation with him I was like I really want to start a gym. He's like so you don't have a gym. I was like no. He's like okay. Well basically uh you're going to need to like do something before I can help you.

3:39And he said you need to make a serious commitment. Make a decision. So I I thought about this for a while and then um a few weeks later I texted him and I said like I'm ready. And so I caught him back up again. He's like well okay great. So you have a lease. What's the you know, what's the you know, it's just like Oh, oh, no, no, no, I don't have that. And he was and he was disgusted. He was like, lose my number, dude. Like and he was disgusted by how little I had done in that meantime.

4:05And so, all of these things happened. It wasn't one of them. And so, as much as I could say like, I just read this one book and my life changed. Like sometimes you have to hear it a hundred times before it either sinks in or there's enough negative or enough positive or both that it gets you over whatever perceived threshold of action that you have. And so, it was only when all of those things happened and I came to the realization and I also applied to business school cuz I was like, what do I do in the meantime? So, I was doing 4 hours of GMAT problems every day because I thought I I was still violent then.

4:39So, that I could ace the GMAT. And then I got above Harvard's mid score and then I was starting I was doing all the applications cuz it's something else that that you can do that you can procrastinate with. And so, I did all the applications into business school and one of the questions that came up was how will a Harvard MBA or a Booth MBA, I can't remember, help your short and long-term goals? And I remember belaboring over this this question for 3 days and I answered all the other questions and I was thinking about it and I was like I don't think it is going to help my long-term goals because I looked at the math of like, okay, it's going to cost me $120,000. This is at the time.

5:10Um and I won't be able to make money for 2 years. So, I'm going to stop making money and it's going to cost me 120 and then the starting salary was 120 or like average starting salary post business school. And so, I thought to myself could I take 2 years $120,000 and within that period of time believe that I could get to the point where I could make $10,000 a month but I would own a business rather than having a job so then maybe someday own a business. And I believed that that bet felt reasonable.

5:37And so, even then you're like, okay, so that's when he quit and did it. No. And so, it was all of those things and then finally the realization that I that it was never going to get easier. And so then the fear that I was never going to start the business that I said I wanted to someday start. The fact that that that I actually had an exploding offer from life, which is that it was only going to get harder, and that I realized how hard it had been for me to that point to still not have made a decision. And it was the fear that I was never going to make it which compelled me to make it.

6:11And that's what got me to pack all my drive my car halfway across the country, then and then then call everyone and tell them that I had left so they couldn't talk me out of it. And so if anyone is like, "Man, the so decisive Hermosi or whatever." Like it took a Herculean effort and to to suspend a shitload of doubt and risk aversion. And also in terms of when I talk about the stuff with caring about what other people thought, I cared so much about everyone thought other people thought that I I knew that I cared so much about what other people thought that I wasn't even willing to hear them because I knew if I did hear them they would talk me out of it.

6:47>> That's how fragile your conviction was. >> Yes. >> That one sentence from the wrong person moving you back in that past direction would have pulled you. >> I needed to physically create so much space that even if they had talked me out of it it would still take me a day and a half to drive back. And so the reason I think you wrote one of the quotes earlier, like if you want to change your life, change your environment, is so powerful, is that your environment as it currently stands right now, the combination of where you live, where your friends are, the routines that you have, the places you go, have created loops of behavior for you. And so the best way to change what you're doing is change the entire environment. Like there's the the Vietnam War vets, they did this research study, you probably heard of it, but um all these guys did heroin when they were in Vietnam. It was like 25% was a gigantic percentage. And then weirdly, when they came I think Clear talks about this in his book, When they came back, only 10% of the heroin users relapsed into heroin. Only. I mean, but still, it's it's small. Compared to the heroin, that's Yes, the success rate of or the failure rate of rehab institutions like 78%.

7:57So, it had a 8x, you know, a difference in in in relapse rate. But there wasn't even rehab that happened. The only thing that happened was that every single environmental cue was changed. And so, if you are having trouble getting out of your current condition, then get out of your current condition. Move. Go to a different city. Even if you can't move to a different city, move across town. Move 30 minutes away. Train at a different gym. Go to a different coffee shop to work. Yeah, make different friends for the short period.

8:25And realistically, you probably won't make different friends, but just stop hanging out with the friends you got for period. And if you decide that once you've gone through that session, that series, that chapter, you still want to be friends, if they are really your friends, they will welcome you back with open arms. If they only were friends with that version of you, then that's not the version of you that you want to be. And that's not where you want to go back to anyways. And so, if you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I just sold every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling roadmap that I've used to go from zero to one, zero to 10, and zero to 100 plus. And so, you can click here and you can check it out. Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, I appreciate you and enjoy.