Warum es am Ende nur auf Arbeit ankommt

0:00I was just going through all these old files yesterday, and I saw a goal that I'd written, which was to make $10,000 a month income. And so, it was 13 years ago. And so, like, I viscerally remember what that was like. Um and I know I never I was in so much pain during that during that time that I get it. And so, like, the reason we make this stuff is cuz I I've been there, and I don't want that for anybody. You know, like, I missed I missed my 20s. Like, I just I didn't have them as people traditionally say it. You know, like, it's it's weird because in today's like internet culture, like, I started my I I started my first brick-and-mortar business, like, storefront. I was 23. Like, I didn't know [ __ ] about [ __ ] Like, I knew nothing. And like, I didn't know you could hire employees. Like, it wasn't a thought. Like, I didn't know anything.

0:55Um and so, like, I cleaned. I did the billing. I did the sales. I taught the sessions. Like, I fixed the equipment. Like, I did everything because I didn't know you could And I also I did I didn't know, and I didn't have the money, heck, frankly, to afford anything else. And so, um I get it. Like, I get I get I get it. Um but to get out of that, you have to take steps.

1:24And the first step is saying that it's my fault. The second step is that you have to use what you have. And so, in the beginning, I would I would, you know, I I I was reading the self-help books and all this stuff, and um none of them really hit for me because a lot of it was like power of positive thinking and like affirmations and like all this stuff. And the reason I make the content I do now, which has now almost become like a stick, um countering that, is be is because it didn't work for me, and I'm try like, I'm not trying to speak to everybody. If you if that works for you, then like awesome. Like awesome. Like I people mistake me saying this is what worked for me with this is what I think everyone should do. And it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm saying if what what you have been doing hasn't been working, then consider this.

2:13Which is that like I remember because I I I just read this yesterday. The intro in the book, I say um I wish I could tell you that the reason I was able to make it out of the gym was because I was like really passionate about changing people's lives and I loved fitness and I loved you know, my clients' faces when they would light up and they'd step on the scale and they'd lose weight and they'd be like fit in their high school clothes again. It was none of that. It was just the sheer anger that I had but the idea of being wrong.

2:42And having the people back home be right about everything. And I just couldn't I couldn't I mean I still can barely tolerate it. And so, I mean I took in some ways and this isn't a uh I don't know if woe is me is the right is the right term but like I had an otherwise very successful career. Like I was in a white-collar job and and sometimes it's hard like I mean, hey, I don't know. I haven't been in the other situation. But taking a step down and humbling yourself to minimum wage after you've been in a white-collar situation, not easy.

3:16And I remember I had clients who walk in and be like, "Oh, did you did you uh did you go to college?" And they were saying that um patronizingly. Um and mind you, everyone here at least at this channel knows that I don't I don't give a [ __ ] Um but they were saying it to basically like when I was going to like write something down, like am I literate? And in those moments, again, it was like I could be right or be rich. Like I could try and humiliate them back because the pain of what they just said made me feel and they probably didn't even intend that.

3:46Or I can be like, "Yeah. Yeah, I went to I went to school. I'm very grateful for it." You know, like so what are your goals?" And I could just move right past it. And so, you develop that skin because I had to cuz I had to [ __ ] pay rent. And so, I mean, I tell stories about having a kid draw in marker on the wall while I'm trying to close this mom, and he's a writing in permanent marker, and I'm trying not to lose my [ __ ] over the fact that I'm about to repaint the wall because she doesn't know how to parent a child, but I needed to close the car to pay for the paint.

4:14And so, it's like I can scold the kid and lose the sale, or I can close the sale and keep my cool, and then eventually clean the clean the wall. And so, like you only get that stuff by doing it. Um and so, if you're in if you're in a place right now where you don't have a lot, you only have one thing, which is time. And so, you have lower leverage. So, I'm not going to lie to you and say that you like you're there there there's this one play, this one secret. No, it's just it's sheer brute force. Like you have to will yourself out of it.

4:46Like there's you have to do it's it's like a it's a it's a huge amount of of soul driving energy that you have to do outside of what you normally do. So, it's like you have to live one person's normal life. You have to do your normal work, your normal job. You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to clean, you have to do whatever else. And then then the work day starts. So, that is how you eat today, but you're trying to get ahead, and you have to eat tomorrow. And so, you have to you have to you have to eat the glass so that you can take the pain today, and you're trying to take as much of the pain from tomorrow as you can today so you can get ahead.

5:23And like the even the concept of getting ahead I I like I think about this visually, which is like if you have this this timeline of life that you can pull towards you. And it's glass in the beginning, and then it's slightly less less coarse, and then less coarse, and then it gets and then it gets neutral, and then it starts to get a little bit sweeter, and a little bit sweeter, and a little bit sweeter. But you have to get through that glass period where you pull towards you. And I do have this theory that like on a long enough time horizon, if we could live a thousand years, everyone would eventually be successful.

5:51But people wait too long and they die too early. And I say die too early on a long on a long timeline. And so, I want I have to live today and tomorrow and the next day so I can live three days at a time so I can get to my second and third life's benefits now. And so, that was what like I remember the only times that I took off when I was when I was at the gym. And one of the biggest things that I was grateful for with the gyms is that I moved across the country. And so, I knew no one. I was in Huntington Beach. I was from Baltimore.

6:21Like no one. And what would happen, so one of the gifts of that was that once the week was over, so my Saturday sessions were done at like noon. My phone didn't ring. No like in some ways very sad cuz like no one wanted to see Alex. You know what I mean? Like no one is inviting me out. But I was like, well, [ __ ] Like I got to make this work. And so, I would just I'd sit there and I'd be like, how do I sell memberships? How do I market? How do I everything, you know?

6:49But I would but that was how I got ahead. And so, I I tell the stories of like I remember when I when I stopped watching the Ravens. And I was from Baltimore, so that was like like a tie to home. And so, um yeah, it's fresh for me cuz I just read the story yesterday. But it was like it was tough.

7:21I'll catch my breath. So, all that to say, the sacrifices that I encourage people to take are not sacrifices I did not make. And I I don't say that there are there are there's there's no ways to to get there. I'm just saying that this is the way I got there. And if this path works for you, then maybe it works better than what you're doing right now.

7:46Which is I had a lot of pain. And so I I tried to use it. I just used what I had. I just, you know, I was just angry. I didn't I didn't want to fail. And so I just kept going. And so there was no like there just wasn't another option. And so I think that's like that's what I would encourage people to think about was like there just there's I just didn't I didn't allow another option because the other option was just was just worse than dying.

8:19Because I mean, I've told this story before and things get hyperbolized. I mean, you know, exaggerated, romanticized, whatever, but like when I had my big consulting job, I was making good money and I had the approval of my my peers and all this stuff. And I just didn't want to wake up the next day every day. It wasn't like I was trying to kill myself. It wasn't that, but I was I every night I would think if I didn't wake up tomorrow, I'd be okay with it.

8:44And so when I knew that that was what I was going back to if I didn't make this work, I just had I had no plan B. I mean, I had plan B's that I would drive Uber and strip. I joke about that, but that was very much my plan B if I didn't make it work. Um but and I I I get I get grilled on social media for saying this because of like [ __ ] race wars, but like there have been slaves for thousands of years.

9:16There were slaves in Egyptian times. There were Jews who were slaves. There were Persian slaves. There were white slaves. There were black slaves. Humans have enslaved one another, period. And I like to think of things in extremes because it allows me to think about what's possible. And so the idea that someone else at some other time in history has worked 7 days a week, every hour that they're awake, with the threat not of their own death, but of their children's death, because that's what I would do if I were trying to control somebody. I would take their kid and say, "I'll kill them if you don't work."

9:46And guess what? They'll probably work. That that capacity exists. And so I would think to myself like I would try and I would try and put myself in that frame so that I wouldn't get into the woe is me cycle and think all these things I could blame for why I'm here right now. Why isn't this working as fast? Like how is it that these guys are making more money than me? Like why don't these people give me the respect I deserve? Blah blah blah blah blah.

10:16Um and just say like what can I do now? And then just every hour of every day, well what can I do now? And so it was I have to learn how to market. I have to learn how to sell. I have to I have to go to these these groups that where other gym owners are and I got to learn their stuff. I got to I got to go to these seminars. I got to save up so I can learn some stuff. And that's what I did.

10:42And so that's how I got out of it. Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page and schedule a call with my team and we will look into business, see if we can help and if we can we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.