The first and most critical step to escaping poverty or mediocrity is accepting two words: "My fault."
This isn't about self-blame—it's about reclaiming power. Whatever you cast blame to is where you also cast power. If you say you can't succeed because of your parents, your circumstances, or your zip code, you've given those things control over your life.
The harsh truth: You can either be right about why your life sucks, or you can be rich. You cannot be both.
When starting out, you won't have:
You only have one thing: time. And in the beginning, you have lower leverage, so you must compensate with sheer volume and brute force.
The path forward isn't finding one secret or shortcut—it's grinding through the glass period where every step is painful, until gradually the terrain becomes less coarse, then neutral, then sweet.
Work 12 hours a day for 30 days straight with no weekends. This teaches you:
In the beginning, you need massive volume because your leverage is low. As you gain skill through repetition, your leverage increases—you get more output per unit of effort.
The difference between the newbie and the veteran: The veteran has seen it before. They don't have anxiety because they've done it 1,000 times.
It took five years to save the first $100,000. You save it $1 at a time. This isn't romantic, but it's real.
If you're earning minimum wage, you won't save your way to wealth—but you need enough capital to start taking intelligent bets on yourself.
When broke, follow these rules:
The most expensive thing you'll ever pay for isn't your car or house—it's the information you don't know but should.
If you make $50,000/year but want to make $1,000,000/year, the value of that education is $950,000 per year. Every year you don't acquire that knowledge, you lose $950,000 in potential earnings.
Education isn't expensive. Not being educated is.
Make saving automatic. Make spending manual and difficult. This one habit creates wealth over time.
Forget the S&P 500 when you're young. Invest in the SME 500—yourself. You will always beat the stock market's 10% return by investing in your own skill development.
When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Your downside is zero; your upside is everything.
This is the only time in life where you can take unlimited shots. Every "failure" gives you experience points. You either win or you learn—both make you better.
Success isn't jumping over a chasm in one leap. It's laying bricks:
What looks like "overnight success" is actually years of brick-laying that finally connects end-to-end.
The most focused person says yes to ONE thing and no to everything else. Focus is measured by the number of opportunities you reject.
100x not 2x. If you want 100x results, you need 100x focus, not slightly better tactics.
I had nine businesses at one point. I made lots of revenue and zero profit. When I cut down to ONE business, everything changed.
Every hour you're not working on your ONE thing is an hour given to something less important than your stated goal. Your actions reveal your true priorities.
By the time you have all the information, the opportunity is gone. Make decisions fast, then correct course if needed.
Change your timeline:
If it's a five-minute task and you have five minutes, do it now. Don't batch tasks or "circle back"—execute immediately.
When learning from experts:
This is how you compress years of learning into weeks.
You can become competent at any skill in 20 focused hours. The problem is people wait YEARS before logging their first 20 hours.
Most people don't have a time problem—they have a starting problem.
Want to make more money? Solve bigger, more painful problems.
The nature of pain changes (ignorance → judgment → lawsuits → uncertainty), but pain is constant. Accept it.
Ironically, competition for massive goals is thinner because most people think they're unrealistic. Fewer people try, which means fewer obstacles.
It's often easier to build a billion-dollar company than a successful local restaurant—both require similar sacrifice, but the former has clearer paths and fewer competitors.
Your competitive advantage isn't one skill—it's your unique combination of skills that would require someone to live your entire life to replicate.
Every skill you master becomes a brick in your personal moat. The more skills you stack, the more defensible your position becomes.
The best entrepreneurs have the biggest failure resumes. Your goal isn't to win immediately—it's to collect experience points through failures until you level up.
Every attempt that "fails" is actually:
Most people quit at "known pessimism" when they finally understand how hard it really is.
There's a lonely chapter between:
This is where most people quit. They want the outcome without the isolation.
Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners.
Ask: "Does this person increase or decrease the likelihood I hit my goals?"
If the answer is "decrease," remove them. Your lifestyle is your competitor's opportunity.
There are no social obligations, only social consequences. If someone punishes you for missing their event by avoiding you, congratulations—you just saved future time.
I had nine failed partnerships before finding one that worked. Here's what I learned:
A partner needs ONE of these three things you lack:
If they have the resource but don't contribute it clearly, you still get zero benefit.
Most partnerships fail because people get insecure and think they need someone when they don't. Don't give away equity out of fear.
People want to learn "advanced" tactics before mastering basics like:
It's like trying calculus without knowing arithmetic. Build foundations first.
Every multi-millionaire and billionaire I know started in high-volume sales:
This isn't optional. You must learn to sell, or you must pay someone who can.
I was obsessed with sales and marketing for years—getting fast feedback loops and quick money.
What I missed: If you make a great product, people do the marketing for you.
I spent 2 months building good products and 2 years marketing them. I should have spent 2 years building great products and zero time marketing.
My book "$100 Million Offers" had zero paid marketing, sold 1000s of copies daily for years, and became #1 in its category. Why? The product was good enough that people told everyone.
There's "too big to fail" and there's "too good to fail." If you make something good enough that every person who tries it tells someone else, you've won.
Don't say "I have demons" or "I self-sabotage." That's mystical nonsense.
What you have is: Insufficient skills for certain conditions.
Under X conditions, you behave in Y way. That's learnable and changeable. Stop romanticizing your struggles.
When you believe something limiting:
Most limiting beliefs collapse under this scrutiny.
If I had to compress everything into 60 seconds for someone in their 20s or 30s:
Figure out what you want. Ignore the opinions of others. Do so much volume that it would be unreasonable to not be successful.
That's it. That's the game.
Content inspired by insights from Alex Hormozi, entrepreneur and author who built a portfolio of companies generating $100M+ in annual revenue.