I have been in business for about eight years. The first two years made me about $2,000.
Business is a slow path to wealth, not a get rich quick scheme. Most people start one expecting fast money, and quit when it doesn’t come. Starting a business is easy. Very few people make real money from one.
I documented the whole journey to $112,974,653 in sales. These are the seven biggest lessons.
Lesson 1: Belief comes before everything
When my college football career ended, I left school at 22 and moved back into a small bedroom at my parents’ house. My girlfriend left because she didn’t think I’d make it. Most of my family felt the same.
I had been a high school captain with straight A’s who played Division I football. Going from that to living at home wrecked my confidence.
So I worked. Up at 5 a.m., a full time job during the day, then the business until bed. Half effort would never have gotten me here.
Social media shows the Lamborghini, the dinners and the trips. It doesn’t show years of small, boring progress. Step one before any business is believing you can actually win. Belief drives behavior. Without it, you will sabotage yourself. Results might take one, two or three years.
Lesson 2: Know the difference between good losses and bad losses
Every business has expenses. Treat losses as one of them.
- A good loss: you follow a sound strategy based on the best data you have, like testing something a mentor saw work in his market. It fails. You lose some money and learn it doesn’t fit your business.
- A bad loss: you make an emotional decision, usually to win back money you just lost. You rush a new strategy and lose even more.
The difference is how you made the decision, not the dollar amount. I started taking bad losses seriously after losing $100,000 in a single day.
Lesson 3: Treat life like a game you can switch
From about 12 to 16, I was addicted to video games. Banjo Kazooie, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart. Games were an escape from a strict, military style household where I felt I had few friends and couldn’t drive anywhere.
College, a good job, retire at 65. That is a game too, and most people never question it. You can switch games by building business skills that buy you time, location and financial freedom.
Every improvement in your business is a level up. Look at it that way and real life gets more rewarding than any video game.
Lesson 4: Focus is the scarce resource
What you focus on consistently, compounded over years, decides the quality of your life.
Hours of games or streaming won’t move you forward. Focused learning gives you an edge. You may see nothing for six months, but five or ten years of it produces serious results.
Business pays for good decisions, not hard work alone. When it’s time to focus, put your phone in another room. Someone else is working to beat you, and what you refuse to do, they will.
Lesson 5: Money didn’t make me happy
My dad was a teacher and money was tight growing up. I thought more money meant happiness.
I went from $1,000 a month to $100,000 a month to $1 million a month. My happiness didn’t move in proportion. More money meant more team, more people depending on me and more responsibility.
One of my happiest moments was my first $10,000 month. I was prouder of that than my first $1 million month.
And consistency is the hard part. One $10,000 month is easy. Twelve in a row is not. Get complacent and the market will humble you.
Some days are lonely. I skip a lot of normal social stuff, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because I value long term purpose over short term pleasure. For me, the meaning comes from helping other people change their lives. That’s why I make these videos.
Lesson 6: Sacrifice, then teach what you learn
Either you sacrifice for your goals, or your goals become the sacrifice.
I have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and made almost every mistake possible. I started making videos on an iPhone and a weak computer. Now I use a $4,000 camera and a $2,000 MacBook, and I do it to give back what I have learned.
How I learn anything:
- To learn it, read about it.
- To understand it, write about it.
- To master it, teach it.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it yet.
Lesson 7: Discipline is most of the game
About 80% of business is psychology, and few people have the discipline to think strategically. Most try one thing after another instead of planning five moves ahead. My ten discipline rules:
- Stick to your business plan.
- Know when to step back and when to act.
- Always keep going.
- Never make decisions on emotion.
- Accept that losing is part of the game.
- Focus on quality, not quantity.
- Cut screen time to avoid analysis paralysis.
- Be a lifelong learner.
- Learn from past mistakes.
- Be patient. Life is long.
The takeaway
There was no trick. Belief, smart losses, focus, consistency, sacrifice and discipline, repeated for years after almost everyone around me said to quit.
If you are in your $2,000 years right now, that is normal. Keep going.
Want to know what’s capping your business right now? Take my free 90 Day Ceiling Plan. Answer 18 questions and get a written plan, built on your own numbers, that names the one thing holding you back and what to fix first.
