How I brainwashed myself to be rich
Summary
- I grew up in a poor environment where most people had the same limited views on money. When I read "Rich Dad Poor Dad," I realized these beliefs were holding me back.
- The first principle to brainwash yourself into making money is to ignore advice from broke people. Don't take money advice from someone who isn't where you want to be, even if they're family or friends.
- Surround yourself with people who are smarter, fitter, and more successful in what you want to achieve. Success is contagious, and being around these people will elevate you.
- Money loves speed, but wealth loves time. Act quickly on business ideas to make money as these decisions are often reversible. For wealth-building decisions, which are often irreversible, be patient and strategic.
- Focus on making money instead of just saving it. Energy spent on penny-pinching could be directed toward generating more income, yielding a better return.
- Investing in expensive solutions isn't always the best choice. Frugality drives innovation. Often, the simplest and most cost-effective solutions yield the best results.
- Always have an emergency fund. A safety net helps you make better financial decisions and allows you to take calculated risks.
- Avoid making rushed financial decisions. If an opportunity pressures you to act quickly, it’s often better to pass. Most rushed decisions lead to regret.
- Don’t make impulse purchases. Impulse buying can hurt your financial stability. Measure your money often and make decisions based on logic, not emotions.
- Understand that making money is like a game. Anyone can play and win if they learn the rules, not just those who are "smarter" or "more deserving."
- Money is just a tool. The more you measure it, the more you make. Regularly tracking income and expenses makes you more likely to improve your financial situation.
- Wealthy people buy for both now and later. They make decisions that benefit them in the short and long term, avoiding liabilities that only serve immediate desires.
- To be rich, stop listening to broke people and start listening to those who make money. Apply their principles and frameworks to guide your financial decisions.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing some easy and low-cost steps that can lead to significant personal and financial growth. Start with these actionable strategies:
Ignore Advice from Broke People
Don’t take money advice from people who aren’t where you want to be. Even if they’re close family or friends, their limited views on money shouldn’t influence you. Seek advice from successful individuals or mentors.
Surround Yourself with Success
Be around people who are smarter, fitter, and more successful in the areas you want to improve. Their habits and mindsets can positively influence you.
Act Quickly, But Be Strategic
For making money, try to act on your ideas quickly. Most decisions you make to make money are reversible, so don’t overthink. However, for wealth-building decisions, which are usually irreversible, take your time and plan carefully.
Focus on Making Money, Not Just Saving
Put your energy toward generating more income. Spending too much time penny-pinching takes away from time you could use to make more money.
Invest in Cost-Effective Solutions
Sometimes the simplest, most cost-effective solutions work best. Expensive solutions aren’t always necessary. Practicing frugality can drive innovation and better use of your resources.
Maintain an Emergency Fund
Always have a safety net. An emergency fund helps you make better decisions without the constant fear of financial ruin, allowing you to take calculated risks.
Avoid Rushed and Impulse Decisions
Don’t make financial decisions in a hurry or buy things impulsively. Most rushed decisions lead to regret. If you feel pressured to act quickly, it’s often better to pass.
Understand That Money is a Game
Treat making money as a game where anyone can succeed if they learn the rules. You don't need to be a genius; you just need to understand the principles of money.
Measure Your Money Regularly
Track your income and expenses regularly. The more you measure, the more you’re likely to make improvements.
Think Long-Term
Make financial decisions that benefit you both now and in the future. Avoid buying liabilities that only serve immediate desires without adding long-term value.
By applying these principles and regularly updating them as you progress, you can steadily move towards achieving financial success and personal growth.
Quotes by Leila Hormozi#### "Ignore advice from broke people"
– Leila Hormozi
"If you hang around broke people, you're more likely to stay broke"
– Leila Hormozi
"Understand that money loves speed and wealth loves time"
– Leila Hormozi
"Money goes where attention flows"
– Leila Hormozi
"Trying to save yourself into becoming rich is like trying to run a marathon backwards"
– Leila Hormozi
Full Transcript
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 doll company in the span of less than a decade if you don't know who I am my name is Lea horos I'm the CEO and founder of acquisition. comom 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 end 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 3 days before my graduation ceremony I 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 is1 l 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 sub consciously 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 realized 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 going to 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 6 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 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 disheartened 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 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 a ideas so if you look at somebody's 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 often times 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 3x or 4X or 5x my money with investing he just put all his money into a bunch of different Investments well 4 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 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 going to get more saving from the money that you currently have but you're not going to get more of the total pie you take all that energy and focus you have have on saving money what if you took that and put it on 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 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 took another three and I remember I had a manager and he said Leila 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 and 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 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 6 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 10x 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 is almost like an easy button and even for people who haven't amounted 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 often times 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 want to make sure we're 110% compliant not just with like Federal but like with the FTC with f like all of that stuff right I want to 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 6 weeks to 8 weeks later I got hit with a bill it was like $870,000 inlegal 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 Ila 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 I said cool let me see it and I mean it was probably over a thousand 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 put together a 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 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 pop 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 fund something that I have 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 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 CEOs in my portfolio them being able to know that they have their finances right and they have an O 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 fund a fund that's like all right never touching this money again but if everything goes to and all the decisions I make from here on out 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 fund established where I was like all right 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 he was like honestly Lea 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 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 ision around money that requires you to rush to make it don't do it I have literally never had this workout 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 when we were looking at buying the company another buyer came in and then I was like oh 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 myself my team were like oh 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 it and bought the company and that purchase ended up being the worst purchase that I made in my whole career because then when I got the company and I started doing diligence I was like oh 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 around an investment if you want to make more money you need to be able to resist urges to spend or to give the 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 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 what's funny is those two things that I bought cuz I felt like fear of Miss missing out and 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's a study done actually by the National Endowment for financial education that shows that 68% of people who make Rush decisions around finances regret those decisions so that means that about 2third 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 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 going to 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 purchas 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 lot 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 phase and I remember this guy got on stage I remember the first thing he said he's like H you know I've been stuck at like 400k a month for like 3 months I can't seem to beat the 400k Wall everything else he said I just completely forgot all I heard was like this guy this guy that I am clearly smarter than this guy that I am clearly a nice person then 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 going to do this I never looking back I'm never going to get a job again I'm never going to 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 doesn't mean that you have to be a good person to make money there's lots of people who are you could consider bad people that make money but you could also look at it like Wow money is available to anybody willing to learn the rules of the game a 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 going to figure out what the 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 smarter 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 it was 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 as soon as I realized that I was like ah he has so much more room to make mistakes than me that 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 E iomic 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 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 wake way more money than me and I always like to say and I tell Alex I'm like dude I think I got to 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 us to why it won't work I always remind myself I'm like you got to be a little d 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 proceeds 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 going to 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 cash what value are you creating with the money because that's really what you want to 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 ton of eida 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 got that we're making from the business plowing in and making the software and you know what that did it's 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 did they do they learned that money is 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 O f 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 is a tool money is 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 clue of no 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 o 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 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 6 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 lb not even trying the group that didn't weigh themselves gained 4.9 lb over 6 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 updated 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 Bane 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 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 that would make me feel really good if I could be driving that car this weekend on my date and you buy the car but was that the best decision to do for the next four to 6 months probably not or on the other hand investing in a skill for example might be best for the short and long term cuz in the shortterm 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 skills 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 my 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 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 we were going to change the commission he bought a new house and a new car off of his first month AK 4 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 decision Deion 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 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