The biggest mistake in your 20’s that will make you poor in your 30’s
Summary
- I wasn't a good person when I graduated high school; I was self-centered, seeking respect and status.
- I own Acquisition.com, a portfolio of companies making $85 million a year.
- Had a bad reputation in high school for being promiscuous; went to Vanderbilt and hoped for a fresh start.
- My first three months of college, I amplified my high school behavior and ended up with a 1.9 GPA.
- My father challenged me to change who I was instead of trying to manage others' perceptions of me.
- After getting serious about my studies and avoiding distractions, I brought my GPA up to 3.2.
- It took two years to slowly change the negative first impression I had made.
- I learned that to change your reputation, you need to change your actual behavior.
- Caring about what others think is not the goal; it's about self-reflection and improvement.
- By acting like someone I could respect—studying and being a good friend—I began to change.
- This transition made me realize I'm the only one who truly knows who I am.
- The quote from Epictetus reflects the idea that you should be your own witness to maintain integrity.
- Your reputation with yourself is what genuinely needs to change to affect how others see you.
- Recognizing my own visibility, I strive to maintain the standards I've set for myself consistently.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest focusing on genuine self-improvement over worrying about what others think. Start by reflecting on your behavior and decide what aspects you want to change. Here's how you can make these changes happen for yourself:
- Identify specific behaviors you're not proud of. Write them down so you can clearly see what you need to work on.
- Set realistic goals for changing these behaviors. For example, if you used to skip studying, plan dedicated study times each day.
- Limit distractions that lead to poor behavior. This might mean spending less time partying or avoiding certain social situations that don't align with your goals.
- Surround yourself with people who support the new you. Choose friends who encourage your positive habits and help keep you accountable.
- Commit to consistent effort. It took me two years to change my reputation; change won't happen overnight, but consistency is key.
- Reflect daily on your actions. Ask yourself, "Did I act like someone I can respect today?"
- Don't be too hard on yourself if you slip up. Recognize the mistake, learn from it, and keep moving forward.
- Remember, your reputation with yourself is most important. Be your own witness to maintain integrity and don't rely on others to validate your worth.
- Be patient. Changing perceptions can take time, but as long as you're committed to personal growth, people will start to notice.
By following these steps, you systematically transform into the person you want to be, which will naturally influence what others think and say about you. Remember, it's about being that better version of yourself for your own sake, not just to change opinions.
Quotes by Alex Hormozi
"why are you trying to change people's perception of you when you can just change who you are and let their perceptions catch up"
– Alex Hormozi
"the only way to change your reputation is to change who you are"
– Alex Hormozi
"the only way to change your reputation is by being different"
– Alex Hormozi
"if you need someone else to tell you something about yourself, you are out of integrity because you can always be your own witness"
– Alex Hormozi
"if we want to change our reputation we need to change our reputation with ourselves first and then eventually it will reflect in the world"
– Alex Hormozi
Full Transcript
in this video i'm gonna break down one of the stories that impacted my life the most and hopefully how you can learn from it so i wasn't that great of a person when i graduated high school i think i was really self-centered it was always about me and what everyone could do for me everything i wanted was just like respect and status and maybe that hasn't changed i've just gotten better at it i don't know i want to share with you a conversation that changed my life if you don't know i am my name is ashmosey own acquisition.com it's a portfolio of companies of 85 million a year this particular story was after my first semester of college i went to an all guy school in high school and i went to vanderbilt for my undergrad and i had acquired a pretty bad reputation in my opinion in high school by being kind of uh promiscuous for lack of utter term i you know i was known as a womanizer and i just didn't generally have a very good reputation at least one that i wasn't proud of and so when i went to college i was like okay it's my chance to start fresh and it's a much bigger school so you know my transgressions won't be as known because there's way more people and the first you know three months of my college career i did everything that i was doing in high school on steroids i did more of everything i drank more i went out more i ended up having a a one i think a one nine gpa going inside i basically had these report cards from my teachers that were like halfway through the first semester that were sent home that were like your son is failing basically every class and so my dad called me up and was like if you're gonna do this like you can do this it's here for free and not do this at college right and so i went home and i was like how do i get these people to stop talking all the smack like there was this thing back in the day called juicy campus which was like a gossip form and ended up getting shut down because there was so much hate on it but there was like this massive massive threat about me and how i was just like a total warmanizer and all the stuff i felt horrible you know i mean you can imagine like the younger version of yourself that's really sensitive to like what everyone says about you and so i i just went to my dad and i was like how do i change what they're saying how do i get them to say good things and it sounds to say this now but what he said to me changed my life and he looked at me in the eyes and he was like why are you trying to change people's perception of you when you can just change who you are and let their perceptions catch up the only way you're going to change your reputation is by being different he's like you need to stop being this person that does all these things and your reputation will catch up and even if it doesn't you'll always know i and honestly it barely scratched the surface because my ego was so high and i was like no i just have to think of a better way to like market myself but i ended up knowing that he was very serious about the threat of pulling me out of school if i didn't get my grades up and so what i ended up doing for the next half of the semester of my first semester freshman year is i didn't go out at all i didn't drink anymore i really didn't like hang out with girls at all and all i did was study and i was able to pull my it might have been 1-2 it was very low up to a 3.2 for the semester which basically meant i got an a on everything from that point for the rest of the semester and so when i went back home he was like well now you know you can do it and so we should always expect that that is what you're going to get from here on out and it also kind of proved it to myself too i was like i guess i can do this and you know what happened is after i started switching that way people still thought of me as a and i still had to deal with that it took like two years to really reverse the reputation that i had acquired in the first three months i think during that period of time i grew an appreciation for how easy it is especially in first impressions to set the wrong one and how hard it is to overcome a negative impression and my reputation overall the realization i had was there's too many people that you're interacting with in the world to try and curate reputation the only way to change your reputation is to change who you are reputation is fundamentally just what people say about you to your face and behind your back i'm not saying that you need to care about what everyone else thinks that's not really the point of this it's much more if one person says you're an whatever if every person you know says you're an like you might be an and so if you have one of those situations where you feel like the proof or the evidence is overwhelming and you might even believe it then it's probably you i think that for me getting out of the whole like i can control this and try and curate what people think about me and transitioning to be like at the end of the day i'm the only person who knows who i am and i don't like who i am and just saying like well how can i get to a point where i would like me even if everyone else hated me how can i like me when i started operating from that place it really changed my life because then i started thinking like what version of me do i want to be and what does that guy do well that guy studies really hard and that guy works out really hard and that guy's a really good friend he's always respectful doesn't have an ego and it took me a long time and i still work on that stuff you know i'm not saying i'm done by any any search imagination but i think that if you can simply shift the perspective of like i'm going to try and appear this way to like i want to be this way if it just so happens to get captured great and if it doesn't great and there's this this quote by epic cheetahs that i'm probably going to butcher but he says if you need someone else to tell you something about yourself you are out of integrity because you can always be your own witness i think that that's a great point to wrap the this little video lesson up with because that piece strikes to the core of everything which is we are our own witnesses and if we want to change our reputation we need to change our reputation with ourselves first and then eventually it will reflect in the world and this has just been very telling for me because like more and more people recognize me every day when i'm walking around and i'm like jeez like i don't have any room for having a bad day like if i'm out to dinner and like i'm just like not concentrating and i'm short with the waiter and the waiter recognizes me then you know he's like this guy's an or whatever and so i guess in some ways it's like you can pretend like you're famous because you are to yourself and so i will leave you with that mosey nation if you're new to the channel welcome lots of love and i'll see you guys next video bye
