The truth about retiring at age 31 with $100,000,000
Summary
- I've realized that my life lacks challenge after stepping back from my active role in our businesses, which left me feeling depressed and stagnant.
- Despite having a passive income of multiple millions per year and a portfolio of businesses generating about $85 million annually, I found that removing myself from the day-to-day operations wasn't fulfilling.
- I've reached a point where my net worth is in the nine figures at the age of 32, and my wife is 29. While we don't need anything materially, the lack of necessity introduced a new problem: a lack of purposeful work.
- Reflecting on the importance of work, I've embraced the idea that our work shapes us more than we shape it. The challenges and hard work are what forge our character.
- I've adopted a personal mantra: hard work is the goal. This mindset shift has helped me to be present and find joy in the effort itself, not just the outcomes.
- By focusing on working hard, irrespective of results, I've experienced a more genuine presence in all aspects of life, be it at the gym, writing, or in my relationships.
- I've learned to measure success not by outcomes—which are often subject to luck and external factors—but by the sincerity and effort of my work.
- I understand that my capacity for hard work is something I can improve, and that the pursuit of hard work is a reward in itself.
- Looking back, the struggle and high-stakes situations were what I found most enjoyable, not the achievements or milestones.
- Embracing hard work allows me to set and exceed my own standards, taking back control from societal expectations.
- I'm now focusing on hard work as the most authentic form of personal growth, and this philosophy is what I want to be remembered for.
- The concept of being loyal, honest, or hardworking can only be proven through action, especially when there is an opportunity to do otherwise without consequence.
- My new focus is on striving tirelessly to fulfill my potential, seeking opportunities for hard work, which has become the measure of my personal growth and satisfaction.
Video
How To Take Action
A good way of finding meaning and satisfaction in life is to embrace challenges and focus on hard work. Here are some strategies to implement this philosophy:
Recognize that work shapes character: Understand that it’s the hard work and challenges in work that forge your character. Look for tasks that challenge you and help you grow.
Adopt a personal mantra: Just like "hard work is the goal," find a phrase that keeps you focused on the importance of effort and use it to motivate yourself daily.
Measure success by effort, not outcomes: Success isn't just about good results, which can be influenced by luck. Measure success by how sincere and hard you work.
Improve your capacity for hard work: Take on challenges and push yourself. Your ability to work hard can grow the more you practice it.
Find joy in the effort: Learn to be present and find satisfaction in the process of work itself, rather than just the end product.
Set and exceed personal standards: Don't let society dictate your success; set your own standards and aim to surpass them through hard work.
Take action that aligns with values: Actions are the true measure of your values such as loyalty and honesty. Look for opportunities to prove these values through your actions.
Embrace personal growth as a continuous journey: Avoid complacency. Continuously seek out tasks that require effort and hard work, which in turn lead to personal growth.
Be authentic in your work: Work diligently and with integrity, even when there's no immediate consequence or reward.
By focusing on these strategies, you create a more purposeful and fulfilling life or entrepreneurial journey, grounded in the value of hard work and personal development.
Quotes by Alex Hormozi
"We do not have values until they are tested"
– Alex Hormozi
"As humans we wither without adequate challenge"
– Alex Hormozi
"Hard work is work worth doing. The fact that it's hard makes it worth it"
– Alex Hormozi
"The work is the goal"
– Alex Hormozi
"Your work works on you more than you work on it"
– Alex Hormozi
Full Transcript
at this point in my life i have enough passive investments that i make multiple million dollars a year uh without doing much and over the last nine months i struggled mightily with this fact and it was because i had completely removed myself from the portfolio of businesses that we own which do about 85 million dollars a year in revenue what i want to talk about today is kind of what that nine to 12 month journey was for me kind of living in pseudo-retirement and the single thing that has gotten me out of it because i was candidly you know pretty depressed and i couldn't find a way out because i kept looking for the next goal post right the the second championship ring because the desire was that that ring would somehow make the first one more valuable you know at the time of this making you know we've now crossed about a nine figure net worth i'm 32 my wife's 29 and it's hard for people to to conceptualize this but like i really don't need anything like i need nothing as much as that has been the goal for a long time which didn't need nothing it also introduces a new variable of needing nothing which means that there is nothing for me to do what i want to walk through is the kind of single phrase that i've been repeating to myself over and over again and it has become the chorus in my mental dialogue to myself it's around work and so what i realized after pseudo retiring and not really being involved in the businesses and having them continue to grow and continue to pump out cash flow is that you know the first thing that god gave adam and i'm not religious but i think that there's there's power in this in this story the first thing that god gave gave adam was not eve it was a job it was work to do and as humans we wither without adequate challenge we are formed against something else right the hotter the fire the harder the steel as a person who desires to continually grow i had removed the challenges in my life and felt stagnated or stagnant as a result of no challenge i had to re-examine a lot of different pieces of my life which is why do i work and up to this point the reason that i worked was for the outcome it was for me to build up my net worth to create financial freedom to be able to have all the time to do the things i wanted to do but in so doing i removed the things that i actually wanted to do which was challenges which was work that i found meaningful with stakes that are real the single chorus that i continue to react to and i'll show you the background on my phone it's hard work that's it and i love this proverb in the bible i can't remember which one it is i think it's i can't remember i want to say 14 3. our work works on us more than we work on it that's a loose paraphrasing but that's how i like saying it is that your work works on you more than you work on it and so if i have the desire to grow i must work and the goal cannot be to stop working that is what most people say and i think it's because the word work still is has has terrible connotations in society the amount of people who are like man you won't have to work ever again like dear god that sounds horrible i just lived it i never want to do it again but hard work is work worth doing the fact that it's hard makes it worth it when you look back and when i look back at the times that i enjoyed most in our entrepreneurial journey was the struggle was the times of lacking was the times where the stakes were high and we had to perform anyways not because of the outside circumstances because of what it told me about myself we do not have values until they are tested you cannot say you are loyal until you have a way to cheat on your spouse and know that no one will catch you you cannot be honest until you have the ability to steal money and know that you will not be caught and then choose not to do it anyways and so to the same degree i cannot grow unless i have something to match the ability to conquer that i have now i can't hang up my my suit right my arms uh my weapons just yet and so what's interesting is that as i've shifted my course to this thing what a lot of people when i share it say oh yeah because if you work hard all the other things will follow i'm like no no no no you're missing it and i had to correct this in my own head because that's how i started it if i do the hard work the things will follow and that's the common thing like it's all about the process not perfection it's it's not about the outcome it's about the journey like everyone says this [ __ ] but deep down they still want the akka and i'm telling you removing the outcome truly has been the most liberating thing i've ever done and i i can't begin to tell you the joy that i am feeling in being truly present because the work is the goal the work is the goal doing a good job is the goal and so when i find myself at the gym sometimes i would write you know i did eight reps when it was really seven and a half but i'm like why the hard work is the goal if i went up or it went down from last week it's irrelevant how hard i chose to work is the goal when i'm editing a paragraph for my next book i'm like oh that's pretty good i'm like you know it can be better and then i remember hard work is the goal and so then i dive back in when i'm tired and i don't really feel like giving layla the emotional energy to be the husband that i know i should be or that rather i would like to be i remember the chorus hard work is the goal and so it gives me this renewed energy to not only be better but to be present and so i have the opportunity to work hard and that's really the thing is that now i'm seeking opportunities to work hard because the work is the goal right now everyone's trying to shy away society's trying to tell us you shouldn't work it's all about passive it's blah blah blah but work is the goal and when you make work the goal it allows the process itself to be meditative it allows the process to get you into flow and for most of us flow is some of the best feelings that we can have in our experience because we truly are in the moment and so we do not work or try our best so that we do not work hard so that we work hard period because hard work is who we are and this has been a credo that i have i'm just beginning to internalize and it has it is giving me more presence than i've ever had and it's amazing and i know that i will fall short of hard work but i will be damned if i do not try in the present moment to work hard and when i die if all anyone says is that [ __ ] worked hard i don't know what else i would want anyone to say because the outcome is irrelevant there's luck there's outside circumstances right there's plenty of things that can affect how well you do but if we can appraise our success based on how hard we worked and the work itself and only you know if you could have done better and if you chose not to and i'm telling you the more times i recite this chorus in the present moment where i have the opportunity to not to to finish and know that based on the standards of others it's excellent but not on my own it gives you this it takes the power back from the world and brings it in because i'm not allowing them to tell me how well i did i'm not allowing chance or luck or chaos or circumstance or outcome to dictate how well i did i know because the thing is is that that stuff is irrelevant the only actual thing that we can control is the work we do now the hard work the work that we know that energy by the way side note your ability to work itself is improvable you can increase your capacity to work and to work hard and to work well by working hard and working well and so the more work i do the more work i become capable of and it's [ __ ] awesome and so i'm telling you that i was so so driven by first the outcomes that others that that i wanted to have to impress other people and then i would say the second kind of phase or season of my life was creating outcomes that would impress me and i feel like the thing that i'm transitioning towards which this last 12 months has helped me make this transition and i'm sharing this with you because i've been to what most people consider the mountaintop right we crossed a nine figure net worth mind you i'm 2 000 times poorer than jeff bezos but i'm still probably wealthier than the guys on instagram who are flexing right i've been to the mountaintop and i can tell you that there's nothing there nothing you feel nothing so the same way you feel right now truly about the amount of money or the amount of outcomes that you have supposedly achieved up to this point everybody's achieved something these things will be no more meaningful to you the second ring does not somehow make the first more meaningful moving the goal post does not make the thing more meaningful which transitions me to the third chapter right the third season for me which is that the hard work itself is the goal and that's it and when i look at my wife and i think uh i'm just gonna say hi rather than saying hey sweetie what's going on how can i help right if just like it doesn't like it's just mental energy of just trying harder just and then once i try hard over and over again that will become the new baseline and then i will be able to try harder still and so it's been this repeated chorus in my mind when i'm at the gym when i'm talking to layla when i'm working on a project when i'm making these videos try and work hard work hard hard work is the goal and it feels amazing because there's nothing else because at the end of my life at least if i look back and i had two lives one life where i achieved everything that everybody thought i would know that i would feel the same way i do now which is not empty but just nothing i feel the same as i did when i had ten million dollars the same as i felt when i had one million dollars the same as i thought i had a hundred thousand dollars i felt the same but if i look back and i can see that consistently over time i worked to the limit of my capacity to work true and honest to myself and so like i said at the very beginning of this you only have the value if you have the opportunity to not exercise it and do it anyways so you cannot be loyal unless you have the opportunity to cheat and not get caught and then you don't do it that is when you have the gift of knowing and having evidence that you have loyalty and so if i desire the character trait of hard work and work ethic then the only way that i will be able to have that is to do work and know that i could work and stop and everyone else would be satisfied and i would have no negative status ramifications because most of us work to the point where we would have we we reversed the negative status offications that the outcome of the work delivers all right so you do stuff just enough that your boss says it's good you do stuff just good enough that your clients think it's good but that means that you have the opportunity to work harder to work better to make it for its own sake for the sake of the work and chose not to and so therefore you cannot say or claim that you know how to work hard you work just enough to escape the social negative consequences you are just loyal enough to not cheat on your wife because you know you get caught in the negative consequences outweigh it you are just honest enough that you won't steal because you don't want to get caught and if you are only truly motivated by the negative consequence then you do not have the value and so the value that i am trying to grow in myself is the ability to work and the beautiful thing about this is that i get to test this every [ __ ] day is that i can have work that is good enough that people will see it and think that's good stuff and i would know that it wasn't as good as i could have made it but i get that opportunity again tomorrow to try and raise the bar and that is what i am focused on in this season and so i love you all mozy nation appreciate you um keep being amazing and i'll see you guys in the next videos bye