← Build with Leila Hormozi
Build with Leila Hormozi
6 Lessons I Learned in My 20's That Made Me Millions | Spotify Video Exclusive
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The lessons that I've Learned throughout my 20s to get me a net worth of over $100 million by the age of 30. As I was kind of reflecting last week on what are the things the key not courses I consumed or books I read, but the experiences that I decided to pursue that actually shaped who I am today. So the first key moment of when I was in my early 20s is that my junior year of college, I actually got an apartment by myself. And so I know that's typically not what people do. Usually when you're in 20s, you want to be living with your friends, you're in a big house. And I did that for the first couple of years, but then I realized I was like, I really want to see, take my time to study. I want to commit to, you know, getting in really good shape, consuming better books, materials, et cetera. And also just separating myself from people that were constantly partying and doing drugs. Though I knew that I could live with people and not do that. Right. It's much easier to change your environment if you want to change your life. And so I would rather my environment work for me rather than against me. And so what it looked like in my first couple years of college was, you know, I was, like, meal prepping while my friends were partying and smoking weed. And so I finally decided I was just going to get an apartment on my own. And so I did. And it wasn't the nicest place, but what I really loved about that is I was able to take my. My extra time that I was normally trying to, you know, wearing headphones, trying to avoid the noise, you know, trying to walk through the smoke when I walked to my apartment. And I was able to actually take that time to read books, reinvest in myself. I was able to control my environment and more of what I was consuming and also taught me a lot of autonomy. Maybe it's hard for the first week or two weeks to be on your own and living in your own place, but the reality is that very soon it becomes normal. And so if you can just break past that first, you know, week or two weeks of being on your own, it's normal, and eventually you actually like it. The second experience that I pursued in my early 20s was taking an internship that was basically an offsite retreat center in the mountains. And so the reason that that was such a key experience for me is because, one, I was alone, you know, three quarters of a mile from the actual retreat center. I didn't really have any cell service or Internet, so it Kind of sucked. The second was that I was alone, right? So I was by myself. There wasn't much else to do. If I wasn't working, then there was literally nobody I knew in the area. And so it was a lot of time by myself to read, reflect, et cetera. And then the last piece to it was that it was just completely teaching me the meaning of hard work. Right. I think until that point in time, you know, I worked throughout college, I worked in high school, I started working when I was about. I had never understood what it's really like to, you know, wake up, be at work at 4am and working truly until 8pm at night. And that was what I was doing when I was there. And I remember how exhausted I was because I would lead a hike at 4am, I would teach swim class or I would teach a biking class at lunch and then I would lead another hike in the afternoon. And the in between was all training people, taking other people on walks, you know, helping the other clients that were at the facility. And so it didn't leave a lot of rest time. And it was very physically and mentally exhausting. Not to mention that, you know, they run a tight ship there. So there was a lot of pressure. And so I think that was a huge experience in the sense of teaching me what work really looks like. Because until then, you know, I was used to eight hour shifts, but this was not just an eight hour shift. There was so much ancillary work around it, not to mention the physical exhaustion of it. And this is something from Robert Kiyosaki's book. You don't want to work for money, you want to work to collect experiences. And that was what I learned. It was super valuable. There is. I knew it wasn't going to pay well. I mean, the job paid barely anything, right. I didn't make any money from it, but I learned so much about myself and I was able to develop skills that I didn't have before. And that's why it was such a key experience that I had in my 20s. And so if you're looking at opportunities for yourself when you're in your 20s, don't think about the money. The money is going to come if you have the skills and experience. Focus on collecting experiences and skills rather than money and the money will come later. The third experience that I pursued in my twenties was that I decided to move to California not knowing anybody. I think three days after I graduated college, I actually packed up my Prius and I drove across country to California. And the reason for that was. I just knew that I didn't want to be in Michigan anymore. No offense to Michigan. It's a great place to live if you're a Michigan. I don't think it's a great place to live. It's fine. But I always wanted to live in California, and that was, like, my dream. I was like, the weather's great. The people there, everyone's super ambitious and successful. And I really wanted to be around that. You know, I remember telling my parents, like, I'm going to move out there. I think I had maybe seven or eight thousand dollars saved up. And so if you know anything about California, you know, that's not much money at all. You know, when I first moved there, I had so much anxiety. Like, I felt so insecure when I didn't have a job yet and I didn't know anybody. Like, I felt so lonely, afraid, feeling like, what if I have to move back home? All these things. But I just figured it out. And I didn't have any resources. I didn't have much experience, but I was still able to figure it out and make it work for myself. If you put yourself in a situation where you're like, I believe that I have the capability to figure this out for myself, you'd be so surprised what you can prove to yourself. And doing that for myself created so much confidence that those kinds of things you can't get from anything else. They only come from putting yourself in a situation where you have to figure it out. Otherwise you fail. If you pursue something that makes you insecure, ironically, you become more secure. If you pursue fear, you become less fearful. So, anyways, that's why I would suggest, if you're in your early 20s. The fourth experience that I had in my early 20s was that I took a sales job at a large Globo gym. And the reason I took that job is because every book I had ever read on being successful, what I noticed is that everyone actually started out in sales. And so I decided that I would get into sales because I had gone to school for exercise science. I want to become a personal trainer and eventually have my own business. But what I understood and what I had learned from all these books I've been reading, these biographies, was that what most people are never taught is sales applied at the Globo gym. And I got the job, and it was absolutely terrible. Like, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done because, you know, constantly being rejected over and over and over again when you've barely been rejecting your whole Life, it's like a smack in the face. But I'm so glad I did it. And it was probably, I want to say it's almost the number one experience I had just because of how terrible it felt the whole time for the first two, three months. Getting rejected on a daily basis, having people say no to me all the time, and being in a situation where if I didn't make money and I didn't make sales, I was going to have to move back home to Michigan. That was probably the best situation, situation I could have put myself in because it taught me that, though it's very hard in the beginning. At first you suck, then you suck a little less, then you suck so little that you might actually be, like, decent. And then eventually you're good, and then eventually you're actually pretty good. And then one day you're actually great. And then one day you're a master. And it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over a very gradual timeline. And I think that if you can acquire the skill of sales and you're in your early 20s, what you teach yourself is that you can generate income on demand. And that is something that you can go into any new situation. You always know that you can fall back on the skill, because this skill is so valuable to any business, any business owner, to really anyone doing anything. If you can sell something, you can always generate income for yourself. And so I'm really glad that I pursued that as a skill set, because selling also pertains to many areas that I've encountered later on. Like now, I don't sell necessarily clients, but I'm constantly selling people on ideas, selling my team on why they should do things, selling people on why they should believe in themselves. And so the skill of sales was always going to translate into other areas of life. And that's why it's such a valuable skill to get in your 20s. The fifth experience that I pursued in my 20s was that I actually ended up quitting working at a global gym. And I went to work a small business, a smaller gym. And the reason I did that was because I really wanted to understand how business work. Working a smaller business, I was able to see how we market, how we sell, how we price, how we bill the customer service on the back end, how we get equipment, how we source things, how we get clients. I was able to honestly try a lot of those things on. I was able to get a lot of those experiences and work in different departments, right, because everyone's kind of doing that. Everyone's wearing multiple Hats at a small business. And so that was an incredibly valuable skill for me because it taught me, if anything, that working in a small business is just as hard as working in a big business, which is what I realized, that these people were working almost harder to have a small business than the people that I saw working to have a big business. That got my brain working in terms of it's all about opportunity, size. And so I asked myself, you know, I've been pursuing fitness career, and I was like, I want to have some sort of business. I didn't know what it was yet. And then I question myself, like, I think I'm thinking too small. I think the same effort is going to go in either way. So I want to make sure that if I dedicate myself to an opportunity that's a business, it's going to be a big opportunity. And so I think that being able to see and work in both a really big business and then a really small business helped me understand that perspective and spot that for myself. The last experience that I pursued in my early 20s was competing in a fitness competition. And so I did this because it was kind of honestly what I was supposed to do. You know, I had lost a lot of weight, I'd gone to school for exercise science, I became a personal trainer, I worked at these gyms, I had this personal trained clientele. And so I decided I'm going to compete in a fitness competition. It could help my career, it's something I've always wanted to do, etc. Ironically, what that taught me was that it's not about the destination, it's about the process. And the reason for that is this. I pursued this competition not because I wanted to prove to myself I was the best. I wanted to prove myself I could do it, but I really wanted, on the end of it, feel a sense of confidence. I want to make friends. I wanted a community. I wanted all these things that I thought winning a competition would bring me. And I remember getting to the show day and I ended up placing second in qualifying for nationals. And I remember thinking how empty it felt, you know, one, nobody actually wanted to be friends because they were actually extremely competitive. And then the second piece to it was that I realized that the entire piece that was hard was the process leading into it. The competition day itself was not that hard. Right? You stand on a stage, you do the pose that you've practiced for the last 12 months, etc. I didn't really feel any sense of excitement. And so when I came out on the other Side of it, I was expecting to feel like I became a different person. But the irony of it is that the process is so gradual that you become a different person throughout the process. You've already become the person that you want to become. And the competition is just, like, almost ceremonial. And so that was actually my turning point when I decided I wanted to have a more balanced life or I wanted to focus on other things, which I just took all my energy from fitness and put it into business where I felt like I could impact more people. And then the second piece to it is understanding that you have to know why you're pursuing something, and my why didn't match with the outcome. The one thing that I would say that I wish I had known in my early 20s is just this, is that nothing, nothing is as fancy or complicated as people make it seem. Every time that I've gotten closer to something that I've gotten to understand, something that I've taught myself, something that I've gotten around people who understand something that I don't, what I've come to realize is a lot of the fancy, complicated stuff is just a facade, right? It's usually so it can sell you something, or marketing or something to that extent. Right. And in my early 20s, I don't think I understood that. I think I thought I had to be this person of, like, insanely high intellect, and I had to be so talented and so naturally gifted in order to achieve things. And the reality that it comes down to is that success is typically achieved through just taking massive action. And the thing that's so great about being in your 20s is that you have so little to risk in order to take that action. In fact, you have almost nothing to risk because you haven't built this huge thing. You typically don't have a large family. You don't want people relying on you.