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At 19, I was arrested six times. I was broke and I was completely lost. By 23, I'd made my first million. And now at 33, I want to tell you exactly how I did it so you can avoid the same mistakes that I made. So if you are ready to flock in and get ahead of 99% of people, here are the six habits that you can use to build real wealth. Habit number one, immediate gratification. What if the thing keeping you broken has nothing to do with your income and everything to do with how fast you need to be rewarded? You need to understand this concept so you do not let tiny choices control your life. Okay? So I will never forget this because this is the epitome of everything I think about on a daily basis. Okay? There was a study done, it was at Stanford. There were psychologists and they placed preschoolers into a room with a single marshmallow at the table. And they were told this. You can eat this now or wait 15 minutes and you can get two marshmallows. So what happened? Okay, some kids grabbed the marshmallow. Within seconds they were like, give me my marshmallow. Other kids, they were like squirming. They cover their eyes, they were like doing all this stuff. They're holding their nose so they don't smell the marshmallows. They could resist temptation. The test ended after 15 minutes. But the follow up on this test was crazy. So the researchers, they followed those kids. The kids who managed to weight not only scored higher on their SATs, but decades later, they had healthier relationships, they had lower body mass index, and they had stronger careers and made more money. This is one of the most famous studies in psychology because it revealed something very, very simple, yet very profound about humans, which is the ability to delay gratification. Choosing future reward over instant comfort was and was one of the strongest predictors of long term success. So who do you think you are? Do you eat the marshmallow right away? Or are you the person that can control their actions and delay gratification? Now, here's the truth. Most people operate on immediate gratification and that is why they are broke, that is why they're overweight, that is why they don't have the relationship they want. They optimize for today's comfort at tomorrow's expense. And this is also why 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, regardless of income. Okay? I tell people this all the time. I'm like, listen, if you don't make a lot of money and you're broke. When you make a lot of money, you're still gonna be broke. I see it all the time. It's. It is a habit. It is a way of being. It is immediate gratification you will just find more expensive to spend your money on. I remember when I was younger and I lived this way. I lived paycheck to paycheck when I was making $30,000 a year and when I was making $85,000 a year. Now why is that? Because I did not understand this philosophy yet. I was constantly taking the first marshmallow. More money, spend more, right? Think about it. A lot of people do this. Once I realized that I had not only over, I had to tripled my income and I was still living that way. I was like, oh, you're just gonna keep finding shit to spend money on. That is when I decided to make a different choice with my life. I decided that every dollar that I had, it became capital. It became an asset. It was not something to use to consume things. What happened is that while everybody else, they were planning weekend trips, they were buying stuff they wanted. They were spending their money on their hair and their nails, their outfits and all this stuff. I was like, screw it. I don't, I don't care anymore. I'm buying stuff from Goodwill. I am going to the cheapest place to buy food. I am no longer getting my hair and makeup done. I am funding my future. I am now choosing to wait for the second marshmallow. So I treated short term sacrifice as my long term strategy. Before any purchase, ask yourself one question. Does spending my money on this build my self respect or break it? You ever buy something and then you feel gross after? Seriously, you've done it for sure. I'm not saying you went to like the sex toy store. I'm saying you bought something and you. And you feel bad that you did it. You feel like you knew you shouldn't have spent that money. Now why is that? Because you're breaking promises you made to yourself. You said you would wait for the second marshmallow, but you keep buying that thing. Now another question you could ask. Does spending my money on this get me closer to my goals or put me further away from them? We need to buy things based on these questions, not do I want it? Is it on sale? Does somebody else think I should buy it? Will I look cool if I wear it? Habit number two, check the numbers daily. The biggest threat to your wealth and how much money you have isn't what you earn. It is what you avoid. There was a study is behavioral economists and they call this the ostrich effect. People literally avoid looking at negative financial information the same way that you see an ostrich just buries their head in the sand during a market crash instead of looking for opportunities to buy. Most people actually do this and this is tracked by banks. They log in less, they misrebound, they lock themselves into long term losses because they don't want to look at it. Sometimes when the stock crashes and I know how much money I have in the stock market, I'm like, I don't want to look at it. But I'm like, you've got to look at it. You have to know because it is a behavior, it's a habit. It's not about the money, it's about the habit that it creates. And this behavior isn't limited to socks. Most people avoid even opening bills, credit card statements, their banking app, when they think there's going to be bad news. Now the irony to this is very obvious, which avoiding the numbers does not make the problem go away, it actually makes it worse. It's like if you don't weigh yourself for a year, you probably get fatter because you cannot improve, which you refuse to face. And avoidance is expensive. People avoid their finances like they avoid difficult conversations. And both habits keep them weak. I remember I had had a low month in terms of I wasn't making as many sales in my job and I was driving and I pulled my banking app out because I need to look at it, because I realized I hadn't. And then I started crying because I was like, oh my gosh, I am not making enough money. And then I got pulled over and I got a ticket for being on my phone and I was like, a $200 ticket for checking my bank off. I showed the guy, I was like, I'm poor and I was crying for being poor. Can you please not give me this ticket? Even remembering a moment like that, it's important to me because even though it's hard, even though it sucks, even though I hate looking at it, I'm going to look at it until I change it. That's when I got control over my life and control over my finances. You cannot manage what you don't measure. And if you look at wealthy individuals, there is one consistent behavior. They track that meticulously. I will tell you that I track everything now. In fact, I am cheaper now that I am rich than I was when I was poor. It's because to get there, you realize one, how hard it is to make money. Two, that if you don't know where all the money goes, then you're not constantly able to resource yourself. So the wealthiest 1%, they know their exact numbers more than middle income earners and they got more account. So there's no excuse. So here's what you're gonna do. You are going to open your bank account every day for 30 days. Record every transaction. Train your brain that financial reality is manageable. It is not a threat. It will feel shitty and then less shitty and eventually not shitty. And it'll feel good because you realize that you are being the person you want to be. Which brings me to habit number three, Radical responsibility. You're like, oh my gosh, this is not a get rich quick. No, it's not. Because you cannot get rich quick. Okay? There are two types of people in this world. The ones who believe that life happens to them versus those that believe they make things happen. This is why some people rise up stronger from failure, while other people just collapse underneath of it. Something I realized in my 20s is that that blame is the enemy of improvement. When I make and made early business mistakes, I hired the wrong people. I had a failed launch, I missed opportunities, I kept people in my business too long. I sold to the wrong customers. My first instinct was to find external reasons. And then I remember talking one time to one of my mentors, he said, layla, you gain nothing and your team gains nothing by blaming your customer. And what I realized after that and really like, impacted me a lot. If I'm not responsible, I'm also not powerful and I'm also not the one who can solve it. Blame gives you reasons, but having ownership and taking responsibility gives you control over doing something about the situation. And so what that did is it allowed me to look at every failure as data. Every mistake is an instruction as to what to do differently next time, because I can do something about it. Now, in psychology, this is called the locus of control. People with an internal locus believe that they shape their outcomes in the world. Whereas people that have an external locus believe that fate or other people or powers outside of themselves decide what happens. So believing you're in charge does not just change your mindset, it changes your results. Because it determines how much effort you're willing to put in when things get hard. Because if you believe it's all up to other people, how hard do you think you're gonna try? Not that hard. So here's how you're gonna form this happening document. The last two things that significantly went wrong in Your life. And these might be bad. They might be really bad. I understand that. For each one, identify your specific contribution to this outcome. I just want you to ask, how did I contribute to the situation? How am I responsible for this situation? And trust me, I know because I have had some situations that are up then. What you can do is now you've taken a situation that you felt powerless and you felt like a victim, and you've made yourself the victor and you've decided to be the person that can do something about it. Habit number four, do the hard things first. I know that this sucks to hear, but your brain is wired to waste energy on all the wrong things and it is wired to be lazy. We are wired to be lazy. People are always like, oh my gosh, Leila. Like, I don't feel ready. I feel lazy. I feel like I don't want to know shit. That's all we're supposed to do. Our bodies want to conserve energy. Our brains want to conserve energy. Your brain will always look for the easiest route because that is what you were wired for. There's nothing wrong with you, my friend. This is how we're all wired. The moment that I started leading with the hardest tasks each day, everything else felt manageable and momentum was like a daily norm after that. It actually started when I was losing weight because I said, I will make myself work out at 5am every day. I was like, I hate getting up at 5am and I hate working out and I don't want to do this. But I was like, I will do the hardest thing first at the very beginning of my day. And if you look at high performers and people who have what you want in life, what they do is they tackle complexity when their mental resources are strongest. Even for myself, I know I am not making decisions past 4 or 5pm My team knows. They will ask me a question. I'll be like, I will find a way to deflect the question. I'll be like, let me come back to you tomorrow. Let me think about that. Now, why is that? Because I can measure. I'm like, ah, you're not that sharp right now. High performers, they're not going to be sharper longer than somebody else. They just know when they're not. And to delay the decision. Now, what average performers do is they delay difficulty and all the things that take hard work until later in the day, until it becomes a crisis, until they absolutely can't move forward without doing it. There's somebody that's probably before your time. If you're watching this video, but his name is Brian Tracy and he popularized this idea, and I remember it to this day, which is called Eat the frog. The premise is this. If you had to eat a live frog every morning, maybe a toad, because they're even more disgusting. The rest of the day would feel easy in comparison. Like, if you woke up and you had to eat an actual frog every morning, like, it's lie. This thing's like flapping in your mouth, right? Everything else would be like, dude, it's a breeze. I ate a frog this morning. That frog represents your hardest, highest leverage task, okay? The one that you would avoid, but that would move your life forward the most. Because we know eating frogs is powerful. So the principle is simple but powerful. Okay? Success belongs to people who are willing to swallow the hardest bite before anything else. So here's how you're going to take action on this habit, okay? Identify something you've been avoiding because it's really challenging. Maybe it's something you have to do tomorrow. Maybe it's something you have to do next week. Maybe it's something that's been lingering in the back of your head that you, like, wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. It's one of those things. Right? Now we're going to plan to do it first thing tomorrow morning. We are going to execute it before you check your email, your Slack, your Instagram, your Facebook, your WhatsApp, your signal. I don't know what you use, but before everything, you're just going to do that and you're going to say, I am not allowed to do anything else until it's done. Do the hard thing first, Reward yourself. Second, habit number five, choose skills over status symbols. This is the truth is that only broke people spend money trying to look successful. Okay? Money has essentially two functions. There's signaling and there's building. That's it. It's like either you're building stuff with your money, it is a tool that you use to build something else, or it's a signal. You're using it to show people that you actually have them. Here's the thing. Researchers have found that when people feel uncertain about where they stand socially, they become more likely to buy luxury items. Clothes, watches, cars, all these things. Now, it's not because they need them. It's because they want to signal worth to other people. And this is normal. Humans seek status. This is not like there's something wrong with you or you're lesser than. I'm the same way. I mean, clearly, I wear things And I have clothing that I like. Right. But what you need to realize is this. Status purchases depreciate them. So if you are trying to become wealthy, these things are not going to add to your wealth. They're not going to build upon each other. Whereas knowledge and talent and skills are appreciating assets. If you build on your character, if you build on your skill sets, like, those things are going to get better with time. They're going to be bigger, you're going to have more of them. And I know that it seems scary to invest a small amount of money in skills because it's like you're betting on yourself. And I get it. I have been there. But that is the best thing that you can do. I remember the first purchase I made. Biggest purchases I ever made. I was 22, and I finally had $5,000 in my bank account, like, saved. And I had this course I wanted to buy. It was $3,000. And I bought that course. And then you know what I realized? There was a part one to part two. I bought part two. I started watching the thing. I was like, what the are they talking about? And then I was like, oh, my God. At that time, this was, you know, decade ago, there was no customer support. There was no, you're gonna swap this. I was like, I'm. You know what it taught me? Always double check. But what I did do at that point is I stopped optimizing for external validation. I started optimizing for my internal growth. Because real confidence, it does not come from from the clothes you wear, from the jewelry you own, or from how you do your hair and makeup. It comes from how you feel about yourself inside. I promise that I have both things. This doesn't matter if you don't have this. So here's what you're going to do with the money that you didn't spend on this stupid. Before any status purchase, ask yourself this. Is this building my capability or my image? If it's image, redirect that money towards capability. Allocate 20% of your income to either education or buying more time back to invest in your skills. If you can just do $20 towards skills or systems that will multiply your output, that is a worthwhile investment to make. Now, habit number six, I want you to manufacture discomfort. The things that you resist doing are always the things that will unlock your biggest growth. Now here's the thing. People like, I don't know. Discomfort is actually just information. It tells you where you have room to grow. So it's like people Say they want to get better, but then they don't want to be uncomfortable. It's like, well, then you don't want to get better. Because in order to get better, you have to be uncomfort. People who choose hard things end up handling life's unwanted hard things far better. So if you pursue hard things, you do a hard workout, you have a hard conversation, you do something that scares you, you are training your brain to reframe that stress as a good thing instead of a threat. So suddenly your brain says, oh, stress leads to growth rather than stress leads to fail. Die, be killed, Right? Because our old outdated system thinks stress equals bad. Run away, guys. If you go to a party and people don't talk to you like, you're not gonna die. I know sometimes it feels like an inside but, like, you're not gonna die. You're gonna be fine. So the biggest way that you can move forward towards that discomfort is to audit your environment. Think about this. If everyone around you operates at your level or below, where do you think you're going? The people around you are thermometered. You need to intentionally place yourself in rooms where you feel underprepared and uncomfortable, because that means that you're gonna grow. A lot of people avoid that. They're like, oh, that person, They've got an ego. They're too intense. They're too. What you told me right now is that you are actually just uncomfortable with that person because they have something that you don't yet have. They have a level of something that makes you uncomfortable. That's not a bad thing. And if you take anything from this, let it be that wealth is not built by luck. It is built by choosing habits that have nothing to do with wealth, that trade comfort for growth every single day.