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Learn more@LinkedIn.com mbashow I'm 46 years old and if I could sit down with my 20 year old self and have one honest conversation. Not some stuff that you would read in a self help book, but real things that I had to learn the hard way, this is what I would say. These are the 20 things I wish someone had told me when I was younger. And by the way, this episode is an answer to a question from a fan of the show. Tim, if you want me to answer a question here on Q and A Wednesday, just send it over to 100mba.net q. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week and more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Number one. And it's number one for a reason. Because it's probably the thing that will change your life the most. And that's Focus is the deciding factor. Get that into your head. Focus is the deciding factor. Not talent, not luck, not connections, not anything else. Focus. When I look at the people who have won in life, in business, in relationships, in health, the common thread is they never are the smartest person or the most talented person in the room. It's that they could direct their attention at one thing and refuse to let go until it was done. They know how to separate the signal from the noise. We live in the most distracted era in human history. Your phone is engineered by some of the most brilliant minds and engineers on the planet to keep you from focusing. Social media notifications, endless content at your fingertips. All of it is competing for one resource that determines the quality of your life, and that's your attention. Whoever controls your attention, controls your outcomes. It's just that simple. The ability to sit down, shut off all the noise around you, and do the hard thing in front of you is a superpower. If you can cultivate the superpower, you will be unstoppable. And like any superpower, it has to be trained. You have to work on it. You have to start treating your focus like it was money. You have to budget it carefully, you have to spend it intentionally, and you have to stop just giving it away for free. If you're able to focus and get the things you need to get done to move forward in a time efficient manner, you will be ahead of 99% of the world. I guarantee it. I know this firsthand because when I started to focus, everything changed in my life. When I cut off distractions and got serious and really just honestly answered the question, do I really want this? Whatever that is, whether it's building a business or having freedom of my life or whatever it might be, do I really want it? If I do, then I gotta just remove everything else so that I can make this happen. You will be shocked. Shocked how much you will move forward once you start to focus. Number two, no one is coming to save you. That one took me a long time to accept. For years I was waiting. I was waiting for someone to tell me what to do. I was waiting for the right mentor to show up, an elder, somebody to give me some advice. I was waiting for my circumstances to change. Nobody's coming. Not your parents, not your boss, not your government, not your friends, not the universe. They're all busy. The decisions are yours. The action is yours. You need to take action. You need to decide the direction you want to move in. Now, that might seem terrifying at first, but once you really absorb it, it's the most liberating thing you'll ever feel. Because if nobody's coming to save you, that also means no one can stop you. The moment you stop waiting for permission or waiting for a sign or waiting for somebody to give you inspiration or to rescue you, is the moment your life starts moving Stop waiting. It's up to you to make anything happen. Number three, fear is the enemy. Most of the worst decisions I've ever made in my life were made out of fear. Staying in the wrong job for too long, staying in the wrong relationship for too long. Not starting something I should have started long time ago. Okay, Saying yes when I should have said no. Let me make this perfectly clear. Fear is a terrible advisor. It dresses itself up as being cautious or being practical, but most of the time it's just the voice that doesn't want you to grow. It's the voice that wants to stay right here, comfortable, wherever you are. Now, I'm not telling you to be reckless. Don't quit your job with no plan and you got bills to pay and a family to feed. No, calculated risks are smart, but the kind of fear I'm talking about is the fear of judgment, the fear of failure, the fear of what people will think. That kind of fear has stolen more dreams and years of people's lives than anything else. There are people that are in their 70s and 80s and 90s and are on their deathbed and they will tell you firsthand and say, yes, this is true. Fear controlled my life. I thought too much in my head and I didn't take enough risks. When you feel fear, here is a useful question to ask. What would I do if I wasn't afraid? Usually that's the answer. That's the answer. You kind of answer the question for yourself. Because in life, in business, in everything, you're going to need some courage. You're going to need some courage to move forward. And courage is not having no fear. It's moving forward despite your fear. Number four, everything's your fault. And that's actually a great thing. It's good news. I know that sounds harsh, but stay with me. As an adult, the situation you're in right now is the result of decisions you have made. Not entirely. Life is not entirely fair. I get it. But in a large part, where you are is a direct output of the choices you made up to this point. It's just the facts. Your career, your relationships, your finances, your health. Most people react with defensiveness. They say, this is not my fault. Don't do that. Because here's the flip side. If your decisions got you here, then your decisions can get you somewhere else. But only if you take radical ownership and not self loathing and punishment. You got to take radical power. The moment you stop blaming external circumstances and take full ownership of where you are, you become capable of changing your Circumstances, victims are stuck. Don't be a victim. I used to be a victim myself. I had this huge blameless where I blamed everybody but myself, of course, right? I blamed my parents. I blamed my circumstances. I blamed the fact that didn't come from money. I blamed the fact that I was a minority. I blamed, I blamed, I blamed. But I never actually took responsibility, never actually looked at myself. And what happened is when I took ownership and said to myself, everything's my fault. So I need to take ownership and be the owner of the solution, things started to change. Number five. Your partner will be the most important decision you will ever make. More important than your career, more important than where you live or what you study or what you do as your first job. The person you choose to build your life with will shape almost every everything. Your ambition, your peace, your finances, the family you build, your daily mood. The right partner will make every hard thing easier. I know this firsthand because I've had a lot of success in business and in life. But my biggest win is that I have the best partner for me in my life. Nicole, who's my business partner, she's also my life partner. She's my wife, and we've been together for many, many, many, many years. And it's the best decision ever made. Because she makes the journey so much better. She makes it easier. She's really my partner in everything I do, and I can rely on her. I know that she's got my back, and I know I have her back no matter what. I also know that the wrong partner, by the way, the wrong partner doesn't mean this person's bad. It just means they're wrong for you. Right? But the wrong partner will make everything easy. Very hard. Okay? Something that's easy to do will become super hard. They will make your journey less enjoyable. And sometimes it will be a nightmare. Okay? So don't rush it and don't settle. And don't ignore the signs because you're comfortable or you're afraid to start over. Sunk cost fallacy is a thing. And if you already got this wrong, which many of us have, so don't worry about it. Don't do what I just mentioned. Sunk cost. You fall into that sunk cost fallacy where you believe I put in so much time and effort, I might as well just reinvest. Listen, I'm not trying to break anybody's relationship up. But if you know you're in the wrong relationship, staying in it because of how much you already invested in, even when it's clearly not working is not a good enough reason to continue to invest. If you bought into a business, you invested into a business or a stock and over 10 years, it performed poorly year after year, month after month, would you spend more money on that? Would you continue invest? Probably not, right? You would think, oh, maybe I should try something different. Maybe I should invest in something different. Listen, the years you already spent are gone either way. The only question is, is what will you do with the years you have ahead? Hopefully. So choose wisely and choose honestly. How do you know you're in a good relationship? Things are easy, things just work. You are on the same page. You have shared values and both of you are the biggest fans of each other. You are making sure you are trying everything you can to make sure that other person is successful, the other person is happy, the other person getting the most out of life. If you have that kind of relationship, it's very hard to be unhappy in life. Speaking of which, number six, happiness and peace are two different things. Most people spend their whole life chasing happiness and then they wonder why it keeps moving, why the goalpost keeps moving. Here's what I've learned. Happiness comes from giving. In my opinion, from making an impact. From feeling at the end of the day that you did something that matters. Feeling like your existence on this earth is actually making a difference. Listen, I like and respect a lot of fancy things, right? I like cars, I like watches. I can appreciate a nice house, I like a nice vacation. But what I found is that happiness doesn't really get attained long term happiness by acquiring things. I found that you get the most happiness when you give up things. When you give up your time, your skills and you care about something. Peace is a whole different thing entirely. Peace, in my opinion, comes from freedom. Freedom from things that you own. Freedom from things that own you. I'm talking debt, I'm talking about obligations you resent. I'm talking about relationships that drain you. I'm talking about habits that control you. So the quietest, most content people I've ever met are not the richest or the most successful. Although I know some pretty happy rich people. I'm going to be honest with you, but honestly, the thread I see that's common in happy and peaceful people are that they untangle themselves from the things and the people that used to run their life. So if you want real peace in life, it's really about freedom. Freedom to do what you want, how you want it, with people that you want, when you want. That is where peace comes from. In my Opinion. So happiness, in my opinion, comes from giving and being useful to the world. And peace comes from freedom. So chase both, but know the difference. Number seven, a really important one. Solve for financial freedom early. A lot of people say that money doesn't buy you happiness. We talked about happiness earlier. We all know that saying. But here's what money does buy. It does buy a less stressed life. No doubt about it. By the way, poverty doesn't buy you happiness either. In fact, more divorces end because of financial stress. And than any other reason, most health problems are directly tied to financial anxiety. More dreams die not from the lack of ambition or talent, but a lack of Runway, a lack of a bit of breathing room financially to be able to pursue your dreams. Financial scarcity, in my opinion, is a recipe for a hard life. I know this because I didn't grow up with money. My parents were immigrants from Egypt, moved to the us. They had just enough to get by. They tried their best, they worked hard, but we didn't have abundance of money. You know, we used to buy clothes at thrift shops. I got one pair of sneakers, brand new sneakers a year. I had to take care of those sneakers like they were like an ancient artifact, right? I had to make sure no one ever touched them or harmed them in any way. So early on in my life, I decided that the solution is to get serious about financial freedom and financial security early. Because money is one of those things where time is your most powerful ally. The longer you are building wealth, the easier it's going to be to build wealth. The earlier you start, the less hard you have to work later. That's just how it works. It's actually pretty boring, right? Financial freedom is not about being rich. It's about having enough margin that money stops being a daily source of fear and stress and anxiety. If you hear what I'm saying and you're feeling what I'm saying, you know what I'm talking about, right? It's not fun being poor. It's not fun being paycheck to paycheck, being worried about your bills. So that's why number seven is get to financial freedom as fast as you can so you can start enjoying a life with less stress. If you're selling online or out of a storefront full time or as a side hustle, you already know the challenge. You're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk into your store. Whatnot flips that on whatnot. You go live and sell directly to people in real time. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses. People selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. I was just shopping on whatnot yesterday. I absolutely love how fun the experience is. You get to interact with the seller, you get to chat with them, they give you shout outs, and you get to bid on the product and get a great deal. I bought myself a really cool phone tripod so that I can film myself on the go easily anywhere I share this experience because if your customers are enjoying the experience of buying from you, you know they're likely to buy more. And for a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com sell to start selling. That's W-A-T N O-T.com sell whatnot.com sell this episode of the Hundred Dollar MBA show is brought to you by booking.com if you're looking to grow your vacation rental business, this is the place to be. Booking.com is one of the most downloaded travel apps in the world. And for good reason. Since 2010, they've helped over 1.8 billion vacation rental guests find places to stay. But here's the thing. Most vacation rental hosts don't even realize they can list their properties on booking.com and if you're not on the platform, your rental is basically invisible to millions of Booking.com travelers worldwide. After all, they can't book what they can't see, right? I book all my travel, personal and business through booking.com and it's for good reason. I love their genius program. So because I'm loyal And I use booking.com, i'm a genius. Level three. Yeah, I say it with pride because it gets me the best prices. I also love the fact that they give you all the details about all the hotels or the apartments that you're booking. So I know exactly what I'm getting before I check in. Does the place have a gym? Does it have a hair dryer? Does it have a fridge? What about a washing machine? I know because the listing is always accurate and their app is easy to use. So when I'm dead tired after a long flight and I'm trying to check into my accommodation, it's super simple. Just pull up my booking and show it to the host. So if your vacation rental isn't listed on booking.com, it could be invisible to millions of travelers searching the platform. Don't miss out on consistent bookings and global reach. Head over to booking.com and start your listing today. Get seen, get booked. On booking.com number eight. My 70, 15, 10, 5 rule. What is this rule? Okay, it's a simple financial framework that I know. I started to implement this rule later in my life. But if I follow this rule for my first paycheck, my life would be very different. So let me break down what this rule is. And by the way, I learned a version of this rule from Jim Rohn and I modified it so it's applicable to today's financial markets and just something that's a little bit easier for people to implement. At least that's what I found. So here it is. After tax, spend a maximum of 70% of what you earn. Invest 15%, save 10%, give 5% to charity. That's it. But let me break it down. The 70% ceiling forces you to live within your means without feeling deprived. And by the way, it's not illegal to spend less than 70%. Okay, if you can, it's better. But the maximum is spending 70%. So you shouldn't be spending more than 70% of your monthly income every single month. Now, by the way, we're not talking about your business. We're talking about your personal income, salaries plus dividends. This is what we're talking about, your take home. Because we're talking about building personal wealth. Now, that's 70%. We have 30% left over. Right. What do we do with the rest? Well, 15% you're going to dedicate to investments, and that's really how wealth builds. It's pretty boring, right? But if you put 15% in any low risk investment, like an index fund, like real estate, like gold, whatever you feel comfortable with. And of course, everything I say today is for educational purposes. I'm not a financial expert. You speak to an accountant, all that jazz. I need to say this even though it's obvious, but in my experience, 15% in investments. Now you're going to then take 10% and you're going to just save it. Saving creates a cushion and allows you to be ready for any kind of emergency. And I believe that cash is oxygen in life. You know, if you have some cash reserve just sitting there that you don't touch no matter what happens. And by the way, this is not saving for a vacation or saving for a fancy bag or whatever it might be. No, that's part of the 70% you spent, this is just pure savings so that you have cash on hand if you need to jump on something or solve for an emergency or maybe buy an investment that's going to make sense, like a down payment for your house. But 10% should be savings. Lastly, 5% charity. And this is not just altruism. And I need you to trust me on this. Giving changes your relationship with money. When you give regularly, every year, every time, 5%. It keeps you from holding money too tightly and it connects you to something larger than your own balance sheet. And trust me, a lot of people think, oh, why only 5% charity? Well, if you are making $100,000 a year after tax, have you spent $5,000 towards charity every year, year after year? Probably not. Okay, so don't, you know, think that this is a low number? This is actually a pretty healthy number. Now, I'm not a very religious person, but I do believe that giving and paying charity kind of cleanses your wealth, kind of makes sure that you're doing things right, and it kind of shores up any shortcomings that maybe you've done something wrong in the past, and it kind of makes sure that everything's right in your world. I find that giving 5% charity helps you have an abundance mentality and not feel covetous about your wealth and your money and feel okay with sharing it with others and giving it to people that need it. Run this formula for 10 years and your future self will not recognize how far they've come. Number nine, you don't need 50 friends. Social media has given us this illusion that more connections equals more richness. It doesn't. Okay, five close, dependable friends that genuinely are good people, people that produce more joy for you, more support, more meaningful memories, is a whole lot better than having 50 kind of loose acquaintances. Think about your best memories from the last 10 years, the ones you actually treasure and think about. Often. Almost all of them involve a small number of people you really love. So invest in those relationships like they're the most important asset, because they are. You know, call them instead of text them. Show up when it's inconvenient, be there for them, remember what really matters to them, and surprise them with maybe a gift. A handful of people who truly know who you are and truly have your back is one of the greatest luxuries in human existence. So stop chasing quantity. Go deeper with fewer people. If this episode is resonating with you, I want you to subscribe to the show because I have an upcoming episode that I'm working on that you're going to want to listen to. It's called why I've always hired more women in my business. I explain why this happens and what most people don't understand about working with women. Guys, don't worry. Men are great, but women are special in their own way. And I share with you what kind of impact they can make on your business if you allow it to happen. Hit subscribe so you don't miss that episode when it drops. Number 10. Be an optimist on purpose. Optimism is not naive. Optimism is actually a strategy. This is what I found. And by the way, research shows that people that are optimists live longer, they achieve more, they recover faster from setbacks, and they report higher levels of life satisfaction. That sounds like a good deal. Sounds like it's worth being optimistic. When you believe good things are possible, you take more action towards them. That's just how we operate as human beings. When you take more action, you create more opportunities. And when you create more opportunities, more good things happen. It's like a great fulfilling, like flywheel or a cycle that keeps happening over and over. But here's the thing. Optimism is self fulfilling and so is pessimism. The lens you choose to see the world really, really, really shapes the world you end up living in. If you are wearing glasses that sees everything as crap, then the world will look like crap. Okay? This is how it is. But wearing glasses in the world looks like sunshine and rainbows, you're going to tend to see the beauty in the world. So make the choice to wear the right glasses. Choose the optimism glasses. Okay? Not because everything is perfect, but because it just works. Why not? Why not do something that helps you? That leads me to number 11. Cut the negative people in your life right now. I'm talking about this moment. This is the one that people resist the most for some reason, and I know the reason, because those people are often family. Those negative people, they could be old friends, people that you've known for decades, people with history, people that have memories. You've done a lot of things with them. But here's the truth. Negative people are not neutral. They're not just like doing nothing in your life. They're actively pulling you backwards. Every time you share a goal, every time you tell them something that is important to you, they tell you why it won't work. Every time without fail, every time you try to improve, they make you feel like you're getting too big for yourself. Hey, calm down, buddy. Every time you make progress they find a way to minimize it. Oh, okay. You know, anybody could do that. You know, you know what I'm talking about. You've heard this, right? You know these people. And by the way, that's not loyalty, trying to stick with these people. It's a tax on your potential. It's like running a marathon with like 10 kilo ankle weights. Why are you doing this to yourself? They say you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That is not just a motivational quote. It's the facts. This is documented psychology, guys. And if you don't believe me, just, you know, look it up. Ask AI. It'll tell you. I'm asking you today to audit your circle, your close circle, ruthlessly. The people you see regularly, people that you see at least once every few months. You don't need to be cruel about it when you cut them off, but you need to be honest with yourself. Some relationships just need to quietly go away where you're just maybe not in touch as much, right? You kind of deprioritize that relationship. And honestly, some of these just need to be end right now. I'm talking about outright tonight, because your future depends on it. Why are you making it harder for you to succeed by having them pull you down? Number 12, exercise every day, without exception. I know you've heard this one before, but I want to give you a different perspective. I want you to put the physical benefits of exercise aside. Just forget about that for a moment. Let's forget about even how exercise is going to make you look in terms of your appearance and vanity and all that kind of stuff. I believe even with all of that aside, exercise is the highest return investment you can make in your life. It makes you think more clearly, it improves your mood more reliably than anything else, more than any medication or any kind of supplement or any kind of drink or anything else. It builds resilience, it builds a discipline, it builds confidence. It allows you to prove to yourself that you can do things that you say to yourself, right? You, when you say something and you say you're going to do something, you do it. And that builds confidence. And the dividends will pay you over and over in your 20s and your 30s and your 40s and your 50s and beyond. It's extraordinary. It's one of the gifts I've had early in my life, where at the age of 11, I started playing basketball. I fell in love with the sport of basketball and I continued to play basketball throughout my life. And it made me sharper, made me more energetic and made me more capable of handling stress. So really the key here is to fall in love with some sort of sport or any physical activity they enjoy. This could be a gym routine, this could be a martial art. This could be surfing. This could be tennis. This could be yoga. This could be Pilates, this could be dance. Something with a community around it and a skill that you are kind of encouraged to keep improving and it allows you to keep moving. This relationship with physical exercise will become the relationship that keeps giving back for the rest of your life. Number 13. Read every day. You don't have to read for long. You don't have to read for hours, even if it's just 10, 15 minutes. Why? Books are the longest conversations you, you will ever have with the smartest people in the world. Scratch that. The smartest people that ever lived. You can spend a weekend with Warren Buffett if you read his work. You could spend a week inside of Marcus Aurelius head. You could spend a month inside the minds of some of the best entrepreneurs in the world, whether it's Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs or Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, all for the price of a book. 10 bucks, 15 bucks. 20 bucks. This is ridiculous. Reading is not just an investment in your knowledge, it's an investment in your perspective. It keeps you humble because you're constantly reminded of how much you don't know. The more I read, the more I realize, wow, I need to read more. It keeps you curious because the more you learn, the more you realize there's to discover. You realize, oh, there's so many other worlds, there's so many other topics, there's so many other philosophies I can get into. And by the way, in a world of 30 second videos and headline skimming and people not really being deep in anything, reading deeply has a profound advantage. And it doesn't need to be much. Like I mentioned, it could be 10, 15 minutes a day. You could do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes before you go to bed, 20 minutes a day, consistently. It will transform the quality of your thinking over a decade if you start right now. Number 14. Broaden your inputs to broaden your world. Here's something I noticed about the most interesting, most creative, most insightful people I know. They all consume a wide range of experiences. Whether your hero is Kobe Bryant or whether it's Anthony Bourdain or Vera Wang. They don't just sit down and watch Netflix all day or the same genre of Netflix all day. They Go to museums, they go see live music across different genres, different languages and cultures. They watch local theater and they also see the big plays on Broadway. They go to stand up comedy shows, they travel to places that change their assumptions. By the way, you could do all of this, right? You can literally buy a ticket to your local theater right now. You're going to pay $25 or something to see Julius Caesar done with the local actors in your town. I'm telling you right now, it's going to be a great experience. You're going to enjoy it. Yeah, they're not professional actors, but the story, the playwright, you know, the actual script, the interpretation, all that stuff is going to enrich you. You can go to a stand up comedy show this weekend, go to open mic, that's free. You can travel to places that most people don't go to and it'll be less expensive if you're going to Europe or going to Italy. You know, you can go to Rome, it's beautiful. But you can also go to Puglia, the south, which no one goes to, or go to Bologna in the north, where you're going to get to have a completely unique experience that's going to really inform you in a different way, different from other people. Why does this matter? Why? Why do this? Because your inputs shape your outputs. If you only consume what the algorithm recommends, your thinking becomes narrower, becomes like everybody else, Your taste becomes predictable, your solutions become very ordinary. But the most creative business ideas, the most unexpected connections, the freshest perspective, in my experience, come from when you deliberately expose yourself to the unfamiliar. I'm going to challenge you. The next movie you watch, whether it's on Netflix or in a theater that make it a foreign film, go read some subtitles and see somebody deliver their art in their own way, in their own culture, whether it's a Brazilian film or Korean film, it doesn't really matter. Get a little uncomfortable, expand your inputs. Your perspective will expand with them. Number 15, look after your parents. Now, this one's personal. You may not agree with this, but I actually think that this is a little bit of a cheat code. You know, we spend so much of our young adult lives and analyzing what our parents did wrong to us, right? The wounds, the trauma, right? And I'm not dismissing any of that. But here's something worth sitting with. You can't blame your parents for everything that went wrong without crediting them for everything that went right. Anything that's good about you was influence, was actually a gift from your parents. Most parents tried their best with the tools they had, right? Not everybody had the exposure or the education that they needed to do the best job possible. Whatever values they instilled, the sacrifices they made, the things they gave up so you can have more that counts. I know this for saying, because my parents were immigrants from Egypt to the US and they had to change their whole life so that me and my sisters can be born in the US and have a better life than they did. They had to learn a new language. They had to do it all without any friends or family or any connections. They had to learn everything on their own. How to get a haircut, how to register their car, how to get a license. My mom had to do her degree all over because they didn't recognize her university degree from Egypt. They had to do so much. And yes, they were strict, and yes, they were a little bit controlling. And yes, you know, they probably didn't give me everything I wanted as a kid. But that's okay, that's fine. Because that instilled a lot of great qualities and values that I cherish to this day. So call your parents, visit them, help them if they need some help. Not out of obligation, but at a genuine understanding that they're human and they're finite and they need you, too, and they won't be around forever. I truly believe with everything in me that we are rewarded in life when we are kind to our parents. I always feel like when I call my dad or I check up on my mom or my siblings even, I really feel like I'm paying a debt. I'm feeling that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. In a lot of ways, I feel like good things happen because of that. Now, you may not agree with me or think it's some sort of abstract spiritual thinking, but in a very practical way, that is the kind of person you want to become. When you honor that relationship with someone that really you trust and respect, you want to be that person that does those things. You want to be a person of honor. And it starts with your parents. Number 16. Treat everyone with respect. Everyone. The waiter, the cleaner, the person behind the counter, the people you disagree with politically, the people with different values, the people you find difficult. Everyone. Why? It's a small world. And the intern that you dismiss or treat rudely will one day be the hiring manager at a company that you want to work with, that you want to kind of do business with in about five years. The person that you were unkind to and obnoxious to in the comments section. Will turn out to be someone's close friend. Listen, reputation travels faster than you think. But beyond the practical reasons, here is the deeper truth I found. How you treat people when there is nothing to gain is really the truest measure of who you are as a person of your character. So be kind. Not for strategic reasons, but genuinely be a kind person. It costs you nothing and it compounds in ways you can't track or even predict in your life. Number 17. It's okay not to have it all figured out. This one I needed to hear. When I was about 20, 21, 22, I thought everyone around me had a plan. I thought there was some sort of secret to adult life that hadn't been revealed to me yet. There wasn't. Most people are figuring it out as they go. That's just the truth. The ones who look the most certain, confident from the outside, are often the most uncertain ones on the inside. Actually, the pressure to have a five year plan, a defined career path, and a clear vision for your life, it's largely invented, it's largely not real. What actually builds a good life is not certainty, actually. It's actually just showing up, doing the work, staying open to what comes, being flexible with whatever happens in your life, being open. The people who have the richest, most interesting lives that I found and I know personally, did not follow a straight line. They followed their curiosity, they had a lot of detours, they took unexpected turns along the way. They stayed in motion, they fell, they picked themselves back up, they kept working, they stayed open to opportunities. And it started to come together. So don't worry, it's going to be fine. Number 18. Don't forget about your soul. You got to feed your soul. We spend so much time feeding our ambitions, our bank accounts, our careers, our social profiles, right? And we spend almost no time feeding the part of us that needs something quieter. Call what you want. Prayer, meditation, reflection, journaling, charity work, sitting in silence, whatever it looks like for you, do it every single day, even if it's just five minutes. The people I know who operate with the most clarity, the most groundedness, the most genuine warmth, they all have the same version of this practice, some sort of practice that grounds them. This is not soft. It's the foundation that makes everything else possible. It's having a bit of peace of mind. This type of work allows you to be grateful, allows you to be reflective. It allows you to be a bit wiser. And you can't give what you don't have. Right? If your inner life is empty, eventually your outer life Will show it. Okay, so spend a few minutes every day just observing yourself, taking a moment to work on your heart a little bit. You should be able to just sit quietly and reflect and to ponder and to meditate just for a few minutes. Okay? And meditate doesn't mean not thinking, just means just like you're. You don't need to do anything. You can just think about life and be okay with what you're doing in your life and who you're with and how everything's going. Just check in with yourself. Don't distract yourself constantly. And that might take different forms for people. Some people that be serving others, Some people is serving their creator. Some people is serving their community, whatever it is, okay? But the point here is that it's not just about you and the next thing and keeping yourself distracted. It's you understanding that there's something inside that needs a little bit of nourishment that requires you to just calm down a little. Number 19, your health is your wealth. And we talked a lot about financial wealth today, but I know a lot of people that worked really hard at building their financial wealth, but they then they spend it all trying to recover from poor health. And that is a trade you never want to make. Okay? You need to take care of yourself because there's no point in working hard and trying to become rich and not be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor because your health is in shambles. I know really successful multimillionaires that never have to work, that just have ton of money, that are 40, but are biologically 70. So you need to take your sleep seriously. You need to take your nutrition seriously. Stress management regularly. Go to the doctor if you can. Okay? This is important. These are actually not luxuries, right? They are the infrastructure that allow you to do everything else. If you don't have your health, you really have nothing. You really can't do much. You will not outwork a broken body, right? You will not think your way out of chronic exhaustion, okay? Your energy is the engine of your output, plain and simple. So you got to protect it. You need to build habits right now in your 20s that will protect your health and not make choices that will punish you later. They say a healthy person wishes for a million things. A sick person wishes for one thing, health. And finally, number 20. Now this is number 20, but it's not the least important. It's actually one of the most important ones. So I wanted to save it for last. I want to give it to those who made it this far. Okay, number 20 is. Time is the only non renewable resource. You can make more money, you can rebuild a reputation, you can even recover from almost any setback in life, but you can't get back a single second of your time. This is a truth that changed everything for me. When you really absorb it, not just intellectually, but viscerally in your bones, every hour you spend on something that doesn't align with who you want to be is an hour you're spending on someone else's agenda, someone else's needs. Your job is to covet your time because you can't get more of it. I just turned 46. Like I mentioned at the top of the episode that year when I was 45. I will never be 45 again. I will never be 40 again. I will never be 20 again. It's over, okay? I only have today. I only have what is given to me. There is a certain number of minutes and hours that is called my life. I don't know what that number is, but I can't get any more. Guard your time like it's the most valuable possession, because it is. Please don't kill time because killing time is basically killing your life. It's killing parts of your life that you will never get back. Those are the 20 truths I would go back and tell my 20 year old self. Those are the things I would need to hear and I think it would make a huge difference. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. None of the truths I shared are complicated. None of them require some sort of special talent or unusual opportunity. They just require a decision. You need to believe in yourself and just move forward. Decision is so powerful. The desire to take ownership of your life, to be careful about your time and the people around you and all the things we mentioned today. Be generous, be kind, move through the world with a bit of grace. Okay, you don't need to do all 20 immediately, but pick one or two or three that hit the hardest and start there and keep coming back for the rest. Your future self is counting on you. If this episode resonated with you, if you got value from it, then I recommend you check out a recent episode we recently published called how to turn $100 into a hundred Thousand Dollars. And exactly what I would do if I if I was starting out in 2026. The episode is all about execution. It's a clear blueprint that you can follow. So go ahead and check it out. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast, hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever, you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode. Hey Fidelity, Can I get a second opinion on stocks in the Fidelity app? With Fidelity, it's easy to get an outside opinion from independent experts in a single score. 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