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Getting into a head-on collision in a DUI and having basically no money to my name to, you know,

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12 months later, uh, having $3 million in profits, not knowing what to do with it.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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progress during how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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Hi, my name is Alex Ramuzzi and I own acquisition.com and our portfolio

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company is going to do $85 million here. What I want to talk about today is one of the

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pivotal moments of my life that that took me from, uh, really just getting into a head-on collision

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in a DUI and having basically no money to my name to, you know, 12 months later, uh, having

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$3 million in profits, not knowing what to do with it. There was a series of decisions that

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happened in that period of time that radically transformed my life and so I want to talk to you

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about one of the more significant ones today. And so, uh, kind of like I just alluded to,

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leading into my DUI head-on collision, I had six gyms, two with one partner. I had, uh,

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three with another partner and then I had one on my own. So, I had all these kind of weird arrangements

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that were going on in my life at that time. Um, I also had a partner that I was doing a 50-50

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split for, uh, dental agency work and another and the same partner. We also had an agency together

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for car practice agency work. I'm also doing in-person gym launches. So that means that I was flying

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out in-person and doing gym turn-arounds and trying to launch gyms. And at the time, I was so stressed

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that I was drinking, I mean, probably half a bottle every night just to, honestly, not to get drug,

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but just to not be stressed. It took me a really long time to just even like function. You know what

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I mean in the morning because I was so spread thin mentally. And what I want to kind of talk to

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you through is some of the decisions and how I thought through them because I don't know where

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you're at right now. And it doesn't really matter what the scale is of what the decisions are

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because I've made decisions like this at multiple times in my life. I ended up going to an attention

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coach. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I went to a coach to help me manage my attention.

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And so one of the things that I think us as entrepreneurs we think about all the time is like,

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you know, we're managing our time, we're trying to be productive. And I worked every hour of the day

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that I was awake. And yet I still didn't have that much money at the time. Everything was tied up

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and, you know, the gyms and all that kind of stuff and cash flow for employees and all that kind of

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jazz. And this coach had kept telling me he's like, you need to, you know, you need to aggregate

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your attention. You need to focus. He's like, you're spread all over the place. I pretty much just

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like would not along and listen. And I tried to do some of the stuff they told me to do. But I wasn't

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making, I mean, I was making some progress. But it wasn't until I drank so much that I ended up

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getting into a head-on collision at 60 miles an hour on the highway. And I actually walked away

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from that. And it wasn't, I didn't hit anyone. I was actually getting pulled over and there was a

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car that was in the side, the shoulder that was turned off. It was dark. And so I was looking over

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my shoulder and just kind of going from lane to lane as I was, you know, getting into the shoulder

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as I was getting pulled over. As I was getting pulled over by the cop in the shoulder, there's a black

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car and I just, I nailed it. And so anyways, they say that because I was drunk, I was really relaxed

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and that's why I didn't get any injuries. Who knows? But anyways, I stepped out of the car, you know,

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I'm getting whatever they do, you know, signed, you know, signed paperwork, whatever. And the next day,

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after Layla picked me up from jail as my girlfriend, not not my wife at the time. She was like,

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this guy's a real winner. Anyways, and so she picks me up and the next day, I have a conversation

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with him obviously and he's like, he's like, your lack of making decisions is going to kill you.

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And I remember him saying that to me and he was like, the reason you're stressed is because you

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have all these decisions that you know you should make and you're not making them. I wanted to make

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this because I wanted to talk about probably the, the, the, the second hardest decision I made in my

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life. The hardest decision was quitting my job. Probably the second hardest decision was, was

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the decisions that I had, it was a multitude of decisions that I had to make that I knew I was

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supposed to make and I just didn't know how to confront them. And it seems like it's a common

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theme in my life that when I only make decisions when I'm literally confronted with my own mortality.

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And so if you notice that as a common theme among my stuff, it's because for some reason I can't

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get myself to decide to do things unless I literally think I'm going to die. And so I saw this and

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it became the catalyst for me making a number of changes in my life. And so what I did over the

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next, you know, really the next 48 hours was a rapid series of decisions that consolidated all my

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attention into one thing. And so that's what I want to talk to you about. So the first thing I did,

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I called up the partner that I had the two agencies with and I said, hey, I can't do this. I'm doing

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gym agency work where I'm flying out and doing turn-around, I'm doing dental agency work and we're

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doing chiropractor agency work. I was like, I can't do any of it. So I'm, I'm just, I'm out. I just

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was like, I'm out. You can have everything I'm done. It was like, okay. And that was a horrible

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conversation to have because I felt like I was letting a partner down. And then I called up

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the partner that I had in in the the multitude of gyms, more of the gyms. And I said, hey,

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you know, how can we figure out a way for us to walk away? I want to do this gym launch stuff.

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And so, you know, we ended up working it out and I basically gave away the gyms

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at fire sales numbers more or less. I was able to sell two of them successfully in a, for a

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better number, but the rest of them I pretty much just gave away. And then the partner that I had

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that I was in the new gym with, I said, you know, hey, I'm, I'm, I don't, I don't want to do this

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anymore. I need to focus on gym launch. Obviously, all those conversations did not go, you know,

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super well. They weren't super well received. But I think I just was only able to have the

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courage to do it because I had almost died the night before. And so it just gave me this massive

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perspective where I was like, am I I'm so afraid of letting these people down that I that I might die?

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And so I ended up making that all those decisions just in a matter of like a day or two.

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Hey guys, real quick. If you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon called 100

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million dollar offers that over 8,000 five star reviews and it has almost a perfect score. You

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can get it for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up is that I put over a thousand hours

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into writing that book. And it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very shameless way

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of trying to get you to like me more and ultimately make more dollars so that later on in your business

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career, I can push the partner with you. So that's my gift. Go check it out. Amazon and back to the show.

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And having those conversations. And so I think the the the lesson for me that I've taken with me

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that's been the most valuable thing of this is one, you won't die when you make those those calls.

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But second, a lot of times I feel like when I was a newer entrepreneur and even as I feel it as I

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accumulate un-unmade decisions, right? I think we accumulate these unmade decisions or un-un confronted

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conversations. And what happens is there's like a portion of my brain in my decision making, my

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thinking power that just gets allocated to this chunk, this this decision, right? That needs to be

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made that is un-made. That I know I should make and I probably know what the right call is, but it's

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just sitting there un-made. And so it's like as we start accumulating these things, it's like my my

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actual amount of of thinking power continues to decrease until it gets to the point where you're so

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reactive because you have no brain power. And as a small like correlated to that, I don't know if

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you've ever like if you remember when you were a kid and you had like homework or something like

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that and you were like staring at a math problem you could figure it out and and you know you're

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staying up late into the night and you're like whatever I'm going to go to sleep and see if I can

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think about the morning. And then you wake up the next day and you feel refreshed and you look

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at the problem and it seems obvious you're like oh duh, it's here it is and then it's done, right?

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I feel like that is the that is an expression of having far more attention, far more decision making

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part of how far more thinking power because you can concentrate on this one thing and all of a

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sudden it seems easy. And I think that business and life are a lot like that at least they have

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been for me where it's like if I feel like I like simple decisions are take an inordinate amount

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of efforts because I am too distracted I have too many things too many un-made decisions too many

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un-confronted conversations that I need to have. And those can be life conversations with a spouse

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they can be conversations with parents they can be conversations with siblings they can be

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conversations with business partners they can be conversations with employees they can be

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decisions that must be made. And I think one of the most powerful things that that I've tried to

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remember is like I'm only one decision away from changing my life just one decision I'm one

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decision away from from changing my life I can quit my job that is one decision right I can start

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a business that is one decision these are decisions that we have to make at some point in our life

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and these are like the crossroads there's two kind of major major things that I have one is that

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most people don't regret doing things they regret not doing things and so I know that when I die

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I don't want to regret not having done things I'd rather do things than fail so that I do not

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have the regret and I'll have the experience and having that kind of thought process has been

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extremely helpful for me to draw back to the point of this this whole thing when I made these

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decisions and Layla was with me because she basically said as well after I got off the phone

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call with the coach she was like if you don't change things she's like I'm not like this this

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got to change like I'm not going to be around she kind of indicated that she didn't say it directly

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but I think I understood I could read between the lines and I valued my relationship with her

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more than a lot of the other things that we're going on on in my life and I could tell that she

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was a little bit outside of the storm that was Alex Hermosey at the time the storm of chaos

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and so she was like you have to make these calls and so I made these calls physically like

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phone calls and also these decisions and what resulted next was really the you know I had to

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suffer the pain of the consequence of those decisions which was very hard for me but I felt

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determined that I had made those decisions I felt confident and I felt like I had more attention and

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more bandwidth in my disposal because I made the tough calls and I started believing in myself more

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because I was like man if I can make these calls then I can do this next thing and so that was

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kind of I would say the explosion that created the beginning momentum of like I can do this after I

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basically shut down as many different side-prochets as I could that's when I went all in on Gemlunch

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and so Gemlunch actually was started in 2016 which was probably 2016 into the first half of 2017

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was like the worst 18 months of my entire life and that was also when I coincidentally met Leila

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my wife so she saw me at the absolute worst and for some reason decided to stay with me because

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she believed which is why she'll always have my my eternal gratitude we made this call I ended

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three partnerships I sold sold or let go of fire sold you know at the time I guess if you

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if you were to try and number those but I had like 11 just nine businesses or something that was

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going on and so this is one of those things where people were like man I have I have I have so many

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businesses you know et cetera and it's like you have to do them in the right sequence like I didn't

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even I wasn't fairly making any money and I had all these businesses so I could feel good about

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my status when in reality I knew that I wasn't that successful and so it was only when Leila was like

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this gym launch thing is working like all we have to do is just give it our full attention and it

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will work at that point I felt so I want to say defeated but I also felt like my my my slate was

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clean right I had clean the slate and like I pushed everything off the side in the face of my

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of my mortality that the stress of not making these decisions was going to kill me and so

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that's when I just focused full in on on on gym launch and and things kind of took off and I think

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in another video I'll tell you that story of how how things actually started there because I think

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it's valuable for a lot of people who are going through it right now but I guess I wanted to

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make this video because the the takeaway that I had from that is that I'm always one decision

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away from changing my life and I'm often one conversation away from getting my attention back

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I'm one decision away from getting all my attention back from where I'm feeling distracted so I don't

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know where you're at right now but the most valuable thing that we have is entrepreneurs is not

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our time but our attention if we have all of the time but we have a million things going on we

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are useless because we have no decision making power we have no thinking power because little pieces

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of our brain are being allocated these un unformed un finalized decisions that maybe can cost your

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life and I don't know I mean it did almost for me which is why I've been so ruthless with my

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attention since then and so and had to invite by consequence so disciplined with my focus it's

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not because I'm naturally that way so hopefully this story will illustrate that to you that this

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was not something that naturally came to me but was a decision that I had to make to save myself

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and so don't know where you're at right now my name is Alex from Rosie we own acquisition.com

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our portfolio company is now doing about $85 million a year I have nothing to sell you I made

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this channel because a lot of people are broke and I don't want you to be one of them and I think

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that everyone has a hundred percent within their control to become the top one percent of the

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United States which is already the top whatever percent of the world so anyways lots of everyone

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if you did like this hit the subscribe button if you didn't love you either way I'll see you

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next video bye