things i stopped doing that made me rich (TIER LIST)

Hey guys, Mark here. In this video, I am going to be ranking things that I stopped doing that made me rich. So the way that this chart works is the higher up it is on this tier list, the more broke it was keeping me.

And the moment I stopped doing said thing is when I actually started becoming rich. First up on the list, we have reading what I'll call spiritual success kind of book.

Now, this is a slippery slope here because I don't mean to say that having a good mindset is not important.

Obviously, having a good mindset is important, but I will tell you this, the period in my life where I was the brokest I have ever been is when I was obsessing over this book right here.

I followed every single step that there was step by step, and I promise you, I was broke as all fucked. Here's the reason why, when you get started in anything that you want to be successful in, you have to put in so much more work, so many more reps than you will ever understand.

You may think you know a little bit, you may think you kind of understand how things work, you know, you've watched some YouTube videos, maybe you've practiced a little bit already, or if it's e-commerce, for example, you've tested some product, maybe you've tried a little bit, you have no clue how much more work it is going to take you, and what you need to spend virtually every minute of your waking hours doing is getting good at these hard skills.

Getting good in the context of making money, for example, getting really good at writing copy, at creating high converting creative, on learning how to run Facebook ads, every extra moment that you have, just pour it back into acquiring these hard skills.

I really enjoy reading, I still enjoy reading spiritual success books, very similar to this one here, even, you know, I'm seven years into entrepreneurship now, but I will tell you this, there has to be a balance.

The moment where you go too deep into all the spiritual, lyrical, miracle type shit is the moment that you lose your ability to be grounded in reality.

You almost like stop doing what is already working.

So just focus all your energy on just getting better and putting in the reps, period.

So reading too many spiritual success books, I'm going to put this one in the A tier.

Our next up on the list, we have me stopping having a scarcity mindset around investing in myself.

I'll let you in on a little secret, I have a lot of, well, I don't have a lot of friends, but I do have some friends and a lot of acquaintances.

And the people that I personally know that are 10 to 100 times richer than I am, some of them still have a scarcity mindset.

I know that may not make sense, but a lot of times, having a scarcity mindset follows you after you start to make a little bit of money, especially when you make that initial portion of money.

So I'll give you an example, when I started making around, let's just say 10k a month, because it's a nice, nice even number, I was basically taking 80% of that money that was not going to my direct expenses and saving it.

Because I had never actually made that money before in my life, and I still had that scarcity mindset that if you have money, you should hold on to it as closely and as hard as you possibly can, you should never let go of it.

That is the most textbook example of your scarcity mindset, just because you know how to make money, this active income, does not mean you got rid of your scarcity mindset.

And this was me for a while, and this is still me at some point, right, when I'm going to be investing, for example, in a new program, new mentorship, new coaching, whatever, that's going to be a substantial sum for me.

It has to be just enough to make me uncomfortable, and if you feel that that sense of discomfort, that is a positive growth signal, period.

It is a positive signal, and it's your job as an evolving human being to get over that bullshit scarcity mindset.

Take some of that income you just made, invest it in yourself, because you know that investments that are made in yourself, as long as you actually do the work, it's going to pay off way more than any other investment that you could ever possibly make.

So for that reason, when I stopped having the scarcity mindset around investing myself, this was a big one.

This one is going in the S tier.

Next up on the list, we have I stopped succumbing to shiny object syndrome.

This is a big one, and for me, that shiny object always has been crypto.

I am a super duper crypto nerd, but I go in phases.

Anytime that I get really, really into crypto, I usually make a lot of money, and then lose about half of it.

And then realize, I would have just made more money if I was focusing on the one thing, which is my businesses.

And every single time, it's so crazy how convincing this really is.

Like, these shiny objects, they can legitimately fool you.

But the people that I know, and it took me a long time to figure this out, the people that I that I know deeply, that have made shitloads of money, they legitimately just stayed in their own lane, they saw all these opportunities, opportunities, that's how to frame, they saw all these opportunities pass them by and just said, nope, nope, nope, nope, this is my one thing, and this is the only thing I'm putting my focus and energy into.

Those people are the ones that become the most wealthy.

So letting go of my shiny object syndrome was definitely a big one.

Not the biggest, but I would say, I'm going to put this right in the C tier.

Actually, fuck it, this one's going in the B tier.

Just because there's so many of you that are still thinking this way.

Next up on the list is when I stopped avoiding doing the reps and just focused on getting in a ton of volume.

So this is a quote here from Alex Hormozi, people tend to think they need to learn more.

They really just need to do more.

Now, I don't know who started this, but there's this whole rhetoric in the entrepreneur space or just online money space in general.

Where, oh, you don't have to work hard, you just have to work smart.

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever fucking heard.

Because it implies that if you're working hard, you're not working smart.

You can do both.

In fact, there's a third one, you can work smart, work hard, and work long.

Like a long period of time.

The game of success is not picking and choosing which of those, like, oh, I'm just going to work smart.

Cool, I work smart and hard and longer than you.

Now what?

I'm going to kick your ass.

The point here that I'm trying to make is very similar to the first point that I actually made, which is that you need to put in so many more reps than you possibly think.

And don't fall into this trap of just, oh, I'm just going to work smart, so like I don't really need to do all that hard work.

If you want to acquire skills, you have to put in a lot of reps, period.

And that's just going to be hard sometimes, and you have to understand that things that are worthwhile in this world.

Guess what?

They're hard.

They don't come easy, and that's good, because if it was easy, everybody would doing it, and success would not be something that is actually cool and fun to have in this sort of accomplishment.

It would just be a commodity, it would be the average.

Like being successful would be synonymous with being mediocre.

But guess what, that's not the case.

Because it's fucking hard.

Stop falling into the strap that you need to work smart and just put in more fucking reps.

You should work smart and work hard and work long hours.

In fact, that is literally what this guy right here does and what I do.

So think about who you're really competing with.

So with that said, I'm going to put this guy in the B tier.

Next up on the list, we have when I stopped being unresourceful.

Which is kind of a double negative.

So what I mean is that you should be resourceful as fuck.

Okay, a lot of times, when you're trying to start something great, like trying to start a new business, there's this immediate objection, but wait, I don't have any money, or I don't have a lot of money, or I don't have enough money.

And that's kind of the reason that you're starting the business, right, and that was my reason for starting the business in the first place too.

I didn't really have as much money as I wanted.

However, do you know how many people stop right there?

Meaning like they want to start a business, they realize they have no money, and they just give up.

The best entrepreneurs in the world that I look up to are incredibly resourceful.

Now they have millions, if not billions of dollars.

So you have to look when they got started, you have to look at the early phases of their journey.

This is a really good trait of successful entrepreneurs.

They are incredibly resourceful.

I'll give you an example, when Airbnb was becoming a relatively, you know, large company, they obviously didn't start that way, they started as a very, very small company, just had a few hosts, but they treated them incredibly well.

And as a result, they ran out of cash.

So there came a point where they're like, shit, like we have to generate cash, or else this business is going to die.

And so what they did is they made political cereal boxes, I think this was right around 2008, so it was like Mitt Romney and and Barack Obama, I think, if I remember correctly, and they made these boxes of cereal and then sold all of these like one-time boxes for like, I don't know, five or 10 bucks.

And ended up generating like tens of thousands of dollars that would then fund the creation of Airbnb, which is like this massive successful company.

And it would not be around if it was not for this silly, but incredibly resourceful idea to create these political cereal boxes and sell it as it's almost, you know, political merchandise.

I'm not saying that you should make political cereal boxes, but what I am saying is that the best entrepreneurs are incredibly resourceful.

Even when I was getting started, before I really had any money, before I even had a job, I went around my neighborhood and I printed out this flyer, basically my first sales letter, I didn't even know what a sales letter was at the time, but I was trying to convince people that I could do dog sitting for them.

And the reason why this was such a good gig is because with dog sitting, you really only have to go over to the house, you know, two or three times, let out the dogs, feed them, et cetera.

And I was getting paid like $50 a day for maybe like 30 minutes of work, like 60 minutes of work a day.

So basically, by that math, I was making anywhere from like, you know, 50 to $100 an hour and only working like an hour a day.

So it wasn't the most money in the world, but it was also only an hour a day.

So another example, just being resourceful.

Is a skill in and of itself.

Like get creative with how you want to make money, it's you don't have to just force yourself into like these online business models.

If you literally have zero cash, because if you do, you're probably going to end up running out of cash in the first place.

So you might as well build up some cash and be resourceful.

So with this, this is not the most important and only really applies to people that are just completely fucking broke.

So with that being said, I'm going to put this guy in the C tier.

Next up on the list is when I stopped obsessing over goals, instead, started focusing on systems.

This is actually a quote from the book Atomic Habits, if you haven't read it, highly, highly recommend it.

And this was actually kind of during the time where I was obsessing over thinking grow rich, and I was like, I don't get it, like I'm doing everything right, I don't see any results, but I'm like doing this super extremely obsessive goal setting system, and I'm literally making reverse progress.

Like, I'm not even not making progress, I'm like losing money.

So I'm literally getting farther away from my goals.

It's not like I'm staying in the same place, I'm going backwards.

And after months of this, I was basically just like, this is not working, the way that I think about setting goals is getting me farther away from my goals.

And that's when I was reading this book, and I came across this chapter that said, focus on systems, not goals.

Because systems are something that are directly in your control, right, they are inputs.

And if you build a system, you only have to build it once.

One thing I say to my team very often is that I have no problem that you made this mistake once.

But what you need to do now is build a system that you never make that mistake again.

A system versus like just relying on your own human accountability.

Those are two completely different things.

And I would choose a system every single day of the week.

Because it doesn't let you down.

Also, research shows that the people who would visualize goals versus visualizing the process for you to get to the goal, typically the people that would visualize the process had a higher likelihood of actually achieving said goal.

Which is crazy.

Like just visualizing the process is more important than visualizing the outcome, and that just goes to show that the inputs, the systems, the controllables is what you should be focusing on, not the goals, not the outcomes, not the stuff that's outside of your control.

So for that reason, this was like a huge shift for me.

I really wish somebody told this to me when I was younger.

But for that reason, we're going to put this one right in the A tier.

Next up on the list of things that I stopped doing because they're keeping me broke.

Is I stopped being afraid of active risk.

I think risk is such a stupid term in the first place.

Because people totally misunderstand it.

But risk essentially falls into two columns.

You have active risk and passive risk.

People mostly only think of active risk.

Which is where, you know, you go and start a business, statistically, most of them fail.

You go, you know, try to be in the NBA, statistically, you're probably not going to make it.

Passive risk, on the other hand, is the risk of doing nothing.

For example, when I was 18 years old, I was going into college, and I also knew that I wanted to start a business.

And when I told this to people around me, they weren't exactly the most supportive, they were saying, that's great, but like, you know, they typically don't work out.

Like, it's going to get in the way of your school.

I don't think it's a good idea, blah, blah, blah.

And to me, I thought this was absolutely insane.

Because this is quite literally the best time for me to ever start a business.

I'm young, I can make mistakes.

I can lose all my money, and I'll still be okay.

If I was like 35 years old, I got a wife, I got kids, I got dogs, I got shit to take care.

I got a whole load of responsibilities, man.

But when you're young, you're you're for some reason brainwashed.

That risk is a bad thing.

The only risk that is a bad thing is the risk of staying the same.

That is the most terrifying, nightmare fucking scenario that I could ever think of.

Staying the fucking same person.

Looking the same, same bank account, same friends.

Same fucking loser ass life.

Is that really what you want?

Obviously not.

But people don't think about that.

That's a risk.

Staying in the same place is the biggest fucking risk of all.

I would much rather go head first into a bunch of active risk, totally fuck up, lose all my money.

Then stay in the same fucking place.

Because at least I actually learned something and acquired XP and experience and skills by going towards active risk.

But I wasn't always that way.

I used to just think that like, you know, everything's risky.

Everything is risky.

Staying the same is risky.

Changing is risky.

Which would you rather have?

You either like suffer in the name of doing something great for yourself and your family and your friends.

Or you just suffer being the same.

The choice is yours.

But for me, I used to not always be this way.

But now I run head first into active risk.

Because I know there's only positive outcomes.

Even if that like positive outcome is me losing money, I know that I just learned something.

And at least I went all in.

So for that reason, we're going to put this one in the S tier.

You could probably sense my emotion on that one.

Next up on the list, I stopped living a balanced life.

You know, truthfully, I don't think my life was ever that balanced.

Even when I was, you know, younger in school, I was always very obsessive about one thing.

When I was younger, typically, it was basketball, because I just wanted to be the best basketball player that I possibly could.

And then I got into business, and it just shifted forms from basketball to being an entrepreneur.

But I hate the word balance, man.

I hate this fucking word.

Because the way that I think about it is balance is, if I handed you a stack of 50 books.

And I said, you got to balance these, meaning you have to stack one on top of the other, top of the other, top of the other, till you have 50 books, and you can't drop anything.

The problem with that, obviously, is that.

The more stuff that you stack on, the harder it is to balance everything.

And the more that you go through life, the more books you have to stack.

Initially, you know, you're young, maybe you just have like school and a girlfriend and a job.

But eventually, you're going to have a wife, eventually, you're going to have children, eventually, you're going to have to put those children through school.

And it's just like, you may think life, as you go on, gets easier.

But that's not true.

Life, as you go on, usually will get harder up until the point where your kids are like through college, they're more independent.

And even then, I don't even know if that's true.

There's just more responsibility at each stage of life.

Maybe until you're like 50 to 60 plus years old.

So, what you're doing is essentially stacking books, books, books, books, books.

Until you're fucking 50 years old, hoping that you won't drop anything.

That's not fucking how life works.

Instead, I believe in the concept of counterbalance.

Counterbalance, on the other hand, looks a little something like this.

Where you have two things that are both very heavy that are balancing each other out.

So the way that I view this, instead of like work life balance, I think of it as work life, you know, counterbalance, or even like work life integration.

So it's not like 5:00 PM hits, and I like turn off my phone.

And I'm like, no more work.

No, of course not.

I work 10 to 12 hours a day at an absolute fucking minimum.

But I will take like the next day entirely off.

That's really what counterbalancing is.

But honestly, bro, as a general rule, if you look at the people that live a balanced life.

Ask yourself, is that something that you really want?

Like genuinely, look at that person's life, look at their every aspect, financial, health, relationship.

Everything top to bottom.

Is that something that you want?

And for me, when I look at the people that have this purported balanced life, I fucking hate it.

I don't want that at all.

That to me seems like a life of mediocrity.

And that fucking terrifies me more than living a balanced life.

So I choose counterbalance.

And I think balance itself is bullshit.

So for that reason, we're going to take when I stopped balancing, whatever the fuck that was.

In the B tier.

Next up on the list is investing in shitty mentors.

I have had a lot of mentors in my life, some of them paid, some of them free.

Some of them really, really good.

Some of them really, really shit.

And after going through all this trial and error of finding good mentors, I have concluded that, number one, you typically get what you pay for.

And number two, don't let one bad apple spoil the bunch, all right, in the grand scheme of things, we're still pretty early to this whole internet money thing.

Like if you look at most technological revolutions, they've been around for a while.

But the internet has only been around for, you know, like 25 plus years.

Like it's not really that long.

I have paid people thousands of dollars and gotten virtually nothing in return.

At this point, it's just like, I could go one of two routes, you know, I could be like, you know what?

Every course, guru, coaching, mentorship, whatever, is a fucking scam because I went with this one guy, he was 13 years old and claimed to drive a Lamborghini.

And then he didn't teach me anything, except for getting my PayPal account shut down.

Like, I could go that route.

Or I could be like, okay.

This last guy obviously didn't work out.

But that doesn't mean that mentorship or coaching, et cetera, doesn't work out.

That just means that you picked the wrong fucking person.

And the wrong group to invest in.

That's all it is.

And the last thing I'll say here, just to let you guys in on a little secret, little hack.

Is if you're trying to figure out if the person or mentorship program, whatever, is a worthwhile investment for you.

You can ask yourself two things.

Number one, does it seem like this person is genuinely trying to help, or they're just trying to get clicks, leads, engagement, et cetera?

And then number two, go to this person's IG and tell me what you see.

If all you see is hyper materialistic shit, that person is either genuinely passionate about all these materialistic things.

Which does happen, you know, there are people that are super interested in cars.

And just love buying these luxury cars.

Or, more likely, they don't actually know how to talk about the thing that they're teaching, because they don't do it.

Therefore, they have to rely on lifestyle and status to sell their thing.

So, I learned this lesson quite literally in 2018.

I clicked on the wrong guy.

It is what it is.

You know, shit happens.

We make mistakes.

Move on, though.

Learn from it.

It's not that the person is like a bad person because of this, or it's not that mentorship or coaching in and of itself.

Is not worthwhile.

No, it's just pick the wrong guy.

You just picked a bad apple.

And there's a lot of bad apples out there.

But like I said.

Two simple rules.

Do they genuinely seem like they care?

And number two, go to their IG and tell me what you see.

So for that reason, we're going to put this one in the C tier.

Next up on the list, we have when I stopped living in a bad environment.

Now, I don't mean a bad environment in terms of the physical location.

But I mean the people that you're surrounding yourself with.

You've probably heard it a billion times before, the five people that you surround yourself with most.

Is who you're going to end up being.

You're an average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

Now, I knew this to be true, yet I was still pursuing my entrepreneurial journey.

Mostly alone.

I had a few friends on the internet.

For the most part, I was a lone wolf.

As soon as I moved to a place where I was just around people that had the same hunger and ambition.

And honestly, people that were just legitimately making more money than me.

As soon as I moved to that place, I'm not even joking, my income 5X in the span of about 11 months.

That is the power of surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you, who make more money than you, who are just better than you in some way.

So this alone is an incredibly powerful one just by the numbers.

And you can do this digitally, right, you can surround yourself with really good people on the internet.

However, I strongly would push for you to make that happen in person as well.

You can begin that relationship on the internet.

But eventually.

Fly to their city and meet up.

You're trying to develop like lifelong relationships at the end of the day.

And if you find somebody who's on a similar journey as you, similar mission, and they're just hungry and ambitious and just like wanting to to make money and prove themselves.

That's a unique thing in this world.

And when you put many of those people together in the same house, the same apartment.

You guys are all going to level up very fast.

There's a lot of truth to that.

So for that reason, I'm putting this one in the S tier.

I know it's not the most exciting, but it is just by the numbers.

This one was a game changer for me.

Next up on the list is when I stopped hesitating.

To just run more ads.

Now, as the official run more ads guy, I can say that I was not always this way.

I have always loved ads.

But there was a point where I probably didn't think that you needed to really run more ads.

Just more creatives and spend more money.

However, that belief has been eradicated.

For one reason and one reason only.

I don't care who's watching this video, but I can tell you this with 100% confidence in my heart.

Whatever is on that lovely vision board that you got, whatever goals you have in your little heart.

You are just one winning ad away from making that happen.

One banger fucking ad can change your entire life.

That's why I believe run more ads, it doesn't mean more, you know, unique creatives.

It's not getting into the, you know, the algorithmic strategies that you need to follow inside of your ad account.

No, it's just you can change your life with having one winning ad.

One, literally.

I can think of very specific moments where my life had one of those before and after moments.

And the only thing that preceded it was more winning ads.

So for that reason, this one's going in the S tier.

You already know it.

Next up on the list is when I stopped thinking short term and started thinking long term.

I don't know who said this quote or who to attribute it to, but the larger you think in terms of your time frames.

The more successful you're going to be.

The people that are the wealthiest people on this fucking planet, they're not thinking, how can I make X amount this month?

They're not even thinking, how can I make X amount this year?

They're thinking in terms of decade.

And I know that's going to be hard for you to get a grip on, because if you're watching this video.

Especially like I was many years ago, you probably didn't have a lot of money.

You may not have a lot of money right now.

So you literally are focused on like paying your bills next month.

I totally get it.

I have been in those exact shoes.

But it's one of those weird things about life, about God, the universe, where you got to do the opposite.

And you just have to have faith that if you do the right things in the short term.

And you have patience in the long term.

That you will probably become successful a lot faster than you think.

And I promise you, I've tried both, I have set very aggressive short-term goals.

And I almost never hit them.

And then I've also set very aggressive long-term goals.

And I usually blow those out of the fucking water.

People tend to overestimate what they can achieve in six months, but completely underestimate what they can achieve in five years.

So for that reason, this guy's going in the A tier.

And finally, last guy on the list here is I stopped letting my emotions rule my decision making.

And I've never been a particularly emotional, you know, person.

Literally, people on my team accuse me of being AI.

And these are people that work with me all day, every day.

So, you know, I don't know what that says about me.

But, you know, we all have emotions.

I'm no exception to that.

But I can tell you that emotions are not good, but they're also not bad.

They are only what you decide them to be, right?

Nothing in this universe is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

And emotions are one of those very things.

So what you should do anytime that you feel yourself getting one of those hyper emotional states.

Number one, fully feel that emotion.

Don't run from it.

Feel it.

Whether that's anger, sadness, whether that's apathy.

Guilt, fear.

Just literally take a second, take some minutes.

Close your eyes and feel that feeling as deeply as you possibly can.

Then, the step that most people miss.

Is you have to ask yourself a question.

Does this emotion serve me?

That is all.

Does this emotion serve me?

Some cases, the answer may be yes.

Like, for example, I a lot of times was an angry little kid, you know, growing up, you know, going to college, working on my business.

I was eating so much shit every single day.

Failing, failing, failing.

I was getting angry, I was getting pissed off.

But instead of just getting pissed off and lashing out in a terrible, terrible way.

I used that emotion, I used that emotional energy.

And transmuted it into something productive.

Whether that would be working late at night when I'm tired as shit, I'm hungry, and I have no money in my fucking bank account.

But I still have to work for the next three hours.

Or whether that's, you know, going to the gym.

And just like working your fucking ass off and taking your anger out on the weights.

Then you end up feeling amazing afterwards.

It doesn't matter what way it is.

What matters is that you use it productively.

Or you just let it go.

Some emotions don't serve you.

And they don't serve you and your goals.

For those emotions, you just feel them.

And then you let them go.

David Hawkins type shit.

All right, guys, that's going to be it for this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you like this one, I have one video in mind that I know that you would absolutely love.

That goes into a lot of this, but just in more depth.

And that is my full mindset course that I have here on my channel.

So I'll link it somewhere around this video.

Just click it, check it out.

I promise, you won't be let down.

Other than that, y'all, see you on the next video.

Peace.