25 Brutal Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s

If I could go back and hand my 20-year-old self one list to get rich a lot faster, it would be this. If you don't know me, I'm Sabre Subie. I'm an investor on Shark Tank. I've generated 7.8 billion for my clients. Here are the 25 brutal lessons that I wish that I learned a lot earlier and that would have saved me years of pain.

Starting with number one: regret charges interest forever. If you think the cost of success is too high, wait till you see what regret charges. You regret 100% of the shots that you don't take. Whenever I speak to people that are later on in their lives, it's often the things that they haven't done that they regret, not the things that they have done. Far too often, we are concerned about what everybody thinks about the decisions that we're making and not what we care.

If we think about, okay, what would my 80-year-old self say about this decision that I'm about to make? Would they say, "Hey, you should have never given that a shot," or will the regret and the burden of not having that story of not trying by not taking that swing be the thing that is the pain in their side? Either I look back on my life, the things that I already regret are shots that I didn't take earlier. Worst case scenario is you try something, it doesn't work, but you get a story which makes the next win, the next mountain that you have to climb, that much more rewarding when you've gone through all of the pain in order to get there in the first place.

Which brings us to number two: luck is the shadow of action. It's movement, not meditation. Early on in my career, I used to look at people and see the success that they were seeing and be like, "Oh, that person is just lucky. They got into the right business at the right time with the right opportunity, or maybe they came from, you know, a more favorable upbringing." But the reality of it is, if you really look into anybody that's gotten success, their background is just littered with failures. I have never met a successful entrepreneur that doesn't have like two or three big epic failures before they hit it. And the reality of it is that they have just increased their surface level of luck because they have taken so much action and they've failed at so many things that they have just created their own luck from the level of action that it is that they've taken.

Which brings us to number three: your body is the first business that you'll ever run. This one took me longer than I would like to admit to realize. But you want to get in the best shape that you possibly can as quick as possible. Once you do, everything becomes better. You are lighter. You move around easier. You can get up. You can lift things. If you've got kids, you can pick them up, right? You have more energy. There's more enthusiasm for everything that it is that you do because you can only put out into your marketplace what it is that you possess within yourself. And more often than not, people who have the most energy make the most amount of money.

And as you get older in life, it just becomes more and more difficult to get into shape. And I used to tell myself in my 20s, like, "It's okay not being in the best shape of your life. Like, this is the hustle season. This is when you're grinding. Like, just get your business, get your money up." But all of that is a lie because you can get all of your steps that you need to do while you're doing meetings. So for me, I work out three days per week and I am in the best shape that I've ever been in my life. And if you're coming up with some kind of excuse in your mind like, "Hey, I know this person who's incredibly out of shape and they run a successful business," this is the litmus test: to the person that has no money, they want many things. For the person that has money, they want one thing, and that is good health.

Which brings us to number four: companies don't heat themselves. It is the founder's job to inject heat, pace, and intensity. Companies just exist right at room temperature. And if you just leave them and you let the teams that you build operate them, and you don't step in as the founder, they just become lukewarm. Because from all of the billionaires that I have known and I've met and I've had lunch with, the one thing is constant: the energy and the heat is the most potent at the top with the founder. So you need to know how to move within your organization, into a team, into a certain division of your company that needs some intensity, and be able to inject that heat. Do not completely rely on the managers and the people within that team to operate at the same level that you are. Because the reality of it is that no businesses really have leaders that can operate at the level of the founder. If you look at Tesla, if you look at Amazon, if you look at Apple, it is always the most potent at the top. So instead of being like, "Oh, this is frustrating that no one is operating at this same level intensity as I am," of course they're not. It's not their business.

Which brings us to number five: dedicate 36 months to a goal and not 30 days. Be impatient with action, but patient with results. It wasn't until I buried myself underwater with King Kong and said, "Hey, in the next 36 months, you are not going to be looking at any other opportunities or any other shiny objects. You are going to sit your ass down and you are going to execute on this violently." Did everything change for me? I used to look at goals in 30-day increments and expect to get huge, huge results in 30 days. That is the most ridiculous thing ever. If you want to achieve anything great, it is going to take time and repetition in order to get that because we value things that are hard to get. And if it was easy as just setting a goal and getting really great results in 30 days, then we simply wouldn't value it. Simply look at what are the levels of action that I took in the last 30 days, and are those levels of action, if I continue to do them, would it be unreasonable for me not to get to the outcome that I want in 36 months' time?

Which brings us to number six: discipline will take you further than motivation ever can. I used to sit down and try to be motivated or look at motivational quotes and books or certain icons and try to wait for motivation to be dawned upon me. If you operate a business that way and if you operate your life that way, then you're always waiting for that motivation to come in order for you to take ridiculous levels of action. Instead, it's all about the discipline and the systems that you build within your life. Because if you don't have always, then you end up with nevers. You need to have these certain disciplines that you do every single day that you just go out there and you don't even question it. It's this like hygiene standard of certain things that must be done in order for you to get to the outcomes that it is that you want to go.

Which brings us to number seven: speed wins. You want to move quickly and with confidence. When you're running a business, there are so many decisions that it is that you need to make. And most people, they worry about getting everything completely right and correct. And they spend an enormous amount of time trying to get all of the information that it is that they need in order to make the correct decision. What you realize the longer that you run a business, it doesn't matter how much information that you get, there is always inherent risk in whatever the decision that you're going to make. So instead, what I have found to be far better is once you feel like you have 80% of the information that you need in order to make a decision, you make it and you move on. Because the market rewards speed. If you're going to sit down and deliberate on everything and about getting absolutely everything right, some dude out there with an imperfect plan that is being violently executed today is going to kick your ass.

Which brings us to number eight: set a goal and then build the room. What I mean about that is once you're clear on what the goal looks like for you for the next 36 months, for the next year of what it is that you want to do, then what you want to do is you want to build a room of people that are all trying to pursue that same thing or that are already at that level. Because everybody knows the advice of like, you are the average of the five people that you hang around with, and then they go hang around with broke bums or people that aren't on the same mission as them. And the biggest cheat code in order to hit your goal is to create a room of people that you get together with once a day, once a week, once a month, ideally as frequently as possible. Once a week is the cadence that I like to shoot for. And you are chopping it up with those people. You're talking about all the things that you tried in the last week. What worked? What didn't work? And everyone goes around the room and they tell that. You create a recurring calendar invite that is a Zoom call and you get the smartest people that you have access to. For me, I've done this with learning organic content. I have gotten the biggest YouTubers in the world into a group that I can converse with and we can chop it up and go back and forth and I can basically shortcut that learning curve that these people have been doing for many, many years or ahead of me on certain things that I can get the cheat codes for.

Which brings us to number nine: pick a theme for every year. Far too often in my 20s, I just spread myself too thin and I thought that I could go out there and I could attack every single aspect of my life in the next year. I could stack my money. I could get in shape. I could have a better relationship with my partner. I could, you know, go out and have friends and do all these certain things. In all reality, right, you need to cut off all the other things in order to get a huge level change in the one thing that you're trying to do. So, every year I try to pick a theme. Last year, the theme was to get a six-pack and to get in the best shape of your life. And I went from having high double-digit body fat to getting down into single-digit body fat.

Which brings us to number 10: play long-term games with long-term people. In business and in life, we are always tempted by the shiny objects, the things that are going to give us instant gratification and that always appear that like this is going to be really easy to do and then I'm going to get a big result in a short period of time. It was only when I put all of that to rest and I said, "Hey, what is this decision that I'm choosing to make going to mean for me in a decade? Do I see myself still playing the game in this game that I'm choosing to play in 10 years from now? Are these the people that I would have on my team in 10 years from now?" The longer that you can delay that window of when you're going to see gratification, the bigger the win.

Which brings us to number 11: confidence is magnetic and it comes from the promises that you keep to yourself. Everyone wants to be around somebody that is confident, right? It attracts other people into your life. The last thing that you want to do is step into a room or be a part of a team that's somebody that is constantly doubting themselves. And this confidence doesn't just come from nowhere. It's you setting down something that you want to achieve or something that it is that you want to do or something that is hard to do but you know that will be rewarding in the long term. And then when you wake up and when you don't feel like doing it or you don't feel like getting after it, you keep on doing those small little things. It builds the whole aura of you being able to go and get after those big things because it's that momentum that you stack into your confidence. If you go into anything with the confidence that you have the ability to find a solution to do it, then you will do it and you'll be able to get other people that rally behind you on this mission.

Which brings us to number 12: stop looking for answers to problems that you don't even have yet. In my 20s, I used to read all types of business books and I used to think about solving all of these problems that I don't even have yet. And a great example of this is all of the people in the business community that are like, "I don't want to start this business because you can't sell this kind of business or it's not going to be a great exit." How about you just get to a couple of million in revenue or 10 million in revenue and you build a team and then you ask yourself that question of what is it that I need to do in order to sell this business? And I used to go out there and I used to think, research all of these certain things that were problems that I didn't even have yet. And it wasn't until I stopped reading a whole bunch of random business books and only read books that would help me solve a problem that I have right now in my business. Cool. I can't get enough leads. Let me figure out how to get more leads. I need to build multiple teams in my business and I don't have the skill set to do that. Let me learn about leadership.

Which brings us to number 13: the places that you know the least make you grow the most. As they say, new levels have new devils. If you're trying to go out and achieve something that it is that you've never achieved before and it's scary and it's new, that is the thing that's going to make you grow the most. In business, we typically have a superpower and we have a default to only work on the things that are within our zone of competence. But realistically, it's very rarely that the answer to the next level that you're trying to get to is within your zone of competence. The reason that you are stuck where you are right now is because you're working on these things that you've probably been working on for a long period of time and you're trying to squeeze an extra 1% out of them or an extra 2%. When realistically it is a complete other different place that you need to be focusing on. And when you do, and because those areas are the most uncomfortable and you know the least amount about them, they're the areas that you're going to grow the most. And by default, we don't want to work on those, right? We don't want to go down from being an expert at what it is that we do and then drop down a few levels and have to become a novice again because that is a humbling thing to do, right? But that's where all the growth occurs.

Which brings us to number 14: how you do anything is how you do everything. This is probably the most valuable piece of advice that my mother ever gave me. She sat me down and said, "Subrey, whatever it is that you choose to do in life, just do it to the best of your ability. Go all of the way." And it's how the Japanese turn anything into an art form. You watch these people rake a stone garden, they turn it into an art form. Whether it's cooking rice or folding bed sheets, you can see that there's just an incredible amount of pride that they do. In business, all of the success comes from the small things. It comes from being timely, showing up, being courteous, and being extremely curious. So, in my business, whenever I get together with my team, say I'm getting together with my conversion rate optimization team and we're going over funnels and they're building a landing page for a dog food company, I would say, "You better make sure that that is the best dog food landing page that exists anywhere on planet Earth." So much so that you would be willing to stand on a stage in front of 10,000 of your peers and say, "This is the landing page that I built for this dog food company," and be so proud that you know that there is no other page anywhere in the world that even comes close to it. Because if you're not willing to do it on the small things that you're doing right now in your life, then you're never going to be able to do it on the big things.

Which brings us to number 15: to know and not to do is not to know. What I mean by that is we often know what it is that we need to do in our lives and we've spent an enormous amount of time in researching what to do and then we simply don't do what it is that we know. So there's no point in knowing at all. When I was, you know, in my 20s, I was always trying to accumulate certain different levels of knowledge and skills that I didn't have instead of just looking at the skills that I do have and applying them 100% to my business. And now whenever I go down the road of acquiring a new skill, I first ask myself, "Am I doing the things that I already know? And is this just mental masturbation in going out there and further researching these things rather than just doing what it is that I know right now?"

Which brings us to number 16: focus is more about what you say no to than what it is you say yes to. And I learned this one from Steve Jobs. Personally, when I sat down with him, I used to think in my 20s that I needed to figure out some new productivity method, the Pomodoro technique, and get timers and do this certain time management system, right? And I used to think that I would get more productive by adding things in and get more focused by all the things that I wanted to work on. When realistically, you get focus through subtraction and just removing everything. Removing all the decisions about what color clothes and t-shirts that it is that I need to wear, what time that I'd be working out, when I would be working out, what I would be eating every day.

Which brings us to number 17: momentum is fuel. When the wind is on your back, that is the sign that you should row harder. Because once you lose momentum in business, on a sales team, in anything, it's very, very hard to get it back. And when you do have it, you can make more progress than you've made in the last 12 months, in the last month. What I have learned is whenever things get easy or whenever you feel like things are clicking and you've got momentum, that is the time that you need to double down and go even harder. Because if you row harder in those periods, you're just going to cover so much more ground. And when you lose that momentum, which you inevitably do, then things become tougher. And yes, you need to keep at the same pace, but it's often times you need to find that sixth gear and start cranking in the sixth gear when you already have momentum in that situation.

Which brings us to number 18: if it's meant to be, then it's up to me. This is all about taking extreme ownership. In my 20s, I used to think about, "Hey, if only this happened, if only I was in this different situation, then things would be a lot easier." And I was looking at things outside myself and blaming them rather than just taking 100% full accountability of every single situation and telling myself all the time, "If it's meant to be, then it's up to me." And no one's coming to save you, bro. There are no other outside forces. You simply need to figure a way out.

Which brings us to number 19: be the person who lifts the energy in the room. It costs absolutely nothing, but it pays the most. I learned this from my good friend Robert Herjavec. I don't think that I have ever met somebody that has more energy and that is more positive than this guy. And whenever you're in a room, you either subtract from the energy or you add to it. There is no maintaining the status quo. It's like I tell people that join my company, "When you join this company, you're going to either enrich the culture or you are going to take away from it. You can't come here and just maintain the status quo. That's not the way that it works." And it's the same thing with energy in the room. And it's the same thing when you go home. When you run your business, you're going into war every single day. There are fires, there are people quitting, there are problems, there are lawsuits, there are all of these things that go on with running a business. And then when you go home to your family, most people's family, they get the scraps of who you are. They get you once all the energy's expended. You've gone through all the problem solving all day. But what instead you want to do is just before you go into your house every night, you want to stop in your car or out in front of the door, take a couple of breaths, and think about these people likely haven't seen you all day. Yes, you've had a lot of things go on in that day for yourself, but you want to step in that room. Those first two minutes of you coming in the house, it sets the energy of the rest of the evening or the rest of the time that you're going to be spending with your family. Before you step into any room, just ask yourself the simple question of, "How can I be the person with the most energy or most positivity in this room?" Because it costs you nothing to do so, but it is incredibly valuable to everybody else that's in that room.

Which brings us to number 20: set a goal so big that it forces you to evolve and to change. Once you set a goal that is so big, that forces you to go through rapid transformation in order to make that goal happen. And in my 20s when I got early on, I was just setting goals that were far too small and I would hit them in 12 months' time or even earlier than that. And once you stack a few of those wins, yes, it gives you momentum, but then you also go through this situation where the goals need to be a lot bigger to keep you engaged and excited. And then you figure out, "Hey, the bigger the mountains I need to climb and the rivers that I need to cross and the dragons that I need to slay, the more excited that I am." And a way to know whether you're taking a side step or it's a big level step change is to say, "Hey, if I was to hit this goal, how would my life materially change?" And if you can't come up with the answer for that, that is a huge telltale sign that the goals that you're going after simply aren't big enough.

Which brings us to number 21: go into every relationship thinking about what it is that you can give and not what it is that you can get. Go in through every situation and think about what can I give to this person? How can I better help them? What is it that I possess within myself, either my skills, my knowledge, or my network that I could help this person get more of what it is that they want? And it's about showing up to serve, right? And helping as many people as you possibly can or helping one person the best that you possibly can. Instead, most people they go out there, they network with people or they'll meet a friend of a friend and they're always thinking like, "What can I extract out of this situation?"

Which brings us to number 22: you do not need everyone to like you. Actually, if everybody likes you, you're doing something wrong. I had to learn this the hard way. In my 20s, I thought that I had to look and act a certain way. I was trying to appeal to everybody, and I was trying to not upset people. In today's day and age, if everybody likes you, then you are doing something wrong because you're trying to appeal to everybody. You want to make an omelet, you've got to break some. Instead, be confident in who you are, right? And what your superpowers are and the things that you're standing for and put a line in the sand and in fact, throw stones at people on the other side of that line. Be unapologetically you and just live whatever your truth is because you are going to resonate with so much more people as being authentic and real. And that's how you're going to get your content shared online. That's how people are going to be talking about you because you're going to be resonating about not being like this mush vanilla that is trying to play it safe in all the things that you're doing.

Which brings us to number 23: losers react and leaders anticipate. The more that I have been able to think about what does the future hold and what are the upstream problems that I see that are coming and how do I anticipate them and build teams and systems to solve any of those downstream problems that are going to be coming, the more success that I have seen. Whereas in my 20s, I was reacting to a lot of things that were happening to me or certain problems that were arising and then you'd find yourself being frustrated that you're even in this situation to begin with when in reality I just didn't have the foresight to be thinking and anticipating in advance of these things becoming inevitably a problem. Right? If you're going to be spending more money on advertising, you're going to be getting more leads. If there's more leads coming through, things are going to slip through the cracks and there's going to be problems. And then what you do when you're in your infancy or when you're a loser, quote unquote, you react to that situation and you're like, "Oh my god, I can't believe the sales team are allowing this to happen. Like, why are they allowing these leads to get wasted? Why are they not following up on them?" No, that was just me not having the foresight to go, "Hey, I need to build a system that's going to anticipate that that's going to happen when I get to this level of scale. And I need to basically be running the business as if it's already at that scale right now."

Which brings us to number 24: your nights build your mornings. Sleep is the base of the pyramid. If you look at productivity and what you eat, exercise, all of those kind of things, if you remove sleep from your daily function, you cannot exist. So, sleep is incredibly important. There is so much science and literature about this. I'm not going to hop on about it. But what I will say, what worked for me is I always used to set an alarm clock of like, "Hey, you've got to wake up at 5:00 a.m., you've got to wake up at 4:30 a.m.," whatever the time might be. And regardless of when I would do that is I might be going to bed at midnight some nights. So I might be going to bed at 1:00 a.m. And that whole rest of the day was just a write-off because I set an arbitrary time of what I wanted to wake up at. But what I have found, on the contrary, what works much better is to set a time that I must go to bed in order for me to wake up naturally and feel rested at the time that I want to wake up.

Which brings us to number 25: live like you're broke. In today's day and age, everyone is far too concerned about looking rich rather than being rich. One of the things that I could say to my 20-year-old self that I'm very proud that I did is I lived like I was broke, right? I lived off such a small amount of money and I took any surplus in money that I've got and I invested that in either skills or I invested it into my business. You want to live well below your means in your 20s. You are going to create a surplus of money that you do not need. You're going to basically make the decisions in your 20s that your 30-year-old, your 40-year-old self will thank you for in having the fortitude to actually think about and invest. Because when you do get in a place where you have a surplus of finances, one, you are going to really cherish that and you're going to have the polarization of knowing what it means not to have anything. And it's going to mean when you do have stuff, it's going to be a lot sweeter. But it's also just going to be able to put yourself in the situation where you are going to be able to have a surplus. If you're always playing the game of keeping up with the Joneses or looking a certain way, then you will never really get there. You will always be what looks rich on paper, but you will never really be wealthy.

And these are the 25 brutal truths that I wish I knew in my 20s. If you liked this video, you're going to absolutely love this one on how to brainwash yourself to make millions. Like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next.