The Real Stories Behind My $100M Success | Ep 221
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What's up guys, welcome back to Build. And today I want to share with you a little bit more of a reflective episode with a tweet that I made earlier this morning. What you see, lost 100 pounds, $100 million net worth by 28, successful marriage and partnership, 2.5 million person audience, helping thousands operationalize running a company daily. What you don't see, five plus years of disordered eating before I figured it out,

Six years of working 14 hours a day because I had no idea what I was doing. Three years daily of reading and researching on relationships to figure it out because, again, I was bad at it.

terrified and avoided making content for four years due to insecurity and still hated daily for who I am. I don't have superior intellect or skills. I simply don't take failure personally. I get back up and I just try again. This is a reminder for anyone trying to better their life that you only see the results others have today. Sell them the work they put in for years to get there. You can do and be anything you want.

Oh my God. I do not know why I'm emotional right now, but I think, you know, it's the end of the year. I was reflecting on everything that I've been working on and I'm not going to lie. Like this year has been some of the hardest years that I've worked. You know, I thought I worked hard in the beginning. I've worked just as hard, if not harder in some ways now. And I see so many people, one of two things, right? I see people on one side of the spectrum saying, God, I wish I could have what you had. How do you do it? How do you get there? And I see people on one side of the spectrum saying,

And I feel bad that I don't have enough evidence to show you guys how hard it's been and how long it took and how much work I put in, the hours and how bad it felt to do and how much of a struggle it is to get anything amazing in your life when you first start off. And it makes me sad that I don't have that to show people because I want everyone to believe that they can do it too. And I think that's honestly why I started making content. I was really thinking about it the other day as I was reflecting on the years, like,

why did I start making content? And it was because I wanted other people to believe that what I have is also achievable for them. And it's not like you have to want every year of my life. I live my life in a very different way. But in some facets, whether it's the business, whether it's the partnership, whether it's fitness, whether it's mindset, whatever it is, like take what you want, leave the rest. I just want other people to believe they can fucking do it. And so that's one end of the spectrum is I was just thinking about like, gosh,

I want people to believe that they can do it too. What am I not doing that isn't conveying that to people that they are able to do these things? And then on the other end of the spectrum, as my brand has gotten quote bigger, I've gotten a bigger audience. You know, I see people throwing shade and gosh, I'll see clips that get millions of views just shitting on me. That stuff doesn't really bother me. But I think, you know, I saw a couple posts recently just more discrediting what I do than

and the success I have and making assumptions that were, honestly, they were just blatantly false about how I've gotten to where I have.

And I was like, gosh, like there's enough evidence out here to support my success and how I've gotten it. Like, how could that be happening? I was sitting and I was reflecting on it this morning. And maybe that's why it made me emotional is because I felt like maybe I'm not doing a good job of this. You know, I'll be honest with you guys. Maybe this is a diary instead of a podcast today. Making content is really difficult to continue doing at scale. You know, it's kind of like when you start off making it,

It's just like for fun and you're trying it and you're seeing what works. So it doesn't work and there's no pressure. And then once you gain enough of a following, there's like this expectation that you're going to put out a certain amount of content, that you're going to show certain things, that you're going to be a certain way. And,

Sometimes what happens is it starts to turn a little bit more into like a performance rather than just making content. That's been something that's been top of mind for me because I've been trying to almost reverse that and say like, how can I create the conditions in which like I'm really comfortable making content and I just talk about what I want to talk about rather than like feeling like, I don't know if you guys have ever seen like Dance Monkey Dance. It's like, that's how I feel sometimes. It's like, everyone's like Dance Monkey and I'm like, fuck, I don't want to dance today. Or like, I want to do a different dance. I don't want to do the salsa. I want to do the other one or I want to do hip hop today.

right? I was just reflecting on my content and how I can better help people see that it's possible for them to have whatever they want. I really wanted to break down this tweet for you guys so that you can understand because no matter where you are in life, there's always a path forward and there's always a way up. And I've been at so many different points in my life where I didn't think there was. And more recently than you would think.

I wanted to break down a couple of these things and just explain to you the price of the success that I have in these different facets of life because I think that success seems unattainable when you don't know what goes into it. And you don't know the things that people still struggle with. So this is me in an attempt to make you believe that you can do it too by sharing the good and the bad that it took to get all of these things. So I lost 100 pounds. What do you not see?

This, up to losing 100 pounds, I had five-ish years. I had every sort of disordered eating you could think about. First, it was binge eating. So it was like I would restrict myself for bouts of time and then I would binge and just like eat to the point where I was like, I couldn't even like move. I just felt sick to my stomach, right?

Then I was like, well, that doesn't work. Let's be anorexic. And so then I lost almost 40 pounds just not eating, running eight miles a day. I remember I would eat Cheerios and a piece of chicken and that was it. And that wasn't healthy either, nor sustainable. And so then...

I went to the other side, back to binge eating plus, you know, throwing up. I went through, and I don't say this to like, I went through each of these phases and I was in a very dark place when it was happening. Like I was very depressed when I was not eating. I was very depressed when I was overeating and I was very depressed when I was throwing up.

And it took all of that, plus all the drugs and the alcohol, until finally I said one day I've had enough. And I said, I've got to figure out the sustainable way. This isn't right. I'm hurting my body. This isn't good for me. I'm not happy. But it took going through these like really low points in my life

Hating myself, looking at myself in the mirror every day. In fact, I couldn't look at myself in the mirror every day. Trying every diet that existed. I remember even trying the banana yogurt diet. Good Lord. Like anything and everything that was unsustainable, I tried. Any way that I thought that I could lose weight besides just eating healthy and being in a caloric deficit, I tried. And so everyone asks, how did you lose 100 pounds? And I can say, you know, you just eat less calories. Really, I had to fix my relationship with myself.

And I had to fix my relationship with food. What I realized was that the whole time that I was overeating, undereating, overexercising, underexercising, whatever it was, I was just buffering out emotions.

And so it really wasn't about the food. It was about what emotions do I feel when I'm not eating the food, when I am eating the food, when I'm overexercising, when I'm avoiding. And so really it just came down to like using food as a coping mechanism or using exercise as a coping mechanism. It was either or, I did both. I overexercised.

I underate, I overate, I underexercise. Just trying to do something to buffer any sort of feelings I had that were just feelings about life, right? Because life is 50-50. 50% good, 50% bad. No matter what your life is, no matter who you are, you can't really fight that. I say that because it's funny when people say like, how do you lose weight? And you're like, you just count calories. Yes, that is exactly what you do. But oftentimes the path to getting there takes a lot longer than you think.

People say, oh, how long did it take you to lose 100 pounds? Well, almost two years. But actually, it took me seven years. If you look at all the shit that I tried prior to that, that didn't work. And that, if anything, probably made it worse. If you're trying to get in shape, if you're trying to lose weight, if you're trying to look better, like one, just know, I understand it's not an easy path. I might seem how I do now. This is me almost 17 years after going through all this. So

So like this is not an overnight process. This isn't something that just happens overnight. I had to learn to stop buffering my feelings with food or over-exercising. It was either one of those things. And it wasn't until I realized that and had that realization that it wasn't about the food. It was about a relationship with myself that I was able to actually get and stick to a healthy lifestyle. And I'll be honest, like what do you not see now, right? Oh, I still feel like I'm 100 pounds overweight.

People even write in my content, they're like, if I ever wear something tight, if I ever wear something low cut, people are like, oh my God, did you lose weight? Did you get your boobs done? Did you? And I'm like, no, I just don't show my body because I still feel like I'm that fat person. It's crazy. It's been this long. And I still hesitate to look in the mirror because for almost all of my life up until, you know, eight years ago, I was overweight or I didn't like my body.

It's really funny because it's like, and even now people will say, oh, you're in shape. You look great. You've got abs, all this stuff. And it's like, I make up every reason in the book as to why I probably still don't look good. So like, even though I am physically fit and I'm in shape and like, I can objectively see a picture of myself and be like, oh, I look good. I still don't feel like that person inside.

I think that's again what you don't see and what people don't talk about. And I think for anyone who's gotten in really great shape, lost a ton of weight, you might relate to that, which is like, it's kind of like the inside doesn't catch up with the outside, if that makes sense. Let's look at the second line.

$100 million by 28. Six years of working 14 plus hours a day because I had no idea what I was doing. Through the whole time of building my first business, which led to having that net worth, I had never been so stressed in my life. I had never been so stressed, not because of what was going on,

but because I didn't understand how to manage my emotions around it. You guys, if you followed me for some time, you might see that I say like, fuck your mood, follow the plan. I say that because what I've come to realize is that if you don't regulate your emotions, they will regulate you. Now, does that mean that emotions aren't feedback? Absolutely not. I absolutely listen to what my emotions are saying. In fact, I look at them as signals to be curious about.

I'm curious about them. But when I follow my curiosity, a lot of times I realize, oh, it's just linked to a fear that I should overcome. The best thing for me to do is probably to face this fear because if I don't, my life will shrink. But if I overcome this fear, my life will expand.

And the whole time I was growing my first company, it was a constant process, like almost every day of overcoming these fears of just, I'm not good enough. I don't know what I'm doing. What the fuck do I do next? I'm going to blow up this whole thing. It's all going to go to shit tomorrow. Like it was this perpetual hamster wheel of feeling like I was going to just like set a bomb off the next day because I was inexperienced and I didn't know what to do next. And for those of you who are building a business, like that's completely fucking normal.

And like no amount of information, no amount of coaching, no amount of content is going to take that away because that's how our brains work. And I'm so grateful I learned that, which is...

You know, the brains are wired to help us survive, not succeed. When we look at survival, right, our brains are saying, well, we want to be able to predict what's going to happen tomorrow because if we can predict and we can plan and we can navigate, then we're less likely to get killed. That's like our prehistoric brain what it's saying. Success, though, requires us to often go out on a limb, try new things, you know, capitalize on opportunities, constantly be uncomfortable. When people used to look at me and say, congratulations on all the success,

I was like, oh my God, why doesn't it feel good? And so what I learned along that way, what you don't see is what I fucking learned is that success does not equate to happiness. That was the best lesson I could have learned. Success, having money, having success, having status, having fame does not equate to happiness. They're different things. They come from different ways of doing things. And oftentimes they're polar opposite. I mean, some of the most successful people I know are not happy at all. Now, what I will say is this,

When I was building the business and people were telling me like, listen, money won't make you happy. I was like, all right, that's what you've all been saying, but I'm just going to find out for my fucking self.

And you know what the funny thing is, by the age of 28, I did. You know, when I reached the point where I was like, wow, I'm worth $100 million at 28. That's crazy. Like, and almost all liquid too. And I don't feel any different. I still feel insecure. I still feel stressed. I still feel all these things. Why that's been so valuable for me to learn is because then I said, you know what, going forward in building this next business, I want to build a business that doesn't just bring me success, but brings me happiness on a daily basis.

That's probably not something I talk about much. Why though? Because I don't think about happiness because I genuinely am happy doing what I'm doing every day. It's not top of mind for me because it just exists. Why am I happy? Because I said, how do I engineer a business where I can stay in the game? And I truly believe that if you don't love what you're doing and love who you're doing it with, then you can't even stay in the game long enough to win.

People see my public wins, but what they don't see is that those wins exist because I've created an environment for myself and I've created a job for myself that I know I don't want to quit. Now, of course, do I have days where I want to quit because unexpected things happen, shit happens, whatever? Of course, everybody does. And anyone would be lying if they said otherwise to you. However, I did learn from that first business I had that success and happiness are different skills and they come from different things.

And so I now know what things I need to do on a weekly or daily basis to remain happy in what I do. Taking walks every day, right? That's something that makes me happy. Having coffee with my husband every morning. That makes me happy. Having team events, team meetings, motivating my team, having developmental conversations with my team, doing nice things for them, ordering them dessert, ordering them dinner, like decorating the office. Like those things make me happy.

Are they necessities to my job? No, but they're why I want to do the rest. I look forward to those things. I look forward to mentoring people. I look forward to coffee with my husband. I look forward to my walks. I look forward to calling my parents every week and catching up. I look forward to talking to my friends. I look forward to listening to a podcast.

And I do those things not because they help me succeed, but because they keep me happy. They keep me with a good attitude, which allows me to do even better in my job, which means I'm going to stay in the game. But here's the thing. It took me six plus years of working my face off and sacrificing all things that made me happy to learn that. When I say, fuck your mood, follow the plan, I say it now because what I learned along the way is how to regulate my emotions. And a lot of people haven't yet learned that.

Just a note on what does it mean to regulate your emotions. It means to observe them, to not get pulled into them, and to ask yourself, is this useful or is it not in this situation? Is this going to make me more successful? Is this going to make me more happy? Is this going to make me stronger? And if not, I should acknowledge it, but that doesn't mean I need to indulge in it and take action upon it. And those are some of the things that I learned building my first business.

Now let's look at the next one. Successful marriage and partnership. What you don't see. Three years of daily reading and researching on relationships to figure it out because again, I was bad at it. Listen, going into my marriage with my husband,

I did not have a good frame for relationships. And I knew that before I got into it. So what actually happened is that for 18 months, I did not have a relationship at all. I only went on dates. When I say dates, I don't mean that I slept with people because everyone always asks that. No, I was completely like surface level, go to dinner, don't even kiss the person, date. I went on dates for 18 months because I said, you know what?

The past relationships I've had have not led to me having what I want, and I don't feel like the person I want to be in any of these relationships. Why do I feel disempowered? Why do I feel like I can't be myself? Why do I feel alone in these relationships?

And I realized that I'd had a bad frame because, listen, I grew up, my parents got divorced very early. They didn't really have the best relationship for the time that I was a child. So I didn't have like a good frame to rely on. I read every fucking relationship book that there probably could have existed. Just trying to understand the science behind what makes a great relationship. And what I came down to after reading all of these books, right? And by the way, I'm not an expert. This is just what worked for me.

Because I was like, the best relationships are not just based on some fleeting emotion. They are based on a common, their common shared vision, shared values, and shared interests. And if you have those things on paper, you can actually create the chemistry.

And so then what I do, I went on all these dates and I started looking for that. I started saying, I want to find this relationship that will get me out of this, this bad habits I have had of looking for these people who, you know, it feels very exciting and very, you know, like there's all this chemistry in the moment, but then it's like, okay, we don't have shared values. We don't have shared mission. We don't even have shared interests. What the fuck do we talk about? When I met Alex, I was like, crap, this is it. Like, this is the person.

It makes complete sense. I wrote everything down on paper. I had like a list already of like everything I want in a person. And then I wrote down everything that he had. And I was like, holy shit, it's a match. I was like, that's weird. I don't like feel like, oh my God, I like, I'm in love with this person all of a sudden. I was like, wait, but I'm not supposed to feel that. I want to build a bond with this person and those things will come. That is exactly what happened, right?

What they don't tell you and what you don't see is how much fucking work it took. I mean, imagine this, right? It's not like we're unicorns. It's like two people having never been in a relationship, having never worked together, and then they throw themselves into a business together, living out of motels, flying from state to state, starting this business together, never having been in a relationship. It was fucking messy. And there was so much that I had to learn about communication. There was so much I had to learn about hard conversations. There was so much.

I had to learn about myself and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But what I will say is this, the first three years, there were many times where both of us questioned, is this it? Are we doing it right? Are we ever going to get better at communicating? Are we ever going to get better at working together? Until like year four in our marriage, it really was really hard.

Like it wasn't easy. Now it feels like easy and there's momentum and we just have learned each other. We've learned how to work with each other. We've learned how to communicate with each other. We've learned what each other likes and don't like. We know how to talk to each other, give each other feedback.

But man, that took a fucking long time. And man, was it painful. And were there hard conversations and tears and arguments. And it wasn't as dramatic as many relationships, but it still felt shitty along the way. Because I was like, I'm not good at this. I only know one type of relationship and it's not this. And so everyone sees this marriage, this partnership they want,

But what they don't see is that like there was three, three and a half years of just constant daily work to get there. And that work, honestly, it's like building a house. I'm grateful because we laid a really strong foundation because we addressed a lot of the hard stuff really early on. And so if you are somebody who's looking for a relationship and you're saying, God, I want what they have. If you want what we have, just remember, you might have put in those three years.

And that is what people don't see is that I think also, why is it that we had to put in those years? Because it was a different relationship that either of us had ever had. We are both very autonomous, ambitious, powerful in our own right people.

And so it's just a lot to manage and to work through and to see how you're going to work together. You know, it's kind of like if you have a team, it's really easy if you have one person who tells everybody what to do and they just follow orders. I think the same thing goes for a lot of relationships. But if you have two very powerful people, that's a lot to talk through. That's a lot to understand. That's a lot to manage. And so again, people see this amazingly successful partnership. You can have that too, but know what comes with it. Know what work it takes.

understand it is a grind to get there. And then lastly, terrified and avoided making content for four years due to insecurity and still hate it daily for who I am. People see I have this big audience. It's grown quickly. How did you do that? One, I didn't build an audience. I did a thing and then I started making content about doing the thing, which then people wanted to listen to because I had credibility because I'd already done the thing. I always think of this, which is like, why should people listen to you?

It's like, well, I knew that there was a reason for people to listen to me because I had this amount of success. I'd sold a company, I had the net worth, I had this, I had that, right? But what people don't see is how much I avoided doing this. It was literally like four years of my team saying, you should make content, you should do this, you should get out there, start a podcast. Like, I actually have a podcast that's

that I had created from, gosh, now it was like six, seven years ago, that I never recorded anything. I made the cover. I did a photo shoot. I did the whole thing. Never posted it, right? I did a photo shoot, never posted on Instagram. I wrote blogs, never posted them. I made a course, never posted it. Why? Because I was so fucking insecure and I was so terrified of doing it.

And so everyone sees me now and they're like, wow, how do you put yourself out there? How do you do that? I'm like, listen, I was there where you are too. And to be honest, I did avoid, I avoided that shit. I was like, hell no. Don't want to put myself out there. Sounds fucking awful. Everyone picking me apart all the time.

And it wasn't until one day, I don't even know what changed. It was just like, I was fed up with myself. I was like, oh, I am losing respect for myself every day that I don't do this because I say I want to, but I don't. And that was what it took me to change. But gosh, that was four years until that happened. Four years of not doing the thing. Four years of avoiding the thing. Four years of being afraid of the thing. Four years of it stealing respect from me, of it stealing my power. And so again, if you're like, how do I build that audience? How do I make that content? How do I

And you're like, but I've been avoiding. Yes, me too. I also avoided it because it sounded awful. And guess what? At times I am like, oh gosh, this does suck sometimes. Because, you know, it does happen. People hate on you. People shit on you. You know, what do you guys not see today?

I see, I would say pretty much every negative post that goes up about me. Videos, articles, shorts on YouTube or TikTok. I see all of it. You know, for the first, gosh, 18 months that I made content, it bothered the fuck out of me. I mean, I would go into like a dark place for days at a time.

But I just said, I kept asking myself, like, are you going to stop making content? And if the answer is no, then I'm not going to let this affect me. It's not going to change my behavior. And that's what I told myself. I was like, it won't change my behavior because I know why I want to do this. And it's for a greater reason than these people that are hating on me and shitting on me every day. But it was still very hard for the first 18 months.

It wasn't until I like built this layer of armor around me where I just finally realized like I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. And if people want to hate me, so be it. I would rather have that than hate myself for pretending to be somebody else. And once I realized that and I realized this was an internal journey and it was about me and my relationship with myself,

That was when I felt truly free. But hey, what do you not see? I still struggle with it at times. I still feel at times like I'll say something that I really believe and people are like, fuck you die. And I'm like, dude, what? And I'm like, should I not say that? Am I weird? Is there something wrong with me? Does nobody think this? Am I too extreme? I question things all the time as well. I say all that because I want you guys to really, really believe this.

I do not have superior intellect or skills. I did not go to some crazy school. I did not do something genius when I was young. I have worked my fucking ass off and I have not been perfect along the way. If you can work your ass off, you cannot take failure personally. You just get back up. You try again. You do your best. Just be one fucking percent better every day.

you can have whatever you want in life. So let this serve as your reminder. Whatever it is that you are trying to achieve, other people have been there. Whatever it is that you want to have success in, know that others have paid the price and it felt just as bad to them. And I want you to use that as fuel

so you can attack whatever problem or whatever milestone or whatever project it is that you've been avoiding. Because here's the thing, everything will click for you the moment that you realize. It won't not suck. The moment I realized, like, do you understand? Do you see the theme here with all these things? I wanted all these things. I wanted to lose 100 pounds. I wanted $100 million. I wanted a successful marriage. I wanted an audience. I wanted to help thousands of people. Everything clicked when I finally realized for each one of the things,

There's a price to pay. It's gonna suck. And when I stopped trying to make things not suck, I got really good at doing things even when they sucked. And then when I got really good at doing things even when they sucked, I started to kind of like it. And then eventually they started to suck less. And then here I am today. With that guys, I hope you have a great holiday season. Maybe it's Christmas, maybe it's New Year's. Maybe we post this months later.

I hope this serves as inspiration to you guys. I do not want anyone to think that success is unattainable. It is available to anybody willing to put in the work.