After leaving YEC Escape I felt so energized and motivated by what our peers have achieved that I decided to revisit my goals and stop shying away from fundraising (a daunting activity that left me wholly discouraged from numerous years of not being able to raise a penny).

By risking carpal tunnel, I frantically took copious notes and collected amazing nuggets of wisdom from [arguably] the smartest and most impressive people I have ever been fortunate to be around. I read my notes over and over and OVER again (thanks to my #NotebookGainz), soaking up all the wisdom I collected, by putting things into perspective. I witnessed firsthand how our community was playing to win while I was playing to not lose. I had been making excuses for way too long and needed to 10X my efforts.

Henry Ford once said, “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t- you’re right.” It was time to do the hard thing, by burning myself to the ground, and revisit the capital raising process because I wanted to leave a dent in the world. So I packed a backpack and a suit, and for the past two months have criss-crossed the country sleeping on buses, trains, and low budget planes (Spirit/Horizon/Frontier Airlines). By sheer brute force I ‘delusionally’ pitched every Private Equity manager I could mine off of LinkedIn. After achieving the ever glorious status of Gold at Starbucks (by buying more coffee than I could ever imagine), we finally got some traction earlier this week.

After reviewing our track record, we have been blessed by some sponsors who are going to co-investing with our platform. This overnight success story (only nine years in the making) allows us to scale into some high impact projects around the west and southwest region of the United States.

The sky really is the limit. And if I could do this, I know others can too (including you). So go out there, work hard, and if you are consistent long enough- you just might get what you deserve. At the end of the day success is all about repetition.

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.” – Charlie Munger

Thoughts to consider:

Tony Robbins once said that, “repetition is the mother of skill”. 

In his book Total Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote about how anything in life you want to become good at requires a massive amount of commitment. It all comes down to how much time and effort you are willing to invest into your future. It’s all about those reps. No matter what you do in life, if you want to be successful, you will never have “enough” time. You have to make time. Everything you want to become good at in life requires a massive amount of commitment.

The question becomes- what are you really committed to?