Are they smarter than you?

I watched a video this week of Robert Herjavec telling a story about a dinner he had with Mark Cuban - the billionaire Shark Tank investor.

He asked Mark a question.

"When you were 12 years old, what did you want to be?"

Mark said: a billionaire.

Not rich. Not successful. A billionaire. At 12 years old.

Robert drove home that night feeling small. Not because Mark had said anything to make him feel that way. Because he realized his whole idea of what was possible had been built out of the small room he grew up in.

Mark was picturing a world that didn't exist yet.

Robert was picturing a way out of the one he was in.

I sat with that for a couple of days before writing this.

When I started my business, I had a goal too. A real one. I wanted my business to pay my car insurance 😉

That was it. That was the vision.

Then I hit it. So I moved it. Okay — what if it covered the car payment?

Hit that too. Alright — what if it covered the mortgage?

That was the first 2 to 3 years of my business. Three years of moving a goalpost that was never more than a few hundred dollars down the field.

I was working hard. I was just not thinking.

The life I have right now, I never pictured it. I never sat down and decided on it. It's not the life I aimed at — it's the life that showed up because I refused to stop working. 🧱

And I'm grateful. But if I did it all over again, I'd think a lot bigger, a lot earlier.

Today, I know exactly how to make the First Million. I still don't know how to make your first Billion. But billionaires know how to make their next one. For years I assumed that was information — some room I wasn't in, some secret nobody told me.

It's not information. It's the size of the picture in your head.

I see it in the small stuff every day.

Someone will agonize for weeks over a $1,200 lawyer versus an $800 lawyer for their closing. And listen — I'm not mocking that. When you're buying a home, $400 is real money. It's not nothing.

But if that deal doesn't close, you're looking at a lost deposit of $40,000 or $50,000. Maybe getting sued.

We stare at the $400 and never look at the $40,000.

Same thing with a $100 workshop. My first instinct used to be that's expensive. Never can I pull more than $100 of value out of that room? Because the honest answer, almost always, is yes.

I'm not saying anybody reading this is poor. I'm saying I had a broke mindset for a long time, and it cost me years.

Until I was about 25, I genuinely believed rich people were either lying about it or doing something shady. Drug money. Something. That's what I thought.

Mark Cuban was 12 and picturing a billion dollars. I was 25 and assuming anyone with money must have stolen it 🤷‍♂️

Let's do this.

Think of someone you know who makes more money than you. Someone real. Someone you've actually spoken to.

Be honest with yourself — are they smarter than you?

Most of the time the answer is no. Not even close.

The difference was never the intelligence. They just thought bigger. And they got less scared.

That's it. That's the whole gap.

Nobody in my world had given me permission to want something that big, so I never asked for it. I spent years being careful with a life that was never going to be won by being careful.

Don't get me wrong - if you're happy where you are right now — actually happy, not convincing yourself — then ignore everything I just said. Seriously. You've got the thing most people are chasing money to buy 🤍

This one is for the person who is not happy. The person who is already tired, already working, already giving it everything.

You probably don't need to work harder this year.

You've been working hard for years.

You need a bigger picture to work toward.

P.S. Hit reply and tell me honestly: when you were 12, what did you want to be? And when did you stop believing it was possible?