Why Being Cringe Is the Key to Success

This is the first piece of content I ever made. >> Don't let your >> This is the first ad I ever made. >> Are you tired fitness? >> Fast forward today. We make 450 pieces per week. I broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling non-fiction of all time with $16 million in sales in a weekend. And we own a portfolio of companies that did north of $250 million in aggre revenue last year. In this

video, I want to show you just how far anyone can come and not to judge your first chapter by someone else's 25th or thousandth chapter. Also, quick shout out to Don Misetti. You're the one who inspired me for making this. Here's one promise I can make to you. you will be cringe. And so, let's define these terms real quick. Shame is breaking someone else's rules. Guilt is breaking your own rules. Cringe is supposed secondhand embarrassment. Someone

saying, "Oh, that's cringe." Saying, "I'm embarrassed for them." But in reality, it's a defensive status play, which means you should interpret it as if someone says, "Oh, that's cringe. They said that to you." It means I'm beginning to change my status relative to other people or relative to them, and therefore I'm on the right path. And so we have to ask the question like whose rules are we breaking? Did we agree to their rules? If we

set the rules, what outcome do those rules optimize for? A rule is an if then statement. Is that true? How do we know that? And why does that matter? People seeing you try hard will say, "Why are you taking this so seriously? Why do you even care?" But the truth is, they've never cared about anything in their lives. Like when's the last time they took anything seriously? Of course. Never. And it shows. And so I had

a guy once come up to me and tell me that he saw how hard I was trying with content and then he said he'd almost outsourced all of it down to two hours a week. And he was and he was like, "Yeah, like bragging about it." And I said, "Yeah, it shows." And he just like looked at me and I was like, "Yeah, it shows, right?" He was trying to be cool about the fact that he

didn't try hard, but all it looked like was that he was losing. But back to point, is it cringe to care? Yes, of course it's cringe. You can make anything cringe by just caring about it. And the only people who think caring isn't cool are people in high school or people who got older but never grew up. So be real about this for a second. Just changing how I talk about something can make it sound cringe.

So in the fitness world where I came from, right, bodybuilding, you could be obsess over muscles oiling up and posing in tiny trunks on a stage for strangers, right? Maybe competitive chess, right? Staring at a board for hours in dead silence. Obsessing over wooden pieces like your life depends on it. Making YouTube videos. Cringe. Setting up light. You going to set up your little lights and talk to your little camera like an idiot. Like no one's

listening, right? Editing for hours just for a couple views and comments. Oh, writing a book. That's cringe. Locking yourself away for months or years pouring your soul into words that most people will never read. Like you just go sit away and type at your keyboard, right? Anyone can make anything cringe, right? because anyone who cares about anything is cringe. But the worst, and I think um Dometti said this and I love this, the cringiest thing of

all is to be scared about looking cringe. So why are you hating on someone else who actually has a passion or an interest or actually tries? Like do we really want a world where people care less? Because when you make that claim, like who do you really hate? Who does the person who says that's cringe really hate? Do you hate them for committing to something or yourself for lacking the guts to commit to anything? I want

to show this in the the realest form I possibly could. I went through the archives. I scrolled all the way back and I um I'm a weirdo about like I try to keep everything. So, I have like my lifelong text and videos and and and and u and pictures and I'm very grateful for that. So, I'll give you a tiny piece of advice to anybody who's on the journey right now. Document more. Like one I would

say I don't have many regrets in life, but one of them is that I didn't document the the struggle. I didn't document the journey cuz I was ashamed of it. I didn't want anyone to know. It's kind of like the people who like when they're overweight, they don't want to take pictures of themselves cuz they're ashamed. But it's like one, you got to face reality. And two, if you believe that you're going to win, this will

be part of the story you tell. And so you like Kanye was documenting in the very early days cuz he believed so hardcore that he was going to win, right? And I'm grateful because I knew the first the moment that I actually started documenting purposefully was the day that I had $1,000 in my left in my bank account after I lost everything. I was like, I will never let this happen again. And this will be the

beginning of my comeback story. Hey guys, real quick. Many of you guys are getting started in business and don't know, but other entrepreneurs have already tried to help. And so 3.6 million copies were donated by other entrepreneurs in my book launch. And I'm donating these books as well. And so if you're starting in business and you would like the ultimate business backpack, all three books, this one shows you how to figure out what to sell. This

shows you how to get people to find out about it. And this one shows you how to make money from it. When you have all three, you can actually get started. All right. On top of that, you have 30 days of school that you can get absolutely free. And all of this, including the books, including school, including shipping is 16 bucks. >> Yeah. >> Like, we lose money on this. So, go grab it. Um, it's the

ultimate thing. I can give you my gift. Uh, enjoy. Um, if you go there and it's shut down, it's cuz we ran out, but as long as the link still works, there's books. And so, I want to show you some real stuff. That's it's tough. Um, but I hope you enjoy it because I think everyone, you know, many people will compare their current chapter to like my chapter, somebody else's chapter, whoever your your person is, but

it's not real. It's made up like, like, compare it to this. This is the first ad I ever made. >> Now, compare that to my first professional ad that I ever made. >> Super cringe. >> Okay, here's my cringy first post where I was trying to get people to give me money. Right? I'm just like, "Hey, I started this thing. Please, please give me money." Right? Here's my first content piece that I ever made. >> Hey

guys, Alex here. Welcome back. >> Sounds very dialed, right? There's a strong hook, strong meat, strong payoff. >> No, it's horrible, right? >> And this is the first YouTube video that I made when I started making YouTube content. And this is my first IG post. Now, 90 days after that first ad that I showed you, um, I lost everything for the second time. And that's when I made my first podcast. And so, my goal was to

document the lessons so that I had something to look back to as I moved up in my career. And I thought it'd be really cool if Buffett or Bezos or Musk had done some sort of like video diaries of the comeup, not just the the top, right? As something to like an artifact for us to learn from that we could follow in their footsteps. Unfortunately, the world is too rational of a place to reward the undeserving.

That's a Charlie Mer quote. In order to get what you want, you must deserve what you want, which really means that you've got to be good. And the only way to get good is to be willing to be bad for a very long time. And so, this is my promise to you is that you will be cringe. These videos, these pieces of content, your first product, they will be cringe, but you will also not be alone.

And so, the point is this. You'll figure it out as long as you start, take feedback to get better, and never stop. And if this motivated you to stop judging yourself, because hopefully these are super cringe, I made an entire video on the iterative process that I followed to get here, which you can watch. See what this is. Hey guys, and in your next installment of the mind game series, uh I just want to talk about

love versus discipline. And it's a topic that I feel like gets totally misconstrued within the fitness industry because >> Hey guys, welcome. Okay, so measuring yourself is a really important thing for tracking progress so that you can make adjustments to your meal plan. Makes sense. You want to track as many variables as you possibly can. The reason for that is not because you want to see who was recording. >> I don't know a trainer like I

have no idea. >> Hi guys, I'm Alex and I'm the owner of United Fitness. So welcome to our family. Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business. So I just want to tell you a little bit more about what we do. Uh, United Fitness, we uh strive to be the leading body and life transformation business out there. >> Are you tired of fitness places that don't make you have fun or give you the results you

want? Well, United Fitness is ready to change that. And you know how? We're going to have you lifting weights.