Shadowing Practice: View - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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This is a video I'm making for Ivanta,
479 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
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This is a video I'm making for Ivanta,
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the young man who was working two jobs with a one-year-old who was struggling
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and said he was sick and tired of being poor and didn't know how to get out.
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I didn't have time to answer you when I was walking,
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but I wanted to take this minute to give you a longer answer.
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I'll read you the tweet and maybe we'll put it up on the screen. To Ivanta,
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the young man who stopped me at the grocery store working
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two jobs with a one-year-old who asked advice on how to get ahead.
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I gave you a short answer because I was in a rush and it ate at me.
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So if you follow me here, maybe you'll read this.
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What you're going through is tough.
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Being so young and already having to support a child is not easy
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but you'll have the opportunity to become an amazing inspiration in a way I never could.
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Your success story will become your sermon.
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That being said, onto the advice.
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You're going to need to assume that luck isn't real,
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or that it applies to everyone else but you.
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Because the only way you're going to get out of your surroundings is by having something of value that other people want.
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And right now, the only thing you have is your time with low skills to trade,
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which is a hard game to play.
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You have to trade a lot of it,
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only to get a little.
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So your main objective is to have the time to learn a skill while providing for your family.
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That means in the short term,
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your family may have to suffer.
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Scratch that.
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Your family will suffer.
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But better now when they're too young to remember it than when they're too old to forget.
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Again, not forever, but for now.
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So these are the things you're going to have to do.
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And this isn't dabble stuff.
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This is wake the fuck up because if you don't,
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you're going to blink and be 30 and in the same spot, but worse.
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Number one, cut all costs.
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And I mean all costs.
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You don't eat out anymore for anything.
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And if you're hungry, you deal with it.
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If it's not from a discount grocery store, you don't buy it.
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Clothing?
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Ha.
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What you've got is everything you need for the next two years.
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Period.
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No exceptions.
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Reuse, trade, or go to Goodwill.
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You go to work, you go home,
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and home is ideally with your family.
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And when I say family, your folks.
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And if you don't have folks who have got room or a couch or a basement that you can stay at,
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the worst case is with another family also trying to make it and save.
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So it's six of you,
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eight of you, ten of you in one spot.
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All splitting it, all of you contributing.
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And it's going to be as cheap as you possibly can.
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Number two, increase your income.
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You're working two jobs.
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Your free time, I want you to spend applying to other jobs closer to what you want to do.
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He said he didn't like either of the things that he was doing at that time.
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So any at-home phone sales job has starter roles that require zero experience to pay $40,000 a year or more.
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Do that and work your other job in between.
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If you can't, drive Uber.
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If you don't have a car,
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save up until you do.
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Number three, the easiest thing to sell is someone else's stuff.
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So start there.
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Then learn how to buy stuff for cheap and then flip it.
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The bigger the thing, the more you make.
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You go from flipping cards to furniture to home,
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and the limit never really stops from there on.
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Final note, I could hear the stress in your voice when you were talking to me about your situation.
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It sounded like you didn't know what to do.
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Sadness comes from a lack of options.
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It's a feeling of hopelessness.
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But whenever you feel that,
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I want you to think,
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this is ignorance, not sadness.
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It means I don't know enough,
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and that I can control.
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You asked me to come work for free,
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but I have no need for low-skilled labor.
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But I do have a need for high-skilled beasts.
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It's why I make the books and the courses and the content everywhere for free.
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So use those.
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Then get yourself a high-paying job,
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and every day apply for higher-paying ones.
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I recommend sales to start.
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Then once you get in there,
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for the love of God,
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Work until your fingers bleed because you have no other option.
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You have no luck.
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Nothing is going to work out for you.
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You're not going to catch a break.
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You're going to have to make it happen.
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You're going to have to force it.
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You've got to become undeniable.
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And the best news is,
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is that you can do that in less than a year.
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So that's my advice.
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Number one, cut all your costs, everything.
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Number two, work more to make more and apply to better jobs and then learn to sell.
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Three, start selling more expensive stuff and then eventually sell your own.
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The game is just trading up over and over and over again.
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You're just a few trades away from a very different financial situation.
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So, Avante, I wanted to add on top of that,
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you're in a tough spot.
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And I think some of the words I probably just said to you might have hopefully hit home somewhere.
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But one of the hard things that you've got going on right now is like,
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when I saw you, you were wearing relatively nice clothes.
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And I wasn't going to,
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like, bash you on it when I saw you,
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but I want to take the opportunity to say, like, you know better.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, you know that, like,
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if you're struggling with money,
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that's the last thing that you should spend money on, right?
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And I think one of the difficulties,
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especially when you're younger, is you've got your friends,
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you've got your family, and especially if they're all poor,
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then they have terrible views around money.
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They might not approve of all the stuff you're learning on the Internet and trying to try these new things out.
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And the real, real is like you're going to fail a lot.
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And they're going to say, see, told you so.
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And the tough part is,
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is they're going to be right most of the time.
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Except it's one of those things where it's 99% right, but 100% wrong.
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Is that anybody who bets against you for this thing being the thing is usually going to be right.
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It's just like a parent who says,
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you're going to break up with this person.
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You're going to break up with this person and you're gonna make up with this person.
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But they're right with every single person you ever date,
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except for the person you marry.
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And then they're 100% wrong.
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And if you have the perspective of listening to that,
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it can be incredibly disheartening.
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And so number one is,
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I want you to go on a different information diet.
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So you need to be able to ignore all the stuff
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that they're giving you because the best way to stay poor is to listen to poor people about how to get rich.
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You're already taking great steps by watching content and doing this stuff.
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Just keep doing more of that.
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And I'm sure your girl you have your baby with, that's your world.
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Like anybody who's not trying to build Avante 2.0 with you doesn't deserve your time.
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Because like right now, you have a wallet of money and you got a wallet of minutes.
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And like every single person you're choosing to pay minutes to or pay dollars to has to earn their keep.
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And earning their keep in this season of your life is them helping you get to where you want to go.
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Now, I don't know what you're making in your job.
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I'm just going to assume the extreme scenario of you're making minimum wage at both jobs
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and you're working 80 hours doing that.
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I get it and I respect the hustle,
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which is why I'm making this video.
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You need to get more for your time.
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And right now, the extra time on top of that 80 is you sleeping and probably spending time with your kid.
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And what I'm going to say,
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people in your surroundings will say,
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like, that guy's extreme or that guy, he's not balanced.
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And the answer is yes.
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I am extreme and I am unbalanced.
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For the season that you're in,
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I think you should be too.
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Because the thing is, it's like if you don't take action on this,
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five years is going to go by and nothing's going to change because you're not going to get ahead.
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Like, you need to get your head firmly above water
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because you probably barely feel like you can keep your head above surface, right?
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That's where all that stress is coming from.
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And you don't know what to do.
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So to get the water lower,
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you've got to lower your time budget and your money budget.
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And I want to go really extreme with you.
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And I'm not telling you to do anything I didn't do, all right?
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I owned my car in cash,
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which I think was a $5,000 or $6,000 car.
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And I slept in a room with another dude in a house that had six other people in it.
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And we all split it.
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So I wasn't in a terrible neighborhood.
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I just paid $400 a month in a nice neighborhood because I didn't have my own place.
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And so I had to split my kitchen.
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And I had to deal with the fact
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that three of them had dogs and were shit and piss everywhere all the time.
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It sucked.
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But you know what would have sucked more?
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Not being able to have the money to buy the courses
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and the seminars and the workshops that I was able to attend with the extra
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that I saved so I could learn my next skills.
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And so right now, food and shelter is the only thing you spend money on,
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and you're going to drop everything else.
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And you're going to drop those expenses to the greatest degree possible.
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And either your girl is working.
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If she's working, then you can have child care.
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If she's not working to take care of the kid,
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then you need to say,
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listen, sweetie, like, I got to do this for us right now.
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And so, like, you're putting your sacrifice in,
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which is you're sacrificing your career,
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so you can be with the kid.
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I need to sacrifice the kid right now
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so I can have the career so that together as a family we're balanced rather than the individual.
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So there's two levels of balance I want you to think about.
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One is the macro, which is like you can be balanced over your lifespan.
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When you're retired, you'll have more time.
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You can go to Europe.
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You can do whatever the other stuff is, right?
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And also you can be balanced in a family unit.
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Your wife might spend more time with the kid than she does in her career,
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but you're gonna spend more time in your career than you do with the kid for now.
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Cut out the people who are taking your time.
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Easy way to see this is like,
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if the people in your life don't have bigger dreams,
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for you than you do,
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ignore all of their advice.
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Let's just ignore them entirely.
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And I know that that's simple to say and hard to do,
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but you're in a hard situation.
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And I think the question is whether you can be harder than your circumstances right now.
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And you have to be to get out of this.
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Luck has already dealt you a shit hand.
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Let's assume he's never gonna give you the right hand.
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You're never gonna get lucky,
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but you still need to win.
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And so now it's like,
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how do I do that?
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If you have a car,
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you can have more flexible hours if you drive through again.
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That's something that I recommend for a lot of people.
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If you don't have a car,
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you need to save up as fast as you can to get one.
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Buy one in cash, negotiate,
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try and get yourself, $5,000 to $10,000 car in cash.
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You don't have payments, you just have the insurance,
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which because it's a cheap car will be less.
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The remainder of your time,
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and you've got to tell your lady this,
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is like, I'm going to be spending four hours a day,
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every day, watching these videos,
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and this isn't me doom scrolling on YouTube.
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I need you to pick one skill that you want to have and only consume stuff about that.
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This is my one thing I'll let you buy.
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It's a timer.
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You can buy it for five bucks, not your phone.
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And you set the timer,
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and you set it for those four hours a day.
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And every time you look away, you stop the timer.
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You do four hours of real work of studying the skill after you've done enough of that work and you're like,
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well, what's enough?
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20 hours?
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Like you're like, oh, I could do that soon.
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Yeah, I know.
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That's what I'm telling you.
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You can get out of this fast.
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You can switch those four hours of you learning the basics of that skill,
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just spending the rest of your time being the most amazing applicant to new jobs that exists in the world.
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I didn't say go apply to jobs.
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I said, be the best candidate that has ever applied.
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And you're like, I don't have experience.
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And you can address that.
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Like what I don't have an experience I will make up foreign hustle.
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And you prove that by messaging multiple people at every company with a snippet personalized to each of them.
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You know what other people do?
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Like they take a half step.
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They copy and paste the same thing to all four people.
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And you know what the four people do?
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Yeah, yeah, he copied and pasted the same message to me.
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Don't do that. Be personal.
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Look at the HR recruiter.
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Look at the head of talent.
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Look at director of whatever and message each of them on LinkedIn.
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If you don't have a LinkedIn, go get one.
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It's free.
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And when you submit your resume,
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put a personalized cover letter on it after reading from the website what that business is about.
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When you read the job description,
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good job descriptions say what they want the person to do.
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And say like, I will be able to help do this thing because of these things, right?
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And especially a lower level role,
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your resume is not going to matter as much.
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Don't let anybody around you say that or fool you into that.
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What will matter, especially for low level roles, is hustle.
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So every employer wants to see somebody who's going to go out of their way to go above and beyond.
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And so you demonstrate that you're going to go above and beyond.
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And guess what's going to happen?
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You're going to do this for five different places.
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You're going to write a custom thing.
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It's going to take you four hours to do the research.
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Write the custom thing, message 20 people because it's going to be four people at all five places.
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You know what's going to happen?
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Nothing.
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Because you're not lucky.
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So what are you going to have to do?
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Got to be undeniable.
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Do you think if you applied to a thousand places like that over the next six months,
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you wouldn't get a job?
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I think you would.
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Do you think if like after you got off your shift,
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you drove over and you said,
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hey, I just want to let you know,
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not in a creepy way.
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You say, hey, I just want to let you know,
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I applied to put my resume,
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I messaged a couple of you guys.
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I just want to let you know I'm really excited about the opportunity.
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Don't want to be overbearing.
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But if you guys would give me a shot,
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I promise I will work harder than any other candidate here.
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And I'd like to show you that I'm demonstrating that by these things.
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So you're like, I have proof that I'm saying,
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I'm not just making this up,
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I have proof that I will work harder.
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And you know what'll happen?
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One of them will say,
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I'll give you a shot.
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And then when they give you that shot,
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shove it in everyone's face how hard you work.
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Not by what you say,
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but by what you do.
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Be silent and just kill.
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Look at what the top guy does and do twice as much as that guy does.
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Be Kobe for whatever the job is.
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If you don't know the whole story about Kobe,
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he did three practices a day while everyone else did one or two because he wanted to get ahead.
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And in the beginning, he was worse than them.
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And then he got as good as them.
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And then he became better than them.
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And he kept doing three practices a day until eventually no one could catch up.
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Because if they were doing three practices a day,
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they would just keep up with his rate of progress.
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But he got ahead.
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And so the guy who's number one at whatever that business is probably works better than you.
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And he works longer than you.
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And so you can't just match him to get ahead because he'll always be ahead.
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You've got to match his current effort and then do your I'm going to get ahead of you effort.
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Like when he clocks out is when your work clocks in.
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That's when Avante 2.0 clocks in.
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And the thing is, if you can adopt this,
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if you can really internalize this, you're going to crush.
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You're gonna win.
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You can make luck not a factor.
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When I had Jacob, my 19 year old, my son, I'm kidding.
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When I was talking to him,
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I think he was 16 actually,
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I was 15 or 16 when I started talking to him about this.
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Imagine, he has even less reason to get a job than you, alright?
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Less experience.
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I gave him three words and he said he still remembers him this day.
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I said, volume negates luck.
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If you need to put it,
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put it on the back of your phone as a reminder to yourself.
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Because in the beginning, the volume you're gonna do is the timer of you watching the videos
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and taking the notes and watching the videos,
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learning the lingo, learning the language so that when you get into an interview,
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you know what to say.
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And then reps is gonna be watching mock interviews on YouTube,
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watching people who are hiring experts talk about the best ways to present.
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Watch some of Layla's videos about how to interview correctly.
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You do that stuff, you'll put yourself ahead of other people.
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Volume.
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Okay, cool.
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Now you're like, okay, but I'm not getting interviews.
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Volume negates luck.
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Crank the timer.
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Start doing the reps.
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One a day, two a day,
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three a day, four a day,
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five a day, six a day, 10 a day.
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Every single day.
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You're like, wait, that's 40 messages that are personalized and 10 cover letters.
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Yep, that'll probably take about four hours.
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And then what do you do tomorrow?
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Set the timer.
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You do it again.
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Next day, set the timer, you do it again.
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What do you do the next day?
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You set the timer and you do it a fucking end.
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And you keep doing it.
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And on the ones that you really,
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really like, you drive over there after you get off your shift.
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You stop by and just say, hey, I'm Avante.
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I'm really excited about the opportunity.
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I think I can help.
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I applied.
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You got a couple messages from me.
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I promise I'm not a weirdo.
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I just did it because I wanted to stick out for the rest of the pile.
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Because I know you guys I'm sure for an opportunity as good as this,
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you probably got a lot of people who are interested.
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I just will promise you that I just want a shot.
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You say that, they will give you the interview.
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And if they don't, someone will.
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And once you do get that job and you work harder than everyone else,
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you turn the dial, and you don't do it for a week.
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You don't work harder than everyone else for a week.
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You don't work harder than for a month.
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You don't work harder than for six months.
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You work harder than the top guy for a year, for two years.
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You're like, well, shit, dude.
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I'm already like two or three years from now.
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Yeah.
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I said it was a season.
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But on the other side of this season is everything else that you want.
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And so if I said,
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Avante, in 36 months, are you willing to give me 36 months to get yourself out of the feeling
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that you have right now?
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You're like, I'm sick and tired of being poor.
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I'm sick of not being able to buy the stuff for my girl that I want.
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I'm sick of not being able to provide for my kid.
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I want them to be in a good zip code.
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I want them to be able to have a good school.
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I want them to be able to have these things.
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There's a price tag on that.
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The question is just whether or not you're willing to pay it.
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If you're willing to pay it,
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crank the dial, and volume will negate luck.
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But you can't rely on luck.
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You can rely on volume.
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Because that, I promise you,
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independent of race, color, socioeconomic background,
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you're like, wait, some racist socioeconomic backgrounds or how someone appears gives them an advantage.
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Sure.
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But if you do it a million times, it's given advantage?
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Because you only need one, yes.
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If there's a lesson I can have you etch into your brain is
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that there's a significant amount of money and opportunity
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that sits on the other side of being willing to be rejected by a stranger.
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If you get rejected a thousand times,
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you are no worse off than you are right now.
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In fact, you're better.
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Why?
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Because you have a thousand times experience.
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And so you either learn or you win,
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which means in both cases,
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by doing, you win by default.
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I'll give you a little analogy.
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So let's say you and your buddy are thinking about asking a girl to prom.
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It'll make sense in a second.
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And your buddy's like, ah,
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man, I want to ask Nicole.
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And you're like, all right,
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man, why don't you go ask her?
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It's like, ah, what if she says no?
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He's like, well then you're in the exact same position you are now,
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which is you have no prom date.
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You will also have no prom date.
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But you'll have experience of asking one girl,
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what happens when you talk to the next girl?
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You'll probably be a little less nervous.
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And you'll probably realize that you'll survive.
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You will live if you hear a no. And if you ask a hundred girls,
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do you think one of them will say yes to your prom date?
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Probably.
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And in that situation, what are you now?
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Better off than you were before you asked.
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The moral of the story there is that you lose nothing from no. You only stand something to gain from yeses.
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And one yes can change your entire life.
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And so if you're willing to be rejected and see the rejections as you learning,
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meaning you win, and see the yeses as you also winning,
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then you can't lose.
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And everybody else around you who's poor is going to convince you otherwise.
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They're going to be like,
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why are you still doing this?
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Man, stop bothering those people.
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Man, you're never going to get the job.
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Man, you need to readjust your expectations.
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Set your goals lower.
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Hey, that stuff's not for us, right?
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They're going to tell you those things.
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Because the thing is that you have something that I do not have and that many people won't have.
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Is that you have a hard fucking beginning.
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You have a harder and bigger monster to slay,
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but the bigger the monster,
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the more epic the hero.
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And so these are the stories that you're going to someday tell.
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And these are going to be the sermons that you're going to be able to give to other Avantes in the future.
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If you can't even muster the willingness to fail for yourself,
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be willing to fail for your kid,
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for the story that you're going to tell them,
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and be willing to fail for the hundred other,
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a thousand other Avantes that you'll be able to someday tell your story to,
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so they can get out of their situation.
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So, I didn't have time to say that,
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but hopefully I'll give you a couple more minutes that give you a little more context a little more context.
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I think I can speak confidently for all of Mosey Nation.
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We're all rooting for you.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
This video offers a unique opportunity to learn English through real-life scenarios that resonate with many. The speaker addresses a young man named Ivanta, discussing the challenges of balancing work and family responsibilities, showcasing a relatable and motivational context. By engaging with this content, English learners can practice speaking in a conversational setting and understand how to convey their thoughts and feelings effectively. Emulating the speaker’s tone and message will enhance your shadow speech abilities, helping you to improve your English pronunciation and fluency.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Throughout the video, several key structures and expressions can be analyzed for their educational value:
- "You're going to need to assume that luck isn't real." - This phrase uses the future tense to convey necessity and encourages learners to consider proactive thinking.
- "Better now when they're too young to remember it than when they're too old to forget." - This expression highlights the use of comparative constructions, which are essential for making contrasts and comparisons in English.
- "If it's not from a discount grocery store, you don't buy it." - The conditional structure illustrated here can aid learners in forming sentences about hypothetical situations or rules.
By practicing these structures through the shadowing technique, learners can integrate them into their own speaking style, enhancing both their grammatical foundation and expression in English.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice with this video, be attentive to specific pronunciation challenges that may arise. For example:
- The phrase "cut all costs" features the 't' sound in 'cut' which may be pronounced too softly by non-native speakers. Emphasizing the consonant can improve clarity.
- The word "Hungry" might be pronounced with differing stresses, so ensuring that the correct syllable is emphasized will enhance your pronunciation accuracy.
- Expressions like "working two jobs" can blend sounds together, which may cause confusion. Practicing this phrase can help learners adapt their speaking to natural English rhythms.
As you learn English with YouTube, utilizing video resources like this one, focus on these common pronunciation traps to improve your overall speaking skills. Engaging in activities such as repeating phrases and mimicking the speaker will significantly enhance your ability to communicate effectively.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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