Alright, gents.. So the story I'm going to share with you today is gonna blow your mind.
This crazy story is 100% true, and it had a profound impact on my career.
So the story in a nutshell, is that First Lieutenant Matt Tenney was not happy with his job,
but he found it out. He was speaking with the disbursement officer of the
11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, of which he was a part of. They were about to leave the
country for six months, and he came to find out they carry a lot of cash, $2.7
million, to be exact. And you know what? He was getting all these details, all this information,
and found out I could maybe redirect this. So that's what he tried to do.
He created some fake documents. He even created a fake uniform. He was going to
intercept that money and then leave the country. Well, the FBI found out. He found out. The FBI
found out, and he was on a race to the airport. They ended up shutting down Interstate Five before
he could get to the airport and leave the country for Brazil. Now, the Marine Corps is a military
unit. It's relatively small, so most of us officers, especially for about the same rank, we
either know each other or we know of each other. And with Lieutenant Tenney, we had actually gone
to the basic school together. We were in the same platoon. In fact, I personally knew him.
We'd worked out multiple times. He had actually trained me a little bit in jujitsu,
and he had this beautiful girlfriend from Brazil. I remember that connection.
So, yeah, finding out this fellow officer had tried to steal almost $3 million was shocking.
And even more shocking, the news I received a couple of weeks later when I found out I
was going to Third Battalion, first Marines to take over tenny's old job to go in there
and have to fix his mess. I receive heartfelt letters all the time for men around the world.
They're 25, they're 35, they're 55. They're talking about that their life is off track.
So many things have happened to them, so many things they've gone through,
and they don't know if they can recover. So what to do if you wasted your 20s? You
were out partying, you were drinking, you were going out every single night, you were playing
video games. Maybe you got addicted to drugs, you spent some time in prison. Can you turn
your life around? Well, gents, it's my firm belief based off experience and having seen
this happen multiple times with men that have fallen incredibly low, that you can choose at
any point to change the direction of your life. Example let's go back and look at my friend Matt.
He received a sentence of nine years in prison. He was released in 2006.
Well, a couple of years ago, I had a conversation with Matt, and this is what he's up to. He's
published two books the Mindfulness Edge and Serve to Be Great. Both of these books well
received on Amazon, and both of them geared towards helping people overcome mental blocks
that are stopping him from being their best. He's become a sought after speaker and has
an amazing Ted Talk. Why the best leaders make love the top priority. So how does this apply to
you? Because, gentlemen, at any point you can make a choice to be a better person.
Here's the thing. When you practice being that person for an hour, for 2 hours, for one day,
for one week, you are becoming that person. And yes, you will fall down.
You will make mistakes, you will fall back into your addiction. But step by step,
you can take actions that show you, that prove to you you are the type of person that is capable of
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RMRS the next thing we need to talk about when you're rebuilding your life is how to look at
that downtime at that time of struggle of that time. 20 years you were dealing with
addiction. Ten years you spent just wasting time doing things that, yeah, you weren't proud of.
You're not happy about that entire decade. How do you account for that? Well,
here's the thing. You need to flip it. And that's what I loved about Matt's story
is that he used the weakness as his strength. For me, I'll use the example of going through
a bankruptcy. Incredibly embarrassing. The fact that I couldn't manage money,
that I had to step in front of a judge and explain this, that I went through almost
a decade with really bad credit, that I had to write all of these letters to my creditors to tell
them why I had to speak with people, and it was embarrassing, why I couldn't pay back this money.
But here's the thing. This weakness is a strength now because you have a deeper sense of empathy.
You actually have experienced something that the vast majority of people haven't. When people talk
about addiction or they read about somebody going through a deep, dark depression dealing with an
illness that has held them back, they read about it. You actually have experienced it.
You have felt this. And you not only can draw upon this for strength,
but you can better connect with other people that have gone through similar experiences. Because the
reality is nobody out there is perfect. Even if they're putting up a facade,
they look perfect from the outside. Deep down, they know the mistakes that they've made,
the thoughts that they've had, the actions that they've taken that no one ever caught them on.
They probably, yeah, maybe should have put them behind bars, should have actually broke up that
relationship that everyone sees as perfect. They know who they are deep down inside. And
you have just in the case that, yeah, you were caught, you simply dealt with that
addiction on the outside and everyone got to see it. Everyone saw the pain.
But here's the thing. Other people are going to connect with you. They're going to want to listen
to you and they're going to understand, especially those that are seeking growth,
those that are looking for someone who isn't afraid to be vulnerable.
And this is a strength, gentleman, not a weakness. Now, of course, there are going
to be people that are never going to forgive you for the gambling debts and problems that
you had. Simply, I know with Matt, there are Marines that will never look at him the same.
He's not part of the club anymore. But for me, what I look at is an individual who made one
mistake at one point in his life and has paid his debt and should be able to recover and now is
going out there. When I looked at his video that reached over a million people, I'm thinking, if
I do the numbers on that 10,000 business owners. And really what he's advocating is that business
owners, people that are running companies, managers that they love,
the people that they're managing, they treat them with respect. This is something we learned in the
Marine Corps. IC really is not practiced much throughout not just the military,
but also just simply the civilian world where people are disposable where companies don't look
out for the best interest of their individuals. And here he is preaching love. Simply love your
employees. And yeah, not in the lovey dovey sense, but in simply look out for them.
Next, this takes me to the quote, smooth seas never made a skilled sailor. The idea there
is it's the challenges that life throws at us that forges us into the instrument
that we become. In fact, think about it. Would you want to follow a leader that's
never been tested? Would you want to work for a manager in an important project that
has never actually gone through a high stress situation in which they've got to meet deadlines,
which they have just really high expectations? No. You want somebody that has actually gone
through the gauntlet, someone that has maybe failed, picked themselves up and
come back stronger. I think a few videos back I talked about the art of kinsugian.
In case you haven't heard about this, it is basically golden joinery. It's the Japanese
art of repairing broken pottery by mending the area of breakage by mending the area of breakage
with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Now, for me, there's three
very interesting things about kinsugi. One is that they don't hide the breakage
in the repair. This isn't a job that you try to, like, camouflage
what happened here. No, it's right there. Obvious that this thing has broken and it
has been put back together, but it is now more valuable because initially it was just a basic
piece of pottery. Now it actually has precious metals inside of it. And finally, it is stronger.
Yeah. Apparently the lacquer technique that they used to go back over with the pottery
reinforces everything and ends up making the item tougher, stronger than what it was before. Now,
gents, if you're enjoying today's video, do me a favor and smash the like button.
This lets me know to create more videos like this, and it lets the YouTube gods know that,
hey, this video is worth watching. Now, some of you guys watching this may be thinking, okay,
Antonio, that's all nice, but I am in my mid thirty s and I'm not going anywhere. I've been
toiling trying to make things happen with my art. It's not picking up. I never finished college.
I've got three years of student loans. I've got that debt, but no degree to show
for it. I'm almost 40 and I have nothing to show for that. Hell, I'm almost 40 and I got
nothing to show for the last 20 years. Well, if that's you, then don't worry,
because I've got a few people right here I want to share with you who didn't have
success until actually later in life life. Let's start off with Eric Wan. Ever heard of him? Well,
you probably have used one of his products, Zoom. But here's the deal. He didn't found Zoom until he
was 41 years old. Next up, we've got Henry Ford. Now, we've all heard of him, but many of us don't
know that he actually didn't create the model t till he was 45. Next up,
rodney Dangerfield. He didn't get his break till he was 46 on the Ed Sullivan show a year before.
Yeah, he was a comedian that most people had never heard of. Imagine giving up at 45 when
your big break is just around the corner. Stan Lee yeah, the marvel legend didn't create his
first comic till he was almost 39. Again, we live in a society that is
youth obsessed, always talking about these 20 year old billionaires that sold these
companies. But get this. The research says that age can be an advantage.
So they looked at 2.7 million founders yeah, a lot of research here. And they
looked at founders at ages 50. Ages 30. They founders age 50 were
twice as likely to have a successful exit as those that founded a company at age 30.
And this takes us to the old stoic quote that's been around for thousands of years.
Comparison is the death of happiness. This was true time of plato. It is true nowadays,
especially when we go on to instagram, when we go on to TikTok, we see all of this media out there,
social media that's pushing to us an ideal that honestly is not our ideal
of happiness, if you think about it. In fact, I fell into this trap. I
thought I needed to save for, like, a 10,000 square foot huge cabin, one of those big,
great rooms, huge windows, big fireplace. I thought, this is the dream home I wanted.
So I'm putting away saving up for it. And I realized this isn't the house I want.
And this realization only happened through experience and reflection.
My wife actually on my birthday, and I tried to disappear for a couple of days,
so she got me a couple of nights at still bend. This is known as the Schwartz house.
It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It's over in two rivers, Wisconsin,
not too far from me. I spent three nights there, and I have to say, it was a simple,
clean, comfortable design. I loved the nooks and crannies, just how comfortable
I felt just as a single person in this house. And I have to say that this is what I want for
a home, a place that feels like a home that wraps around you like a warm hug and, yeah, that's I
realized I don't need a whole lot. So many of us are chasing dreams that aren't even ours.
They've been pushed on us maybe by our parents, by people we love, people that care about us.
But really, we haven't thought through. What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you
want to get out of this life? What is it that you want to have? The kind of people around you guys
make sure that you think through that because that is going to determine really, where are you at in
your life and if you're able to accomplish it, because you're going to probably find that you
really want simple things. I think most people do. And you're going to find you're much closer to
it than you think. And speaking of people that didn't transform their lives to later in life,
ray Crock, I think it was aged 52 when he acquired his first McDonald's. Steve Carroll,
the comedian that so many of us love, didn't get his break in Hollywood till he was 42.
And of course, there's the story of Colonel Sanders. The guy didn't start Kentucky Fried
Chicken till he was 62 and then ended up selling the business when he was 74. And
of course, let's not forget Nelson Mandela. The guy spent almost 30 years in prison but
was elected president of South Africa at the age of 75. So what video to watch next? How
about the brutal truths men in their 30 need to hear? Seriously, guys, if you're in your 20s,
you're in your 40s, you're in your 30s, you need to watch this video. It's a good one.
Solid video. Think you're going to enjoy it. Boom. Click it, go check it out.