If You Believe

Merry Christmas, folks.

Although we've been here for nearly a week, I haven't quite shaken the East Coast time, so I'm up earlier than the rest of the family.

I'm sneaking around like a ninja, making coffee by the light of my phone screen and sitting in the dark.

The only "office" I have in this condo is the open living room/kitchen where LuLu, my daughter, has commandeered the couch as her bed. (She says Granny, who she's sharing a bedroom with, snores too loud.)

When she was little, I told Lu the sky was the limit and that she could do or be anything she wanted.

Like most parents, I repeated this mantra to all five kids.

For Christmas this year, if I could have anything I wanted, it would be for them to understand that those words are more than cliche.

Lu and Sam (my youngest son) have been watching Mr. Beast for the last couple of days. If you don't know, Mr. Beast has the world's #1 most-subscribed YouTube channel.

He is, by definition, the world's biggest YouTube sensation.

Three hundred thirty-eight million people subscribe to his channel, and many millions more watch it without subscribing.

The night before last, during a commercial break, I called Mr. Beast by his real name: Jimmy Donaldson.

"OMG!" squeaked Lu, "YOU know who MR. BEAST is?????"

"Yes, dear."

"So you know he's like, the biggest YouTuber ever, right????"

Like all my kids, when she was younger, Lu worshiped YouTubers and wanted to become one.

"Oh yeah!" I said excitedly. "And did you know he was just a normal kid? Did you know that when he was about your age, he decided that he was going to be the biggest YouTuber ever and that he would. . ."

"Shhhhh," she said as the show came back on.

My moment of being cool for knowing who Mr. Beast was had passed before I could get to my point.

In my last email, I mentioned a "monster deal" I'm working on.

I called it that because the income potential from this deal is high.

Very high.

If completed, I'll earn 3X more money on this deal than I've ever made at one time.

Because of that, I referred to it in my last email as a "once-in-a-lifetime" deal.

But, yesterday, riding the chairlift alone through softly falling snow, it hit me.

This doesn't have to be once-in-a-lifetime.

Shit, a friend of mine did it 3 times this year alone!

And that's when it really hit me.

Holy shit!

I'm looking at this deal like Lu and Sam look at Mr. Beast.

"But he's Mr. Beast! Being a YouTube star is for people like him, not people like me."

Bullshit.

For crying out loud, Mr. Beast's first viral video was of himself counting to 100,000! [https://youtu.be/xWcldHxHFpo?si=GgkE3LUYoN5On4c_]. It's literally just a dorky teenager counting numbers in his bedroom.

And my buddy who did my "once in a lifetime" deal three times this year?

Hell, he's just a Realtor!

So, what's the difference?

What stands between Sam or Lu and either one of them being the next big thing on YouTube?

What stands between me and making once-in-a-lifetime deals an everyday thing?

Mindset.

It's 100% mindset.

It's believing you can and being willing to stop at nothing to make it happen.

Jimmy Donaldson believed he could make videos people would watch, and he did.

But he didn't stop there.

He believed he could become Mr. Beast.

And he did.

I believed I could make money as a real estate investor.

But unlike Jimmy Donaldson, I was stopping there. I believed the big, crazy "once-in-a-lifetime" deals were reserved for the Grant Cardones of the world.

So, for Christmas this year, I'm giving myself belief.

Belief that I am capable of more.

Belief that I can accomplish things I can't yet imagine.

Belief that my life ten years from now can be as unrecognizable as my life ten years ago.

And the willingness to stop at nothing until it happens.

Merry Christmas, you guys. Enjoy the day! But remember that it's not just Christmas. It's the first day of the rest of your life and your next opportunity to start building the life of your dreams.

Getting there is like Santa Claus, though.

It will only come if you believe.