I think one of the most important things that any young person who has no one really to look out for other than themselves can do is start to travel. Not because of getting, you know, like crazy experiences or going out and partying, but just. Specifically seeing more and more different cultures to give yourself more data points to view different situations at now I've, I've noticed I'm, I'm very big on like self-auditing and like, what are the thoughts that are going through my head? How am I thinking? Because we live up here every single day. We are the only person that we must check in with every single day. The only person whose mind being regulated that we need to put at the top priority is ourselves because we live in between these years. Every single day. So I'm very big on auditing myself thoughts, and the more I travel, the more people I meet, the more bullshit I have to go through. Like the, just the, the more failures that people would say. The more like really big landmines that you step on. The more people you meet, the more places you see. The more experiences you get, the more data points you have, and the more perspectives you have to then look at the situation and then analyze it for what it is. I think that when we're in places like high school. We think that we know everything around us. Like we think that we've seen it all. And you know, we have just this hometown energy and you know, I know all the people that are in my area and I've seen what I need to see. But in reality, our viewpoint is like this. And there's just so little that we actually see and then you go out, whether that's why a lot of people talk about moving outta their hometown. So moving outta your hometown can take you from this to this. And when you go from this to this, it seems like this. Whoa. Like. Wow. Like what a crazy like culture shock. And that's why I think it's so important to move outta your hometown, even if it's for just a bit of time. So you get a bit more perspective. In January of 2024, I moved, I didn't, I didn't mean to move, but I moved outta the country. I was supposed to be in Meine Columbia here for three days to go meet up with a potential client that I did a lot of work for, for free, which I can touch on here in just a second. On the business side of things, how important that is doing work for free for people. I came to Columbia for the first time and my vision went from this when I was in high school to this when I was in college, because I was in New York City and I saw a lot of stuff. I saw a lot of different types of cultures of people and met a lot of different people. And I thought when I went to college, I thought, whoa, like I just see so much more stuff. I dropped outta college, I moved to Florida, and I saw more things. I saw the way more people operated. I saw inside of more businesses than I got to right here. But then when I did that, I thought, whoa, because I just came up on two years being dropped outta college. I was supposed to be graduating school. Now I dropped out sophomore year and it's uh, would've been senior year right now after that came to Columbia for the first time. Whoa, this is crazy. All of these different expansions of perspective. And throughout these expansions of perspective, what I've noticed is that the shit that gets handed to you, like sometimes you just get handed a plate of shit and the universe is like, eat it. No, no, no, no, no. Eat it. You have to eat it. And you get forced to sit there and eat it. And what a lot of people do is they will complain. Complain, complain, complain. And then stop putting themselves out there in fear that they're gonna get fed another plate of shit. I got news for you. Anything you do in life, you're gonna get fed plates of shit from time to time. It's just about how you deal with the plates of shit. And each time I get dealt one after eating the last one or slaying the dragon, it's like, okay, well this is what it is. Sometimes I just have to eat this in order to become a better person because each of the times that have been the hardest in my life, dropping out of school, losing all my money in business, going through my first breakup business, failure after business failure, after business failure, angry clients, team members leaving, just things that just, ah, the worst. Those ended up being the most pivotal points in my life that it led me to gimme the perspective and to gimme the self-confidence, to gimme the strength that I've needed to actually start to build. A successful business. There's a quote that I heard that I really liked that said someone, someone was asked, if you had to start over, what would you do differently? And the person responded. I mean, we can quote whoever. It's like, I don't remember the name off the top of my head, but he or she said, I'd make the same mistakes but only sooner. So many people live a life, and I noticed this in like the, the, the, the Gen X and the Boomer, a lot of Gen X and boomer men that I come across inside of life. And it's not to say that I know more than the next guys. It's just an observation that I've had is that we spend so much time in a bubble doing what we think others want us to do instead of getting out of our shell and taking risks and going and failing forward, out of fear that we will face rejection, that we will fail, and that others will judge us. But you tell me what the real failure is. Is it going out there and fucking something up? And then learning from it and then going out and fucking something else up, and then learning from it and then getting better each time. Is that a failure? Are these failures over here? Or is the real failure never getting started in the first place and just living an entire life worth of fear and never taking that step? So if I can encourage you guys to do anything in this one video, and again, do whatever you want. Don't just do a word that I had to say, any random guy on the internet for all you know. But what I would encourage you to do is if you're contemplating taking a risk, I want you to look at it through the lens of like, what would 80-year-old me have to say about this? Is he or she going to wish that I just stayed in my comfort zone for longer? Or is he or she gonna be happy that I took a risk regardless of the outcome? Because if you take the risk and it goes well, yes, like let's go. You won. But if anything, that's a bit more dangerous than if you go take the risk and it doesn't work out well because if you go take the risk and it doesn't work out well, and then you realize that like a few weeks later, a few months later, even like a year later, like, you're still alive. Like it, it didn't kill you. And you look back at that and other experiences with more perspective and you can say, oh yeah, I remember that plate of shit that I had to eat two years ago. That was a pretty big pile. It didn't affect me too much. I'm gonna switch from the analogy of plate of shit to dragons that have to get slayed because I don't like talking about eating shit too much, although I believe that you have to do it inside of life. But the way I like to look at it is each obstacle that you overcome, you pull out your sword and you slay the dragon. And the first dragon is about this big, but it's the first dragon that you've ever seen. So it's a really big dragon, and it's big and it's scary. 99% of people run away from the dragon and say, I'm never going to even go out there and fly. There's dragons out there and they're scary. Others will attempt to fight the dragon and lose and then never go back again. Out of fear of losing to another dragon. Some people, most people will lose to their first dragon and it will really hurt. Maybe the dragon will like bite their head off or something and have a really bad experience with the dragon, and then they'll go and try again. And it's the same dragon and they've learned from it. They learned how the dragon killed them the time before, and instead they dodge it. They got the dragon and the dragon's dead. And you have a sword right here, and you go, okay, I slay the dragon. 'cause guess what? Another dragon's gonna come up sooner than you think. Okay, well, worst thing is I lose and I just try again. And you go, you fight the dragon, you slay the dragon, you slay a bigger dragon, and then another one comes up, you slay that dragon. You slay the next dragon. You slay the next dragon. The dragons keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you have a really big dragon that comes up to you and you look at your sword and you're just like, well, and you look back at all the dragons that you slayed in the past, and you just go, huh, what is this? Come on. Come get some, and that's where confidence happens. Notice the difference between a person who goes, Hey, come on. Come get some, because I know even if I lose, I'm just gonna come back and face the same dragon again versus someone who goes, oh, but I might lose to the dragon. That's how self-confidence is made. Ironically enough, I believe that self-confidence is made from failing. You go out there, you fail, you realize it doesn't kill you. You realize you're still alive, and you realize that you got better from the failure. And if you didn't get better from failures that you've had in the past, if you're thinking as you're saying, Denny, like, I've had failures in the past, I didn't get better from them, I challenge you because that's a superpower. Take a look back at it. Analyze the situation and be like, how did I deal with this? Did I, did I squeeze the lemon for everything it had? Dude, I remember I was going through my first breakup and I was depressed. Like, I don't know if depressed is the right word for it, but I had so much emotion and energy inside of me. And the thing that I did was I took that to the gym, dude. Like I was going to gym three, four times per day. 'cause something that, that, that my first girlfriend said to you, man, you would look good if you were bigger if you had put on 20 pounds of muscle. I said, you know what? Fuck, I'm gonna do it now. I went to the gym three, four times per day, put on 25 pounds. Over the course of two and a half months. Now, I'm much more fit as a result of something bad to happen. Now I know what red flags to look for in the next relationship. I get scammed out of everything that I have inside of business at the end of 2024, September 22, 4. I lose everything that I have inside of my business. I'm tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I have no money. All of the money was siphoned outta my bank account and I'm cooked like completely. I moved back in with my mom and I'm like, oh my God, like. Do you declare a bankruptcy? Do you ask for a loan? Like what do you do here? You sit in the basement, hit the phones, look at the numbers, see how profitable you actually are, and you emerge victorious on the other side while having a much more profitable business. It forced me to look at the numbers. It brought my business acumen years. What would've took me years to learn it? Just pulled it into a present, because you look the dragon in the eye and say, I ain't going anywhere from. If there's one thing I'm not gonna do is stop. So if I can leave you with one bit of encouragement at the end of this video, if you made it this far, is if you're thinking about doing something, do it. You'll never regret having more stories to tell as you get older in life. And even if you fail, you'll get a story. And if you win, you'll get a win. And that failure will lead you to the perspective and the experience that's needed to get the wins when they matter. Okay, go get 'em.