31:15Brandon Carter · Talking Head
I'm 43. Here Are the 10 Things I Wish I Knew in My 20s and 30s
A 31-minute unfiltered breakdown of the mindset shifts a fitness entrepreneur says would have made him rich and confident years earlier.
June 6thThe argument in one line.
Two people starting in the same place end up in wildly different lives based on how they repeatedly run one four-step cycle, Challenge, Think, Choose, Test, every time life gets harder.
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READ IF YOU ARE…
- Someone who feels like they're falling behind people who started in the same place as them and wants a framework for why that gap keeps widening.
- A person facing a hard decision right now, career, business, fitness, who keeps delaying the choice and wants language for what's actually happening.
- Anyone who catches themselves using excuses like "I've been working hard, I deserve a day off" and wants to understand why that habit compounds.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for tactical business or fitness steps. This is a mindset and decision framework, not a how-to.
- You want a clinical or academic framework. This is a raw, profanity-heavy personal-story delivery.
The full version, fast.
Two people can start in the same place and end up in completely different lives, and the difference comes down to how each one repeatedly runs a four-stage cycle: a challenge forces a decision, you think through the options, you choose a direction, and then you get tested on whether you follow through or revert to old habits. Brandon Carter illustrates the cycle with his own story: losing two friends to prison and murder, his father's suicide, the 2008 financial crisis, and working four jobs seven days a week to rebuild. His conclusion is that small repeated choices compound over years into a widening gap between people who keep adjusting and people who wait for the perfect moment.
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00:00 – 01:20
01 · Why some people keep winning
Cold open promise: learn this cycle and it'll look like cheating. Sets up the two-people-same-start premise.
01:20 – 01:52
02 · If you're not getting better, you're getting worse
Introduces The Gap: people either keep elevating or getting worse, because the world keeps advancing regardless.
01:52 – 05:12
03 · Why life keeps getting harder (the potty test)
Life gets harder in stages as you age, school to high school to career, each stage a harder version of the same challenge-choice pattern.
05:12 – 06:04
04 · The 4-stage cycle that decides your life
Names the full loop: Challenge, Think, Choose, Test, as the repeatable engine behind every advance or setback.
06:04 – 07:52
05 · Step 1: Challenge (the moment I had to change)
Personal story: two friends lost to prison and murder, then his father's suicide, forced the recognition that something had to change.
07:52 – 08:55
06 · Step 2: Think (then 2008 hit)
Weighing real options after ruling out his old path, then the 2008 financial crisis collapsed the job market right as he needed work.
08:55 – 10:30
07 · Free live training
Mid-video pitch for a free live AI coaching training for online fitness businesses.
10:30 – 12:56
08 · Step 3: Choose (4 jobs, 7 days a week)
With no roadmap and no one hiring, he chose brute effort: four jobs, 4am starts, seven days a week.
12:56 – 14:00
09 · Step 4: Test (where most people quit)
The test stage isn't just success or failure, it's delayed gratification, long-term thinking, and holding up under pressure.
14:00 – 15:27
10 · Mediocre mantras: battle cries of the inconsistent
The small self-permissions people use to rationalize breaking a commitment, and how reciting them erodes discipline over time.
15:27 – 17:11
11 · A bad day is not the end
A setback doesn't have to derail a goal; what matters is having a plan for handling disruptions, illustrated by how he handled his father's death.
17:11 – 18:47
12 · The cycle keeps going (going online in 2009)
Passing one test hands you the next cycle: after two years of four jobs he chose to take his training business online, with zero roadmap.
18:47 – 20:22
13 · How the gap grows in 5 years
Two people facing the same setback diverge over five years based on whether they keep adjusting or wait to feel ready.
20:22 – 21:11
14 · Your next move
Closing challenge: name what needs to change, list your options, and choose what you'll do today.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- If you're not getting better, you're getting worse, because the rest of the world keeps improving even while you stand still.
- The gap between two people who start in the same place isn't one big decision, it's small choices repeated over years.
- Every challenge triggers the same four-stage cycle: recognize it, think through your options, choose a direction, then get tested on whether you follow through.
- There are only three responses to a challenge: move forward, delay the decision, or revert to where you were, and only one of them moves you ahead.
- Delaying a decision doesn't keep your options open, it guarantees the decision never gets made.
- Mediocre mantras, like telling yourself you've earned a day off, are the battle cries of the inconsistent, and reciting them is how discipline quietly erodes.
- Confidence isn't a starting point, it's built by giving yourself evidence through facing challenges instead of avoiding them.
- A bad day isn't the end of a goal, it's a test of whether a single setback gets to control your behavior.
- The cycle never stops: finishing one challenge just hands you the next one, from childhood to career to retirement.
- Being ready is not a feeling, waiting to feel ready is just another way of delaying the choice.
Why small repeated choices create huge gaps
THE CHOICE CYCLE
Two people who start in the same place end up in opposite lives because of how each one runs the same four-step cycle, Challenge, Think, Choose, Test, every time life gets harder.
01Why some people keep winning
- Two people can start in nearly the same place and end up with very different lives based on the small decisions each one makes when things get difficult.
- The pattern looks dramatic from the outside, like someone is cheating, but it's actually the compounded result of repeated small choices.
02If you're not getting better, you're getting worse
- If you're not actively improving, you're falling behind, because the world and your competition keep advancing even while you stand still.
- Tools that didn't exist five years ago are now standard, which means standing still is a moving target, not a safe pause.
03Why life keeps getting harder (the potty test)
- Life gets harder in stages as you age, and each new stage presents a harder version of the same challenge-think-choose-test pattern.
- Failing a challenge isn't fatal, people who fall behind can still come back later and start climbing again.
- The real risk isn't failing a single test, it's that life keeps getting harder regardless of whether you keep pace with it.
04The 4-stage cycle that decides your life
- The repeatable loop behind every advance or setback is four stages: a challenge appears, you think through your options, you choose a direction, and then you're tested on whether you follow through.
- This cycle runs at every scale, from a single bad day to a multi-year career decision, and it never stops as long as you keep trying to advance.
05Step 1: Challenge (the moment I had to change)
- A real challenge is often forced on you; recognizing the trajectory you're on, even without a dramatic event, counts as facing a challenge.
- Being honest that you don't like where your current path leads is itself the first stage of the cycle.
06Step 2: Think (then 2008 hit)
- Thinking through a challenge means weighing real options, not hypotheticals, including ruling out paths that already led to bad outcomes for people around you.
- External shocks can collapse your options mid-decision, which forces the plan to adapt instead of stall.
08Step 3: Choose (4 jobs, 7 days a week)
- Choosing means committing to one direction and actually starting to walk it, not staying open to every option at once; trying to do many things at once is how people go nowhere fast.
- With no clear roadmap or easy options, brute, sustained effort can still move you forward when there's no better plan available.
- Of the three possible responses to a challenge, moving forward, delaying, or reverting, only one actually changes your trajectory, and avoiding the choice quietly damages your own confidence.
09Step 4: Test (where most people quit)
- The test after a choice isn't always success-or-failure, it can be whether you'll delay gratification, think long-term, or hold your ground under pressure.
- Tests show up as physical tests, business tests, and social tests, including people around you pressuring you to just be normal.
10Mediocre mantras: battle cries of the inconsistent
- Mediocre mantras are the small self-permissions that let you rationalize breaking a commitment, and reciting them is how discipline erodes a little at a time.
- You can rationalize a broken commitment to everyone else, but deep down you know you didn't live up to what you're capable of, and that knowledge quietly undermines your confidence.
11A bad day is not the end
- A single bad day or setback doesn't have to derail a long-term goal; what matters is whether you have a plan for handling disruptions when they happen.
- Staying on point through a crisis, instead of letting emotion fully dictate behavior, is a valid way to get through it, even if it doesn't look like how others expect grief to look.
12The cycle keeps going (going online in 2009)
- Passing one test just hands you the next cycle; recognizing a pace is unsustainable is itself a new challenge that restarts the loop.
- Being early to an unproven idea means there's no roadmap and no one teaching it, so the tests at that stage are about figuring things out with zero precedent.
13How the gap grows in 5 years
- Picture two people facing the same setback: one keeps training, adjusting, and getting back up after failures, the other waits for the perfect moment to feel ready; after five years the gap between them is enormous.
- Being ready is not a feeling; waiting to feel ready is functionally the same as delaying the choice indefinitely.
- As long as you don't give up, failures along the way don't erase the compounding gains, the compounding only resets if you quit.
14Your next move
- There's no such thing as standing still: if you're not actively improving, the fact that the world keeps improving means you're falling behind by default.
- The next move is concrete: name the challenge in front of you right now, list your real options, and choose what you'll do today.
Terms worth knowing.
- The Gap
- The widening distance between two people who started in a similar place, created by years of small repeated choices rather than one dramatic decision.
- The Cycle (Challenge, Think, Choose, Test)
- A four-stage loop that repeats every time life presents a new difficulty: a challenge appears, you think through your options, you choose a path, and then you're tested on whether you follow through.
- Mediocre Mantras
- Self-justifying phrases people repeat to excuse skipping a workout, a task, or a commitment, framed as reasonable but which quietly normalize inconsistency.
- Follow Through
- Continuing to act on a choice after the initial motivation fades, the stage in the cycle that actually separates people who improve from people who revert to old habits.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
01:16
“if you're not getting better you are getting worse because the world is getting better”
04:14
“it adds up, it adds up one choice repeated over time”
12:31
“you let that fear keep you in bondage”
19:00
“being ready is not a feeling”
19:48
“there's no such thing as stagnation, because even if you don't keep trying to improve, the world improves”
Word for word.
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i know you sick of failing and you want to start winning you want to start winning big in this video i'm going to show you how you can actually start an avalanche of success in your life how you can start getting so much momentum that everybody will assume that you are cheating or doing something illegal but you're not you just watched a brandon carter video and implemented it however if you fail to understand these tactics you might around and end up in a downward spiral and let me show you how that works so two people can start in a similar place and end up in very different lives all right you can look at the decisions they make when things got difficult the small choices they make and it makes a huge difference in their outcomes and i'm going to break this whole thing down in this video and it's important you learn this from me because over the last 15 years i have helped over 15 000 people build successful online fitness businesses.
Thousands of students started making over $100 ,000 per year. Some of my community members make millions per year. I've also helped thousands and thousands of people get in the best shape of their lives.
Lose fat, build muscle in record time. And this ain't one of those things like those who can't do teach. Even in my life, I've been able to take advantage of what I call the victory cyclone that I'm about to teach you to the point where I've been able to build several multi -seven figure businesses, one eight figure business while staying in an amazing...
have a great relationship with my family and really living the life of my dreams one of the main reasons i've been able to accomplish that is something i call the gap right this is how over a certain amount of time you see some people they just keep elevating keep going up keep making moves keep improving where some people they're either staying the same or they're getting worse but here's the thing if you're not getting better you are getting worse because the world is getting better there's like tons of advancement happening every day what is it it was like five years ago none of us have chat gpt now we all got super agents in our phone the world is improving other people are getting better your competition's getting better and if you're not getting better you're just getting older and worse and that's the best case scenario because otherwise it could look like this so let me draw this out for you in your life you'll notice that life gets more difficult as you age when you're a child life is easy
don't have to do nothing you have no responsibilities as a baby you just cry you get the food they bring it to you you take a just take a right now wherever you are somebody clean that up right but then you get a little older there's a little bit more challenges right now you gotta start in a potty the and then you have a choice there you can say you can think about it you get the challenge you think about yeah i'm gonna do this on it i'm not you got to think about it then you make the choice am i gonna do this or not then you say all right i'm gonna try and then what's gonna happen is you're gonna pass that test or you're gonna fail that test and get worse right if it happened it typically doesn't happen when you're real young right but i was just giving an example most people learn how to shit in the in the potty right but what you understand is as you get older there's gonna be another level just skip a few steps now you're in high school boom different challenges the work gets harder you got to deal with your hormones now right you got to you got to navigate interpersonal relationships with the opposite sex you got to deal with other people you got to learn how to make friends you know life's a lot more challenging in high school than it was when grade school you start to contemplate this you got to decide am i going to rise to this occasion boom and go up or am i you know some people feel flunk out of high school some people drop out of high school right boom and then they go back down you know what i'm saying
Problem is... Problem with that is, as you age, life keeps getting harder. So you got to keep pace.
Or the best case scenario is you could outperform life. You know what I'm saying? And it's like this at every step.
So let's say, hey, I'm going to go to high school. Then you got college or the workforce. And then after college, boom, now you got into the workforce.
It's way harder. So it's like, boom, you keep getting these tests. And sometimes you fail the test.
Some people fail the test. That's okay. You can just get back up.
Try again. Or you might fail the test. If you fail this test, I've seen my dad dropped out of high school, right?
But he went back, got it. gd bam now he got he got back up some time had passed but he got back up and he started being challenged challenging challenging right and this is this is every step of your life you're going to encounter a challenge you got to think about what you're going to do contemplate it then you choose am i going to take the test or not you don't have to take on the challenge you could just say you know what i'm gonna stay here and chill i'm gonna be here forever problem with that is life keeps getting harder right so there's gonna be a point right and after years of making these decisions with the good or bad there's a gap between you and others right there's a gap For example, when I first started my online fitness business and I had the idea, I was talking to other people about it, other trainers, guys who were in better shape than me, just as charismatic, had more advantages than me, and they didn't try.
They took a different choice than me. But now if we look at the gap, the gap is like severe between us. You know what I'm saying?
So it's all about the choices you make and then following through on the challenge and rising to that occasion, right? Because it adds up. It adds up one choice repeated over time.
They just keep adding up. For example, let's say you're trying to grow your social media. Yeah, like one post is not going to grow your social media.
It's what you do repeatedly. Or if you're trying to get in shape, sometimes people will tell me, hey man, Brandon, I ate a salad today. I'm like, yo, guess what asshole?
You did almost nothing, right? Like it's not, that's not what's going to move the needle for you. You get what I'm saying?
It's like, you got to do these things repeatedly over a significant amount of time. Because the example I showed you earlier that I made it look like it was big steps, but really it's like that. every day and it's like little micro steps throughout the entire day where you got you got choices and you get a challenge you have tests you gotta decide what you're gonna do and the cycle looks like this first something's there's some sort of challenge that makes you recognize you need to change could be you tried to holler at some chick and she laughed at you because you fat right could be anything right for me i remember one of my biggest challenges my father he killed himself he blew his brains out now i got a challenge it made me think all right what am i going to do to help my family and i had to figure that out.
And then once I've kind of figured out some viable paths, I had to make a choice. Am I going to walk down this path or not to take care of my family? And then once you start marching down that path, you're going to get tested and you're going to get tested over and over again.
And you're going to go through this cycle your whole life for as long as you want to keep advancing. I don't know if it ever stops. Like when I was originally coming up with the idea for this video, I was thinking, man, maybe it stops when you retire.
But once you retire, there's like still other challenges. Now you got it. Now you literally fighting death.
You know, there's other challenges. So it never stops. Let's break this down.
The challenge part. is a problem or an opportunity that gets brought to your attention. And it could be fitness.
It could be work. It could be habits or just something you can no longer ignore. Sometimes it's nothing dramatic, right?
You can just be honest about where you are versus where you want to be. Or it could be that you're being honest about the trajectory you're on. You're like, I don't like the path my life is going.
Even before my father killed himself, I remember, you know, I was an in -person trainer, but I was also doing some stuff that I shouldn't do. You know, some stuff I don't want to talk about it. I mean, it's way past the statute of limitations, right?
So it's not a b****. deal i could talk about but i'd rather not because i'm trying to clean up my image but it's out there if you know and what i started noticing was that people around me who were involved in a lot of the same stuff they were uh having really bad outcomes one of my boys uh sv he got sent to prison double homicide he's doing life prison still to this day right he's not gonna get out because he killed two people right but that was my dog right and another one of my boys uh esco they found him in new jersey his fucking car was full of bullets right they murdered esco and i was like fuck if you become like the people you're around and the people you're around are dying and getting the prison sent to prison forever maybe i should change my direction and then my father killed himself who was my best friend and i was like all right it's time for a change that was my challenge is the point where you know something has to change.
And it may not be as severe as what I'm talking about. Right. It could be like your fitness.
So you keep promising yourself you're going to do something. You're going to take better care of yourself, but you don't. Right.
Could be in your business. You can see opportunity, but you keep leaving it untouched or you're scared to jump off of you being a coward. Maybe notice you being too fucking cowardly all the time.
Or you'd be in a situation like me where I was forced to make a decision after my father killed himself. Like, all right, I got to figure it out, man. I'm going to start making some fucking money, you know.
And then you see the problem and you recognize it. And then it's like, all right, now it's time to address this. It's time to do something about it.
And once you've figured that out, then you move on to step two, which is now we gotta think, right? We gotta consider our options, right? Look at what makes sense and start coming up with a game plan of things that'll bring us closer to our goals and what we're trying to accomplish.
And for me, after my father blew his brains out, I was kind of in a pickle because I knew one way to get money, but that's the same shit that got Esco killed and SV put in jail. So I was like, you know what? Can't go that path anymore because I see where that leads.
So I said, you know what? I'm just gonna start working, working more. I was gonna get a job.
because I had a college degree. I didn't need to be doing those wild shit. I had a college degree.
But right after my father killed himself, the financial crisis of 08 started. Record unemployment. Lehman Brothers, all the other shit collapsed.
Stock market crash. Employment went to 10%. Like y 'all haven't seen a bad economy.
If you like 30 or under, you don't remember what that was like, but it was fucking chaos if you were an adult on planet earth because this was a global recession. So nobody was hiring. So I said, all right, I need to figure it out.
I need to figure this out. I kind of thought about a plan. I'll tell you what it is, what it was momentarily.
Even if you're just starting out or if you're established, even if you're not certified, even if you're training people you don't like, you're going to learn a lot of ways to actually grow your business online. I'm also going to be giving away some free AI tools you can use to actually come up with your ideas for content, your scripts, and your hugs.
And I'm going to give you some free AI tools to help edit your content as well. And you're going to get them for free. Make sure you register right now for the free training.
It's going to be live. I'm going to answer all your questions before, during, and after. Don't miss out, all right?
but for you you may need to understand all right man i got these ideas but a lot of times you just sit around thinking about starting thinking about starting thinking about it thinking about thinking about it still getting ready man oh let me watch this video or let me do this on monday and you kind of never get around to it you never get there some people stay in this place where they're just thinking about doing some forever but that's not gonna that's not gonna help you advance right so you need to give yourself an end point you need to you need to actually set a date where you're gonna start There's actually studies that show once you give yourself a date that you're gonna start something, you actually are more likely to do it.
You gotta get enough information. You gotta figure it out, right? That's the thinking part.
But once you feel like you got information, we can't stay forever. At some point, we gotta get to the next step, which is you have to choose what plan you're gonna go down. You gotta choose your path.
and this is where intention becomes behavior right and you got a choice you can start you can move toward you can start moving towards your goal pick up pick a direction and start going there towards your goal or you can leave things where they are right and return to your old habits but delaying this decision will make sure like it never happens you have to choose to start walking down this path you have to choose what path you're going to take and start walking down that path so for me i was kind of out of options see what makes it a little bit more difficult for y 'all is there's so much stuff you can do right you never commit to a path so you might start some and then stop and then you go here do you go there right or you're trying to do 18 things at once and that's the way to go nowhere fast but because when i was in this situation when i had to take care of myself and my family after my father's passed there weren't a lot of options because we didn't have the internet like this and nobody was hiring so i just got any job i can get i said all right man what if i just outworked this situation so i started waking up at 4 a .m training people in the morning i would train people in the morning in harlem on 145th around that area you know i had other clients in other places too then i showered jump on the f train
take it to Soho, where I was a security guard at a product store. And I stayed there for eight hours a day. And then after that, I worked for my boy's moving company.
One of my boys had a moving company in New York. And that was five days a week. And on the weekends, I woke up, trained people.
And then I was the weekend manager of a barbecue restaurant in Astoria, Queens on Sniway Street on the weekends. It was 12, 14 -hour days, seven days a week. I couldn't think of another plan back then.
The internet wasn't that sophisticated. We didn't have all the tools that y 'all have now. And nobody was hiring.
So I just went for it. But I went for it. Like, you got to go into direction like some of you guys just sit around thinking about it contemplating you never like start putting one foot in front of the other you know what i'm saying and you got just three responses you can take right you got to make the choice either you're gonna start moving forward or you're gonna keep delaying it or you're gonna say you know what fuck it i'm not gonna do this and then revert and stay where you are right but only one of them is gonna move you forward and you'll only be proud of yourself for one of them as well right because even no one knows that you bitched up and took the pussy way out like you know and deep inside that fucks with your confidence when you never really go for because because you're you're scared you let that fear keep you in bondage and i kind of know that every time somebody asks me man how do you become more confident how do you become more confident i'm like oh man i know they are not confident because they're not giving themselves a reason to be confident right they're not rising to challenges they're not facing their fear they're letting fear control them why should they be confident themselves right if you're not confident it's probably a good reason right you got to start giving yourself a reason to be confident let's start building evidence
but then when you start walking down that path it's a test this is this is when you test it you know the test can come in in many ways it's not just success or failure the test could be man are you willing to delay gratification are you willing to sacrifice what you want right now for what you want most down the line are you the test could be are you willing to think long term instead of short term right the test could be where you really find out who you are under pressure when the heat is on do you back down do you stand tall do you stand firm are you able to adjust your game plan when necessary can you be agile or are you rigid right the test can come in many different forms and it's going to come many different times throughout that journey it could be a physical test like if you it could be a physical test especially if you have a weight loss goal craving slow progress it could be people around you eating some bullshit and now you're tempted you might have to deal with temptation it could be a business test right you can you can have a launch and it fails or you don't make money as fast or the results are coming slow it could be a social test
oh man you're doing too much just be normal oh man won't you chill or the worst what i call the mediocre mantras mediocre mantras are when people say like ah man you can take a day off ah man you can chill today man you've been working hard or ah man you can eat this man you don't need to stick to your diet i call these mediocre mantras because that's what regular people do and by definition regular people are mediocre by by the very definition of the term and the problem with that is once you start falling off and you start letting letting the discipline slip here or or rationalizing, making the decisions you know you're not supposed to make.
And you start rationalizing yourself. You start reciting these mediocre mantras. And what happens is you end up being inconsistent, right?
But the reason you gotta struggle with consistency is because you accept inconsistency. When you recite these mediocre mantras, ah, man, I ain't gotta work today. Man, I've been working all week.
Man, I've been doing this a month. I deserve a day off. Ah, man, I can take one day off.
Ain't no big deal. Ah, man, one bite won't kill you. Yeah, it won't kill you, but it won't help you.
It won't help you stay disciplined. It won't help you be proud of yourself. are you fucking proud of yourself when you put the fucking cupcake in your mouth like a child are you really proud of yourself when you know you when you do what you don't do what you're supposed to do no you're not you can rationalize it as much as you want in fact that's by definition when you recite these mediocre mantras you rationalize and bullshit and you can bullshit everyone else and you can bullshit out loud but you can't bullshit yourself deep inside you know that you are not living up to your potential and it starts to fuck with your confidence from the inside mediocre mantras are like the most dangerous thing when it comes to success mediocre mantras are the battle cries of the inconsistent right so you're gonna you're gonna have a lot of tests and some of the tests may be you know like you just have a bad day like shit happens shit goes wrong but you need to be thinking what happens next some of y 'all got goals y 'all want to accomplish between now and the next 90 days but the thing is your life is not going to be an unbroken boulevard of green lights between now and the next 90 days there's gonna be all types of challenges people around you're gonna get sick you might hurt yourself something crazy might happen
happen in the world, there might be a war, stocks go crazy, fucking natural disasters, car crashes, all types of shit can happen. people you know may die right all types of shit is going to happen between the time you set the goal and when you get it and what's going to determine if you get it or not in part is going to be how do you handle these things when they arise there's going to be a ton of challenges maybe even some disasters emergencies and shit how do you deal with them do you have a game plan to deal with them right you need to think about that going forward you don't know what it's going to be it's going to come at a surprise but it will be something for sure because it happens like that with everyone that is life and it may not be nothing dramatic it might just be you have a bad day your bitches out here tripping your kids get in trouble you know it could be anything someone keys your car it's all types of shit what happens next do you abandon your goal because of it because you don't have to let you because you don't have to let your emotions control your behavior that's true you know that right like shit bad shit can happen you can stay on point so when my father killed himself people were like oh brandy you didn't take time to grieve you just kept working i was like chill don't pay the bills i don't know if i ever like grieved the way people think say you should grieve i just worked fucking
12, 14 hours a day for fucking two years. But guess what? I wasn't broken.
I was able to take care of myself and my family. You know what I'm saying? But it doesn't end there because the cycle keeps going.
Let's say you pass this test, you're going to get another challenge and you got to go through this whole thing again. You got to go through this whole cycle again. For example, like I said, I worked in four jobs for two years.
I knew I couldn't do this forever. Then I had the idea, hey man, what if I take my business online? What if I start training people online?
You got to remember, this was like a fucking crazy idea in 2000. 2009 all of us who started online training in 2009 we were like the pioneers we were the first people to do it and it was a crazy idea and it was some big challenges at that point i just knew i couldn't keep what i'm doing so i'm thinking in the middle start training people online then i went for it i decided you know what i'm gonna go for it but then there was a lot of tests there was nobody teaching how to do it there was no road map nobody ever did it like we were the pioneers so i teach people how to grow their online fitness businesses now and because i already fucking walked that path they compositor goes like way quicker than it took me that i had to figure it out i had to go through this shit by myself just know that it doesn't end You're going to have another one.
And it's like that just in life, right? You graduate from high school. You graduate from college.
Now you're in the workforce. Boom, boom, boom. Let's say you start doing it at work.
Then you get married. Marriage, you know, relationships aren't always easy, right? You got to do that, right?
Then you decide you want to have kids, right? There's some challenges involved with raising kids, you know? And these challenges are going to keep coming at you, right?
Life keeps getting more difficult as you age. But what you choose will decide your future because every time you go through one of these cycles, you should improve and your life should improve. if you don't give up.
As long as you don't give up, life should improve over a long enough duration of time. However, if you keep making the wrong decisions, what happens is that's where that separation comes from. So you just got to think, man, which path are you on?
And look at your life. What path are you on as it pertains to achievement and goal accomplishing? How can you take it to the next level?
So imagine two versions of someone facing similar challenges. One keeps training, learning, adjusting, you know, adjusting after setbacks. The other keeps wanting things to be perfect, right?
Waiting for the perfect time to be. Wait till they feel ready. Being ready is not a feeling.
First of all, dumbass, after five years, where do you think each one of them is going to be? It's going to be like this. Because even if this person fails a bunch of time along the way, he's going to keep growing.
He's going to learn. And if he doesn't give up, as long as he doesn't give up, he should be able to get back on track. Because you're going to fail somewhere along this line.
And that's okay. Cause you're going to learn. And then what you, and then you take what you've learned, get back on the horse and keep going.
And if you don't give up, you'll eventually start making moves. I mean, that's been my whole life. I mean, it looks like y 'all never seen me fail, but I've had like tons of failures, tons of failures.
But if you watch me over the 15, but if you've been watching me over the last 15 years, it's just like a real consistent, steady stream of success. But there's been tons of failures, tons of setbacks. A lot of them have been like super dramatic, but you never stop.
You never take your eye off the goal. You just keep going and you take what you learn from those failures and you, You bring it into your next challenge.
You know what I'm saying? If you do this right, man, over a long enough period of time, your whole life will just keep improving. Constant improvement.
Constant improvement. And it's a little bit each day. You can have a perfect day, but it's negligible.
You got to stack perfect days. Then stack perfect weeks. Then stack perfect months.
Then you start having this upward momentum. Or this. There's no such thing as stagnation.
Because even if you don't keep trying to improve, the world improves. So the world gets better. Life gets better.
And as you age, just life gets harder naturally and if you aren't getting better naturally your whole shit fucks up so your next move here's what you're gonna do figure out what challenges you have in front of you right now like what needs to change in your life and i want you to think about hey man what options do i have right then i want you to choose man what what what will you choose today in order to start moving towards the path where you need to go and then start thinking about what tests may actually arrive along the way because there will be tests if nobody strolls to their goal that don't even happen in the movies you know that don't even happen to hollywood nobody strolls to their goal everybody will encounter challenges on their way up the mountain of success right but you got to keep going you got to make the right choice you got to start taking action if you want to see some more videos that help you do that click around here man you'll see something dope
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Brandon Carter opens with a blunt promise: learn this cycle and people will assume you're cheating. The through-line he draws, between two people who start in the same place and end up in opposite lives, comes from his own story of losing friends to prison and violence, his father's suicide, and the four jobs he worked seven days a week to rebuild.
Named ideas worth stealing.
05:12model
The Cycle (Challenge, Think, Choose, Test)
- Challenge
- Think
- Choose
- Test
The four-stage loop that repeats every time life presents a new difficulty: a challenge surfaces, you think through real options, you choose a direction, and then you're tested on whether you follow through or revert.
Steal forany mindset-driven course pitch or coaching offer that needs a memorable, repeatable decision framework
01:20concept
The Gap
Two people who start in a similar place end up far apart not from one big decision but from small choices repeated over years, visualized as two diverging lines over time.
Steal forbefore/after or compounding-effort narratives in any long-term offer
12:01list
Three Responses to a Challenge (Act, Delay, Revert)
- Act
- Delay
- Revert
Faced with a challenge, there are only three moves: start moving forward, keep delaying, or revert to the old pattern, and only the first one changes your trajectory.
Steal forframing a CTA as one of only a few honest choices a viewer can make
14:00concept
Mediocre Mantras
The self-permission phrases people recite to excuse skipping discipline, named and labeled so the audience can catch themselves using them.
Steal fornaming a villain behavior pattern to make a lesson memorable
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
08:55link
“Make sure you register right now for the free training”
Mid-video hard pitch for a free live AI coaching training, framed as bonus value (free AI tools for content, scripts, and editing) rather than a sale, with urgency before returning to the main framework.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
