How to Brute Force your way to $1 Million

Let's get something out of the way: one million dollars isn't what it used to be. Yes, it won't be enough to live a lavish lifestyle for the rest of your life, but it would definitely make your life exponentially better than it is right now. Here's something 99% of the population doesn't know, which is why they're not in the one percent: you don't earn a million dollars, you make a million dollars. There's a super select few jobs that can get you there—pro athlete, singer, or top-level software engineer—but for the rest of the jobs out there, you're not even going to come close.

This is why you have to create value and exchange it for money. By the end of this video, we will show how to brute force your way to one million dollars. Welcome to alex.com, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. Going from zero to one million dollars can take from three to ten years, depending on your skills, technical ability, relationships, and your ability to use the tools you have at your disposal. If you've got all three of them on luck, there's no reason why you can't brute force your way to one million dollars in three years, even if you're starting from scratch. People are doing it every day in a variety of industries.

Now calm down, we're not going to sell you a course or tell you about some hot crypto or NFT. This video is about a handful of actions that you can make, starting right now, to build towards that million dollars. We want you to pay close attention to the following graph, for this is based on both personal experience and on data that we've collected from several companies that we're invested in. They all follow the same pattern. Although your personal time frame might be slightly different, some might be able to do it in three years, while it will take others a bit longer. The process is very similar for the majority of companies out there.

If you look at the graph, you'll be able to distinguish three very different stages of growth, as follows:

Phase One: Nothing really happens. You're putting in so much effort, but it's all chaos. You don't know what to do, who to hire, what the customer wants, what your business model is, and more. We call this the learn and build phase. This is the figuring out phase. During this period, people will dismiss your efforts. They will laugh at your goals and disregard anything you do. They'll tell you that you should do something else. It's already been over a year and still nothing. This is the stage where 90% of businesses quit, but you're not like them. You'll put your head down and keep building. Learn fast and build in silence. The quicker you're able to learn and implement the knowledge you've found, the quicker you're going to be able to grow. This is why we built Learning Mastery. Learning how to learn is probably the most valuable skill to acquire if you're in the early stages of your growth. In Phase One, you're the one doing almost all the work on a shoestring budget. You've got a hand in everything, and you're mastering the skills required for you to evolve into phase two.

Phase Two: It's very different compared to Phase One, because now you're starting to see some traction. Out of all the things you've learned in Phase One, some of them have found footing and are now picking up speed. If you've put together a minimum viable team and you've got a few customers and the business model has been proven, now it's just a matter of doing it over and over again. We call Phase Two the optimized traction phase, because if you look at the graph, it's almost linear. You can start to tinker with the details. You train people, you hire more specific talent. You're still in complete control of your growth journey, and it feels like you've figured it out. At this stage, you're able to understand what your competitors are doing and how they're moving. In the optimized traction phase, you're actively competing with everyone else in your space for customers' attention, followers, etc. You are growing, but you're not yet differentiated enough. You still haven't found your secret sauce. At this stage, all you want to do is streamline the entire process as much as possible, cut out all of the fat, build up systems, and hire people to take over some of the tasks you were previously in charge of. It's only then that you'll be able to take a step back, zoom out, and look at the bigger picture.

Phase Three: We call it the liftoff stage. Pay very close attention to the graph, for over 90% of your wealth will be generated here. In Phase Three, this is where something simply clicks. The liftoff stage usually happens when you figure out how to scale exponentially over time. Instead of building once and selling once, you figure out how to build once and sell a million times. Instead of picking up one customer after another, your focus is shifting to building things that bring in customers on a consistent basis. In Phase Three, you're no longer going after the client; instead, you become a client magnet. Your brand becomes well known, your funnel starts working, your ads have a positive ROI, and network effects are in play where customers recommend you to others through word of mouth. All of this puts you in a very peculiar situation; for the first time in your life, demand is higher than what you can deliver. Figure out how to fill in that demand and you win.

These are the three phases of your financial journey. In order to be able to take advantage of exponential growth, you have to embrace asymmetric risk. Out of everything out there, it is the fastest way to build wealth. You can actually click in the top right corner, as we have a video dedicated to asymmetric risk and how you can apply it. You can't have exponential growth as an employee; you need to incorporate and build a business. So how can you actually do it? How can you brute force your way to one million dollars? Well, you might notice that on the graph we mentioned earlier, there are 10 distinct points labeled with the letters of the alphabet.

Now we're going to walk you through these 10 stages, so you can properly assess where you are in your journey. You start out in the left corner at zero; you have just an idea but don't know where to start. As you can see, it takes a while to get from the corner to the first A point. This is where you make the decision to start. A is the first day you actually get to work on your business. For example, you register a domain name, you put together a website, you list your first product, or somehow announce to the world that you're now doing this. At this stage, you're using money from your own pocket, and it's horrible because you don't have that much. For the sake of this video, let's say you're starting with under a hundred bucks. That's when you use all the technological advances that you can use. Instagram is free, TikTok is free. Hell, if you go to alux.com/cell, you can have an online store with full functionality up and running before the end of the day, thanks to our friends at Shopify, who are kind enough to support our platform.

Next up, you've got the B point. You've been putting things together for a while. There's been some interest, but nothing much has changed. You're learning a lot, but you're kind of losing faith. It's been almost a year since you thought of this idea, but it hasn't moved forward that much. This is the most common point where people quit. The B point is the test to see who is willing to stick with it. You're not making any money, but you are making progress. It is at this point where true determination and discipline breaks through tremendous amounts of rejection. You have to do it the hard way. You'll have to send 100 DMs to get a positive reply. You'll need to post 100 pictures to Instagram to get one order. You'll have to cold call 100 businesses until one of them allows you to pitch and maybe convert. But do it. Do it 100 times, and then do it 100 times more. The B point is where you begin to understand how you can make money the hard way. If it takes 100 pitches to land a client, then do 500 pitches if you must. You can take care of you for the rest of your life. Are you going to quit six months or one year into it? What's the matter with you? Focus! You're here to play the long game. All of that effort will take you to the C point.

It ain't much, but hey, it's honest work. You finally figured out just how much effort it takes to land one client. This is the game changer moment for any business. This is the moment you realize you can do it over and over again. Your product or service delivers; it's just a matter of keeping it going. The C point is the moment of transition between an idea that's being executed into reality. At this point, you're still doing almost all of it yourself, but you are the designer, provider, and take care of shipping and services rendered. You are the tech support and the sales agent. Keep doing it. We know, we know it's hard, but you just have to push through. Things will start looking better. That's when we land at the D point. You're almost two years into this journey, and things are slowly picking up speed. You've got a few satisfied clients, and the business is dripping a little bit of money. You've been super busy for a while now, and this is where you realize you need some help. At the D point, you're getting your first employee. Don't get us wrong; you still work at a hundred percent of your own capacity, but there's someone else working alongside you. Just keep in mind they are not you. They will never be able to work just as hard or as thoroughly as you do, but they do earn their bread and make your life just a bit easier, which allows you to focus on more growth. At this stage of the business, you're still not paying yourself, but you are paying this person. Basically, the money coming in goes to paying for your first employee, but it's okay because you begin to see the growth trajectory.

Because of this newfound help, you're able to steadily increase the income of the business, which gets us to the E point. It might not look like much, but you're actually killing it right now. You found a sustainable and linear way to scale your business, and now you have a way of hiring people. If you look at the graph, you're bringing in at least twice as much money as you did in the previous point. You already know what to do. Of course, you're not going to go hit the club; instead, you will reinvest every single dollar coming in. You're still living way below your means, but this is a game of delayed gratification. You're eating right now so you can eat whatever you want later on. So you hire another person to help you increase sales even more, and guess what? It shows, because now you're at the F point. You've already hired a few people, and the chart is already going up. So you begin to think bigger, and now you're a bit more technical with your business because you know what works and what doesn't. Plus, for the first time, you're making a considerable amount of money compared to anything you've done before.

This is where you usually upgrade your infrastructure and the quality of your products or services. You invest in a new website, you do a redesign of the products, you begin buying raw materials in bulk, because now you have a predictable demand that you can negotiate on costs and increase your profit margin. You're three years into the process, and for the first time, this is when you know exactly what you need to do to grow your business. So you reinvest everything again, make a few changes while still keeping up with the grind, and it shows. You do it over and over again until you hit that G-spot. Okay, we know it's a childish joke, but we're gonna stick with it. Now it's on to the G point. For the first time ever, your wealth is now over one hundred thousand dollars and you feel like you're on top of the world. You've got a good thing going on. You understand the customer, you understand production, but there's one thing missing: wide distribution. You've got a good product that people are willing to pay for. This is the golden spot to be in. This is where you need to take your marketing seriously. You need a sustainable way to reach more people. Take some of the money that you're making and begin experimenting. Be very careful because at this stage, a bunch of smaller companies will come knocking on your door, promising the moon. A good portion of them are artists; they don’t care about your business, they don’t understand your business, they just want your money. The problem is, you don’t know which is which. As it is with everything in life, you’ll have to kiss a few frogs until you find one that turns into a prince. This is usually the moment you have someone taking care of your marketing efforts full time, and boom, it happens.

H Point: Believe it or not, the H point comes with a problem you never expected. The marketing part worked so well that you're now at capacity. At this point, you simply can't keep up with demand. You're now turning down potential orders because you don't have the infrastructure to fulfill all of them. Don't panic, okay? This is an incredible position to find yourself in. Luckily for you, the business is cash flowing. You can use that money to hire more people, bring in some new technology, and automate what you can in order to streamline production even more. At this stage of the business, you have multiple employees taking care of different parts of the business. You have people in production, you have people on sales, and you have people on marketing. And even more importantly, this is where you have a manager in place that keeps the business running from a day-to-day perspective. Your focus is on business growth and on the quality of the product or service that you're offering. Be very careful at this stage because, due to the size of the business and the many people involved, the quality will inevitably suffer. Remember, they don't care about the little things the same way that you do, so quality control is key. It is because of the quality that people are rushing to buy from you. All this effort, all this attention you're getting can now be monetized through the new structure. Flip the switch.

I Point: If you've been able to maintain, but improve the quality of your offering and reach the desired customer audience through effective marketing, your business is now growing exponentially. At this stage, you're likely doing between one and five million dollars in revenue per year, and you're comfortable taking some money out of the company. You've earned it. We know that people might be shocked to hear five million dollars in revenue, but so little money for yourself. These people don’t understand product margins and what it takes to keep people on the payroll, what advertising budgets look like, and how to balance all of it for a positive return on investment. Building a solid business is hard because there are many moving pieces that need to be accounted for. You are paying taxes, you're buying equipment, and almost all of the profit gets reinvested. At the I point, it's the first time you begin to slowly increase the quality of your life. That's why this is the I point. It's about yourself. Until you get to this point, you have to train your brain to focus on growth instead of pleasure. It doesn't mean that you have to suffer, but to be purposeful in your spending. It's a slippery slope that you need to check.

It is at this stage that you can zoom out a bit and look at the business differently. It's at this stage you will apply Pareto's law to business development. Twenty percent of your efforts generate eighty percent of the reward, so stay focused on your efforts on that twenty percent. You look for strategic partnerships or big business deals that will bring in value over longer periods of time. Instead of selling to one customer at a time, you sell in bulk to a wholesaler. Instead of hiring one person, you're outsourcing a segment to a full-on business. It's this type of effort that will get the business to maintain that extraordinary growth momentum, eventually getting you to that J point.

You know what J stands for? J stands for joy. You've officially built a strong enough business that can take care of you and your family for the foreseeable future. At this stage, not only is your business profitable, but you can successfully pay yourself considerable dividends and end-of-year bonuses. The company you own is now valued at over 10 million dollars. You're joyful and proud that you've made it here. Job's successfully done. Now it's a matter of if you want to keep growing the business or maybe sell it off for a lump of cash. This kind of video is incredibly important for those of you who are actually building. We could have easily wrapped it up in a workshop or a seminar and charged people for this kind of info, but we're giving it all away for free. All we ask in return is that you subscribe to our channel and help this community grow so more and more people can benefit from financial education.

Take a good look at the three phases of growth and at the 10 letter points scattered across the line. Where are you right now in your financial journey? Share it with the community in the comments section and save this video for the future. Come back to it once in a while and give us an update on the progress that you've been making. And as for those of you who took the time to watch this Sunday motivational video until the very end, there is a special bonus that we want to share with you.

This is the excitement graph. In your journey, you start out incredibly excited, peaking at the day you decide to launch. Then you figure out how hard it all is and that you've got so much to learn and are missing a bunch of things. Most of you are probably right here in the dip. Please just keep going, okay? We promise you it will get better, and it will get better fast. The surprising thing is that most of the accelerated excitement growth is in Phase Two. That's where the business starts picking up traction and you can correlate your work to actual returns. You'll find that you draw purpose from work and that it's all making you happy. Phase Two is what validates you as an individual. You're indeed able to build something of value.

Although you make eighty percent of your wealth in Phase Three, the excitement slowly flattens out as you build wealth. We already mentioned that the time frame might be different, so adjust to your own life. But we didn't choose the five-year period randomly. We've been in hundreds of meetings with serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and startups, and we've identified this pattern straight across the board. After five years, something needs to change; a new wave needs to come. Five years in, and you no longer find the same business model sexy. You need to upgrade, change, pivot, expand, or grow into a different market to keep yourself interested and entertained.

From that point forward, it's no longer about the money until you realize you're actually pretty good at making money. So you begin to challenge yourself and see just how big you can get it. Since it's only the true aluxers left here anyway, we can share a private and personal perspective with you guys. It happened the same way with Alux. It took roughly four and a half years for us to completely dominate the blogging space, and we started to feel the itch for change. So we shifted into video. This year, we're celebrating five years on YouTube, and we're ready to evolve once again. That's why next Sunday, we're officially launching the Alux app, and we are beyond excited for you to try it. It won't be perfect straight from the launch, but we're packing it with value.

Our hope is that you'll give it a try, and hopefully we can expand Alux to what it can truly be. If alux.com, the website, was Charmander, YouTube the Charmeleon, well, the app is going to be the Charizard version of Alux. We want Alux to evolve and in the process help you to evolve. Let's do it together! Okay, if you're ready for it, write "evolution" in the comments. Let's see how many of you are ready for what's next. Thank you for watching this video, Alex. If you found it valuable, consider subscribing to our channel and joining our awesome community. And if you're still hungry for more, we hand-picked this video for you to watch next or head over to our website for more amazing content. See you tomorrow.