My advice: How to become successful in life and business

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So as you can see from the background, I'm here in Malibu. One of the questions I get asked so often is, "What sort of suggestions do you have for me? What sort of advice do you have for me? What tips can you give me?" It's such a broad question that I get asked probably like 10 times a day. So instead of just answering everybody individually with the same thing, I'm just going to make a video addressing it. And yes, I will give you the tips—just for a second—kidding!

But seriously though, to answer all of your questions, this is my advice, this is my suggestion, and this is my recommendation. First off, it's so important that you save as much money as you can. In my personal opinion, it really doesn't matter how much you make; it's how much you save. The person earning $100,000 but saving $50,000 of it is a lot richer than the person who's earning $300,000 per year and spending $300,000 per year. It's so important to save as much money as you can, especially when you're young. If you invest it, that money is going to be growing exponentially by the time you're a lot older.

So save money! Just don't spend it on wasteful things. You don't have to live like a hermit, staying home all the time because you don't want to spend money. I'm not saying that, but just don't spend money on stupid things. Just don't go out to the bar and drop like 80 bucks on drinks; that's just stupid—don't do that! Spend your money wisely on things that really add value and really benefit your life in ways that you enjoy.

It's a stupid bottle service mentality—like don't go out and buy bottle service just because you can. Just because you have the money to buy something doesn't mean you should or that it's the right thing to do. So that's the first thing: save as much money as you can.

My next piece of advice is for people getting into the real estate industry, or really any business owner in general. When you're first starting, work with absolutely anybody and everybody. It doesn't matter who it is; it doesn't matter how big the deal is or how small the deal is. Work with absolutely everybody in the beginning. Even if they're not good clients, every single client in the beginning is just going to be the best learning experience for you.

Even if it's a really shitty small deal with a really difficult client, you're going to be learning so much from that deal and that client that it's going to make it all worthwhile. The big clients and the big deals that are really easy? Sure, those are great; we all want to have those clients. But at the end of the day, you need to learn how to work with everybody, and that's so important. So work with the small deals, the big deals, the easy clients, the difficult clients—absolutely everybody will be a good source of business and will just be a good learning experience overall.

Another piece of advice that I recommend is surrounding yourself with really positive, smart people that just add value and diversity to your life. For instance, the people I work with day-to-day make five times the amount of money that I make, and they do five times the amount of deals that I make. I'm talking about people who are making millions of dollars per year that I am surrounded with. I work with them 5 to 6 days per week. These are the people that I'm in closest contact with, that I'm with from like 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. or later, Monday through Saturday, for the most part.

I surround myself with really smart, knowledgeable, diverse people that I can learn and grow from. I'm not surrounding myself with bums who just sit at home and play video games all day. I'm surrounding myself with people who are really doing something with their life, and they just bring a wealth of information to the table. It's also interesting to see how other people work, because there are a million ways to make a million dollars. And that's what it really comes down to; there's no right or wrong way—it's just whatever works for you.

So I like to pick up tips and tricks from everyone around me and inform my own identity of what works best for me. Because what works best for me may not work the best for you. You may have your own way of selling things, your own way of doing business. It's not necessarily a wrong way; it's just different from mine. It doesn't necessarily work better or worse; it's just different than mine.

So I like to be around as many people as possible, learning from as many people as possible, and I can pick up the things I like the best from them and incorporate that into my own style. The other thing I recommend is not to let people get to you, and don't let people discourage you. At the same time, I mean still be open to criticism, because there are people that are coming from a great place who really care about you and want you to improve.

So be open to criticism, but don't let people discourage you or try to let their own insecurities impact you. If they get jealous or if they're worried that you're going to succeed more in places that they just couldn't, don't let people get to you. But at the same time, you should still be open to criticism. Now, I'm talking about constructive criticism.

There have been a few comments on my channel that are honest, constructive criticism. One of them is me swearing in my videos. I've got about two comments that really stood out because they were really well-worded; they were constructive criticism, and they were coming from a really healthy place and mindset. I took those comments to heart. It kind of makes sense to me that some of the stuff I say isn't really family-friendly because I swear in my videos, and it's coming from a place of passion and enthusiasm where I don't really think about filtering myself and thinking about what I say. It's more about just what comes to mind at the time that I say it. I just tend to speak from the heart, and that includes swearing sometimes.

So for me, hearing that comment was great because it's something for me to consider. I won't necessarily stop swearing in my videos, but it's something for me to keep in mind depending on the type of audience I want to grow. At this time, I'm going to be swearing in my videos just because I don't feel like I want to edit myself or think about what I'm going to have to say in advance so I don't swear. So as of right now, I'm going to be swearing in my videos.

Maybe in the future, I won't swear as much, but as of right now, I'm swearing, and it just—I don't know, that's me. And I've made this channel just for what I really want to do and for my beliefs, so I'm going to swear. Same thing for you guys though—the bigger picture: be open to criticism, don't get defensive and be like "no, no, no, criticism, that's negative, negative, negative." Just be open to if someone has an honest criticism coming from a very healthy place in a way that you can improve.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the criticism like "Bro, your audio sucks!" "What the f*** are you doing?" I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about honest, constructive criticism that you can take to heart—that is something for you to consider that might really benefit you and improve yourself. That's the criticism I'm talking about here.

Another one is trust yourself and trust your intuition, and I can't tell you guys this enough. Sometimes I think we don't trust our intuition just based out of fear and insecurity. If you have a gut feeling about something that you know you should be doing, that you really want to do, that it's just your intuition is telling you, everything is telling you, just do it!

Don't let fear or insecurity get to you and have that delay what you really want to do. Don't be afraid of it! That's I guess really what I'm getting at here. If you have an intuition to do something, usually that's right, and you shouldn't ignore it. So go ahead! If you feel like you should be doing something, chances are you should be doing that, and don't let fear or insecurity get in the way of you doing that thing.

And I think that goes along the same lines as if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That's another thing. If you see an opportunity that comes up that just seems way too good to be true, just do your research on it. There are no—like, I don't believe in any of these "make $7,000 a month at home on your computer doing surveys." I don't believe in any of that. I don't think there's any such thing as a get-rich-quick scheme.

I do think that there are opportunities that you can seize, but none of these things are going to come easy. None of these things are going to be simple. These are going to be things that not a lot of other people are doing, that maybe you have an opportunity to do something that’s trusting your intuition when you see an opportunity that's there that you should be going and taking it, and not letting fear hold you back.

Again, it's not these get-rich-quick schemes or any of these deals that sound too good to be true. You've just got to be smart about it. Do your due diligence on something that you want to be doing and just don't go into it blindly trusting somebody because they claim that you can do something. You've got to make the decision for yourself and find out on your own that it's a good thing to do, and not just trust people blindly—myself included, by the way! I'm certainly not exempt from that.

Everything I say, you can take my advice, you can listen to it, but I still recommend you do your own research and you come up with what works best for you. You don't have to listen to me. You can just take my advice, listen to it, acknowledge it, and then do whatever you want with it. That's what I like.

I think my voice is actually starting to go out here, so I don't know why. But anyway, okay! So the next thing: always be expanding. Always be doing things to improve yourself, whether it's reading a book, finding great people to surround yourself with, reading material on a forum, watching YouTube videos—just do something to better yourself. Just don't sit around all day doing nothing. You want to at least be doing something every single day to improve.

There's a book called The Compound Effect that I have in the link below. I love this book because the principle is so simple behind it. If you just do 1% better every single day, and you continue doing 1% better than the last day every single day, in one year you're going to be 365% better than you were the year prior. It's just such a simple thing to do, and it's so true.

Just every day try to do slightly better than the day before and just build on the day before. Learn from any mistakes you made, learn from anything you can improve on, and every single day you will get better! It just builds on itself. So always be improving.

You also really got to do this consistently. It's like going to the gym: if you go to the gym one day, you can't expect to be jacked the next day. It just doesn't work like that. It takes consistency, and that's the same thing with building a business, or making money, or really just being successful at anything. It just takes a lot of consistency.

It's not something that you can do overnight. It's something that you can do over a year, over two years, over 10 years. It's just not something you can do overnight or within a week. So just don't get discouraged if you start doing something for a few months and you just don't see the results quite yet, because it takes time. So do it consistently and just have faith in the process rather than just the end result because the end result will happen. You'll eventually get there, but it takes time.

So just do things consistently. I also think it's so important not to be afraid to help other people. I think some people are so afraid of giving others what they've learned; there's just such a stupid mentality behind not sharing what you know because you're just afraid someone else is going to take over your business, or they're going to make more money than you, or they're going to make you look bad.

Just share what you know, help other people, and I think by doing that, it just makes your life so much better. I've noticed, at least with me, from starting this channel, I have just been a happier person. I've really enjoyed all of this. Just seeing the comments and seeing that I'm able to inspire other people brings my brain to another consciousness of thinking. As hocus pocus as it sounds, I benefit a lot from this too because I get a lot of enjoyment from helping other people in a way that I just didn't see when I was younger that I do see now. I've just really enjoyed it.

By doing so, I've been getting more creative, and I have more ideas. My business is picking up; there are so many benefits to helping other people than just me spending time ranting to a camera. I recommend you all do that. If you guys know something that you want to share with other people, share it! Don't be afraid to hoard all the information for yourself, because there's more than enough money to go around.

I think we all do this when we're ready. I think we all hit a certain time where we're ready to give back. And that's me now. 21-year-old me honestly couldn't have given a f*** about giving back. 21-year-old me was all about, like, "I notice money, selling real estate, investing." And I'm at the point now where I just enjoy giving back and helping other people, and that gives me the same enjoyment as I get from closing a deal.

So it's not only like I'm closing deals and I'm getting money and I'm making all this, but I also go home and I read these comments, and it just pumps me up even more. So like I'm getting excited at work, I'm happy at work, I'm closing deals, I'm making money. And then I go home and I see the impact I'm having on other people, and it's like I go to bed at night just so happy and so fulfilled.

It even has an impact the next day because the next day, I wake up, and I go to work, and I'm a happier person. I really enjoy what I'm doing, and it's just this upward trend of happiness and success. That's why I think giving back is just so important. So go ahead, if you have something you know that you've learned, share it with other people. Don't be afraid to tell people about it; don't hoard the information. It's more worthwhile for all of us to succeed.

There's a term that it's like "Rising waters raise all ships" or something like that. I don't know if I got that right, but anyway, you guys get the idea. I think if we all elevate, we all get to the same place. It helps out all of us—so that's my belief.

Anyway, I ranted for long enough. So anyway, you guys, thank you so much for watching my videos! It really means so much to me for everybody that's subscribed, that's watched, that's commented, that everybody—even the trolls! I've got a few troll comments; I appreciate you guys still clicking on my videos, still watching, and still commenting. That's still cool for me to see you guys do that.

So anyway, I appreciate everybody. Thank you again for watching! If you're not already subscribed, I'm doing my best to do two videos a week. I think I'm going to be able to keep it up—sometimes three! So I'm definitely going to keep this going sure as much as I can.

Thank you again for watching! Add me on Snapchat, by the way, if you haven't already. I post a lot on Snapchat. And uh, yeah, that's it!

Till next time...

Swim, I wrote you but you still ain't calling. I left myself, my P, and my home phone at the bottom. I sent two letters back in autumn; you must not have got 'em. Probably was a problem at the post office or something. Sometimes scribble is too sloppy when I... But anyway, what's up man? Has a daughter. My girlfriend's... I'm about to be a father! If I had a daughter, what I'm gonna call her? I'mma name her Bonnie.