ALUX AWARDS 2023

This is the best of ALUX. It's like our own little award season where we look back through the year together and look at the highlights. As you would expect, we've got 15 categories to go through. We all talk about our favorite ALUX videos, about the biggest events of the year, the content we found interesting from other people, and more. So put on some clean socks and let's get started. Here are the ALUX Awards 2023.

We want to keep it pretty short, so we'll start off with the most viewed video of the year. The video we published in 2023, which you guys watched the most, is "15 Daily Habits to Boost Your Intelligence." It falls quite in line with the focus you guys have on leveling up your intellect pillar. It's a phenomenal video filled with hidden gems on questioning yourself productively and how to have meaningful conversations.

Next, we'll move on to the most controversial video of the year. Now, controversial doesn't necessarily mean the most comments, but the most different opinions on the topic shared in the comments. In 2023, the title of our most controversial goes to a three-part series: "15 Things That Scream, I'm Low Class," "15 Things That Scream, I'm Pretending to Be Upper Class," and "15 Things That Whisper, I'm Upper Class." A lot of you had a lot of feelings about these ones, especially if you watched only one of the three. They're meant to be consumed as a bundle because it gives you a pretty holistic experience on how people perceive other people and how we rank them on social hierarchies. Definitely a must-watch, and you'll pick up a lot of valuable things for yourself.

Our next category is the most valuable video of the year. Now, this was a hard one to pick because we've dropped a lot of gems this year, and we're proud of it. But the video that's actually the most impactful one in terms of understanding how the scale of how other people are moving is… drum roll, please… "Levels of Income Explained." It's not something you really think about, but most of you watching are barely at level 0 to 2. The value is derived from understanding that there are actually six more levels of wealth above you, and other people are operating at those levels. Your wealth will progress one level at a time, and the sooner you discover the existence of these levels, the sooner you'll be able to move up out of everything on this list. If you had to watch or rewatch a video, it should be this one.

Now, moving on to our next category, the most underrated video of the year, and the ALUX award goes to "15 Ways to Bet on Yourself and to Win Big." This video didn't even get to 100,000 viewers, but it's probably one of the most actionable that we've done this year. Maybe the timing was bad and it just slipped on by. But in it, we talk about when to trust your gut and when to go against what everyone else is telling you, as well as some secret tricks that got us into rooms where we were not supposed to be in initially. There was actually another video that was initially handpicked for the most underrated video of the year called "15 Books to Read After You've Made $1 Million." Now, that was a total flop for us with 32,000 views, but in retrospect, it makes sense why the bulk of our audience didn't click the book recommendations. You know, they're still good anyway.

Now on to the next category, the most eye-opening video of the year. This is the video that got everyone looking differently at the businesses on their street. The winner is "The 15 Most Common Money Laundering Businesses." Yep, most candy stores near the city center are just fronts for money laundering. You know better than anyone that somewhere around you, there is a business that's been open for ten years, despite nobody ever going in and rents perpetually going up. The entire list of 15 businesses sheds light on how they do it, and look. Okay, it's a great conversation starter. Go watch it. It's short and to the point.

Now moving on. Every year we go above and beyond to deliver a mammoth video, something completely different than anything else we do. The winner of the longest video of the year category is "The Complete List of Ways to Get Rich: 62 Examples." It's an hour and 5 minutes long of pure distilled value. Nowhere on the internet is there a complete list of all the business models people use to get rich. So we went ahead and did it ourselves for everyone else. This is the only list of its kind that exists online. Sixty-two business models explained how they work and how people use them to get rich with clear examples. And by the way, we still think our channel is underrated when you think about just how much value we offer for free. If you agree, hit the like button for the last time this year; maybe we can make this one the most liked video of 2023. So don't stop liking until we get to 10,000 likes.

Now, from our YouTube video content, we move briefly over to our hidden gem, the ALUX app, where the absolute best ALUX content lives behind a very affordable paywall. The first two of the app categories is the best in ALUX app collections. For those of you who don't know, when you get a subscription to the ALUX app, you have access to a library of almost 1,000 executive coaching sessions. So depending on what kind of guidance you specifically need, you're recommended a couple of collections that include the best actionable advice to achieve that specific goal. And the best ALUX app collection of 2023 is "Money 201: Accelerated Wealth Building (For Real)." Based on your feedback, this was the most valuable and actionable collection that we've released this year. It breaks down exactly what you can do once you've got a decent understanding of how money works, and it leads to measurable results. By the way, all of our collections come with a free lesson, and there are almost 100 collections in the app. Since you're watching this on the 31st of December, just go to alux.com/app and download it, create an account, and open every collection and listen to the first lesson in each one for free. You'll get a lot of value out of that alone.

Outside of these executive coaching sessions, we bring international experts to share with you the most valuable things they've learned in their careers. And we've had some incredible ones this year with many more coming down the pipe. Now, the next category is called the Best ALUX App Expert, and this is the best selling author, Michael E. Gerber. Now, if the name doesn't tell you anything, he's the mind behind the E-Myth Revisited books. The MF alone sold over 5 million copies, and the man is a true legend of entrepreneurship. "Hope Inc." magazine calls him the world's number one small business guru, and we're proud to have him as an ALUX expert, developing a unique coaching program for our community.

Now let's go outside the ALUX umbrella and look outward, shall we? The next category is called the biggest win of the year. Now, although the year was filled with amazing wins movie-wise, both Barbie and Super Mario grossed over $1 billion at the box office. ChatGPT-4 went live. NASA announced the astronauts for the first trip to the moon in over 50 years. Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard in a record-breaking $69 billion takeover. Dave Portnoy bought Barstool back for $1 after selling it to Penn for $551 million earlier in February. But on an individual level, nobody came as close to winning the year as hard as Taylor Swift. She's the absolute biggest winner of the year, breaking every possible record on a musical tour. After the shows, the merch, the movie, Taylor Swift is estimated to earn in 2023… brace yourselves, my friends… $4.1 billion. Billion with a B. This is a human being that's able to bring out people everywhere in the world and sell tickets. And this is one show that's been performed throughout the year around the world. Unbelievable. Say what you want about her as an artist, but nobody even comes close. Not Beyoncé, not Ed Sheeran, not Drake. Nobody. Massive win, girl, the GOAT.

Now, from the biggest win, we move on to the biggest failure of the year. How we really wanted to give this award to Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX and the fiasco that unfolded this year. But technically, the official date of the collapse is in late 2022. A close one was the 99 superconductors' news that could leapfrog humanity 50 years into the future from a battery and technology perspective. But turns out they couldn't replicate the results. Then we had the collapse of the Vibe Bank, a bank where we had some of our own funds. Now, lucky for us, things were sorted out and we got all of our money back. No harm done. The biggest corporate fall is WeWork, which went from being valued at $47 billion a couple of years ago. In October, they officially filed for bankruptcy. Former CEO of WeWork Adam Neumann has already raised money for a new project called Flow, so we'll see about that one.

Now from the business world, we're switching gears to look at you guys, our community. So the next category is called the top three most frequent commenters. Now we want to take an opportunity to say a sincere thank you to those of you who try to get the first comment on our videos. We take pride in being able to respond directly to you, so we learned your names and your stories along the way. The top three most frequent commenters of 2023 go to Trust. No. Gabriella and Hugh. Every video, especially the some motivational ones, we've seen you in the comments, and we couldn't be more proud to have you as a part of our community. Special mentions go to Constantine, LG, Andrew, Becca, and the rest of our Gold Crown members here on YouTube. Please forgive me if I'm saying your name incorrectly. You know, I do try my best with the pronunciations, but we all know I can get it wrong sometimes, right? It's been years since we've embarked on this journey together, and we're beyond humbled to see you guys still getting value from our content. A thousand thank yous, my friends.

Our next category is the best comment of the year. And man, man, there were a lot of good ones. A lot of insights were shared, especially on more sensitive topics like how the rich prepare themselves for war or even personal stories on things poor people always have money for. But the one that stuck with us the most comes from "Just Some Things to Think About," 8515, on our video "How to Win 100 Cheat Codes for Life," who said, “I love this channel! My entire family watches regularly. Every few weeks I have the kids pick an ALUX video and write at least a page on thoughts and inspiration. My youngest was seven when he started. He's almost 11 now. He holds conversations with adults like a man. It's amazing to see.” This right here has been our goal at ALUX: to change the way people think about these topics. To see a parent use it as a guiding light for their own kids really struck a chord with us.

Now, the last three categories are about our own content consumption. The first of these categories is the best thing we've learned this year. We learned that in order for ALUX to be worth $1 billion and live up to that future billionaire trademark, we need to level up across the board. So we're making a massive investment into the company and branding starting next year. We are poaching talent from big corporations and investing everything into the free and paid products that we are offering. Because look, once the fridge is full, you've got one of two choices: one, you either kick back and relax, or two, you shoot for the freaking stars. And, you know, we've never really been the type to fully relax. So let's do this road to a billion. Here we go.

Now, the best video that we've watched this year. God, where do we even start? Since we're in the content business ourselves, we consume insane quantities of content across our team. We listen to hundreds of podcasts. We have our own favorite creators. And once in a while, we come across videos like this one that just make us happier. But if we had to only pick one video that's impacted us the most this year, it would probably be the following: Noah Kagan's interview with Paul Awful, the founder of Kinko's, on how he turned $5,000 into $2.6 billion. And it's not because of the money, but because of this line right here: it forever changed the way that we think about parenting. The man drops gem after gem in that interview. For those who have the right ears to hear what he's saying, go watch it. We're probably going to rewatch it when we come back to the office ourselves.

Now, the last category of this video is the best book we've read this year. And okay, look, we want to preface this by saying we think this was the year of bad books. We started 31 books and we only finished 23 this year. And honestly, most of them feel like they should have been a blog post. We simply just were not going to recommend them to anyone. We also wrote a bunch of technical books on how to structure the company, how to organize it, to be a sellable asset down the line, how to optimize processes and attract talent. But nothing stands out as truly revolutionary. The only books that we found ourselves buying more than one copy and gifting to friends and business associates are "100 Million Offers" and "100 Million Leads" by fellow entrepreneur Alex Hormozi. Alex has absolutely crushed it this year. The books are simple, straightforward, and we dig him as a business mind, getting their portfolio of companies to 200 million plus in revenue. Alex, being the same age as us, made us recalibrate our focus. The launch event for "100 Million Leads" was a masterclass in marketing, so we tip our hats to you, our friend. Congrats on all your success. If you're watching, everyone else, go get his books; they're $1 on Kindle and you can see why they're at the top of our book recommendation list for 2023.

And that was it for this year's ALUX Awards. Before we end, we do have one final question for you in 2023: What was your favorite video this year? Let us know in the comments. And since this is the last video for the year, we couldn't leave you without a bonus and a sneak peek for what's coming. So here's the scoop: The ALUX app 2.0 drops in one week. It'll have a one of a kind life progress tracking mechanism behind it. We just finished building five wells in the poorest country in the world, and we're going to name them after five ALUX App subscribers. We finally got a new jingle, and a full feel-good song is about to drop. In 2024, we are redesigning the way our videos look and feel. We're about to introduce the first ALUX Scott mascot, and for the first time, ALUX is going multilingual, where our content will be translated and adjusted for five new geographies. So look, there's a lot of incredible things waiting ahead. Let's enjoy some time with our families because we're coming back swinging in the New Year. If you're going to be here in 2024, write the number 24 in the comments. Let's see how many of you will be around starting tomorrow. Happy New Year, ALUX. Cheers to you.