How To Become Unrecognizable In 2026 | Ep 331

Here's the truth. There are eight things that you might be doing right now that would make 226 the worst year of real life, but those people have no idea that they're actually doing. I started from zero and built a multi-million dollar company by doing the exact opposite of what I'm about to tell you guys. So if you want to ruin 2026, keep doing those eight things. Let's get into it. Number one, make decisions permanent. Okay, the fastest way to stay stuck forever is to believe that every choice that you make is a forever decision. I used to think that keeping options open was smart. It is not. It's expensive. Every maybe that you have is like, it's this tax on your attention. So it's like, I think about it like every open loop is leaking more attention and your attention is more valuable than anything. I can tell you this because I am the queen of open loops. I'll give you a really specific example. I had somebody that was on the team who I had really liked having on the team. I got along with this person super well. They were on the team for years and then it was like slowly over time like a frog boil. That person wasn't a fit for the team with where the company was going and how the company had grown and I could tell that person was really struggling. And I remember saying to myself, I was like, I just have to get through Q4 every day. It was all I thought about every time I saw that person, I felt awkward because like I knew what I need to do. It cost me like four months of my attention. And as soon as I made that switch and it was like the end of the quarter, I finally made the move and I had parted ways with that person. I was like, I can't believe I took this long to do it because I have all this attention back. And then I saw I was like, oh my gosh, I wasn't driving forward some of these huge initiatives in my company that were really important to our growth. And I told my team, I had literally said this to them last year. I said, I set us back by an entire quarter by doing this. I just want to acknowledge that. So if I wanted to keep ruining my life, this is exactly how I would do it. I would delay firing somebody for six months because what if I'm wrong? What if they change? What if it's actually my fault? I would refuse to kill products because we've already invested so much in them. Well, we spent all this money and we have those time. We hire these people for it. We should keep doing it. Essentially, I would keep every door open, commit to nothing, and move on to nothing. Now, here's what happens when you do this in decision compounds into sunk cost. Then your best people will leave you because you won't make the call. Now, the real cost is that you end up with a mediocre team because they don't believe in a leader that can't make decisions or a mediocre relationship because somebody doesn't abuse somebody who isn't decisive in a relationship for their life. And you have this huge decision debt that eventually forces your hand anyways, but later when it's more expensive and you get less of what you want and more of what you don't want, the truth is most decisions are reversible, like most decisions in life. The cost of making the wrong call is almost always lower than the cost of making none at all. You want to treat decisions like experiments, not permanent, irrevocable vows that you have made in your life. Now, this applies to all decisions, not just business decisions. I think I tried to use some examples about relationships, which leads me into this number two. Keep the wrong friendships. Okay. Everybody talks about finding your group, finding your tribe, finding your people, but nobody warns you that growing as a person also means that you outgrow a lot of the people that you are friends with right now. I used to have friends that would roll their eyes when I talked about better myself. I remember I literally stopped talking about my own personal growth, my life, trying to get better business, trying to get healthier because all of my friends, when I would say it, they would roll their eyes, they would kind of talk, they would say step behind my back. What it led to me doing is that I just got quiet. And if anything, I thought that me being quiet meant that I was being humble, but here's what I did not realize. I was actually letting their ceiling become my floor. They were the people that were keeping me stuck. If you've ever heard of the law of the thermostat, but essentially, if you want to move up in life, then you need to move your thermostat. Well, who sets the thermostat? It's you plus the people around you. I can tell you guys this. This is something that the first time I ever had to do it was when I decided I wasn't going to drink anymore. I was going to lose weight and I was going to really try and stop being a buff in my life. I was like, okay, I'm going to stop being a dead. And so I said, I can't hang out with deads, right? I don't think I can do this because they're not happy for me to better my life and be healthy and be happy and achieve things that they thought it was like lame and they were like, why don't you come out and drink and do drugs? Why should you smoke you? Weed me more and like, I get that and that's totally fine, but it didn't work for me anymore. If I wanted to keep ruining my life, this is exactly how I would do it. I would downplay my wins around certain people to keep them comfortable. I would avoid talking about my business because they wouldn't get it. And I would schedule time with people who make me feel like it about myself for wanting more for my life. Now, here's the problem with you doing this. You editing yourself to fit old versions of your life. It takes away the space for your newer, better version to arise. And so it's like, it's one of the saddest things in life. I'll be honest with you. It really sucks, but it's the truth. Your pure group determines your trajectory more than your talent. So if you have to shrink yourself to fit in, you are in the wrong room and you need to reconsider. And again, this doesn't mean that they're bad people. It just means that they might be a bad fit for you right now. It's so much easier to get what you want when you surround yourself with people who already have it. Now, once you find those people that already have it, you want to make sure that you invest all your time in that and that leads me to my third point is avoid being the villain. So I thought when I got into business that being a good leader meant that nobody would ever be upset with me. So far wrong. Being a good leader means that the right people are upset with you at the right time. The same goes for being a good friend, being a good parent, being a good spouse. There were so many times in the beginning of my career where I would avoid giving people feedback, right? Because I was trying to protect their feelings. Two things happen. One, they're not able to correct the behavior. And so then I have to go correct it later or they have to find out by fail. Second thing that happens is then they don't trust me because then when inevitably something doesn't work or fails or there's something that I've already identified, it's like, so do you not tell me the truth or you not be honest with me? And so what I realized in time is I was like, Oh, being a good leader means that sometimes you say things that feel bad in the moment. Being a good spouse means that sometimes you say things that feel bad in the moment. Being a good friend means that sometimes you say things that are feel bad in the moment. There's in many times in my marriage when I've spoken my husband and I've said, Hey, I know you want to do this thing. I want to be really honest with you. I think it's going to take you further from your long term goals, not closer to them. Here's why. Now does he like me saying that in the moment? Does he like me? You know, putting down even idea he has or something he wants to do with somebody? No, but he trusts me when I say I think that that's not going to get you to their long term goal. So if I wanted to keep ruining my life, this is exactly how I do it. I would soften the feedback until this meeting list or avoid giving it all. I would let people in my company stay in the wrong role because the conversation would be hard for them. I would prioritize being seen as the nice friend and the nice wife over being a great and enduring effective one. This is the trap when you avoid being the villain. You sacrifice standards to avoid discomfort. And when that happens in the workplace, high performers leave because you tolerate the low performers in a relationship. You end up building resentment because that person sees that you're not investing their long term and then you resent them because you feel like you can't talk to them. And in friendships, you end up drifting apart because you have all these unspoken words that you've never said to this person. And then you have used your own respect trying to keep everybody else happy. The reality is being clear is kind. I remember hearing that when I was like 17. I was like, that sounds so dumb. But it's so true being clear is kind. It's like now I'm like, if I could just, tell people, just be clear of people. Like that's what's kind. Avoiding a hard conversations does not protect people. It actually robs them of the truth that they need to grow. Number four is collect identities. I did not realize how heavy my old identity was until I tried to get higher and get above it. And then I realized what was holding me down. I once wanted to be the person who could do it all. And then I ended up being the person that couldn't do anything well. I was stressed about. And so what I realized in time over and over and over again is like, your identity isn't a foundation. And if anything, I tell people, I don't need to have my identity because it's an anchor. For example, like I've had to make multiple shifts in my identity. When I went from being a personal trainer to starting my company gym launch, I went from being like the fitness girl, the personal trainer, the girl who was like always on top of her food and fitness to like, okay, now I don't do that anymore. Now I don't even dress like that anymore. Now I'm like the boss. And it was more of like people like, oh, she's like an operator. And it was the weirdest transition because the beginning was like, well, I'm just like a fitness chick. And then it was like, wait, I don't need to be that. That's just a story. I'm telling myself, I can be whoever I want. Do I even want to be a fitness check anymore? No, I actually never want to be a fitness check. I just wanted to not be fat. What the am I doing anyways? Right. And then, you know, I would say in the last few years, it went from being like, oh, that's the gym girl, right? Like she owns that gym company to like, okay, now it's the business, the operations, the CEO girl, right? And then that right there, if I said, oh, that's my new identity, I'm the operation CEO tick that runs that acquisition company, whatever you want to call it. If I said that's my new identity, it would stop me from the next thing I need to do. And I can tell you, 2026 is not going to look like 2025 for me. So if I wanted to keep ruining my life, that's exactly how I would do it. I would refuse to let go of any identity that made me valuable before. And then I would become this like very dull Swiss army knife, which is like mediocre, everything, an excellent, absolutely nothing. When you keep collecting identities, instead of letting the old one style, you start to spread yourself across too many selves. And what it does, it creates this like identity whiplash. It's like confusing for people. They're like, what are they all about? What do they actually do? And you get zero depth and anything because you won't let go. But you have to let go of the old to make room for the new. And you can't be afraid of starting at zero again. Number five, let your emotions guide you. If it feels uncomfortable, it's probably not your intuition. It is your avoidance. And I used to think that my gut was smart. And it turned out that most of the time, my gut wanted to do the most comfortable thing possible. And that didn't mean it was the thing that was aligned with my values. Didn't mean it was a thing that was going to get me towards my goals. Didn't mean it was a thing that was going to make me have have the best life. It just meant it was like the thing that felt the best in the moment. So I'll give you a good example. I will look at my calendar with my commitments and I will feel anxious. Now why is that? Because I'll have a lot of high stakes things in a period of seven days. And I'll look at it and my brain will be like, oh my gosh, we should change something. This feel, it doesn't feel but it feels uncomfortable when I'm looking at it, feels uncomfortable thinking about it, feels like all these things. And it's weird because like I could have just planned that a week ago, but all of a sudden the day before it's happening, it's like suddenly I'm starting to feel like I should change something about this. And this happens all the time. What I've realized is like because I'm raising my capacity ceiling, I'm actually accomplishing the things that I want to accomplish. It's just that they don't always feel amazing in the moment. So something I've been very good at is those harder things on my calendar. Those are the things that are the most non-negotiable to move. I would feel bored or it feel anxious. I would change the strategy or I would assume it's the wrong move. I would feel an inspired, then I would blow up my plan and I would give my mood a seat at the table when making decisions and moves that could get me to my 10-year goals. When you let your emotions and your mood, guide your strategy, you optimize for feeling good today instead getting the results you want tomorrow. And so remember like bored um anxiety frustration anger, those are usually the price we have to pay for the success we want. And discomfort means that we're growing. And so you don't want to confuse these signals like we have this stigma that if it feels bad it is bad but a lot of times if it feels bad it's healthy. Number six is outsource your belief validation is overrated. Most great ideas start their life getting laughed at out the room. Early on when I would have ideas in my company, I would like test ideas in the room to see if people got excited. And if they didn't get excited at my idea, I would literally just like kill the idea. I was like get like nobody likes it and always excited about it. What I was doing is I was actually abdicating my own judgment to people who didn't have the context I had. And so most breakthrough ideas as I realized most of them sound stupid at first. Most of the best things I have done did not start with somebody supporting me. About two years ago in my business, I went to my team and I said I think that based on where we're at right now, the demand we have for the business, everything we're doing, I think the next thing that makes sense for us to do is to do some sort of in person events with people that want to engage with acquisition.com. And when I went to my team and I said this, I would say that about 60% of people disagreed with me and 40% of people agreed with me. And I remember in that moment recognizing and coming to that room, knowing that I needed to be ready for this because I didn't think everyone was going to agree with me. And the hardest process or the hardest part about getting this off the ground was not the logistics of it. It wasn't anything. It was knowing that there's a certain amount of people that they're not going to believe it totally see it. And that my job as the leader with more context and understanding and stake in the business than anybody is to make the best decisions for the business. And so in that moment, I had to say I understand that like 60% of my people don't think this was like the best idea and think it sounds like a little far from left field. But I also know this was part of my vision of what I saw when I started this four years ago. And it feels out of left field because I haven't talked about it since then because we've been busy doing this other thing. And so I said, you know what? It's reasonable that other people wouldn't applaud this idea. If I had the same context they had, I probably wouldn't either. And so I said, cool, I understand. We're going to disagree and commit to doing it with me anyways. And the team did. And it ended up being a huge success. So ended up being even better than I thought it could have been. But nobody thought that when I presented it. I would host the idea, wait for comments from people, let that determine if I was going to build it. I would essentially pitch the vision, read the room, edit based on who looked bored and who looked like they like it. So when you outsource your decision to other people's reactions, you essentially are giving veto power to people who do not even have your vision or context. So what happens is you get like a water down strategy. It keeps you away from some of the biggest bets you could make and you end up being unable to build anything that people don't already understand. If you want to do something that nobody's ever done, do you think anybody's going to understand? You have to trust your own judgment sometimes. External validation is data. It doesn't mean that it makes the decision. And I think most of the time, the best moves look kind of crazy until they actually work. Number seven, optimize for feeling productive. Busy is not the same as effective. Exhaustion is not evidence of value. I used to wear my full calendar, like booked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. like it was a badge of honor. Then I realized that I was solving everybody else's problems to avoid maybe like two hard decisions that I could make myself. What I did is I looked at my calendar and I said, what on here is a reaction to somebody else's problems rather than proactively solving my own and solving the ones that I know I need to work on. And that changed so much of how I looked at my time. Because what I realized is that there was a lot that I was doing to help avoid decisions that I needed to make of like there were people that I looked at and I was like, they added five hours to my calendar each week for the last month. Oh, that's because they can't actually do their job. And I've avoided the decision of finding somebody to be their boss. And so I realized that I was letting all these things that other people wanted for me to essentially come in and steal my time. And then what it also did is that every time I had like a really hard thing that I had to do that was like truly my responsibility. I said, oh, well, I have to help them first over here. They really need this. It's important. She felt like that before. Like it's really important though. If I don't do it, I'll be a bad friend. I'll be a bad boss. I'll be a bad the flight. That's you need to get your done first. I would respond to every slack message within five minutes. I would take every meeting request, reorganize the Google Drive, recolor code my calendar, and each day exhausted from taking all these calls that I never intended to take from doing other people's job and not closing out anything that mattered for me. And I would confuse that motion with progress and I would confuse the inputs with outputs. I used to mistake exhaustion for value creation. And the cost is that you get incredibly exhausted with fucking nothing to show for it. And your team and everybody around you, because you probably do with your friends and family too, learn this. You're available for everything. So you also now, congratulations have become the bottleneck for nothing important at all, which is a terrible place to be. So instead, what you want to do is protect your attention like it is more valuable than money because it is more valuable than money. You cannot make money without attention. You need to focus on only what you can do and only what you have set out to do and decided that you want to do. The last one, which is keep all options open. Freedom doesn't come from having a dozen doors open. It comes from walking through one with complete conviction and then locking the door behind you. The thing is, I used to actually think that optionality was well, but it's not commitment is because every door is a leak to your attention. See the theme? I'll give you an example of this. Before I met my husband, I had different relationships. I remember like, I'm dating somebody, but if I didn't know if I was going to be able to get married to them, I'd be dating them. But it's like, there's always this like back door. Like if somebody else would text me if an ex would come into town, you're just like, hmm, I don't know. Like I have options. And I remember somebody asked me, they said like, what was the biggest difference that you noticed for yourself after you got married? And I said, the biggest thing I noticed is that I got so much more attention back because all of a sudden, I wasn't thinking about like in my with this person forever, who am I going to have kids with? Am I going to settle down? Am I going to get married? Is this the right person for me? It was just like, I'm committed. And if anybody texts me, anybody asks me if the answer is no. The door is closed. And I was like, actually, I just got so much time back. I would explore 12 opportunities instead of executing one. And I would treat focus like it was a limitation rather than a force multiplier on achieving my goals and getting what I wanted in life. You see, the thing is when you keep all your options open, you don't go deep enough to compound and even find out if one of the options that you already have is the right option for you. And so you end up with no competitive mode, no expertise in anything, no deep relationships. And your year five looks like a year one depth beats breath mastery comes from commitment, not from exploration. So once you found the thing, you go all in, you have to explore to find it. But once you do, you cut off the exploration. So you pick one thing and you go off in now that you know how she ruined 2026 by repeating the same mistakes. Let's flip it completely because there is a reason that some people turn the same 12 months into very impressive results while other people leave the same year over and over again. So if you want to level up and you want to have a good 2026, go ahead and watch my video on the five principles that will actually make 2026 your best year yet.