How Bad Do You Want It: Eric Thomas on Hunger, Sacrifice, and Real Success

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. It's Wednesday, middle of the week, and I wanted to be able to give you, again, one of my personal mentors, some real good motivation today. And I can't think of anybody better than Eric Thomas. I just bought his book recently, his recent book, UOU. And I'll tell you what, I've been listening to Eric Thomas for a long time now. He is a master at motivation and inspiration. But at the end of the day, he is also the epitome of hard work, of mindset, of success, and accomplishment, personal accomplishment. He reminds me of many of my mentors like Les Brown and others that set the example and lead the way. And I'm not going to spend any more time setting this up, but if you haven't heard of Eric Thomas, I can't think of a better example of a topic to have you listen to than this one I'm going to play you for today. because when you want success bad enough, you'll do whatever it takes. So I hope you enjoy. Have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. These are principles that have stood the test of time. Principles that have stood the test of time. And if you do what I'm about to tell you right now, you will be able to accomplish whatever you want to academically, financially, relationally, whatever. So three things. All right, I'm going to tell you this story. I got to get out of here. The first one is when I first said I wanted to make six figures, my boy Marcus Flowers, who's probably making seven figures right now, he came to LA too. He was with us in LA. You see all the videos with all the stars. Those are his cars they're driving around in You see the houses that the rappers those are his houses in Atlanta that he owns and they come in and play on So he making seven He taught me how to make money This is the first thing he came He told me a story And the story is about, you guys have probably heard about this before. It was a young man who, you know, he wanted to make a lot of money. And so he went to this guru, right? And he told the guru, you know, I want to be on the same level you are. And so the guru said, if you want to be on the same level I'm on, I'll meet you tomorrow at the beach at 4 a.m. He liked the beach. I said, I want to make money. I don't want to swim. Guru said, if you want to make money, I'll meet you tomorrow. 4 a.m. So the young man got there at 4 a.m. He already did rock and roll, got on a suit. He should have wore shorts. The old man grabs his hand and said, how bad do you want to be successful? He said, real bad. He said, walk on out in the water. So he walks out into the water. Watch this. When he walks out into the water, it goes waist deep. So he's like, this guy crazy. Adrian, he's like, I want to make money. He got me out here swimming. I didn't ask to be a lifeguard. I want to make money. So he said, come on a little further. Walked out a little further. Then he had it right around this area, the shoulder area. So this old man crazy. He's making money, but he crazy. He said, come on out a little further. Came out a little further. Was right at his mouth. My man like, I'm about to go back in here. This guy is mine. So the old man said, I thought you said you wanted to be successful. He said, I do. He said, walk a little further. He came, dropped his head in, held him down, hold him down. My man getting scratching, holding him down. I got you. I know you brushed it out, but I got you. He had him held down. I need you for an illustration. He had him held down just before my man was about to pass out. He raised him up. He said, I got a question for you. Somebody answered the question for me. He said, when you were underwater, what did you want to do? Lee I looking for a different word though What that word He said I wanted to breathe He told the guy he said when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe then you'll be successful. I don't know how many of y'all got asthma in here today, but if you ever had an asthma attack before, you short of breath, S-O-B, shortness of breath, you wheezing. The only thing you're trying to do is get some air. You don't care about no basketball game. You don't care what's on TV. You don't care about nobody calling you. You don't care about a party. The only thing you care about when you're trying to breathe is to get some fresh air. That's it. And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful, as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. And I'm here to tell you, number one, that most of you say you want to be successful, but you don't want it bad. You just kind of want it. You don't want it badder than you want to party. You don't want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don't want success as much as you want to sleep. Some of you love sleep more than you love success. And I'm here to tell you today, if you're going to be successful, you've got to be willing to give up sleep. You've got to be willing to work off for three hours of sleep, two hours. If you really want to be successful, some days you will have to stay up three days in a row. because if you go to sleep, you might miss the opportunity to be successful. That's how bad you got to want it. You got to go days without, listen to me, you got to want to be successful so bad that you forget to eat. Beyonce said once she was on the set doing her thing, three days had gone by, she forgot she didn't eat because she was engaged. I'll never forget when 50 Cent was doing this movie, I did a little research on 50, and 50 Cent said that when he wasn doing the movie he was doing a soundtrack And they said when do you sleep 50 Sleep he said sleep Sleep is for those people who are broke I don't sleep. He said, I got an opportunity to make a dream become a reality. Football players, how many football players? I got anybody like football in here? Raise your hand. Anybody like football? Emmett Smith. I used to be a Cowboy fan before they did my boy Tom Landry role. I used to be a Cowboy fan. And watch this. There was a commercial. Emmitt Smith had won his first Super Bowl, and he had this commercial when he was lifting weights. I don't know if you saw the commercial when he was lifting, and he said, Emmitt said, you know what? I won the Super Bowl, so I can rest now. He was doing his bench press. So he said, I won the Super Bowl, so I can rest now. So he throws up about 325, boom, and he rests for about two seconds. boom boom boom you see that he'd already won a super bowl he said i think i'm gonna take a rest and he rests for how long one second most of you won't be successful because when you're studying and you get tired you quit and i'm here to tell you today if you got somebody came to my office the other day crying i said look don't cry to give up cry to keep going don't cry to quit You already in pain. You already hurt. Get a reward from it. Don't go to sleep until you succeed. Listen to me. I'm here to tell you today that you can come here. You can jump up. You can do flips. You can be excited when we give away money. But listen to me. You'll never be successful until I don't have to give you a dime to do what you do. You won't be successful until you say, I don't need that money. Because I got it in here. Transcription by CastingWords