How Using “Dark Motivation” Made Me Rich

anything you do in your life is going to be hard. And this teacher goes, you see, that's what happens when you have a kid that young. The truth is 99% of what you see online about how to actually make it in life, how to actually [music] succeed, is just And I can also tell you that categorically as someone who is around all the people that spew this rhetoric, I have literally just me and my mom. My biological father was an alcoholic. When he started drinking, he got a bit physical. If you look online, what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of people talking about find something you love and you'll never work another day in your life. People are going to make everything seem so airy, fairy, and nice. And I hate to break it to you, but the world is not like that. And if you actually want to get ahead in life, you need a bit of dark motivation. And I also don't know why we villainize that so much. So, I always say that you do things out of inspiration or desperation. And the one caveat before I get on to the rest of this video to prove categorically that you shouldn't run away from your darkness. you should actually lean into it a little bit more. The one caveat that I do want to say is at first in life you're going to do things out of desperation. You're going to get ahead out of desperation to change your situation and then at a certain point that belief system doesn't serve you anymore and you have to move from desperation to inspiration. And funny enough later on in your career you're going to have to actually get pissed off again and actually tap into some dark motivation. It's funny because it can be one very large contradiction. So getting back to the topic of this video, be hard. anything you do in your life is going to be difficult. And when you have just come back from work and you know that there is work that needs to be done, you have a new side hustle, you have an online business that you're trying, you have maybe an internship at a very promising company, and you have hours and hours and hours of work ahead of you and you've come back from work and you're exhausted and you're drained and you're tired. Do you think that the best way for you to get ahead is think about how you want to make the world a better place? are all of these aspirational very beautiful and noble causes that you should definitely lean into in future causes that should definitely fire you up in future. Do you think that you should run towards pleasure or you should run away from pain? Because if you listen to most people, they think that you should run towards pleasure or ideals or brighter future. I actually in my case and most of the successful people I know, we were running away from pain and we all have it and it could be small moments in your life. I'll tell you one moment in my life. I don't talk about it much anymore, but for some of you guys who have been following my career for a while, you'll know that I am a high school dropout. I dropped out of school at the age of 17. And that was a very difficult thing for me and my mother's relationship. I'm an only child. She's the youngest of seven growing up in the Soviet Union. So, she had an incredibly incredibly difficult life. I have no brothers or sisters. I have literally just me and my mom. My biological father was an alcoholic and unfortunately uh when he started drinking, he got a bit physical. So, I only met him once when I was 8 years old. In all honesty, I can't say that caused me too much trauma or this that because you know when you don't have a father in your life, it's it's to me it's like almost weirder having one. And just to give you a bit of context there, especially where I'm from in the world, I'm from a place called Distan and I grew up there until I was 4 years old. When you're the only child and especially, you know, you're the only son, like your mother means more to you than anything [music] in the world. And for my mother, my education meant more than anything in the world. As it currently stands, there's no piece of paper. There's no documentation I've ever been to school, which is quite ironic considering what I went on to do with the rest of my career. But that's a story for another day. Anyways, all that to say, I was always getting trouble in school. And eventually, I informed my teachers I would be dropping out of school. And I want to make it clear, I am not advocating for that at all. I was in a very unique position. And also, I had already started my business at that point. So, it's not like I was like dropping out with no plan. I already had a business. I was making good money. And all of that to say that there was one specific incident [music] where I was walking by my principal's office and one of my other teachers, I overheard them. His door was open. And I'd actually just finished a meeting with me, my mom, one of my teachers, and my principal. And this teacher goes, "You see, that's what happens [music] when you have a kid that young." The amount of times I didn't know if I had what it took to keep pushing. And I tapped back into that dark motivation, that dark energy. And that's just one of maybe half a dozen core memories I kept in my mind. And as time has gone on and I have some of the sharpest, most successful, brightest minds around me and we have long long long conversations deep [music] into the night. When we get down to the root of it and they first had their inklings of success, it was never I want to make the world a better place. It was never I want to do XY. It was they had someing pain. They had some dark motivation that pushed them through everything. Now I want to make it clear. If you live in that place forever, that's also not good. If you live in that place forever, I've seen it so many times where people succeed and then they self-implode because they only know how to tap into that dark motivation. So, look, I don't know what that is for you. I know that a lot of times parents can really you up. I, you know, wish I could say that happened to me, but I was blessed with the most incredible mother ever, full of love. For some of us, that dark motivation, you know, I always grew up an outcast. Like even on the 26th of December, 2025, that was 10 years I've been uploading on YouTube. And if you want to know the real honest truth of why I started uploading on YouTube, it's a lot less cool than people would imagine. And in today's day and age, it's cool to start a business, read books, work on yourself, strive, aspire for more. 10 years ago, it wasn't cool. You were considered whack. You were considered a weirdo. So, if you want to know the god's honest truth of why I started uploading on YouTube, it's cuz I had no friends. Well, I had some friends, but I didn't really have any friends that I could 100% talk to and relate to and at that time at least that shared the same goals and visions that I did. So, I grew up feeling like an outcast. That was pretty much most of my upbringing. So, whatever moment that you have, whatever moment that you can tap into, I implore you to go for a walk or sit down or journal and just think about some of those moments, those character defining moments in your life where you could be at the lowest low. You could have no energy for the day and you just think about that moment. It's just so visceral. It's so real. It just takes you back to a place and it just lights you up. And I want you to use that as a crutch in the beginning of your journey because as I said every single successful person I know they use that and in fact very successful people even later on in their life will go back to that place because I was in that place of just using dark motivation for many years and eventually I moved from desperation to inspiration and funny enough inspiration served me for many many years and I went on to do many incredible things that I've been so proud of from hitting absolutely crazy net worth numbers to buying companies investing in companies that like to me were was dreams [music] to have under my belt to publicly building schools across the world and many many many more philanthropic things that I don't talk about. But what's interesting is when you live too much in that place at a certain point you kind of lose that like kick. So you even have to bring it back again. Like I even found in the last year and a half 2 years I actually had to bring myself back to that place of no I'm I'm the underdog and I actually had to tap back into a bit of that dark motivation. And you see it [music] with a lot of the greats which you know I would not put myself in that conversation uh yet. I still feel like I have so many more things I need to do in my career to get to that point. But, you know, when you study some of the greats, there's always a very interesting example with Michael Jordan. He used to make up stories in his mind of things that people said that like maybe they said it, but he was interpreting it in a much worse way just to get himself fired up. So, I just think that it is incredibly important for us to acknowledge where we are in life and what [music] fuel serves us the best. You know, if you think about us as humans, even just the human body, there's a time and a place where fats serve us the best, carbs serve [music] us the best, proteins serve us the best. In the same way you fuel your body, you have to fuel your mind and you have to fuel your soul. And we are such multifaceted beings. I think it's discrediting ourselves. And it's a very surface level just to say that you only need one kind of motivation or you just need one kind of fuel source to tap into. You must evaluate where you are in life and you must be honest with yourself as to what serves you. As I've referenced before, I've seen it many, many a time where people use that dark motivation, get to where they want to be in life, but they don't know how to get out of it. In fact, I've given advice to multiple individuals where I see it face to face and I'm like, "Bro, just calm down. The world isn't against you." Funny enough, that feeling of the world being against you, that got you to where you are. But if you want to stay here and you want to go further, it's time to tap into a new fuel source. So, this was something that was just top of mind for me. I wanted to, I guess, maybe in a sense, give you permission, like it's okay. You know, you see all these podcasts and people have their PR mask on and they done their PR training and they say what sounds good. You know, they say what sounds clippable and they're not very truthful and it's unfortunate. So, I think I just want to sit here and give you permission and let you know that those dark memories that you have, those traumas you might have, those character defining moments, it's okay. You can use that. Tap into that. Make the most of it. If you need to be angry at the world for a little bit, be angry at the world for a little bit. Don't let that be the fuel for this entire journey that's called life. But at a time before your neck pit stop, before you stop and refuel again. Yeah, that's okay. And with that, I think that I have said everything I need to say on this topic. So, as always, I'm watching from afar and I'm rooting for you.