Hard Times Create Strong Men

How I got here…

21: Graduated Vanderbilt in 3 years Magna Cum Laude, and took a fancy consulting job.
23 yrs old: Left my fancy consulting job to start a business (a gym).
24 yrs old: Opened 5 gym locations.
26 yrs old: Closed down 6th gym. Lost everything.
26 yrs old: Got back to launching gyms (launched 33). Then, lost everything for a 2nd time.
26 yrs old: In desperation, started licensing model as a hail mary. It worked.
27 yrs old: "Gym Launch" does $3M profit the next 6 months. Then $17M profit next 12 months.
28 yrs old: Started Prestige Labs. $20M the first year.
29 yrs old: Launched ALAN, a software company for agencies to work leads for customers. Scaled to $1.7mmo within 6 months.
31 yrs old: Sold 75% of UseAlan to a strategic buyer in an all stock deal.
31 yrs old: Sold 66% of Gym Launch & Prestige Labs at $46.2M valuation in all-cash deal to American Pacific Group. (you can google it)
32 yrs old: Started making free content showing how we grow companies to make real business education accessible to everyone (and) to attract business owners to invest or scale their businesses.

Today: Our portfolio now does $200M/yr between 10 companies. The largest doing $100M/yr the smallest doing $5M per year. Our ownership varies between 20% and 100% ownership of the companies. Many of them we invested in early and helped grow (which is how we make our money - not youtube videos).

To all the gladiators in the arena, we’re all in the middle of writing our own stories. The worse the monsters, the more epic the story.

You either get an epic outcome or an epic story. Both mean you win.

Keep crushing. May your desires be greater than your obstacles.

Never quit,

Alex

*FULL DISCLOSURE*
I make content to make money - just - on a longer time horizon than most. I want to build trust with business owners so we can find the best ones and help them scale. And if they’re awesome, write them a check and go all the way as partners.

[Danzakaria.]

This quote always hits different.

It’s so easy to be great nowadays because nobody even tries.

[scotttenerman]

Everything’s heading back to hard times, remember everyone that wealth is not singularly attached to the dollar, it’s knowledge and education as well and after a week of speaking to high schoolers and college students I can say that hard times will be here for the next 4-12 years

[zaimarketing]

I see so many people just get complacent where they're at and have no drive to push further and I think it really is because they haven't built that skill of resiliency because their life has been on cruise control

[Raspil]

Men in their feelings.. Alex is right.

[EricSteinHealthyChef]

Was it 67 steps where I heard this for the first time? I love that quote

[PerryMatt]

Big shout out to Stefan Arnio on this quote 🙏

[bigchungus]

It’s also very easy to be one of them, too many distractions and temptations, pick your easy

[nitemoves]

Deliver mail in a snowstorm, that’ll make you realize

[emekaudeogu]

So should this be a vicious or virtuous cycle?

[mounirmounir-rlon]

Come to Africa, that is hardly the case, man!! Things are not that simple.

[beamie]

Everyone read Hard Times Create Strong Men by Stefan Aarnio, will change your life.

[luciddreams]

Times are always hard and heavy. The question is how many strong men are present to shoulder and share that burden. The mor ethe merrier the less the harder it is. Regardless work has to be done.

[FLOODOFSINS]

Can you imagine being a clown and just waking up and saying I'm going to make a dumb video today😂

[voutolliC]

More or less implies that the human animal requires a modicum of suffering to achieve optimal results. Not comfortable with how that can be used to manipulate the collective consciousness.

[blackparabellum]

What about hard things….. my uncle says hard things make hard men.

[BenMiles-cu]

Honestly, im sick of self-proclaimed professors regurgitating the same quotes that make no sense

[jackgunning]

If you know anything about history you know how stupid this qoute is