If You’re Scared of Looking “Cringe,” Please Watch This
In a Nutshell
Everyone starts cringe—early content, efforts, and passions always invite mockery from those afraid to care—but that's the path to mastery, as proven by the speaker's evolution from his first awful ad to $250M+ revenue empire and Guinness record. Document your journey unashamedly, even at rock bottom, because success demands deserving it through relentless iteration and feedback, not perfection from day one. Caring deeply is the opposite of cringe; fearing cringe is the real embarrassment.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
This is the first piece of content I ever made. This is the first ad I ever made. Fast forward today: we make 450 pieces per week. I broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling non-fiction of all time with $16 million in sales in a weekend. We own a portfolio of companies that did north of $250 million in aggregate revenue last year. In this video, I want to show you just how far anyone can come and not to judge your first chapter by someone else's 25th or thousandth chapter. Shout out to Don Misetti, who inspired me for making this. Here's one promise: you will be cringe.
Shame is breaking someone else's rules. Guilt is breaking your own rules. Cringe is secondhand embarrassment. Someone saying, "Oh, that's cringe," means "I'm embarrassed for them." But in reality, it's a defensive status play. Interpret it as: I'm beginning to change my status relative to other people or them, and therefore I'm on the right path. Whose rules are we breaking? Did we agree to their rules? If we set the rules, what outcome do those rules optimize for? A rule is an if-then statement. Is that true? How do we know that? And why does that matter?
People seeing you try hard will say, "Why are you taking this so seriously? Why do you even care?" But they've never cared about anything in their lives. When's the last time they took anything seriously? Never. And it shows. A guy came up to me and said he saw how hard I was trying with content, then bragged he'd outsourced all of it down to two hours a week. I said, "Yeah, it shows." He was trying to be cool about not trying hard, but it looked like he was losing.
Is it cringe to care? Yes, of course it's cringe. You can make anything cringe by just caring about it. The only people who think caring isn't cool are people in high school or people who got older but never grew up. Just changing how I talk about something can make it sound cringe.
- In the fitness world: obsess over muscles, oiling up and posing in tiny trunks on a stage for strangers.
- Competitive chess: staring at a board for hours in dead silence, obsessing over wooden pieces like your life depends on it.
- Making YouTube videos: setting up lights and talking to your little camera like an idiot, no one's listening, editing for hours for a couple views and comments.
- Writing a book: locking yourself away for months or years pouring your soul into words that most people will never read, sitting away typing at your keyboard.
Anyone can make anything cringe because anyone who cares about anything is cringe. The cringiest thing of all is to be scared about looking cringe.
Why hate on someone who has passion or interest or actually tries? Do we want a world where people care less? Who does the person who says that's cringe really hate? Do you hate them for committing to something or yourself for lacking the guts to commit to anything?
I went through the archives—I keep everything: lifelong texts, videos, pictures. Advice: document more. One regret is not documenting the struggle because I was ashamed. People who are overweight don't take pictures because they're ashamed. But you have to face reality. If you believe you're going to win, this will be part of the story you tell. Kanye documented in the early days because he believed he was going to win. The moment I started documenting purposefully was when I had $1,000 left in my bank account after losing everything. I said, I will never let this happen again. This will be the beginning of my comeback story.
Many are getting started in business. Other entrepreneurs donated 3.6 million copies in my book launch—I'm donating too. Ultimate business backpack: all three books.
- This one shows how to figure out what to sell.
- This shows how to get people to find out about it.
- This shows how to make money from it. When you have all three, you can get started. Plus 30 days of school free. All this, including books, school, shipping: $16. We lose money on this. Grab it—my gift. If the link is shut down, we ran out.
Compare your current chapter to this, not someone else's later chapter. First ad I ever made. [Clip shown]
First professional ad: super cringe. [Clip shown]
Cringy first post trying to get people to give me money: "Hey, I started this thing. Please give me money."
First content piece: "Hey guys, Alex here. Welcome back." Sounds very dialed? No, it's horrible. [Clip shown]
First YouTube video when starting YouTube content. First IG post.
90 days after that first ad, I lost everything for the second time. That's when I made my first podcast to document lessons to look back on as I moved up.
I thought it'd be cool if Buffett, Bezos, or Musk had video diaries of the comeup, not just the top—as artifacts to learn from. The world is too rational to reward the undeserving. That's a Charlie Munger quote. In order to get what you want, you must deserve what you want, which means you've got to be good. The only way to get good is to be willing to be bad for a very long time.
This is my promise: you will be cringe. These videos, pieces of content, your first product—they will be cringe, but you will not be alone. You'll figure it out as long as you start, take feedback to get better, and never stop. If this motivated you to stop judging yourself—these are super cringe—I made an entire video on the iterative process to get here.
[Clips shown:]
Hey guys, in your next installment of the mind game series, I just want to talk about love versus discipline. It's a topic that gets misconstrued in the fitness industry.
Hey guys, welcome. Measuring yourself is important for tracking progress to adjust your meal plan. Track as many variables as possible.
I don't know a trainer like I have no idea.
Hi guys, I'm Alex and I'm the owner of United Fitness. Welcome to our family. Thank you for the opportunity to earn your business. United Fitness strives to be the leading body and life transformation business.
Are you tired of fitness places that don't make you have fun or give results? United Fitness is ready to change that by having you lifting weights.
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