This episode dissects ambition as two variables—quantity of glass in your mouth and duration of chewing—using the top 1% worldwide benchmark (45 million people ages 20-65) to reframe what extreme ambition actually means. The discussion explores the choice point when financial freedom arrives: continue maximizing pain tolerance or recalibrate to sustainable levels.
Key Takeaways:
- Top 1% = 45 Million People Removing children and retirees from 8 billion global population shows “extreme” ambition isn’t as rare as ego suggests—it’s roughly 1/6th of US population.
- Necessity-Driven vs Choice-Driven Differs Massively Current seven-day workweeks stem from financial requirements, but the real test is whether you’d maintain that intensity sitting on $50M liquid.
- Comparison Is the Enemy Percentages mean nothing—internal calibration to personal pain tolerance and life priorities determines sustainable ambition levels, which can shift across life stages.
- Missing Kids Growing Up Has Real Cost Pursuing top 0.001% ambition indefinitely trades irreplaceable family time and relationships for marginal business gains beyond already exceptional outcomes.
Listen to the full episode for raw exploration of how to define your personal ambition setpoint without shame or external pressure.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at serious land capital vacant land funding partner mindset Sunday. This is quickly becoming maybe my favorite favorite podcast type to to engage in at least personally and the results are showing with engagement metrics just as far as listens to dreams and so forth. So it seems like you all are enjoying these as listeners.
Um, as well here, uh, so I was thinking more about ambition and, um, you know, myself and my core business partner, close friends, like we consider ourselves very ambitious individuals. were, you know, first, uh, insanely lucky to grow up in, you know, one of the highest income areas and zip codes in the entire country.
Chicago, some of those suburbs up there and received a very, very solid public school education. But some of the best you could get within the country. So I just want to lay out the environment there. That’s just flat out lucky. Things could have changed a lot differently, but you still have to do something with the environment that
you are born into and, you know, we gravitated towards each other, just, you know, pushing ourselves always, you know, oftentimes within the business sense, but also, you know, sports and just personally and so forth. Um, that’s what we just really oriented around. And, um, like I said, I don’t have any shame about the ambition that, uh, um, like I have within my own self. Like everybody’s just going to have different.
levels that they’re comfortable with pursuing and I just think that’s an answer or a question that you can only answer internally. like what actually or how would you define ambition? And so, yeah, I know kind of the eating glass paradigm that’s common with just entrepreneurship that especially entrepreneurs is like
You know, just about eating glass day in and day out. You’re having to solve the most difficult problems and the problems that no one else wants to solve. I feel that routinely where, just the hairiest stuff. It’s like, well, you know, just my, lower self will be thinking internally, man, just like, can, somebody help me out here? And it’s like, figure it. And it’s like, okay, no, no, only you can figure out this actual problem. That is why you are here.
to sit down and solve it. So get to it because there’s literally no one else. You are the Calvary that is arriving and the buck stops with you. So like just get to it. That is just the nature of being an entrepreneur. But in terms of like ambition, extending with that eating glass mentality, I think it’s both the quantity. Okay, how much glass are you fitting into your mouth at any given time and how long are you continuing to eat?
glass. So it’s a factor of time as well as amount. And I think that’s a really good analogy for ambition. And again, that could be from business sense or really doing anything hard because like to be ambitious, like you have to do something that is hard physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever. It has to be something that an average person
will not do it has to be, you know, an above average result. So that by necessity requires pain and, you know, consistency with doing the hard work, which, you know, you just equate to again, stuffing your mouth full of glass and for how long can, can you chew it? And so
You know, we have really big dreams with, our business, a bit bigger than, than a lot of folks. And I think like, yeah, I’m probably like a top, top 1 % in ambition worldwide. And when you actually break that down, um, you know, was a little over 8 billion people in the world, but, um, you know, you have to remove everybody and, know, like six, of course you’re going to be more ambitious than like somebody who was just born, you know, two weeks ago. And then people who are on their death bed, they’re like 95 years old. Um, so I, I, you know,
would change the math to where it’s like, everybody who in the world that’s like roughly between the ages of 20 and 65, like working age. And that is, you know, a bit over half the world’s population. So overall you’re looking at probably like 45 million people within that age group around the world who would fit in the top 1%. I’m like, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of people, almost 50 million people.
It’s like almost like, you know, one sixth of the U S population. you consider again, like all the environmental, advantages that we have in my, you know, myself and my core partners and colleagues have had, I, it’s not an outrageous, assumption to make. And in fact, it’s like, it, it almost removes some of the weight from my back. Like, okay, it’s it’s like not actually that.
crazy to be in the top 1 % of EnBish, like 50 million people. It’s it’s a ton. It’s a ton of people.
And but you know, then I have to wonder like how if we go back to ambition being, know, how much glass you’re fitting into your mouth and how long you want to chew it, then it starts to be like, okay, well, if you’re in like the top 1%, but do I really need to be in like the top 10 people in the world when it comes to ambition? And that is where, you know, I start becoming a little bit more comfortable with
being okay, not necessarily going for that, you know, absolute top crazy level because, you know, at the moment within the business, like it’s out of necessity that I’m just eating glass every day, like working seven days a week because, you know, we’re just trying to grow, you know, I’m just not financially, you know, as free as I would really like to be. No, I just, it hasn’t reached the level that.
that I need to be at, like there’s just so much investment within the business and feeding a family and so forth that I just required to do all of this work. so it’s, when you’re actually required to just stuff your mouth full of glass and eat it day after day, it’s like, okay, I can do this. I can prove to myself that I can live this lifestyle just until things are resolved there.
But I’m confident that this work is paying off slowly and steadily, sometimes quicker, sometimes slow. It fluctuates, right? And we’re all products of the macro economy that we’re in. We had to adapt to the circumstances. So things could slow down, they could speed up. I don’t know, but I’m just staying consistent with it. But eventually there will be a day where it will be a choice.
financial dreams freedom dreams are realized and It will entirely be my choice on how much glass I stuff into my mouth and for how long I chew it and that I think is where It really differentiates. Okay, who who is carrying on that torch of just you know? Absolute crazy ambition like if I you know was sitting on you know, 50 million dollars of liquid assets
Would I be pushing as hard as I am now just showing it showing up day after day after day, new marketing techniques, vision of business development and just grinding, figuring out, okay, what are the next steps or in fact, like stuffing even more glass into my mouth because I have even more assets to work with so I can do or I can have even more impact on the world.
And, know, within a business sense and take even bigger leaps forward, to, you know, try to ratchet up ambition even more. And that thought kind of scares me a little bit because I’m not, I think I’m always going to be doing so like it just, you know, in different areas of my life, you know, like physical fitness and so forth. you know, just eat glass every day, you know, work out just, you know, six days where you just.
solid doesn’t matter what doesn’t matter how I’m feeling it’s just and you go and you put in the work and that like that that’ll never change for for my my personality
And it’s, you know, sometimes even when I might take like, you know, even a little extra leisure time off, I just start feeling restless and so forth. And, know, maybe that’s just the product of habits at the moment. But when I like really have the choice to do it, I feel like I’m just always going to want to be in the mix to some degree, but you know, what, what, what I just want to live this.
you know, glass eating lifestyle for potentially the rest of my life to, you know, just try to push, push, push on the ambition side indefinitely until death bed. I, I don’t think that is going to be the case. Like I think I can solidly stick within that top 1 % arbitrary numbers. I know, but that’s just like naturally like my personality just orients to that. just, I like to push.
I like to have big goals. My friends and partners like to have it. So like it feeds on each other. Like that’s why I root for the success of my friends because it pushes me even more to continue to accelerate further. get a lot of energy from that. I don’t think that will ever change, but to just take it up.
You know, to kind of stick with this again, is basically what I’m getting at for the rest of my life. Just like seven days, day in, day out, years go by, holidays, whatever, of just pushing and pushing and pushing and more and more glass, more and more glass in my mouth. I don’t think that is the route that I’m trying to do. And I had a deeper discussion with my friends and partners in New York last weekend, and I think we’re all pretty aligned like that. We all have like really big pain tolerances.
Some of us have to go through more pain than others, fluctuate and cure, but I think we all kind of arrived. like, I don’t want to just miss my kids growing up for, and just like miss other parts of life or like never go to hang out with almost anybody or have like such a limited time to ever do anything with friends or family even.
And you just have to kind of be okay with that and figure out, okay, where can I calibrate myself to fit in with what works for you? And it’s not really a comparison factor. Like that’s the thing is even as I mentioned, like percentages, like that you just have to figure out, you know, where can you individually feel…
the most at home in terms of realizing your ambition, because it has to come internally. Like the comparison factor, if you just do that, you’re going to burn yourself out and you’re going to just be unhappy the whole time. Like I’m, I’m pretty satisfied being in the, in that, you know, 1 % type of mindset. Like it just, again, it just works for me personally. Um, whereas, you know, for yourself, it could just be something different. Maybe, you know, it’s higher in some, you know,
time of your life and then it goes down later, you can return to different ones. But I think that is a really difficult and soul searching question to figure out the answer for, for your own self here. But I think it’s a really, really important one so that you’re not just on society’s or friends or families, you know, defined track for
you know where they might think that your life should be going and you internalize that without really understanding why And then but you know once you actually figure out what works for you individually like just don’t have any shame or guilt or anything about it like just be like, okay this Lifestyle works for me. I want this amount of glass in my mouth and I will chew it for this amount of time because
That is, you know, where I’m calibrated to in my mind. And you can always, again, it’s always something you can change. You can always toss it out, figure out actually, if I’m being too lazy now or maybe I’m just like, we’re, you know, this is just too ambitious. I just don’t want to do this. It’s it’s nothing that you’re stuck into. But I think all of us have a certain set point that
we probably naturally gravitate towards. And product of our circumstances, our relationships, our own personalities and so forth, what we consume. So all of that has to be kept in mind, but I found this to be a pretty useful framework for how to think about these things.
especially from a professional standpoint because you have to do it for yourself. Everybody else, yeah, they can note whatever, but really no one cares. Like zero people ultimately will matter when it comes to how ambitious you actually were. Like that just has to be an internal decision. I know I keep kind of coming back to that and repeating it, but I really, really want to hammer that home.
to help you all kind of figure out what that right calibration might be. With that in mind, hopefully this was an interesting topic for you all. Serious land dot capital for any of your funding needs in the vacant land space, land daily diligence Facebook groups, zero cost review your land deals.
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