Why Pursuing Dreams Beats Partying – Steven Graeber’s Unfiltered Success Advice
Stephen Graber's philosophy at 18: "When I get to the top, when I reach the pinnacle of success, then there will be time for partying — until then, I'm going to keep hustling."
Why Pursuing Dreams Beats Partying – Steven Graeber’s Unfiltered Success Advice
At just 18 years old, Stephen Graber isn’t in college and he isn’t out partying — and on this episode of the Hustle Zone, he tells host Ryan Perez exactly why he made that choice on purpose.
Graber is the founder of Young Gun Motivation, a company he was preparing to officially launch on January 1, 2017. When Ryan asks where he falls between the “party” crowd and the “go back to school” crowd, Graber says he’s doing neither — he’s pursuing what he calls his true dream instead. His reasoning is blunt: “your chances of even existing on this Earth is one in five trillion, so act like it, go after it and get it.” As for partying, his take is that celebration is something you earn: “when I get to the top, when I reach the pinnacle of success, then there will be time for partying” — but not yet.
Graber describes his life and his company like a light bulb: he’s plugging into information as a student so he can put that information back out as a teacher, translating it for other young people in a way they can actually use. He’s candid that his drive didn’t come from home. Both of his parents, he says, have told him they have no idea where his “sales personality” or his attitude came from — his mom was a preschool teacher and his dad is a construction worker, not entrepreneurs.
Instead, Graber points to outside influences: Grant Cardone, Dr. Eric Thomas, and — most personally — Coach Frank Sagasta, who was his football coach in high school. Before meeting Sagasta, Graber says, he was a “rockhead kid” who thought the world owed him everything and just wanted to fight people. Sagasta pushed him through football, taught him to never quit, and, in Graber’s words, “totally 120% changed my life.” Sagasta is also the one who introduced him to other mentors and material, including books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and the writings of Grant Cardone, and got him studying the patterns of figures like Gandhi.
Ryan pushes back a little here, gently — asking Graber to move past the quotes and buzzwords and explain what he’s actually done. Graber’s answer centers on a framework he credits to Grant Cardone: turn your dreams into goals, your goals into plans, and follow through on those plans until they become reality. For Young Gun Motivation, that meant identifying a dream — building a company to help teens and young adults get off drugs and get their minds straight — breaking it into a goal, and then a plan he says he’s currently executing, including interviews with other entrepreneurs and motivational speakers and upcoming live events at high schools and churches.
On money, Graber is transparent that he isn’t yet “100% financially” where he wants to be. His current income comes from three sources: a part-time retail job doing inventory and working in the dairy department, work as an independent distributor of medical products and supplements, and revenue from Young Gun Motivation’s inspirational apparel, plus support from sponsors.
Criticism comes up repeatedly. Graber says he gets it from family, friends, and strangers alike — comments that he’s too young to know what he’s talking about, or that he’s “a big dreamer” who won’t achieve anything. His response has been to “cut the negativity out” and surround himself with people who encourage him, borrowing a line from a friend’s post: “hustle and let your haters work for you.” Ryan relates, sharing his own experience as a former rapper sending out tracks for feedback and realizing people can find something negative about almost anything.
Asked what he does for fun, Graber says plainly that he doesn’t have much time for it — the hustle itself is what he finds fun. He says he still has friends and socializes, but his focus stays on the grind. Looking ten years out, his goals include having his own office, reaching somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 teenagers, and speaking at colleges and universities.
Graber’s closing message to young listeners: find one coach, one mentor, “put your blinders on” to everyone else, apply what that mentor teaches, and take massive, effective action toward your own dreams — because, as he puts it, nobody is going to do it for you.
Find Young Gun Motivation on Facebook, YouTube, and at younggunmotivation.com.
Lessons from this one
A single strong mentor relationship can redirect a young person's entire trajectory.
Graber credits Coach Frank Sagasta, his high school football coach, with turning him from a kid who 'didn't care about nothing' and wanted to fight everybody into someone focused on discipline and purpose. His closing advice to listeners was literally to find one coach or mentor and 'put your blinders on' to everyone else.
Deliberately limiting exposure to criticism and negative input can protect motivation and follow-through.
Graber describes cutting out negativity from family, friends, and strangers who told him he was too young or just a 'big dreamer,' and instead surrounding himself only with people who encourage him. He frames this as a repeated, intentional practice rather than a one-time reaction.
Breaking a dream into a goal, then a concrete plan, then action is what separates talkers from doers.
Graber explicitly describes the sequence he uses — dream to goal, goal to plan, plan into reality through 'massive effective action' — as the method behind starting Young Gun Motivation, distinguishing it from people who 'do more talking' without living it out.
Income diversification, even at a small scale, can provide the financial base for pursuing an entrepreneurial dream.
Graber describes three concurrent income sources at 18 — a part-time retail job, work as an independent distributor of supplements, and revenue plus sponsorships from Young Gun Motivation — while acknowledging he isn't yet fully financially stable.
Choosing not to follow a default path (college, partying) only holds up as a strength when it's paired with a specific, pursued alternative.
Graber frames his decision not to attend college or party not as opting out, but as actively pursuing his business and mentorship-driven learning instead, warning listeners against following trends or fitting in for its own sake.
No controlled study found for this specific claim — reflects the guest's own lived experience, presented as such rather than as research-backed fact. The closest research context found, the opportunity-vs-necessity entrepreneurship framework (Fairlie, R., & Fossen, F. (2019). "Defining Opportunity versus Necessity Entrepreneurship," NBER Working Paper No. 26377), distinguishes entrepreneurship pursued toward a specific opportunity from entrepreneurship taken up merely as a fallback, but it does not test the guest's specific claim about college or partying.
Sources
- DuBois, D. L., Portillo, N., Rhodes, J. E., Silverthorn, N., & Valentine, J. C. (2011). "How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence." Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 12(2), 57-91.
- Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). "The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory." In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 38 (pp. 183-242). Academic Press / Guilford Press.
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). "Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey." American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717.
- Folta, T. B., Delmar, F., & Wennberg, K. (2010). "Hybrid Entrepreneurship." Management Science, 56(2), 253-269.
- Fairlie, R., & Fossen, F. (2019). "Defining Opportunity versus Necessity Entrepreneurship: Two Components of Business Creation." NBER Working Paper No. 26377.
- Runtime
- 33m
- Show
- HustleZone
- Host
- Ryan Perez
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