"COLLEGE WON'T Make You Successful, DO THESE 3 THINGS INSTEAD!" | Kevin O'Leary

every time i've lost doe and i've lost plenty luckily i've had more successes than failures is when i didn't listen to my gut which is my experience you think that you've come here and you've got an mba and you're going to go out in the world and you're going to rock and you're going to be incredibly successful i've got news for you for two-thirds of you the world is gonna chew you up and spit you out you know i've learned a lot from the uh ceos i've invested in over the years and there was a woman um a few years ago much more probably 10 years ago now and she said to me something really interesting i asked her why she was so successful because she was she said i do something very ordinary and almost boring but i do it every day she takes a a sticky note and she writes three things she has to get done before she texts answers any calls or does anything else just three things and she sticks it on the mirror where she puts her makeup on and she really it doesn't have to be business things it can be whatever it is that are deemed to be important to get done the next day maybe it's something that's a holdover from the day before because i've been doing this now for years and it's really effective this isn't tech you're not putting it in your phone it's not a software program it's a piece of paper with and you have it you know right when you're going to bed brushing your teeth whatever you write those three things down you stick it on the mirror i do it every night and then i am myopically focused to get those three things done right before i do anything else i nail those three things you cannot believe how productive you get when that happens because you don't let the distractions of all the other crap that's happening around you i just don't do it until i get the three things done and it's incredibly powerful i tell people to try it most people try it get stuck on it and they stick with it it's really because in life there's so much noise coming at you and every year more noise and all kinds of different distractions and you always say to yourself well i can multitask but you deemed that thing to be very important and you ignored it now it's three in the afternoon you're exhausted or you're busy with other stuff and you say oh i didn't get that done and it's whatever whatever the effects the domino effects are they're going to hurt you and that's why i tell people try it out it's a really great tool okay that's number one what's uh what's the second big habit okay so this one's a little funky chicken um it comes with a story okay um when i was you know i wanted to be a photographer or a musician a rock star when i was you know graduate when i got out of high school and my dad my stepdad said me you're not good you're not good enough at either of those you'll starve to death if i if i were you i would go get any kind of a degree and focus on business which what i did you know i didn't know what i wanted to do but i learned some stuff and i ended up going into postgraduate i went and got an mba which was at that time was a two-year program which you know we can talk about the merits of that or not because i've come to realize what it was worth and what it wasn't worth but anyways i remember on the last week um the graduating class and in those it's sort of like an amphitheater with about 100 people in it and you've been there for two years you've got your little name plate in front and they bring in guest lecturers to talk to you before you jump into the real world and this guy comes in and he says i'll never forget it he doesn't he walks up that the professor hands him the floor and he just goes in the middle and just looks up at everybody for maybe like it felt like forever but it was really maybe 60 seconds didn't say a word and the whole room like you could have heard a pin drop i'll never forget it and then he says you guys think you're so hot you think that you've come here and you've got an mba and you're going to go out in the world and you're going to rock and you're going to be incredibly successful i've got news for you for two-thirds of you the world is going to chew you up and spit you out you have no idea what's going to happen to you you are so irrelevant you have proven nothing you've done nothing you think an mba means something it's worthless and i remember the guy beside me i've been beside me for two years i i we were up in the one road down from the top so we can chat all the time hide a little bit yeah yeah yeah and so i said to him barry was his name i said barry this guy is such a what an what an he is what an arrogant actually is well guess what he was right he was 100 percent right and the reason he pointed that out was the idea that your experiences make you who you are over time as an entrepreneur as a parent as a person as whatever you are as a brand whatever you are it's your experiences and how you deal with them that gives you that equity over time and for many people they can't make it it doesn't work out for them they don't have what it takes to take on the abuse that the world's gonna throw at you and just to give you full circle in a kumbaya you know circle of life lion king kind of moment i got caught saying the same thing a couple of months ago at the harvard mba group i and i realized i was saying the same thing that that guy said to me decades ago i said to these kids you're all think you're you're harvard mbas you are nothing burgers you are nothing and and and so there you have it what he really explained was the idea of experience and how you have to listen to your gut to navigate the bombs of your career and you have to trust it you have to trust your gut every time i've lost dough every time and i've lost plenty luckily i've had more successes than failures is when i didn't listen to my gut which is my experience and i shouldn't he was right he was absolutely right it was great information but i couldn't assimilate it because i couldn't put it in context now i understand it so number two is you need to build that experience and all the way through listen to your gut even when you're young your gut will tell you you'll know when it's right and wrong and don't go against your intuition that is actually your radar that's your dna speaking to you figuring out what the next move is going to be that's a powerful story yeah did they say the same thing to you in the back of the room and say what an atlas guy is when you gave him the speech at harvard yeah the well it's um matt higgins who was a get your shot i know very well yeah yeah so matt um he he emailed me the next day and said hey kevin i got to tell you you're a disturber i mean you know but you know much of the class really enjoyed it but what he was really saying is he pissed a few people off yeah but you know i know higgins pretty well we're good friends and so you know he's uh you know he's he's really savvy at what he does we wanted to talk about direct to consumer branding and that's what we were doing in that lesson was two hours it was great uh i i work with that guy anytime he's terrific yeah great guy uh great content on linkedin he has he's always sharing that content with me there um and the third habit that makes you very successful well you know it it's um you have to make time in your life for your significant other and your family and it's very hard to do it's extremely hard to do because you when you this is really speaking to more to the entrepreneurial uh community out there which is basically a third of people one-third will attempt to take the entrepreneurial journey it's not a destination is a journey and the challenges of that are very very difficult particularly when you're starting out and i learned this the hard way and again i'm going to go to a story of a class that i i taught years ago in the evening class this is this really sums it up it tells you how important this is um three hour class six to nine we're almost closing you know how ten minutes left this guy hadn't said a word the whole class he finally puts up his hand and he says um listen mr wonderful um i have a question for you it's not about the case what's the case we're doing i need some advice i said okay you know you really haven't participated at all i was kind of a little condescending because i know you guys kind of know who's who's engaged in the class even though it was a huge cohort i think it was something like 300 400 i can't remember was a lot of people anyways um he said i ha i'm a i'm graduating this year i'm an engineer and i've developed a cloud-based software enterprise system that helps hedge funds with less than 250 million dollars be compliant it's and you know it's very difficult to stay compliant when you're small he needs two and 20 hedge funds and his it was a subscription service so these guys could use it on a cloud basis and he he had written this code while he was graduating in engineering wow and he was his run rate was 5 million bucks a year in subscriptions i mean that is like and i said i don't hear a problem here i hear something incredible going on this is amazing and he said well here's the problem my fiancee came to me this morning and i'm really deserving she said i have to make a choice she can't live with me anymore i never attend any of her family's picnics i never see anybody on weekends i'm either studying or i'm working on the code that's all i can do and i asked her to come over and sleep with me when she can and we'd be together but i'm just buried in this and i need to do both i need to get my graduation in engineering and i need to keep my customers happy because this is my business now he said what do i do rooms like this is getting interesting right i mean i said okay which one is easier to replace your business or your fiance and that was probably not the right thing to say at the time but that's what i was thinking in my head and i think everybody else was too this guy's phenomenally successful clearly has gotten engaged to the wrong person that can't take that journey with him most likely outcome is divorce after they marry because he's going to work 25 hours a day eight days a week because he's got a business he's an entrepreneur my point is one of the biggest decisions you're going to make in your life between success and failure as a person is finding that right partner that you know i don't care you know who that is if you're going to take that route they have to be in sync with who you are you can't contort yourself to something else and and i think that a lot of people in their 20s really should think this through because you know not i told you i'm in the wedding industry i've got a lot of companies and i've learned a lot about marriages the reason marriages fail is not because of infidelity any marriage can survive that i talked about it earlier but why they fail while the union breaks up 50 of the time within five years is financial stress one outspends the other they're not in sync together they don't share each other's goals that's the hardest time in your life in your 20s maybe start a family whatever you're going to do the point is picking that partner is the third thing you either do right or you do wrong divorce is incredibly stressful many people try it three four times they're not in sync with their partner i'm just you know this is kind of like a little dr phyllis in some ways but i'm telling you with the ceos i work with and all the investors i work with i see stress in people when their relationships are falling apart and it's devastating so there's a story there's a those are the three things i care about in giving guidance and i think everybody knows what i'm talking about and should think about these these are powerful stories and i'm curious uh love and money is such an interesting topic because most people disagree on it or one person is outspending and then they get divorced one of the main reasons is money what questions should partners be asking each other before they get married around money how honest should they be and what if they have a massive disconnect around money but they have this intimacy and connection and love should they you know just break up before the wedding or what do you think would be the right move to make so i i have given a lot of guidance in this space in fact i've written three books about it called men women and money men women and children it's all kinds of advice about family but here's here's how the journey works you meet somebody it's a great first date you have a second date it's even better okay by the time you're having your third date the only reason you're having your third date is both of you are very interested in each other mm-hmm and that is the time to start talking about the future i know that sounds corny and i understand third date if you're just hooking up for hooking up i get it you don't have to worry about this but if you're actually stopping seeing anybody else and you're on your third date with somebody you've met and they've done the same thing and you're being honest with each other something's going on okay now it's time to start doing a little due diligence because this is going to get serious by the fourth date and you're not seeing anybody else and you're talking about you know doing whatever you're going to do together it's a big deal and you have to understand a little bit about where their heads are at number one is you know talk about family do you want to have one i mean you know it's a question some people don't you got to know that up front you make a decision about it or can you have one it's a discussion got to have tough discussion again staying honest number two what are your goals how do you see yourself in 10 years are you at home are you working or would you be raising kids i know this sounds corny but believe me women want that question and men want it to if you're on your fourth date they're dying to get into this because they're starting to really invest their time in what they think they're going to be anybody in your family bankrupt tough question ooh tough question have you ever been bankrupt then you ask how much do how much debt to have on your credit card tough question do you pay off your credit card every month oh my god and then they say why are you asking me and if they say why are you asking me this question you say why can't you answer that what makes you feel uncomfortable about this question yeah well what i really i really worry that the reason you know you've got to be in sync with some the great here's the thing about marriage about getting together whether you're married or not or whoever your significant other is if those are aligned if you have an understanding of each other that is in sync that union could last 50 years because after the euphoria is over with you're in business with each other you have to build a financial pillar to support growing old together or raising a family or buying a house or doing whatever you're going to do and you need to be in sync on that stuff and this is a tough but i'll tell you something every every man and woman i've talked to about this and when i was researching my books all three of them i was amazed at how forthcoming people would be and say i'm dying to answer that question i'm dying to ask that question i'm on my fourth date i really want to know that about my potential partner because i'm really interested in this person and i think we could be great together and at least i'd like to try it but i gotta know these things they're tough questions and you and and if if you like the answers then you should feel encouraged to keep going and if you don't like them you really have to do some soul searching because high probability at least 50 percent it's not going to work out this is interesting and what if someone doesn't share the same money mindset values as you do but you're so in love with them that you have this incredible connection you just laugh at everything that you guys share you know everything is easy except for that one thing do you still think there's a potential you could work on that or is it hey if they don't have the mindset now they're never gonna have it if they don't have the mindset now they're never gonna have it you know what you gotta do you gotta move on tough really tough because it'll only end in misery you know i always say this people say to me all the time what a cold heartless you are talking about love this way it's not about money and i say oh yeah it's always about the money the reason people break up you'll find out is always about money it's always about money it's not about it at the root of every divorce i'll show you money it won't be because they screwed around you know it's really some stress that's occurred within the family because of financial and look i'm just telling you the truth i've already i started our conversation saying i was going to do that and you're going to get all kinds of people listening to say what a why don't i'm 100 right and you know i've been around long enough watching this happen to so many people that i want to give them good advice and i'm giving them good advice you really have to get this bedrock nailed down you really do and particularly if you're into your second year with somebody you know and usually what happens is relationships get intense they then become you know um they agree that they're going to be just with each other which is a very encouraging sign and then they may go on for another year or so before they tie the knot or maybe they're never going to tie the knob but the point is they move in together they start buying assets together you've got to get the financial thing nailed down if you like that video wait till you see my next one don't forget to click right over here and subscribe

Channel: Kevin O'Leary

Views: 115,185

Keywords: Kevin O'Leary, Kevin O'Leary interview, Kevin O'Leary speech, Kevin O'Leary top 10 rules for success, how to become a millionaire, how i became a millionaire, how to make millions, money, wealth, cash flow, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur advice, success tips, success habits, millionaire habits, millionaire tips, how to make money, how to invest, shark tank Kevin O'Leary, ask Mr. Wonderful, SUCCESS SECRETS, college

Id: TkD5JaSsyf0

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021