The SIMPLE SCRET To Making More MONEY... | Lewis Howes

one of the things that i really learned from many different mentors is having recurring revenue streams so i have over the last few years set up my business to have multiple recurring revenue streams i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome for those who don't know my story about 12 years ago i didn't have any money i had no clue how to make money i had some odd jobs here and there i was a truck driver for a few months i was a bouncer at a nightclub on the weekends and i really wasn't making much money maybe a thousand dollars a month uh in between one career playing arena football and then transitioning into the rest of my life and i didn't know how to make money i was afraid of money i wasn't an entrepreneur i didn't think people would give me money i was scared to talk about it and i'm letting you know that if that feels like any of that feels like you that there is room for growth and improvement and i'm going to talk about some of these habits that can support you in your life and i want you to get out a piece of paper and a pen take some notes or at least take some mental notes and let me know your thoughts on the things you're learning as well over on social media and one of the first questions that i want to talk about is what shifted in your life that helped you go from broke to actually having money and the biggest thing for me was overcoming the fear of money and i didn't understand how money worked i just was like okay my parents paid for things you know there was food on the table the the house was paid for the rent every month i just showed up in the world and i had no understanding of how to make money the language around money accounting saving investing i just didn't know and so i was afraid of it i was afraid of it and the things we fear we usually want to run away from so if you don't understand it if you don't have a sense of peace when you hear about money and we talk about money when money is in your hands if you feel afraid then why would more money come to you so some of the things that that i did and i recommend doing is number one is to surround yourself with people that have more money than you usually when you're around people that have it you can start to learn okay what are they doing differently that allows them to get money you can ask those questions and number two would be to talk about it consistently and i just remember i didn't talk about it much because i was afraid about it so if you start having conversations it doesn't become as scary anymore you can have more peace of mind more ease the more you talk about it when you resist something when you don't want to talk about something you're saying i don't want this in my life i'm afraid of this so i'm not going to talk about it or we don't talk about these things because it's private conversations it's private to me personally if you're hoarding something that's private to you as opposed to being open and flowing and talking about it consistently then it's gonna be harder for money to come and go into your life so you want to be willing to have conversations consistently and talk about it number three would be to read about it learn about it money is a language the terminology the way people communicate about it is a language just like the english language just like playing a sport just like working at a company there's languages and terminologies that people use in different areas of their life and money is no different so you want to learn about as much as you can read books about it at the end of this i'll talk about some of my favorite books that i have right here that i'll go into about money on how to earn more and how to attract more money in your life but i started to consume a lot of books i started to listen to podcasts watch videos and just try to learn from people who were already making money and hear the language and even today there are still terms that i don't fully understand around money there's still part of the language that i don't get that i don't fully understand so i'm constantly learning at different levels and different seasons of my life number four a mentor of mine early on said his name is chris hawker i said i was doing like an internship for him for a number of months and after a while i was sick and tired of being broke and i wasn't making any money and i said man i could really use some money right now and he said money comes to you when you're ready for it and i always remember this line because we were going on a walk and i remember the feeling of overwhelming stress and not having enough to pay for things and feeling like you know am i ever going to make any money is it ever going to come to me and he said money comes to you when you're ready for it and i remember saying vividly i was like i feel pretty ready to make some money right now like i could use this money i could help me like pay for rent and food and have more opportunities i can't buy clothes gas money all this stuff and looking back a couple years later after that i realized that i wasn't ready for it then i needed it but i wasn't ready for the abundance of money to start coming in because i wasn't educated enough i didn't know how to manage money i was afraid of it i wasn't talking about it i wasn't doing these things i just talked about and so therefore if money came to me i would probably do the wrong things with it i wouldn't know how to invest it i would spend it poorly or maybe i would hoard it because i'd be so afraid but i wouldn't know how to let it flow in and out of my life and so money comes to you when you're ready for it it means you've got to be prepared for it you've got to learn about before it comes to you you got to study it you got to talk about it you got to do those things and the fifth thing would be to learn how to earn it spend it and invest it to work for you and when you're just starting out it's going to be hard to do that you're not going to know how do i invest this when i'm only making a little bit every month but at least learning about investing learning about what's the best way to spend my money you know people earn it and then they spend it on dumb things you know they spend it on things they think are smart but they're not the best things so you just want to learn as much as you can in the process and that'll support you in really setting yourself up for the next step and the next question is what mindsets around money did you have to overcome and one of the big things for me was am i worthy of money do i deserve money in my life am i a good enough human for money to come to me and i think am i enough is something that so many of us ask ourselves or we've asked ourselves at different moments in life am i enough for this relationship am i enough for this opportunity am i enough for this job for this uh this accomplishment am i enough do i belong do i fit in and so realizing that you are worthy is one of the biggest things that i had to overcome in terms of i've never made money and now how am i going to start making money is realizing that i'm worthy of receiving it and i also had to come overcome the challenge of would anyone ever pay me for skills that i don't have when i was transitioning from 23 24 year old from football into kind of the the business and career workforce i didn't know what skills i had so the limiting belief of would anyone give me money for a skill that i don't have i don't know what they are so i have to figure out what they are or i have to develop new skills i also had a mindset that was i'm too young why would anyone pay me if i'm too young i'm too inexperienced i'm not qualified etc these were all limiting beliefs that held me back early on but when you can flip these things into i'm too young but i have energy i have use i have passion something that maybe older people don't have and when you use it to your advantage and not your disadvantage that's when you can really start to accelerate things so i'm not experienced but i'm more passionate than anyone else i'm willing to try new things i'll say yes to anything to gain the experience or someone else with a lot of experience will probably say no to a lot of things because they've already worked their way to get there i'm not qualified well i'm not qualified but i'm willing to take on multiple different projects to get qualified i'm willing to do what it takes to gain the skills so having that energy that willingness that passion that hunger people are inspired by that people want to have people on their team they want to hire people in that position so make sure that you figure out what your limiting beliefs are and use them towards your advantage not your disadvantage but those were some for me next question is what do you do differently now than when you were poorer that makes you more money and one of the things that i really learn from many different mentors is having recurring revenue streams so i have over the last few years set up my business to have multiple reoccurring revenue streams and i didn't have this for the first six or seven years it all relied on me showing up every day selling something to earn money and then paying the team paying the expenses but it all relied on me showing up every day every week every month to sell something to then bring in money to help pay for things and it's hard if it's all relying on you every single day to help pay for everything so instead i started transitioning our business to make money to be able to take care of our team and the expenses so i don't have to be the only one that is relied on to earn revenue and bring it in and we did that through setting up reoccurring revenue streams in our business things like the podcast things like youtube things like a membership sites things like a coaching program that has reoccurring payments and these recurring revenue streams they rely on me to create but more from an evergreen place not from a place of i need to do this now today in order to generate sales in order to generate revenue so how can i spend my time today so that we generate revenue consistently based on those efforts and that's just something that took time it took time for me to develop skills to get experience to build confidence to make mistakes in order to figure out how to do that and that's i think something that people would want to learn about in the future so what are the best investments that i've made the best investment is always the ones in myself and back into my business i've made multiple different investments in lots of different ways that never worked out and if you want to hear another episode about all the investments i made that were bad investments then let me know in the comments below if you want me to do a solo episode on what not to invest in and we'll we'll do that but the ones that have always paid off are the ones and i've invested in building team building tools for my team building investing in software and things to automate things within our team anything investing back in our team at greatness media that has always been a great investment because it allows us to reach more people allows us to help and impact more lives and allows us to generate more revenue for the business so i can continue to pay the team pay myself and build the mission that's number one putting into business the second thing is like really back into myself and i think this is the greatest investment you can always do is back into yourself so health being number one without health it's hard to build wealth because there's some type of saying out there that a wealthy man has a million problems a sick man has one problem and when you're sick nothing else matters except for how do i get healthy how do i get back on my feet how do i get rid of this disease the sickness this thing that's holding me back the other problems in the world don't matter until you get your health right if the your health is not right that's going to be the only thing so for me i'm investing in nutritionists i'm investing in coaching and trainers for my health and wellness my physical body i'm investing in quality foods organic foods i'm at a stage where i can invest in those things now but when i was younger i was investing in ramen noodles and ice cream you know that was like all i could afford so now it's optimizing health and thinking about that i'm investing in skills for me i'm all about how can i maximize more skills because the more skills i have the more potential i can connect with other people i can relate to other people i can build my business in that way as well and it's just more fun and enjoyable enjoyable for me and i think a rich life comes down to more than financial riches it comes down to having a rich fulfilling life doing the things that you enjoy doing the things that that bring you more love that bring you more fulfillment that inspire you that make you feel more alive for me that's a rich life and just having money and not having that is a poor life so i'm thinking about how can i enrich myself with activities hobbies adventures magical moments that bring me more joy that bring me more freedom fulfillment because that is where the riches lie personally for me so skills that i'm investing in going back into salsa dancing classes spanish lessons because i really want to learn spanish learning about businesses learning new ideas about investing like skills that excite me that that light me up um investing in friends and loved ones whether it be just taking a friend out for lunch or coffee and investing financially with with that there by paying for the tab and also investing my time and energy into them and loved ones taking care of the people when i can when it works for me as well and then also i like to invest in experiences and adventures i was thinking about this last night with a friend of mine i was reflecting on travels of my past and i was like wow i've really been to a lot of countries i've really experienced so many different cool moments in my life because i invested in travel i invested in experiences i invested in trips and adventures with good people and it's cool to be able to have these memories and be able to experience these moments on a consistent basis so that's what i like to invest in personally for me next question is what are the three most important things to do to start building wealth something i want to always go back to is surround yourself with a mentor who's done it and learn from them it's really hard to do something that you've never done before without having a model or a mentor who can guide you or at least someone you can watch from afar and learn from you can watch their content or youtube or books or something it's hard to do it on your own if you don't have that so i really try to surround myself with the people who are the masters of the skills that i'm trying to learn who are masters in business if i'm trying to build my business and and learn more from them because they're at a place that i'm not at yet so i want to surround myself with them and then learn and apply it the second thing would be to create a game plan with structure and processes around how to build your wealth from these mentors from this information you're learning from so really get clear on okay what is it that i want and why do i want this whether it's a financial goal or any type of goal in your life you want to get clear on what you want why you want it and then put a date around a goal of when you want to accomplish that goal for me that will allow you to have structure it'll allow you to have time and space to create and reflect on it allow you to have moments where you can create processes in place it allows you to break down goals that allow you to see what's working what's not all these different things but if you just say i want to make more money and you don't have a date and you don't have a game plan behind it it's going to be hard to accomplish that so really create a structure around learning this and give yourself some time and space to grow and the third thing would be i just think it's so important for me it's so important to be joyful and service focused joyful and service focused when you're trying to build wealth or trying to generate more revenue for your business people want to be around those who are joyful no one wants to be around someone who's negative someone with low energy someone who's distracted someone who's complaining no one wants to be around that person they want to be around positive energy joy someone who's happy grateful now you're not going to be this all the time but i'm telling you the more you can be in that space the more you will find financial opportunities coming your way so it's it's kind of like the pre-step the pre-habit to all the habits of of building wealth and the millionaire mind is coming from a place of joy even when you have nothing because there are people that i want to be around there's people that i've met in the past who have nothing but they bring joy to the moment and i'm like i want to be around that girl i want to be around that guy because they just bring more energy to maybe a challenging day if you have joy it's one of the greatest currencies you can have even if you don't have other skills you don't have opportunities to bring someone joy can be your your ticket the key to unlocking the door to riches and so thinking about i think it was zig ziglar who said if you want to accomplish your goals find a way to help everyone else accomplish their goals i'm paraphrasing this here but find a way to help everyone else accomplish their goals and by doing so it will come back to you you'll be surrounded by the right people to help you accomplish your goals another question is how can someone 10x their income if they run their own business and you want to think about these key things increasing your prices increasing your prospects increasing products increasing process and increasing your personal brand so if you've got a business right now and you've got a product or a service the first thing you can think about is of these five things how can i increase my my rates how can i increase my my my price on this product or this service that's a way you can start earning more right there is your product amazing can you make it better if so then you can increase your prices is it getting incredible results for people awesome increase your prices is your coaching your consulting helping people you over delivering awesome think about increasing your prices number two prospects this is how are you getting more leads to come in to sell your products or services so you got to think about how can i increase my prospects if you want more results you need more people to be aware about you number three increasing products maybe you've only got one offering right now can you offer something else to reach a different demographic maybe people can't afford a certain price you're at but they could afford something a little bit lower or maybe there's a tier up that you could charge for people and right now you're only offering a lower number but you should be charging something else for a different service or product so increasing the amount of products in your product suite can support you in 10xing your business number three the process if you haven't optimized the process for your business meaning how can i streamline things how can i save time how can i get software and tools to support me in automating things so that i can invest my time back in prospects back-end products etc then start thinking about how can i optimize the process for myself and for my team number five i've got one more for six number five is is increasing your personal brand because the evidence is showing more and more that um people with ceos with personal brands or individual personal brands in general are more trustworthy and more likely to get opportunities so finding ways to build your personal brand whether that's creating free content online showcasing your skills and talents whether that's doing collabs with people whatever it might be but putting your personal brand out there with your wisdom with your information with your knowledge with your skills with your talent with your teaching building your personal brand and i'd say the sixth thing if i was going to add one more thing there is increasing the quality of the people you're surrounded by the people on your team so we've got prices prospects product process and personal brand and then the sixth thing would be uh building a quality team of people around you and making sure that the people are supporting this as well as we have increased our team our opportunities for growth has come financially as well and that takes time that takes energy that takes training it takes you know onboarding teaching all these things but that process alone by bringing in great people will support you in your growth next question if someone is an employee how can they start to make more money well i really like to think about the first thing is here what's the value you're bringing to the current company that you're with if you're creating a current value right now can you approach the leadership team or the ceo or your boss and say hey listen i've been here for a certain amount of time and here's the value i've created i would like to create a game plan for creating more value and creating bigger results results that can save the company money results that can make the company money or save the company time and here's my game plan so you taking the time because usually when you go to a job uh you're going to get a set rate and you're expected to get the results that you're paid for that rate so you got to go above and beyond to really be considered for a raise and or a significant raise for most companies and what i would do is say listen i really value my time here i love what i'm creating here i love where i'm at but i want to grow and i want to help this company grow with me showing you how i can create more value in this process and then give a game plan to your boss or your leadership team or whoever and say here's what i'd like to create here's what i propose i propose i step into this role i step into this new role where i could get a raise and hear the results that i could create for the business here's how it's going to make the business more money here's how it's going to save time and here's how it's going to save money if you can show that you can do all three of those things with a clear game plan and you can actually execute it without it taking more resources necessarily or time of the the leadership team or your boss or whoever it might be that will set you up for a greater chance of earning more if you're working for a company right there showing that you care showing that you want to do just more than the bare minimum will set you up for success in that way but you've got to be the one to take charge to make that proposal you've got to be the one to step up and say here i've got the game plan mapped out here's what i'm thinking i want to go do it let me test it for three months and if we get these specific results then i'd love to be rewarded or considered for a raise or considered a bonus whatever it might be so that's something i would think about right there it's really approaching that and i don't know if most employees are thinking about it that way but if you can think about how can i earn help the company earn more save more time or save more money then you should definitely be considered for that and i want you to think about like consulting at nights on the weekends listen you've got your full-time thing and that's bringing your full-time check that's great so you've got extra time at nights and on the weekends so if you want to earn more you've got to be putting in extra time of thinking about okay how can i use my skills how can i use my knowledge how can i use my collaboration skills whatever it might be to either consult to coach to launch a product or a side hustle and to start earning more on the side all things take time and you've got to build your personal brand you got to build your contacts you got to build your content whatever it might be that your skill is in and start doing that at nights on the weekends if you want to earn more how can i use the law of attraction to build wealth well another one of my mentors said that the world makes room for passionate people the world makes room for passionate people so how do you want to use the law of attraction to build wealth is to be passionate is to be joyful like we talked about before i'm really clear on setting my intention in a daily basis when i wake up i say thank you i say thank you for another day because we don't know if we're going to wake up tomorrow we don't know we we hope we we've woken up for so many years for now so we assume it's going to happen but we just don't know and there are people that will go to bed tonight that won't wake up tomorrow in the world this will happen we don't know it could be me it could be you and we don't know and every breath we take right now is closer to our last breath we will ever take so i really think about my intention in the morning thank you i'm here another day i get to help someone else today i get to make an impact today i get to use my skills and talents with where i'm at in my life right now to make a difference whether that's smiling at someone whether that's giving someone a hug or using your skills to support someone in their life so set your intention and think about it daily and act on it daily and let people know what your dream is in the process of helping them so when you're clear on your intention and every morning you think about it you're thinking about it i like to write down my goals i hang them up so i'm looking at my goals they're in my eyesight so i'm not distracted thinking about everything else and then daily acting on it set your intention think about it look at it daily action and while you're supporting other people accomplish their goals you let them know what your dreams are in that process for me that's the recipe that's the less the recipe for the law of attraction and and attracting things by you thinking it looking at it acting on it daily and then while you're helping other people through your skills and talents you're talking about what your goals are what your dreams are that you've been acting on daily not just oh this is something i want to do in the future and i'm thinking about it and i haven't done anything for years about it but you're actually putting in the work on a daily basis to build reps to build material to build skills and to build confidence that's something to think about on the law of attraction we also have a number of videos and interviews about wealth and the law of attraction so if you're over on youtube right now make sure to check out we should have some stuff linked up where you can see more videos on the law of attraction and generating wealth for your life next question is what are the best books to learn about making money there are a number of books that i like and i actually had a a few books on my bookshelf these aren't all the books that i would recommend there's definitely more but i just want to share a few of them that i have here on my shelf that i really like the first one is think and grow rich if you haven't checked out this book yet make sure you check it out i just think it's got timeless wisdom and some great stuff this is a book i read when i had no money and i went through this and there were some incredible ideas that just helped me overcoming the fear of money helped me overcome help me understand money a little bit more from a philosophical understanding so this helped me take action helped me get clear it helped me think differently it helped me overcome fears so thinking grow rich is definitely one that i recommend the richest man in babylon this one has sold millions of copies i think it's a great story again to help you being more inspired so the richest man in babylon i really like this this is a big book but i read this thing cover to cover and for me it's hard for me to finish a book cover to cover but i was really inspired because like i said there's a language about money that can be daunting that can be confusing that can be scary because you don't know what these words are in the terminology in the languages so this book by tony robbins money master the game the seven simple steps to financial freedom freedom i've done an interview with tony on this book we'll link it up somewhere so you can go check that out as well but this was a powerful interview that i did where tony dives in deeper about this so i recommend getting the book but it's like i don't know 600 something pages so you can start with the video or the episode first on the audio or youtube but this is a game changer it's really teaching about how to invest your money in a powerful way so that you can be financially free for the rest of your life with the right investment strategies really good one i like that a lot money match the game this is by my friend david bach david box got a number of new york time bestsellers but this is a short book his most recent book called the latte factor why you don't have to be rich to live rich and i think this kind of goes into what i was talking about at the beginning of this episode where for me a rich life is not about having all the money in the world having all the money in the world can solve a lot of problems but it doesn't solve every problem it can pay for your rent it can pay for trips it can pay for nice things have food it can help people you can pay for your health insurance bills like it can do things to definitely help you in a big way but it doesn't mean you have a rich life if you have a lot of money it doesn't mean that there is someone i live in a building here in los angeles and there's someone who committed suicide last year who was reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars who was so well connected in hollywood connected to presidents and looked like he had it all he had all the money had the success had the fame for whatever reason he committed suicide and it just made me reflect that like there might be some stuff inside of us that if we don't feel rich inside it doesn't matter how rich we are on the outside and this is all about why you don't have to be rich to live rich and i think if you can understand this principle first about building the riches within you not thinking about how can i create wealth outside but when you build it on the inside first then when you have it you can understand it more it doesn't consume you it doesn't control you it doesn't manipulate you it doesn't own you because i've seen it for too many people that money becomes an obsession that then owns them and controls them you hear the term more money more problems this is real if you don't know how to manage it this is also why some people sabotage themselves because i make a lot of money then everyone has their hand out and says give me give me give me give me i want money can you help me here you've got it so why can't you just pay this 5 000 from here 10 000 here can you pay off my debt can you pay for this can you pay for this and it becomes overwhelming because people feel like they're going to take advantage of it feels like they're being used and abused they feel like people are only in their life because they have money and so this is why some people become you know jerks or distant or whatever they might be going through because they don't feel like your relationship or your connection with them is coming from appreciation or from true friendship and that's a challenging thing so you've got to understand if you don't have money and someone who does have it and you're acting and you're saying well why aren't they doing this and why aren't they doing that why are they acting weird it's because they probably have everyone asking them for something as opposed to asking them you know what how are you doing today how are you feeling what can i do for you everyone's always asking what can they do for them right they always want something from them so you got to be aware of that make sure you build a rich life from within a like david box book again he's got many other great books around money but this one is a recent one that i really like that was on my shelf these last two that i have on my shelf that i like that i pulled off uh both of these guys i've interviewed we've got ryan sirhant big money energy how to rule at work dominated life and make millions if you guys don't know ryan sarah make sure to check him out i just did a full interview about him in this book again it kind of goes back into big money energy the energy you bring to deal making to getting a job to building a business like the energy you bring to attracting talk about the law of attraction it really is an energy thing it stems from your attention your joy your level of passion your level of enthusiasm your positivity that's where the rich life starts if you have nothing but you have big energy that's a rich life and that's where you can start to attract financial riches as well so check out big money energy and then i saw chris hogan everyday millionaires how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can as well he surveyed a bunch of millionaires and learned about the strategies they used to generate their millions and he talks about this in this book we did a full interview with him as well everyday millionaires want to check that out these books are for people at different stages you know maybe you don't want to start with tony robbins if you have no money to even invest this might be okay i've got some money i need to learn how to invest what should i do with it so check out the books based on the stage that you're at if you're if you're kind of just getting started then i would go back to this one think and grow rich so you make sure you check this one out as well this has sold a lot of copies over the years and that is my my strategies my books my insights and i'll and i'll leave you with this you know also if you want more episodes like this more solos like this then please let us know in the comments over on youtube below this video and let us know what topics you'd like me to cover and go into but here's what i will say money is definitely an energy in a journey money comes and goes uh the more you hold on to it the less more is going to come to you the more you're willing to invest it in things and spend it and let it flow the more will flow to you so you got to learn the balance you don't want to spend it all the time so you have none you want to make sure you're willing to invest it in certain things that make sense and the more free you feel about it inside the less scarce you feel about it the more will come to you and you also just feel more at peace this takes time for me i didn't have a good relationship with money growing up i didn't understand it i didn't get it i was afraid of it i was afraid to talk about it because i was ignorant to how it worked when you learn about how money works which could be a lifelong journey this isn't just like okay i read a book and i get it now this is a lifelong journey based on the season of life you're at with your money and at different seasons you're going to need to learn new lessons you're going to need new mentors and friends to support you in learning about this you're going to need new books new tools to learn about investing saving taxes all these different things are to come to you accounting just dealing with it all it can seem overwhelming and this is why when things are overwhelming sometimes people don't even want to look at it and if you don't understand it i'm telling you it's going to be hard for it to keep coming your way or you're always going to feel like you're behind i'm behind on payments behind on debt that i got to pay off and you're never going to feel caught up so this is a this is a skill you want to master money is going to be a part of your life for the rest of your life for probably 99.9 of the the population and it's going to be something you're going to need to learn how to continue to evolve into understanding and the more you do that the more you talk about it in a positive way the more positive it will be with you so think about these things leave a comment below of what you thought was the most powerful part about this and what i want to do right now is actually add a couple of clips more about wealth the lava trash around money millionaire habits and how you can really start earning more wealth for yourself and the habits of what some of the richest people in the world do right here on the school of greatness so thank you guys for watching we'll dive right into these clips right now everything is about the whole intuition part right you're sitting there who you choose to be friend who you choose to have relationships with you know and how you water those relationships because if you want to have a relationship together and it's just take take take nothing's going to happen i remember i'm a 24 year old kid i don't know nothing about business i've done some stuff in sales but i really don't know nothing about business i'm i'm a 22 year old kid i go and i take this guy i go to a job interview at the advertising group shout out to jamie hebb and i watch this guy he interviews me i'm i'm at that time working on morgan sandy dean witter but i'm trying to see what else i want to do okay so i got started day before 9 11 but i'm still interviewing i sit with him in the interview and the way he interviewed me i sat and i said i will never work for this company because it's just not what i want to do because they were selling xerox machines and business to business i said but i want to have a relationship with you i said do you mind if i get your business card he said yeah sure i said okay great so it gives me his business card year and a half later i get a job i'm doing good at this point i'm making some income 23 years old i call him up and i said jamie you don't remember me but i want to take you out to lunch and i want to pick your brain if you don't mind i told you a year and a half ago that i wanted to do this with you said yes he says great let's do it so we go to macaroni and macaroni grill someone cover city right around here like victory overland some somewhere around that area so we go there he brings this drop dead gorgeous girl that works for him i think her name is natalia or natasha or something with ant right and she's beautiful short skirt perfect legs flawless beautiful face she's sitting right there and i know what he's trying to do he's trying to woo me to go be one of his sales guys and i said look with all due respect you're beautiful but i have no interest in you my interest is in you is it fair if we just talk business for an hour he says yes so i went okay now at this point he's making a million i'm making 50 grand here i'm a nobody okay we have lunch again i'm taking notes taking those taking notes i offer to pay he doesn't let me pay he pays he says i got it no problem when i leave i send them a book we had this meeting that we did every three to six months together at this restaurant argentinian restaurant called bamboo which they had this beautiful soup every time we would have dinner with them or we'd go to lunch i would always send him a book ten years later he says every time i meet with patrick a book is on its way okay so i value the relationship i ask them what do you need from me how can i bring things to you years later he gives me one referral that one referral he gave me helped me open up florida if he doesn't give me that referral that florida office wouldn't have been opened up right one contact opens up a whole state okay so another relationship i can tell you about is i was going to churches and i said let me see what's going to happen with these churches and i'm going to churches and i'm going to these different places i'm having i'm studying scientology i'm studying lds i'm studying jehovah judaism i'm studying everything at this point in the game i was obsessed with religion so all i want to do is study study study everything about religion right and i'm 24 25 i eventually find this church called shepard shepherd of the hills which is ran by a guy named dudley rutherford and i go to this place and i'm i'm an atheist so it's not like i'm going to i'm just trying to see what's going on over here i'm just trying to learn i'm not trying to do it i go to this place and i'm like okay i like this guy's style typically go to church if you don't do this you oh no hell hey i'm not dude i don't need to know i'm going to hell i know i'm going to hell i just want wanted i was shot in heaven you know what i'm saying so this guy's energy was you have a shot about heaven right i'm okay cool all right i'm going to this might try a little better right i know to screw up let me see maybe i got a shot over here so i go there and i'm sitting in the back i watch him once twice three times four times i'm like wow this i like this guy so then i sent him an email a little bit of an arrogant email but i'll tell you what the email was i sent him an email i said listen my name is patrick baby you don't know who i am but i'm gonna be somebody in the world and i know you are somebody in the world but i promise you if you give me your time i will always bring value to you it will not be a waste your time okay i'm not doing anything at that time at 25. i'm i've got a small little office operation nothing crazy we go have a lunch together black angus black angus of canoga or topanga we go to black angus we sit down we talk after the meeting is over with us so what can i do for you nothing there we go out again what can i do for you nothing there what can i do for you nothing there eventually he says something happened my son had more park basketball and i made a phone call to the coach and i spoke to the guy and anonymous anonymously because i don't like the way this whole situation was handled he probably doesn't even know the story i know the people may know but he may not even know the story so um so i make the phone call we get closer he marries my wife we change our wedding to friday which was set up on saturday to friday so he can wet us anyways in 2008 2009 2008 he introduces me to tom ellsworth you know how i talked about tom earlier he introduced me to tom okay and tom comes okay in 2009 he introduced me to matt sappala matt zappala and sheena i got introduced to 09 they just got promoted this last week at west palm beach to the chief distribution officer php right he is now the cdo okay we've paid them in the first six months to do over a million dollars they're they're doing very good at what they do in the business here but if i don't have that contact and i water him what his needs are not what i can take yeah if i give the needs you i don't have those contacts so i think too many times when you know you build a relationship with somebody it's immediately what can i do you know uh what can i and what can i get from yeah and i remember how you were the first time we met you know when we were done you and i went to earth cafe with jen and i think we went and looked at some furniture and there was like a google shop that we went there i don't know if you remember that walking around right across from earth cafe and and you said pat how can i help you what do you need from me you know what can i do for you it was on the corner exactly yeah exactly something so we walked around babe she's like yeah i really like this louis guy i don't like this approach how he is that's the dynamic that you don't see behind closers people may see school of greatness people may see the books but behind closed doors the context is about what can i do for you so you ask three things i'd say the biggest one is figure out ways to strengthen relationships and take them deeper because you never know just like everybody thinks you're you know one sale away or one opportunity away you're one contact away from your life changing if you start valuing your contact like a book of business yeah everything changes that's true what i heard you say there was intuition study and relationships sure yeah that cover those kind of three things and i think when you think about people that aren't making the money that they want and don't have a rich life whether that be quality of life they probably aren't discerning their decisions and being intuitive about who they should spend time with they aren't researching more ideas and expanding their mind and they aren't giving in those relationships i would agree with that yeah i would agree with that and i think sometimes it's also not knowing what something could lead into you know a guy one time came into morgan center being with her on a harley-davidson uh bike and he had tattoos and he looked rough very rough no advisor would take him he says i'm looking for an advisor no advisor would take this guy yeah i need an advisor you're like oh there's a bank downstairs financial advisor financial advisor while morgan stanley dean witter glendale no one wants to take this guy this guy's got no money yeah so the guy comes out he sees it says oh just give him to somebody else i'm good the guy in the corner office that has a couple hundred million dollars under management he leaves then the new guy takes him then the guy comes i have 50 million dollars to invest he got an inheritance that one account was 15 changed his life changed his life yeah and he put the 500 rookie broker got a 50 million dollar money under management you're getting one or two points on that for life for life every year every year generational wealth we're not talking about like a small thing here so you can't just sit there and look at relationships that you never know the potential of a contact you have to know every contact could take you to some place that you don't know it's like a movie you don't know the next scene you know so you can't just assume what that contact's going to lead into yeah sometimes the smallest contact can lead into something big one of the things i love about you patrick is you remind me of my dad so much and my childhood my dad i think i told you my dad was a life insurance salesman for 32 years until he got into a brain accident he got in a car crash and he's still alive today but he had to stop working and he also became an entrepreneur launched the health insurance vertical in in conjunction with northwestern mutual and um he does everything you do and my whole business model and just the way that i live is based on what i witnessed him doing and this is pre-social media pre-internet wow he would just remember names like nobody's business he was so giving so thoughtful and he was always thinking in the long term he wasn't like how can i sell you now but how can i give you now he would do this every day he would read the newspaper and he would cut out the newspaper every day and write long letters and put in envelopes and send it out to people that were clients and people that are not clients if it was someone's kid in sports that you know was hey they had their best game ever hey i wanted to send you this clipping wow of a newspaper to just people in the community it's on a whole different level though man that's handwritten letters and just send it to them and say hey you know if i can ever help with anything let me know yeah it was that kind of old school mentality but he would always just show up for people just take meetings to take them and wasn't always trying to sell but just trying to serve and that's really kind of how i built my business early on was when i had nothing at all i was just like what can i learn from someone and how can i ask them what they need and then deliver on that need as fast as possible and not ask for anything in return and i think that's one of the reasons why i've been able to grow is because of the relationship building you know ben our producer i met him nine years ago when he was a student at columbia journalism school i get to get her master's right and he was working on a documentary about hamill i was in handball at that time in new york city and really liked the way he made the documentary and followed his journey over the last nine years stayed in touch every year we needed a head producer to really build our content and i reached out to him and the timing right the sequencing was right and we had a relationship where it made sense at least for now maybe he leaves at some point but it's been great so far in the last four months and i think you never know where the relationship will go even if it didn't work out it's still worth building relationships even if we never work together because you just never know who that person might introduce you to who might say your name behind closed doors where it unlocks some opportunity you'd never know so you remind me a lot of my dad that's a big compliment man i appreciate that thank you and i think if more people came from that place of how can i just care about people and help them solve their problems you're going to gain a lot back in return long term whether it's with that person or not and you talk about money a lot on your show and you have an amazing video about your top i think it's your top 20 rules on money i'm curious since we're going to the rich poor conversation what would you say are the top three to five rules on money if you could boil it down to three to five it's a game the number one rule is it's a game you're playing a game it's that simple you know if you if you look at it as a game just like anything you can get better at it right like i don't whatever game you play if you play uno if you play monopoly if you play clue if you play manga if you play fortnite if anything you play you know you're gonna get good i remember in my time i was playing fester's quest i played zelda i used to play final fantasy 1 and i would play uh obviously street fighter and mortal kombat but it was also what was the mario kart is it super mario kart ice and you know how you would do the three jumps and then bam it's going fast and i would beat this time 32 seconds i was so proud of it but i played it 50 000 times right so the game with money it's it's exactly what it is once you learn how to play the game with money then it has to do with timing then it has to do with different kind of things like you know a a year ago i get a call from a guy who needs cash it's okay so he needs an investment he he has something he has to sell immediately to get cash in return okay because he needs the money right away so it's okay so uh what are you selling he says it's the two greatest wayne gretzky cards i said okay signed or unsigned no this is a psa 10 1979 opc technology no sign but it's the holy grail so the the the opg one sold in 2016 for 453 000 okay wow and just five years prior to that it sold for 92 000 so from ninety two thousand to four fifty one in 2016 and he calls me and a top sold in 2016 for two hundred five thousand dollars so two cards combined sold in 2016 for 600 and you know he has them both he has them both and he wants to sell it to me and i said okay what do you want to sell it for he's like 600 000. yeah of course he wants to i said i'm not going to pay you that i mean you know he wants 650 i'm not going to pay that but we talked about it and eventually he gave me a number right and it was still a number i had to still cough up you know half a million dollar check to the guy but we met at the psa headquarters classy guy total gentleman we sat down transaction happened the ceo of psa came showed us the poster on the psa headquarters i think it's a new port of the card is on the wall it's the most expensive hockey card in the world right okay no problem so you're a hockey fan i'm not a hockey fan i'm an investment guy with hockey but i've interviewed wayne gretzky six years ago wow so i like greatness i like anybody that just goes and crushes it with their game right so i buy this card so i buy the card i don't think much one card not two two cards it's both of them i bought both of them yeah wow so the other guy who owns the card wouldn't sell his card for a million dollars if you paid it to him so here's what i do now two guys own the card me and the other guy there's only two of us okay you paid a million he won't sell it to you so that means there's only one in the market because it's me because i'm willing to sell it right yeah so it's on ebay right if you go on ebay right now you type in wayne gretzky opg it's it's on market right up for a million dollars right what the the one of them is on the market four million the other one's on the market for 400 000. so you asked me for rule of money i had cash if i don't have cash like that i can't double my money that quickly so we just talk about three of them money's a game you need cash because opportunity is going to come up and it's a doubles game so if i put this game it's a doubles game everything about money is a doubles game what's that mean a doubles game to me is i pay you a thousand dollars can we double it in six months no how long in 12 months okay no problem i'll do a double in a year here's a thousand dollars i get a double bag right so if you take a thousand and you double it every year what happens thousand goes into two four eight sixteen thirty two sixty four two fifty six five two of a million a thousand dollars is nine doubles away from a million wow now you take a million and see what happens if we double it nine times one million goes into two million four million eight million sixteen million thirty two sixty four one twenty eight two fifty six five two of a billion a million is 10 doubles away from a billion how do you find the doubles well that's the game that's the part of the game that's what i'm trying to tell you so so the doubles now becomes investment opportunities you know what you buy into do you start a company where has a high value you know you can really scale it and finding something that can scale do you invest into things that are gonna give you six eight ten percent or you're gonna go play ball and take the risk that's the game that you're gonna start learning that you know part of my money is going to be hedge and i'm going to buy some gold because i'm not going to become a billionaire off goal but i'm buying it because gold is money and something happens to the economy i'm protected with the gold but you know what i'm going to put some of this money in mutual funds because i know long term i'm going to make 8 to 12 on this i'm fine with that i might do a real estate deal because long term i may do some money although right now commercial real estate may be an interesting dynamic because i think zoom crushed commercial real estate the commercial real estate model has it's been crushed and by the way it may never come back the same way ever again commercial 20 years from now or something who knows i don't even think i think it's gone here's what i mean look we have this space right okay you got this space did you get in the last four months how long have you got it before coming so six months before yeah but if you get this today if you get this today right right now office space in dallas office space nationwide companies are looking at their business models and they're just saying why do i need a hundred thousand square feet of office space why do i need it but if you go out there you look at the numbers you're like okay i don't know if i'm going to commercial real estate you know but if i find some small if i team up with the investment bank or if i team up with a guy that's managing money and i go with a vc team and this is a guy that's you know flipping opportunities fairly quickly and i dump a million dollars with him and within five years he turns a million dollars into five million that's five x and five years i may not be a bad idea so you gotta find those and they're out there by the way yeah yeah they're out there so ray dalio plays a game of uh doubles warren buffett's a doubles game all these guys are doubles game and is investing in businesses yes i'm a business guy i'm not a real estate guy there are people that are by the way that doesn't mean real estate doesn't work i mean it wouldn't make any sense for me to say there's real estate billionaires everywhere our president is a real estate billionaire so for me to knock real estate would would have no value to it but for me i'm more about i have an idea what are you guys doing me and tiffany are thinking about starting a a marketing company okay how can this thing scale well let me tell you what we got we got three packages boom boom boom we're going to be target audience we're going to be targeting people in this world okay and interesting how much are going to be we foresee us doing six million dollars in revenue within 24 months what have you done to be able to earn this i'm a columbia guy i'm in this time of this how much money do you need i need two million dollars i can't give you two million can i come in for a hundred thousand i put a hundred thousand dollars the next thing this thing sells for two hundred million dollars that hundred thousand dollars all of a sudden became 2.2 million dollars that's a victory so those opportunities are out there you just got to focus and then the last one i would tell you with the money so we talked about what we talked about gain is a game you need cash doubles games doubles game yep and i'll tell you one more would be you have to be maniacally maniacal about being patient i mean you have to be patiently aggressive you know patiently aggressive it's so tough to do because you want your money to double now exactly it might take 10 years yeah but but if you are willing to do the 10 years it may double 40 times it may double 30 times you know like when bezos said just hang tight i'm not going to give you dividends just trust me on this trust me on this right and at the beginning if you've heard the story where he goes and raises 2 million dollars from he gets 50 000 from 40 people that's what two million dollars and it gives them 20 percent wow 20 percent about 20 percent gives them 20 just for 2 million you know what that 20 is worth today 200 billion dollars that's the point so can you imagine 1994 amazon gets started forget about you put 2 million just say you put 50 million just with you you put 50 000 what is a half a percent of a 2 of a trillion dollar company right now a half a percent you're still a half a billionaire wow your 50 000 is worth 500 million dollars give or take whatever the numbers we're doing right the point is that is a massive victory the guy who put ten thousand dollars and he gave it to berkshire hathaway in 1974 i don't know if you've heard this story you know warren buffett is starting he says i'll give you ten thousand dollars never touches the money goes back to his regular job makes a hundred grand a year you know have you read this article no tell me the ten thousand dollars if you go on business insider you pull it up it's worth 780 today 780 million million never did anything to it so so that's the part about patiently aggressive yeah it's very hard to do but the doubles get bigger later on not earlier the doubles are bigger you're 15 20 20. that's what papa talks about just like his successes he's he's lived longer you know he's just stayed around longer to let the money continue to compound and that compounded interest is where it's at [Music] how do we negotiate with our mind to achieve something we've never achieved yeah so the first thing to achieve is why do you want to achieve it like what is your outcome many of us walk into the room even into the room we're talking ourselves and they're not honest about the outcome what is the outcome are you why are you going through the motion is it because society has told you that that's what it should be or is it that your parents always wanted that from you or is it that you have been uh neglected in some way and you're trying to please a bunch of people that you can't stand or that you want to change the world is it that you know that you being healthier is going to be able to be around in your family's life much longer or you're going to be able to uh stop some social injustices like what is your why first of all that's the first step you know why you want that that's the first step i always use this example is but people always say well i want to be a millionaire what are you going to do when you get a million dollars what are you gonna do with the money some people go i'm just gonna keep making money well how are okay you're gonna be a millionaire so if over 65 percent of the lotto winners are broke three years after winning lotto same thing with athletes and football players yeah and football players three years at league they didn't know their why the football player knew his why or you know he knew his why oh i want to get that ball or run that play i want to become part of a championship team because i love it or because it makes me fulfilled or it's fun i love going to the gym i love i love the i love i'm there for competition you know better than i do because obviously you are an athlete but if if you don't know your wife for a million dollars well when you get the money you're going to buy a bugatti you're gonna buy 10 cars and then what yeah but but then you just have the bugatti right so now what else you need right you're going to buy 10 cars are you going to move to bali and live off 30 000 a year for 10 years carve canoes save the turtles and invest in some stocks because stocks are gonna average out twelve percent every year and you're going to turn the six hundred thousand dollars into uh whatever case and then when you come back like what are you gonna do yeah yeah right are you gonna buy investment properties and keep doubling down many people go through life without their why and so when they're working that nine to five that that they're sick of they're going home and complaining and you know i i forgot what i was watching the show where a girl was she was like she was now living in nature but she said i lived in ireland and i was fighting every weekend in clubs and bars and i realized i was working and i was so miserable so that was my release so i was working to fight because i was so damn miserable with my life and then she started to find causes that she liked she stayed the job but she would go home at night and put some time into causes that she liked and she got able to get out of that circumstance and move to someplace else and now she's doing what she loves but people don't know their why yeah what's your why right now you've been doing shark tank for what 11 years now seven years eleven years on 12 years you've been investing in a billion businesses helping entrepreneurs grow you've got you know amazing kids yeah so so my why is as i said before first of all uh you know is to take care of my family and my my wife and my my youngest daughter because my oldest daughter daughters when uh when when they were born i was poor and all i knew was i got to go out and make as much money as i can to give these to get these girls uh in an area where they're more protected where they can have a good education and have a medical and things that in case something happens to them and to break the cycle in my family of people who were just average people my mother helped break that cycle by being one of the first to go to college and me i'm gonna break that cycle next but then i said to myself with the little girl now that i have the resources available it's more how much love can i give her because i never had experienced the wanting to come home purely for love i was just so focused on trying to make money because if these if i didn't if i wasn't successful then like most parents i'll sleep in a refrigerator box on the street if i have to make sure those girls had just one place to live so that's one of my why's also you know i've been on a show for 11 years that uh has changed the way that people uh have uh under understood or or or they get to educate themselves on being entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs i'm invested in various many companies on these people's uh you know uh they allowed me to invest in their dreams so who am i to give up and also i'm on the petco board and petco foundation uh you know saving animals i want to stop him and travel i have much more to do and if i have a public platform that i can come and sit with you or go on gma and stuff like that and i can help change people's perception of whatever the case is sex gender religion one of the cases to to make them realize that if i can do it they can do it then then i'm doing my job you know where do you think you'd be had you not had your your two oldest daughters do you think you'd have been as hungry to go earn make a build a business earn money grow or do you think like okay well i've got enough money for me i don't know you know what i had i was worth many millions of dollars by the age of 30 years old i was absolutely broke and poor and sleeping on the ground at 27. um at the ground in my house and how were you when you had your daughter your first daughter 20 27 26 got you right um and because of my daughters and my ex-wife i think that they leveled me to some extent because you don't give a 30 year old guy from the hood millions of dollars in the bank at 30 years old because i think i would have i never tried cocaine or any of that stuff but if i didn't have my girls i probably would have been a huge supporter of cocaine because it looked like it was fun with the people having it so i think that they they they they they governed me in a certain way um in a positive way in a very positive way and it made me also it made me also want to live to leave my daughter's a legacy i wanted them to be proud of their father so i refrain from doing and having a lot of the temptations that i've seen a lot of people fall yeah fall short and yeah and get caught up in there nothing wrong with that we're all human so i've i've interviewed a lot of people and there's one side of the spectrum where the successful entrepreneurs say you know what lewis the key to growing your business is going all in on one focus that's the key right that's what some say yeah but there's others like yourself who've invested in every business in the world it seems like and seen lots of them grow and been successful in that way do you feel like um is that just like your your creative nature where it's like you want to invest this is your part of your path right now where you want to invest in lots of brands because you did so much in one thing for so long no i think i think i'm more towards the person here so when i invest in brands and companies um i invest in them because they're i'm allowing them to they're allowing me to be part of their dream but i'm also learning from them which is in return allowing me to go back to my special skill set and improve it so i'll give you you're learning from the people you invest in i'm constantly learning every single day so in powershift i had i i highlighted my investment on bombay socks now these guys are the number one sock the number one investment in shark tank history the only the only the ring who did not get an investment went into really well did a billion dollars he did a billion two sale crazy right yeah and and and good for you they were there when yeah i said no and you know jamie ended up becoming a guest shark one time and he said he said when he came in the tank he was asking too much money and but but i believe that because we tenderized him like that and he went out and raised money i think we deserve five percent but that's just i'll leave it up to him yeah exactly but i think that that i sent him an email every other day saying hey just five percent all right i'm only gonna go four and a quarter but the socks but the socks is the best investment you made and it's the number one that's the number one product in shark tank history really in terms of how much it's grown how much has grown and how much it's gross now i want to make sure that you want to because i know you interview a lot of people so if you ever interview the underachievers that sit next to me in the tank i want to make sure that you remind them that you're the number one investor i am king kamehameha in the tank all right just make sure it was clear but um let's give you that what was that deal what was that deal and how big has it grown uh they've done over 200 million dollars i think it's 280 million dollars uh more importantly they're very so their deal is a sock and every time you buy a pair of socks they give a pair away to the homeless because they have a big challenge and we don't normally talk about the number it's more important that we've given away 30 million pairs of socks right cool thank you thank you and it's really it's really uh you know dave and randy's company and they they've done it all um i they've gotten very little to almost no advice for me because they're so great yeah but i'm gonna give you an example on the negotiation they come into the tank the only shark that doesn't want clothes is somebody who has ten clothing companies and eight are dead i my my my reason for being on the tank beside investing other people is to diversify my portfolio so when i talk to a retailer i go well i'm already taking a real estate in the clothing area i want real estate and electronics area i want real estate lotion the last thing i want is socks also i have i don't know 20 000 units of socks that i can't sell you know when i when i can't sell side i just send people over to people's houses they steal one yeah and then you have to buy a pair because you just think you lost it right so it's looking silly plus if i do the deal i'm the logo you can't if anybody in this room were in this building wearing bomber socks you couldn't tell so how do i get the advertising out of it but they managed to make me understand that today's generation wants to give every time they purchase instead of at the end of the year they want impact they want impact they and they don't want to buy from people who are just making money they want to know what did you do for somebody else so that's one thing i learned that i applied to all my businesses because you couldn't do that before social media you could but you could get the word out and then plus you would have to advertise or for people's hardships right you wouldn't have self-generated content of people saying thank you right so i learned that i also learned that because the consumer purchased and it was part of a movement they talk about at the dinner table at the water cooler and that's your advertisers you don't need the traditional form of advertising because people want to brag when they're doing something well and then last but not least they were showing me how to sell directly to my consumer and not being at the mercy of a retailer who still doesn't know what they're doing so they shifted the power in the room to get me to do a deal so you weren't interested i wasn't interested what else was everyone no not all not everybody else was interested but i was the last shark to be interested because i'm too jaded by the fashion industry lo and behold i do the deal and that's what a power shift is being able to know your target know what's beneficial for that person know where you're willing to draw the line and know you know really know how to relate to that person and communicate with them what is it that they said that shifted the power inside of your mind and say okay i gotta get into this well they showed me the technology and socks were really good because they didn't have the toe the seam in the toe when me being a manufacturer i didn't know how they did that at first it was a simple change but i used to get irritated and toes when doing that um they then but more importantly you have to put it on a certain way yeah of course more importantly they showed me that the data they received from their consumer was able to give them the ability to keep selling their consumer and keep talking directly to them and that they no longer were at the mercy of if a retailer makes the best decision or puts your socks out over here or advertises your socks or discounts them or anything else right so they were showing me how to control the business it's very much like content sending it out and getting to know a dashboard of your consumer and i learned so much from them but it was it was them understanding that damon i'm going to take you out of the old way of you doing business and move you into the new way of doing it and guess what if it doesn't work out we're going to do another business together and we're going to make some money and or change the world and more than likely have some fun that's cool who has taught you the most in the last 11 years of this show them them they have i learned i learned you know i joke about my fellowship but i definitely learned from that just because they pay you the most every month you get a check every month i see the business operating i see i see them i see them being laser focused i see a lot of things that they do uh they have probably taught me the most yeah who was there someone that you didn't invest in and talk to the most whether it be like a good lesson or a lesson you're like okay that's not what that's what not to do somebody that didn't or maybe someone inspired you but you didn't see the right fit for you and they taught you something uh you they i listen i learned i learned i i'm not saying to be warm and fuzzy i learned from every single one of these entrepreneurs how they operate the business or how they fail a lot of time when they fail it it confirms theories that i have um because you know whenever i fail i look a checklist of all the things and i go why didn't why did i do this this is this is this is not what i do yeah why why did i not take my own damn advice you know so um i can't name just one of them you know but you know i i look at entrepreneurs like uh jeff bezos and learn and go as big as you are you are affecting the world and you will still be scrappy enough to say hey amazon workers you want to make a couple extra dollars when you're going home you can take a package home and you let why is that beneficial well first of all the worker gets to drive home and takes home a package and makes more money you're a worker of amazon so amazon trusts you with the box and amazon saves on shipping like takes a package home that you bought for something no meaning just take anything you want you know take it and drop it off oh and drop it off someone on your neighborhood yeah wherever hey hey i gotta drive two miles i gotta drive ten miles but i looked in the system and seven houses on the way the ten miles wow let me let me make extra money doing that you can make action yeah that's pretty small i'll be picking up whole truck loads and it wins for everybody right but when i look at when i look at an entrepreneur like jeff bezos who does stuff like that i go he's still scrappy he's still thinking you know what i mean all this money in the bank but he's still trying to still maximize yeah yeah he's still scratching do you think the greatest entrepreneurs are more focused on money or on the mission look i think without without questions the mission okay without question and and there's nothing wrong with the pursuit of money i mean it's perfectly fine and it's it's um it's the engine of capitalism and a free market um but you know at a certain point what i've found with the people i've interviewed is that money is really you know a certain point there really isn't much more that it's going to it's really not going to improve your life much more you know stuart butterfield the founder of slack has a great his great explanation for what it means to be wealthy you can go to restaurant order anything you want um you can basically go on vacation or wherever you want and you're not worried about debt and those three factors basically his argument is once those are taken care of you are essentially wealthy i mean you are a and there really isn't much else that's going to improve your you know your life or your anxiety or your feeling of security and i i think that most entrepreneurs certainly the vast majority of i've interviewed are a hundred thousand percent motivated by mission i mean here's and here's actually the best piece of evidence for for for that a lot of founders will eventually exit and sell their companies right and i think a lot of a lot of people imagine that okay you you have a company and then you sell it and then you've got 100 million dollars and then you're going to go lie on the beach in the caribbean and sit pina coladas all day right the reality is if you did that you would eventually become very depressed you'd actually just begin to die right and wither and most of the people i've interviewed they want to work until the very end until even even when they have enough money for three generations behind them because it isn't about the money it's about a sense of purpose it's about camaraderie it's about community and a mission you know i i mean this is this might be weird for some of your viewers to and listeners to heat to hear but i used to be a foreign correspondent i covered the iraq war i covered the afghan wars i covered israel palestine that's what i did before you know this is know 15 20 years ago and i spent a lot of time in iraq 2003 2004 2005. and every time i would ask you know soldiers what is it that like why are you here why did you sign up for this you know and they'd say oh you know to serve our country and blah blah i said no but why are you here what what is what's keeping you here because you know this war is problematic and it can't just be about the flag it can't just be about because you know part of you knows that what you do here isn't necessarily going to be wrecking you know people in the u.s are are they even know what's going on here what is it and and you get the same answer time and again it's it's to protect the guy on the left on the guy on the right i'm here to make sure nobody shoots him and nobody shoots him that's that's it's it's about connection camaraderie mission purpose and it's the same thing with business so you think what motivates people most is the connection of the idea or the product or the service to the people you're working with or your customers or media all of it i think it's it's like a maslow's hierarchy you know all of it and and it's it's the people you work around i mean how many times have you have you encountered somebody who was very successful and then they left their job or they retired and then um they don't have that daily interaction they don't have you know what happens in sports a lot where you're you know as a former athlete you you see a lot of guys get depressed after they retire and they might have been an all-star an all-pro bowler or whatever it may be a super bowl champion made a 10 million dollar contract but then within a couple years they're very depressed they're they they talk about missing the brotherhood or the the locker room because of the camaraderie and the connection and when you don't when you have connection for so long and then you go in isolation it becomes very lonely yeah i'm i'm sure that's that i i'm there's no doubt in my mind i mean just i just watched that michael jordan documentary a couple months ago and espn is so so beautiful and you know seeing some of those um old chicago bull both players you know the the lesser knowns not the pippins and the jordans but the lesser knowns and yeah i mean you know they're not um no one's hounding them for autographs they're not getting on planes they're not i mean some of that i'm sure they don't miss but some of it is it's being part of a team you know being part of something bigger than yourself yeah i'm curious what do you think entrepreneurs are afraid of more fear of failure or fear of success i think that most of the people that i've interviewed and i i would take a sort of go on a limb and say most of us i think are more afraid of failure um which is actually not a good thing um because failure is especially manageable failure is something we all have to experience and embrace i think that that we all in our minds have this idea of what it means to be successful and and the reality is that success is not it's not a it's not an end point you know it's not like you do something and then you wake up and you say you know you you blow the trumpet and say i'm successful and that's it you know it's like and it's like exercise you know like i exercise every day i i don't love exercising every day it's not that fun but i can't just like my kids will say daddy you're you're healthy why why why i'm like you can't just like get to a point and say all right i'm healthy i'm done because then you start to decline the next day and i think it's a sort of a similar concept which is you know success is a constant process and a constant journey you know i think by nature most of us are more oriented toward towards succeeding and and most of us fear failure um but of course it's that creates a whole other series of issues you know one of the things that i love about how i built this is the people i talk to is and i've said this on the show i think failure is just infinitely more interesting than success you know when we get a lot of you know we you know you get a lot of pitches i'm sure you get these two from from from people who are like hey my client um they were the forbes 20 under 20. they were this this they were this they were the nobel prize you know what like all these accolades and that's that's great you know like i'm i'm i'm totally down with that but i want to learn from somebody who's like here's where i screwed up i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you what a dumb idiot i was right because that's when we learn and i think that and and that's really where people are at their most generous when they're really kind of talking about their failures and it allows us to kind of get a window into their soul that we need to have to help us when we are struggling with with failure what would you say is your greatest failure then well i'll start by saying almost every day being in this profession there's some failure right whether it's people not wanting to be on the show or whatever i mean obviously now it's gone much easier as i've grown but you know my my dream my real dream in life when i was a younger reporter was to be the main anchor news anchor on npr i wanted to be the guy ring to tell the news on all things considered or morning edition you know because i thought that was important like when i came to npr's you know as a younger man when i was 22 my parents didn't know what it was you know but i i i wanted i think part of us some of us are motivated by wanting to make our parents proud or whatever it might be and um so that was really what i thought i wanted to do and i i ticked all the boxes you know i was a foreign correspondent i covered wars i i went to cnn and i was on on television for two years covering israel palestine um i covered the pentagon i got your life for this job yeah right i got the weekend job i did a fellowship at harvard you know i ticked all the boxes i did the i was the weekend anchor for the news program the weekend host but um i was so close the weekend so close so close but i wasn't i wasn't chosen you know and that was a real blow for me that happened in in 2011 and i thought you know maybe maybe it was time for me to find a new career i mean maybe maybe i wasn't cut out for this you know really yeah i mean look it was very very hard because i really wanted that and the reality is that in the news business there are managers and programmers and executives and they have their own vision and it's it's a perfectly reasonable vision um and i wasn't part of that vision and it was a time in my life where i i really was trying to figure out what to do with it and just very luckily um ted as in the ted conference people had approached npr and wanted to collaborate on the show and i i heard about it and i raised my hand and i said i'll do that and so i kind of left the news world in 2012. entirely left it and that was a failure and you know that was like i mean i still have emails from you know really prestigious colleagues in washington dc when i used to live there who are like you're going to do a what a podcast what is that who listens to that wow why would you give up hosting the weekend news program you're so close to the main the main show yeah oh they would say what you have a massive audience that we did we had three million people listening on the weekends on the radio now that's changed a lot obviously the radio audience has been in decline but so i kind of i was kind of in the wilderness in 2012. you know i kind of went into exile and i didn't really know if ted radio hour was going to be successful i didn't know and this was launching as a podcast yeah yeah because i started in january 2013 so you started in 2012. the the show the show launched in march of 2013 ted radio well it was a relaunch of the show really so it did so we launched about the same time in a space when and this was before there was a million podcasts like there is now i think we hit a million podcasts on apple recently and i think there was not even a hundred thousand shows or something and it was something that you couldn't even find it was like you had to go to an app on itunes and plug in your phone yeah it was yeah we were we were getting on when no one was listening essentially uh there was a couple of that big people before us with joe rogans and some other tech podcasts but it wasn't a big thing yet yeah so you said i'm gonna leave npr the biggest show that there is in this space and go launch this little podcast thing with ted well i mean i launched it i was launching within npr so it was okay collaboration but i left the new side of npr which was the most important part of npr right is the thing that everyone know knows about this and that's whatever and like if you're a journalist that was what you wanted to do you know and it's like the highest level of respect the highest level of respect and it was washington dc and it's you know all these things and here i am doing this podcast and like you know it's like the it's like the backwater of npr at that time you know um of course now the tables have turned a little bit but that that was really an enormous failure but here's the thing as with almost every failure i've had it's happened for a reason it's like a hidden blessing it's like if that didn't happen and i pursued that path i don't i don't you know i don't know how happy i would be doing the news especially today i think the news is just it's really hard you know it's a hard time in in in our country news is really important i've a lot of respect and admiration for my colleagues who do that but that failure really kind of saved me [Music] one thing i realized is that at certain times in a man's life he's either a fool he's a victim or he's a king and when you're a fool you're like you goof it all up you know well you know but you you think there are no consequences for your actions but there are always consequences for every act you do everything good or bad but then when you mess your whole life up being a fool you become a victim now oh my god look you know what you know why you know why i did that because i was black you know what because i i go i grew up in all that religion and all my father was alcoholic you know he beat my mom you know that right or uh look at this look at the situation i'm from flint michigan man it's hard it's hard for a black man in this in this society and this way we did it i had and let me tell you the table is always full of excuses because they're valid yeah there's a lot of people against you and you can say oh my god this table is full it's like man you know this is the reason why i'm like this and this is this and man you never went out and you always stayed down always you always and but the king stage is when you realize wait a minute this is your table um wait a minute this is your room you have to accept whatever you are letting into your life good or bad as a king you can tell people get out of your court as a king you don't have to accept any of those excuses yeah as a king you have to know that you are responsible for your life good and bad you did that so as a king if something's not right it's your responsibility to change it dude it was like i had to go to rehab i went to rehab it was this place called psychological counseling services it was in arizona i mean um yeah in arizona in phoenix and man how long did you go for it oh man well we you go for a full it's like an intensive yeah where you don't do anything you're there for like 16 hours a day and this is 2010. this was yeah it was 2010. yeah so and my wife told me she thought i would never ever do anything like that because again i was not listen we had been going to like therapy but when you're not honest it doesn't work you know what i mean like you're just telling the game and you know whatever dude i went in there and i was like this ain't me this ain't me in like the first couple hours i'm like come on this is crazy then all of a sudden i was like oh my god this is me wow this is me this is the problem this is what i this is the issues i knew i was in tears i was i was broke i was like i was toxic like when you finally can turn the thing around and see yourself as ugly as you were [Music] i was just so so guilty let me tell you it wasn't shame it was guilt there's a big difference what's the difference shane says you are bad guilt says you did something wrong the problem is when you i was feeling shame since i was a kid yeah uh you you as you as you and this is the thing when you are ashamed person and when you try to motivate people through shame what you're doing doing is constantly telling them you are a bad person you are like this you are wrong you are messed up so you know what happens is no matter where you go you go back to i am messed up but when you realize wait a minute wait a minute it's not that i messed up it's that i i made a messed up choice yeah that changed the framework for me and i was like i didn't excuse anything i mind you it did not it was you are i had to say it and the thing is it's like courtroom it's like a court for you to actually be guilty you have to say it think about it there's nobody if you never admit guilt it will never be presented you have to say i am guilty i did the crime and it allows everyone to see you as you truly are and i went through the process of guilt making sure i was guilty i knew what i i said i put my wife through this i put my family through this i i did this i did this now let me correct it but see shane you can't correct shame is incorrectable you can't there's nothing what happens is shame you just cover shame is something you just put you know let's put some leaves over here and yeah put leaves over the body you know what i mean it's like there's no way you can really you know shame is one of those things where you just have to like color it image image covers shame but when you are dealing with guilt now you've been proven guilty now there's punishments there you have to make amends consequences um there's all kinds of things man you have to come back you have to forgive people who did things to you you have to ask forgiveness for what you did to other people let me tell you and i have to say this the forgiveness that my wife showed me was a was when i say a car carrying lesson for any person ever because i don't understand why people get divorced i do i first of all i should be but this woman finally this is the thing this is the intimacy that i always always wanted because she saw me for who i was for real and she said terry i love you anyway wow wow that's all you want yeah that's all i ever wanted all i ever wanted was to be seen for who i was and i was like you love me like i thought it was real i was like i thought she wouldn't come back but she did she said but terry i love you man that blew me away yeah because i was living this man life and uh here i am you see me as nothing i'm like i'm feeling about myself like i feel like i'm worth dirt and she was like oh i love you wow the man that changed everything it was like the thing that i needed i was running from the whole time louis i was running from it the whole time and i vowed i said after that i said my god my god i can correct this this is fixable this is fixable this is not something this is what i learned through through counseling and i continue to this day i mean it's been 10 years of constant constant work constant just hey man i can fix this before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day i don't think i'm the type of person that is brave enough to admit i've made a mistake honestly because i think things have not worked out along the way where things just didn't work out as i had hoped or dreamed them to be and but i don't see them as a mistake because as quick as you were thinking oh poor me you start to see the light of the door that it's opening that couldn't have opened without it okay so i don't have like a regret this was a big mistake that was a big mistake but i have to also say i have my whole life been very cognizant of doing anything and exposing myself to anything even when i didn't want to do it because i'm deathly afraid of feeling like i would regret like what if i don't do it that's more of a motivation for me than doing me too you know just like well well i look back you know like for example with dancing with the stars i did not want to do it i'm an old babe the last thing i want to do is practice four hours a day you were great you were you think i was so great not the judges they didn't think so i was the number one person on dancing with the stars last season number one rejected now there's a record okay but so you might say that was a mistake with all the work that that led up to and it was a social embarrassment i thought i'd be rejected maybe number three or five or six but number one i never saw it coming and so i was kind of a little mortified on that one but you know what i'm so thankful i did it and the minute i recovered by the next morning i'm like thank god i did it and thank god it's over it's a lot of work it's a lot of work because i didn't want to i said yes because i didn't want to wonder what it would have been like you know so what did you learn from the experience about yourself i learned i'm not a good dancer i swear i've looked at the tapes now one year later when i thought same tapes i looked at a year ago i thought you know i really got this but i look at the morning i'm like i'm stiff as a board what was i thinking missing steps so so what i learned from that is that i can't dance well but inside my body i feel like i'm a good dancer and i'll get out on any dance floor do my own makeup steps and people really smile as i'm dancing because i don't really give a crap and i look like it you know yeah but what did i learn i learned that i learned the same lesson i learned again and again which is thank god i did it thank god and and the the the injury of oh god you did so poorly dissipates quickly but there's an echo to not trying something that's going to sting here i think not that i know that because i really don't do that but i'm afraid of it it's like it's like fear of a nightmare that might happen i don't know why because i don't really have that in my life but i'm fearful of it yeah i think that'll sting you for a long time too that fear of regret of like oh i had the opportunity to do this dancing with the stars and i didn't do it how many years would you think about not you know what maybe a year but still a bad year you know um you know what uh regret does i think and and why i've been able to build up my personality and whatever i can get out of and give to life as best i could um what regret does is it quietly takes down your confidence a notch because in short you're a coward you shied away even if the right decisions to shy away once you shy away you quietly without even consciously thinking think a little less of yourself now i say that from experience because i've watched many people get stronger or people where life makes them weaker and there's a lot that goes into that but i really believe that that regret piece is not given enough do you really have to try everything and try your best because even and listen two out of three things i try don't work out you know but people just remember the success that's what i learned but i know what the failures are but still i got confidence out of failing each time a little notch up a little notch up so then you conduct yourself with more power in life because you feel better about yourself and ironically you have more to give you're a better package to give more because you've you've put a lot into that basket by just trying to try and try you know do you feel like you're more confident even though you're the first one out of dancing with the stars that you you did it and you absolutely yeah absolutely i'm more confident i got a lot of confidence out of that because every female friend and male friend i had that was even close to my age they were like i can't believe you even went for it right they said you're at they discourage you out of your mind but i want all their respect and they constantly say that was amazing that was amazing so even my friends that kind of took me for granted think better of me i went up a notch in their head you know it takes a lot of courage to do that oh it takes a lot of courage to publicly fail but i happen to be very good at public failing really because i've done it my whole life and i'm that doesn't bother me i think uh what i think what i didn't want to happen was that i would look foolish or old dancing with a 24 year old rip stud on the floor until i realized it feels really good to lean in on that guy let him spin you around that floor and how my girlfriends are having to dance with anybody like that lately there you go that's a good way of looking at it yeah what would you say um why did you not why are you not afraid to fail publicly because you know what i've learned nobody's really watching nobody gives a yeah everybody's saying about it the next year or whatever you know maybe even in the moment because the truth is that people most of all are thinking about themselves so just when you think the limelight's on you and everybody's going to say god is she's stupid why would she say that or do that the minute they've given you that one moment of attention they back on to their own problems their own selves so it's like overstatement of your ego to think you're really that important right you know you could just move right on we could distract people you try the next thing in their eyes on that if you're lucky so no it doesn't really amount to anything it doesn't really match anything yeah it's self-ego that is not really true that's interesting because you say that most people are focused on themselves so when you mess up publicly or you fail publicly they'll think about it for a moment but then they're on to their own thing if you're lucky and they notice honestly most people won't notice it just feels like everyone notices yeah definitely what a shame right exactly yeah what about um when you want people to have the attention on you for the things you're doing good how do you keep uh the attention on you the relevancy of yourself as an entrepreneur an individual when people are focused on themselves so much how do you keep them thinking about you your brand your business your work your mission you have to think of a way uh to grandstand you know what do you mean by that uh good old-fashioned grandstanding like i built my corcoran group brand on the backs of the new york times and the wall street journal in new york post without a doubt i would think of all kinds of crap to get media attention okay as long as my brand name was in there really the best single best thing i thought of which was really just an attempt to get publicity when i couldn't afford advertising because it was a bad market was my corcoran report and all that was a was a one-page report giving giving the average sale price of apartments in manhattan is how i labeled it i didn't i was too stupid to know that that was the wrong label it was just my 11 sales but it was on the front page of the real estate section and i was quoted on the first line and boy that was an eye-opener that's how i learned that publicity can build a brand today's version of publicity that i look for in all the entrepreneurs i invest in is how good are you at social media i don't care if you're in the sock business if you're in hardware what what's going on how good are your social media what's your following those are the key questions now how how well how good are you at at building uh attention through social media because that's the new free ride not really free but to a large degree free just like the new york times and wall street journal my free ride okay so you have to be creative i think in thinking of how you can grandstand and so what's uh like i don't know i'm thinking what's a business right today like well i don't want to use cousins we already talked about uh cousins like um grace and lakes which is a start out as a baby sock company phenomenal entrepreneurs i have this the long like the long lady stocking yeah with a little lace on top i bought some of those for a girl before yeah and they make girls look sexy and they're well priced and they're beautifully known nice they're elegant they're sexy well now it's a full fashion line and it's uh i think 70 million dollars in sales this year but what are they particularly good at as there's a husband and a wife team melissa the the the wife of the team has gorgeous long legs you may remember her from shark tank her husband's more of a nuts and bolts guy but great at business what she does is she constantly models and talks directly the camera she has so many people that love her she has limited dishes out constantly constantly she's great at social media she knows how to primp herself right look sexy talk to the ladies and get sales okay so she uses her assets but she does on social media and that's built their entire business social media yeah and did i answer your question because i feel like i somehow got lost in my life how do you stay relevant when things are going good because when your things are going bad they'll look at you for a moment maybe where it seems like everyone's looking at you but then they forget how do you stay relevant while you're growing or well things are kind of going the same i'll give you another example i have a company i just bought in this past season i was out of my mind to buy into them it was two guys with a product called comfy it was a sweatshirt blanket you slip into it it's like a sweatshirt but it's actually a blanket okay why i say it was crazy to buy into it none of the sharks they were smart enough not to is because they're two loudmouth guys having a good time pitching their product and they had no inventory they had handmade their own product two prototypes had no idea what would cost to make what they'd sell for who they'd sell to they had none of the answers but they were great salesmen and i i said um i'll take 15 or 40 whenever i got it boom just because they're great sales people right and what they have done is they've done in their first year 11 million dollars in sales they found a way to produce it and sell it but a couple of weeks ago it was very quiet they have had social media coverage to the moon and back but it was very quiet and they hand delivered and i wish i could remember the famous actress name sexy cool long-legged actress i'm so bad with names whoever she was i think she was the same actress who closed the uh oscars the other night i might be telling you i didn't watch it ah shame on you my man oh my god oh come on all right well anyway i saw your little party watch party on instagram that's so lonely yeah but anyway they sent hand delivered to her front door how they found it in hollywood the package and she put on video her jumping on her bed in it they quicker than a second starter social media campaign people competing with the jumps they're johnny on the spot that's smart business okay they're causing attention they made it happen and then they're gonna write it again and it's gonna be all over social media all over they're annoyed with me that i'm here because i don't have their product because they want me jumping on the beds you know what i'm going to do i'm going to put the hood on i one girlfriend has gorgeous long legs i'm going to photoshop my head in to her long legs and i'm going to win the contest i like that so grandstanding now is like more influencer marketing if you can find creative ways that's a fancy way to put it with an audience maybe it's a micro audience or a large audience or create an audience of your own one by one but you really have to be able to grandstand yeah i know you talk about uh the keys to entrepreneur success a lot but for those who haven't heard you talk about it what are what are you think some of the smart ideas in business right now the smart industries to go into if someone's maybe talented maybe they sold a company or they're trying to start as an entrepreneur what's an industry you really like a product uh section you really like you know is software is it coaching is it consulting is it an agency is it physical goods food what's the type of category no really none of the above okay it's not my cup of tea to think of an industry that's that you can this certainly leading industries i don't believe that's where your head should be if you're thinking of going into business i think your head should be is what do you enjoy what are you naturally inclined to be good at what were you always good at things these these abilities don't change much whatever you're you know if you're gregarious as a young kid you generally don't wind up as a bookworm you know when you get older and get a head on your shoulders you're still gregarious so i think what you have to do is think what would suit me what could i visualize myself doing where i could picture a happy picture of myself you know and i think most people are capable of dreaming that up i don't think it's an analytical kind of left brain kind of thing where you apply yourself to your best shot like going and playing back blackjack and putting your chips on the right thing no i think you have to figure out your other table where should you put your chips what what's on you what's true to you okay and so for me it took me 22 jobs to find real estate but the minute i was out opening keys uh you know opening the doors and chatting people up and it didn't feel like work and i was the boss i knew i was going to be the queen of new york real estate i knew it as sure as i knew my middle name was in i just could see it in my mind's eye i never had that vision when i worked my other 22 jobs and the other thing it sort of related what you ask i think it's such a such wrong thinking that you have to choose your spot i think it's like finding out what clothing you look good and you got to go try a lot of on the rack and see what works with you and then you kind of little by little kind of get your look on what looks well with on your body type your personality the colors that are good i think you find yourself little by little it's very hard to sharp shoot it's not that kind of a thing and you know often the people i know so many entrepreneurs well beyond a well before shark tank peers of mine in many industries that have succeeded no one ever went out for that industry and so that's what i want to do but you know what made the biggest difference in a myriad of those if that's a word a selection of those people uh that made the biggest difference was they came along someone they worked for who believed in them getting one good boss that gives you an opportunity is worth a million intellectual thoughts and harvard mbas grouped up in a pile because you kind of can sometimes need somebody else to see that light or you get into something you never thought you'd be interested in you really love your job and then that winds up being what you do for a lifetime and so i don't believe that you've named the big industries that's more of mark cuban stuff he's like high level um investment strategy stuff but i'll put my businesses against this any day one two because i think i'm so good at seeing who's got that talent that matches where they are you know if uh if someone's approaching you for uh investment or to partner with you and you could choose only three qualities that you would dream that they would have whether that's you know never giving up a grid a positive energy whatever the quality might be and you could say if they had these three qualities it doesn't matter what business they're in maybe timing and the economy might play a little bit apart here and there but like if they had these three qualities they're most like i would bet on them any day yeah well that's what i do every day on shark tank yeah and i've gotten better at it because i've learned to hone in on those i could think of two maybe i'll come up with a third if i keep talking all right number one is salesmanship i have never succeeded with any business where the principal didn't know how to sell i mean sales is the guts of every business if you don't have sales you're not in business any business applies to everything okay so okay if you're a technology nerd and really are in a technology space but you better have a partner who could sell the out of it or it ain't gonna go anywhere okay so selling is number one the other uh thing i look for and maybe it sounds weird to you but i've learned it to be a great um almost insurance policy i look for injury i look for anger in the individual if i could find someone uh and this is true of all my successful business interestingly enough if i could find someone who had injury at an early age and has something to prove i got myself a winner it's like insurance okay so when i say injury meaning they were dumps in school like three out of four three out of five sharks were dumpsters at school they're they're out to prove you know um i have i i don't want to out them so i i really i'm inclined to use the names but i won't i have entrepreneurs usually successful never had a father and then when they went on shark tank their father after 35 years was back into how insulting enraged them okay i have on entrepreneurs who were sports figures uh almost uh going to be professional sports people had an injury but were fiercely competitive with someone who wound up in their space they hate that person because i played against them in ice hockey crazy all i have to do is name the other person their sales go up wow so i think uh anger improving uh is very much part of a lot of successful stories out there it's an overcompensation overproving overdriving like i'll show you give me the i show you something that went wrong earlier and you've got a motivated person and it gets you through hard times really well and then i'm coming up with a third i can't there's a million other ones but none of them as serious as that oh it's those two you have to be able to sell and if you have injury uh to prove something it's a wonderful insurance policy how important is a positive attitude with those two things like if you were negative oh you don't let me tell you you're not even going to get out of the gate well there's negative people all right you know what i'll be trying to prove people wrong and always nasty about it you know get it let me tell you what's true about a negative person you will meet them in the entrepreneurial space you know why because they are far more comfortable criticizing the next guy than doing negative people are blood suckers they just suck your energy away you know the nicest thing i did for all the people that worked with me over the years was get rid of negative people the men and i spotted them i didn't care if i had cause they were out you know why because it's like it's like letting the enemy quietly into your camp and giving them free reign negative energy is the enemy of all business especially i've always been in sales related businesses you let a negative person into a sales force they have a pity party all of a sudden they need one more person to feel sorry for them or to point out what's wrong it's terrible i would spot them my way feel their vibe do you have a few minutes on friday i'd love to have a chat with you because i felt like i was saving my good people you know they were good positive people i don't mean criticism it's invaluable in business you need to have your criticizers to let you know when you're off and what you could do better but i'm just talking about real blood suckers you know you know everybody's met a few all right here you are yeah now sales is number one for you if there are great salesmen you would bet on them if they're a great salesman with something to prove that's like the golden ticket it sounds like so how does someone train to be a great salesman if they don't know how to is it something they can learn or is it something you just have to be a part of your energy well you had question about positive uh that's the blood that goes through a great salesman seeing the positive side of anything a lot of people see that as bologna i don't it's just like you show me a negative and i'll say you know you're right it's a negative but i can tell you what the upside of that negative is so you have a bend toward being positive so you must have uh that okay to be a salesman if you don't you'll never become a sales i don't care how hard you try i think it's an intrinsic quality of personality trait i know you're not supposed to say that everybody's supposed to believe you could become a salesman i think if you're inclined to be outgoing and and positive you can become a better salesperson but the real phenomenal sales people that i have worked with and i've made my living my whole life in different venues with phenomenal sales people i'm telling you um they come out of the gate maybe not out of the womb but they come out of the adolescent gate as sales people it's very hard to teach that it's a it's an artistic gift to be able to sell really well because think of how complicated it is you have to read the situation accurately you have to read the person and think of how you could use them in the way that they want to use themselves and thank you in a thank you note 12 hours later thinking it was their idea that's a complicated little thing right and you need to think of how that person could be used for your long-term goal of the picture you want to create so that's very complicated math in the head and that's what great sales people do [Music] why do so many people make money the enemy you know first of all like i i think i i think about that all the time i think as we grow up a lot of the movies we watch as a kid it's like the guy with the money on the hill was the villain right yeah and i i was on a i was on a boat with richard branson um on the only reason it's not because i'm really cool it's because i helped raise a million dollars for his charity and for that for virgin united invited me down to his island and he saw that i got up at five he got up at five so he said hey tomorrow when you get up let's uh let's uh sail he's like you know how to say i'm like oh yeah i know i was like grab the f-line i'm sorry dude i don't know just tell me what to do but one thing he said it helped me a lot with money he i said i feel like i should be giving back more and i said he said you said that i said that to him i said should i should i um you know donate more of my time he said well the way i look at it is different you were given a gift to know how to generate revenue he said and this is something i'm paraphrasing but this i'll remember forever and it really shifted my mindset on money he said you could go to a charity or you go to a soup kitchen and you could work there for three days and that'd be wonderful and i know they need help or you could swing by there one day and drop off a check for 50 grand the second one that's what you're you're given that gift go make the 50. because i was given a gift to know how to start and run companies now at this phase of my life i'm giving most of it all away but that's my gift and it kind of made me realize is like i took the brakes off i took the brakes off it's like make as much as i want i can give it all away i can you know we just got done feeding 5 million we just passed 5 million meals provided through feeding america we got all kinds of chairs like now i have this like no limits like because money has allowed me to retire my parents my money's allowed me to make it so my kids don't have to worry about their future not raise entitled brats but i have to worry about their future i get to be in better shape if my fiance needs something my mom needs something my dad needs something cut a check for those problems and i can help with charity so for me it's like there's no limit i want to just keep impacting lives and making money how can people shift the perspective as money is this bad thing what's the quickest way for them to if they've been conditioned with a belief for decades that money is the evil or the money it doesn't solve your problems or yeah how do they how do someone what's a perspective shift for people to understand like this really yeah that's a really good question one of the things i think because i've asked this question on stage to tens of thousands of people through the years and i ask them to raise their hand if it's this and one that i never thought of was people feel in this like like intuitively somehow that if they're making money they're actually taking it away from someone else wow and that's a like i don't know if any like and as i say that somebody right you know so many people right now are going wow i feel that way like if i'm getting wealthy i'm hurting someone else or if i'm getting wealthy oh my god there's so many people starving in different third world countries and it's the fact of the matter there's always the same amount of money in the world money is either flowing away from you or money's flowing towards you and i just want to position myself in a place where money's flowing towards me and then i have the ability to give it away because if you really think about this when you make money i would bet the majority of the world not someone selfish which is a rare thing and i doubt someone really selfish will be listening to you louis is when you make money what do you do you end up hiring someone to do your lawn because you're making money you can do that you you send out your dry cleaning you go out to dinner more you buy a bigger house you buy more furniture when you make money you actually flourish the economy in your home and then you flourish the economy around you so like i just have this philosophy of like i if i want to help the economy if i want to help the environment if i want to help the people i love i make money and i get to help the economy help the environment help the people that need it yeah and i just change that belief because again if you make money to you know sell drugs if you make money to promote gambling like that's evil that's bad it's really just the byproduct and in most cases uh more money the byproduct the more money is positive impact yeah right i mean why is america you know such a lead in finding cures and finding technology because a lot of the companies and money flow here to solve those problems but america is also the biggest uh contributor to charities around the world i mean look what bill gates did so i i just found a way and i'd encourage everybody listening find a way to just change that whatever story you're telling yourself it's most likely a lie it's a story that someone else gave you we know all this i'm not sharing anything you don't know but just prove that it's wrong go find wealthy people who've made a massive impact yeah because the last thing i'll say about money i know we didn't plan on getting this but i feel like we have a dysfunctional relationship with money like if you're the therapist you know the therapist is sitting a third party over here like where your candle is and your money and i'm the patient it's like i think we're saying like if they're looking at us like a relationship you're saying money i don't like you i think you're evil i think you're wrong but simultaneously i'm always stressed about money and i want more of it and i want to be able to help people i want like and i feel like i never have enough and i never have enough right so it's like it's the push and pull it's like it's like a dysfunctional relationship and i think if you have any hesitation around money it's time to fix that relationship wow and then you know i've had people write down five things they would do when they made more money and five problems that more money would solve and most of time people write i'd make sure my mom was okay i would take care of my health and none of them on the list is buy the lambo the new watch and be uh you know selfish or or buy you know have more carbon emission like nobody writes in negativity they write all impactful stuff for other people and the last thing i'll say is this and i've been using this analogy for myself for years notice is i look at when you first get on a plane you know how they say if the oxygen mask drop put yours on first and then help if you have a child with you right i look at that with money is when i put my oxygen mask on when i'm so secure when if you're listening right now if you get confidence if you have control of your life if you have financial security as soon as you feel stable and what happens every single time is you start putting oxygen masks on when i was 26 i retired my mom when i was 33 i retired my dad both of them worked their butts off to make nothing i put oxygen masks on my mom and my my dad i helped my nephews go to college i paid off debt for people that i cared about that it was it was crippling them with stress i was able to help my stepdad when he needed a surgery and they needed 40 000 bucks immediately i was like so i just realized if i get secure and i obsess on making it i don't have to hold it and hoard it and be this bad human i could be a human that solves problems puts oxygen masks on other people that's powerful we were talking about um briefly we're talking about this that it seems like there's a common denominator for every millionaire or successful person that we know that they always had something dark happen or multiple dark things happen and something that drives them whether it's the greatest athletes in the world the biggest you know billionaires in the world there was something that defined them early on or some things that defined them i'm curious what were the three moments when you were a kid that really defined you to be this driven hungry person to originally like just be make sure that money wasn't an issue yeah really and want to continue to grow and and you know reach a billion dollars in sales and all your businesses and impact the world because that doesn't happen just if you have a happy normal life yeah in my opinion and you know what a really great question lewis and here's what happens over time some of that goes away and you craft a new story of course i did it because i wanted to change the world i'd lie if i said that was true but there's usually there's some defining moments that happen when you're five and seven i know some of them one is um my mom did work this sounds like a an infomercial store my mom worked three jobs she was she was a hair stylist she cleaned houses and then cleaned up after a painter right and she did those three jobs and i asked her to this day she made about 90 a week because she didn't she barely got a high school she had dyslexia that wasn't diagnosed my mom's a beautiful woman inside now unbelievably gorgeous heart soul all of it but she always felt dumb like she she failed every grade she quit school in 11th grade she was so embarrassed to go and uh so she kept that stigma inside and i remember being really young and watching her come home from work tired as hell at seven o'clock my parents went when i was three so we were living in a trailer park my fiance's here i took her to the trailer park that i was living in and we'd come home latch key kids when we were like six and eight because you know my grandma would come a lot my grandmother was amazing so she was there a lot too so we weren't so you were just with your mom your dad was your dad in the picture uh every other weekend okay yeah and just watching her i can remember lucy i i don't want to exaggerate but i can i moved in with my dad when i was 12. i think i look back at that i was like seven or eight and i remember saying i am there's no way i'm letting this happen to my mom i am doing this wow my mom was my original like i'm taking care of her there's no way i'm letting her work this hard and it it it broke my heart like if i look back my heart was broken all the time watching her come on and she wouldn't complain but she was just tired you know so one i remember thinking i'm getting wealthy to solve that problem i mean young young seven eight yeah seven years old i mean i had an uncle larry who was very uh um he went to college halls his kids went to college and i just didn't i mean from nine years old ten years old that's just the path i knew i wasn't going to college i didn't think i was that smart my family didn't have money i'm like i'm just i'm going i just wanted money out of the way like it wasn't like today's world has changed a little bit with social media right there was no such thing as the internet when i was that age right this is 40 something years ago right and i think money has gotten a bad rep a little bit more because i didn't look at i didn't have like guys you know yeah like driving the lambo or in the in the private jet or you know the look at me and the rolex's the champagne pop and the nightclubs i didn't know that i didn't even know that world existed louis i we didn't have money i lived in a blue-collar town nobody i knew had money so it wasn't like i was saying i'm getting rich because i want to roll you just wanted to help your mom stop suffering not suffer and man that that's him and the one thing i love telling people and again you may have heard this but maybe today is the first time you actually hear it it's okay to be in pain over something just don't ignore it the the biggest plight we do all do to ourselves i think the biggest like negativity we do to ourselves is we avoid the things that bother us when i say what i believe is let that pain sink in if you if you get moving to start your own business the scale the company have to finally quit the job that's dry you know draining you if it's because of pain use it like so many times when people listen to you and all the amazing people you've brought to the world louis i love what you do man i mean it i'm really proud to be your friend i love watching what you do i love watching you grow so many times we'll get into personal growth and we start thinking compelling future i gotta look ahead i gotta stay positive i gotta be the man i gotta be this woman that keeps it in control and everything is good i'm blessed i'm blessed i'm happy i'm alive like sometimes that's just sometimes life sucks and what i realized what moved me as a kid had nothing to do with a compelling future it had nothing to do with aspirational quotes it had nothing to do with meditation had to do with i hated where the freak my life was i hated watching my mom and i was fixing that and it bugged me every day like it bugged me until you were like 16 18. yeah and like i was i was hustling i i 13 14 years old i used to go around the neighborhood and clean out people's garages and then i'd take all that and i do a massive garage sale wow that's cool so 13 and my gram was the bomb my grandma would drive around have her trunk up i'd clean out the garages it mostly was her friends so i'd clean up like oh that's garbage that's garbage that's garbage i'm like you want to sell that like i can't give that away like i'll sell i'll give you half like okay this is before ebay it didn't exist that was ebay on my gram's front yard right so she lived a little bit off the highway i'd put a sign yard sale man i'd be out there on saturdays learning how to sell because people had no mercy i i was a young kid doing it still coming five bucks i'll give you two it's like make it four you know so i was negotiating that and then at 16 i started a firewood company at firewood company i i cut trees down split it stacked in the back of a truck and delivered for ninety dollars a quarter um are you chopping it with the chainsaw and log splitter wow not manual like no no no no it wasn't uh what they call it like just an axe yeah i wasn't big enough yeah exactly um so that one motivator was my mom okay for sure so that was the first thing what was the second thing moment or defining experience um i didn't have money in school it's like when i moved into my dad i was 12 years old my dad um the my dad's uh my dad was the youngest of 12 oh and was physically and sexually abused his whole childhood yeah and back in those days there was no therapy talk therapy nobody not going to account for suck it up have the ability to talk like you and i talked when we were jogging men back then didn't talk my dad's 83 now he didn't he wouldn't go to his best bud oh my god you know when i was five years old or seven i was molested by my cousin no one knew in the old days they'd like get away from you know yeah um so he didn't talk about so what he had he had this built up anger his whole life and no one was able to take advantage of him like if if you know the waiter was rude to him he'd be fist fighting on the floor with the razor right if if we were in we were driving in traffic one day and the flag guy during construction he didn't wave to my dad he was like looking at somebody else and my dad drove by and goes hey didn't you see me my dad literally jumped out and just beat him oh my gosh that's that was my dad rode like he was just he was infuriated with everybody because he was this young kid who got abused and no one was there to protect him and nobody was doing that now so he lived with that and and he's an amazing place right now and i love him dearly but when i was 12 11 it was so bad that i was i was afraid i was just afraid like i was nervous for him and i wanted to help him so at 11 i left my mom and moved in with him and when i moved in with him i legit this is again sounds like some infomercial story i moved in the bat he literally had a house with no heat because he was remodeling and he ran out of money and he was working on it so we had to literally drag a bed into a bathroom at night and plug in a little electric heater and that wasn't forever but it was for months and when i moved in with him it wasn't poor me i didn't know anything different it was fine and i learned a lot by living with my dad and the good the bad i learned how to negotiate and all those things but some days i'd go to school without lunch money and there was a point and this is okay too i'm not anywhere near that now but there was a point where when i saw people with money or like when everybody turned 16 a lot of kids in school their parents got them a new car and they had the new girl the the car and then they'd get the cheerleader and i'm the guy going home every day working with my dad i worked every single day i worked on cars i worked on construction and like i remember being like you know what you can't hear me now but you'll hear me someday wow in my in my high school high school yearbook literally my quote is like i might be silent now but someday like it'll be impossible not to hear me like i got to get the quote i just found my yearbook damn when it's old from 1986 like oh my god um but anyway i want to read the quote but it was something like you don't hear me now but someday you'll hear me roar and that's i had this like internal chip like i was really shy polite to everybody i called every one of my parents friend mister missus i still do when i see him like i just that's like i wasn't like yo i got this it was more like oh yes and i probably looked really um like not weak i don't know the word like just really like an introvert and shy and like uh he's but i was hungry with a chip on my shoulder on the inside like you don't hear me now you got the car you got the girl i got you like and so that was probably another one too is true and and i say like envy is toxic it's completely toxic but it's a driver it's a good driver right like just just think like you can't putt with a driver but it's okay to smash a ball off the tee right yeah so if you need envy to smash the ball off the tee then use it like again i usually get you going yeah like i again i personal growth is my life i mean i'll tell that story in a little bit but um personal growth is my life and and and self-education tony robbins who's now one of my best friends in the world he changed my life when i was in my mid-20s when i ordered his course like i was already financially successful yep i already had a car business a collision shop on auto sales i had 21 apartments at 26. at 24. 24. yeah 24 i had 21 apartments i had two tow trucks at a tow truck company i was doing i'd enterprise and hertz rental car account and how'd you have the money to fund all these yeah i'll tell you that in a minute um so i got to that um but up until that point i was suffering to get there like working night and day stressing all night now you you know exactly what i'm talking about man when you're starting when you're on your sister's couch and you're thinking of going all of a sudden you go you don't stop and then you're up at two o'clock in the morning solving problems and you think that's the way you do i got a competitive edge because i can stay up all night i can stress more than anybody i can get overweight yeah yeah i worry more than anybody else so up until that point i i was on my way to already at a millionaire um from where i was a kid but i was doing it through suffering and uh you know i gave tony robbins money off an infomercial that's the reason i went in the infomercial business i gave him a check he gave me information everybody told me i was nuts like you bought something off of some huckster on tv which people probably have said about me in the past i bought it i went through it i g i thought i was going to listen to it over like a month and i just obsessed over like seven days i digested every piece and it was just so profound no one i had ever talked to and this is a true story no one i had ever talked to in my entire life talked this way talked about people this way about obstacles this way about challenges this way about your past belief systems and belief system and limiting beliefs and you and your past is designed for you to make you strong and you know what i just believed him like i didn't question anything because i saw my dad worked hard but he wasn't rich and he suffered every day and if i take on my dad's thoughts i get to work hard and suffer if i listen to this guy it just seemed like a different path and then he introduced me to wayne dyer and eckhart tolle and john wooden and all these other people and all of a sudden life you know self-education exploded um but let me go back to the original question one was my mom two was envy i would say um the third the third thing was probably um and completely wanting control of my life like i i know i said that and there's probably another one i'm trying i'm hoping something else comes to me but i know for a fact what drove me more than anything was i hated not being in control and i i love my parents but i just felt like they made bad decision after bad decision i didn't want to listen to them on where i lived i got my own apartment when i was in 12th grade like i didn't i didn't like their decisions and i figured if i got money no one can tell me how to live no one can tell me what to do how to talk and the truth is i still feel that way yeah like i don't i don't want anybody tell me when i can go pick up my kids from school or take them on vacation i coach little league i coach softball today i scheduled this with you at one i'm gonna jump on a plane because 6 30 is my daughter's my son's game and it's 7 45 is my daughter's softball game i'm not missing either one of them and there's nothing or no one that could tell me i'm not going to be there right that's just an exaggeration of what my life is but there was a point where money will allow me to make you know be in control of my decisions and uh and i still believe that yeah i still believe that [Music] what feels better for you craving or curiosity if you're curious about something what feels better yeah in your body if you're even curious about this question curiosity feels better because craving feels like you're a slave to something it's like you're a prisoner to this craving i need it now i'll do whatever i take to fulfill this emptiness that i need to fulfill give me the m m's give me the ice cream i want the pizza now post mates let's go yeah all right uber eats door dash i'm in right right and we can we can have food instantaneously almost show up at our door yeah right so we can reinforce those habits curiosity feels better because uh you're exploring a different part of your brain you're you're interested in something different you're like wondering what could something else be like but even that momentary experience you used uh with your hand you clenched your hands yes so there's this contracted closed down quality to a craving does curiosity feel contracted or expensive yes what's the possibility yes so which if you just took closed versus open or contracted versus expanded which one feels better expanded yes yeah so right there we can give our brain a very clear bigger better offer expanded so for example when we're caught up in ego and we're waiting for that next compliment does it feel closed or open closed yes how about when you're in flow like when you're just totally killing it in sport or playing music or having a great conversation feel closed or open open yes bigger better offer boom okay so you reflect on the bigger better offer uh feeling expansive feeling healthier happier more fulfilled well it's not even on what could be it's right in that moment we can tap into that superpower of curiosity what would the curiosity be what as opposed to the craving what are you curious about we can get curious about the craving oh what does this craving feel like in my body and we flip the valence from this closed down feeling of craving being caught up in a craving to oh wow this feels like tightness or tension or you know i'm feeling my hand to move to my phone to click on you know click on the food eating app or whatever oh wow wow and we can just explore our experience in that moment so we can actually hack craving with curiosity just by bringing it in okay and what if the craving is still there then we can get curious about that how long is this gonna last is it changing is it moving in my body we actually have had people on our program saying you know i had actually had a guy walk into my office i was working at the va hospital and he walked my office and he said doc i feel like my head's going to explode if i don't smoke and you know i was young addiction psychiatrists i was like oh what do i do so i was like well uh if your head explodes just put the pieces back together and call me i was like he politely laughed you know it's like bad joke but we actually got up and mapped out what head exploding felt like for him what does it feel like so he described it as like tightness or heat or clenching and things like this and we mapped it out on my i remember mapping this out with it on my whiteboard where we watch that wave go up and then over so typically what somebody does is they'll smoke to make it go away but he realized it goes up and it actually goes away on its own and that was a big aha for him and i feel like i feel like everything comes back to mindfulness and meditation it's like the to solve anything in life is mindfulness and meditation it's what it all seems like it comes back down to over the last few years i've done so i've done so much research on meditation myself i've been to india retreats headspace calm had all the meditation teachers on and it feels like it's the solution to so many things is that true well i would say especially for habits we can see how mindfulness helps teach us that awareness piece that can help our brains get that updated and accurate information so there's actually a pretty good scientific basis around mindfulness helping us with habits okay so and those habits can extend beyond eating and anxiety and smoking they can extend to um getting caught up in you know in ego as we talked about a little bit yeah thank you they can also extend to being attached to certain views right so if there are political parties where one side says i'm right and the other part side says they're right and they just spend all their time fighting how are we going to do anything so what does fighting feel like closed or open closed how does it feel when people actually collaborate and cross the aisle and say hey i want to understand your point of view i really want to understand it so we can work together open it feels pretty good yeah so we can even see how mindfulness can help with these things where you know people are not having a good relationship or or societies are fighting with each other we can stop notice how unrewarding the fighting is and how rewarding it is just to remember each other's humanity yeah what is the likeliness then of changing a negative habit without the use of mindfulness meditation well the the rescuer lewagner curve suggests that you really have to get that updated information to devalue the old things so there isn't anything else scientifically suggesting that we can change things you know it's not about willpower it's not about magical thinking you know it's about positive thinking and hoping and wishing hoping and wishing doesn't fit into the math the only research says meditation mindfulness awareness however it looks for you that type of awareness is the only solution that's what the math is suggesting so mindfulness helps teach us to be aware and awareness is what helps our brain get get that updated now when we have a bigger better offer yeah well that so the bigger better offer can come in the form of curiosity or connection or kindness which are often tart taught yeah those are often taught as part of of part of mindfulness practices but even feeling physically healthy mentally healthy feels good and so that's going to reinforce those ha those positive habits so eating healthfully feels better than eating a bunch of junk food i certainly know this myself yeah um so when we can really clearly see that cause and effect relationship it's just much easier to stay on a healthy habit what is what is the root of addiction in your mind you know i like this really simple definition of addiction continued use despite adverse consequences so i would say the root of addiction because you know how to continue just despite adverse consequences can be anything from self being addicted to social media to a point of view um so i think the root actually comes in this survival mechanism that's just trying to help us remember where food is but in modern day when food is plentiful you know most of us have a refrigerator yeah and restaurants are open you know you can find a restaurant open any time of day that mechanism that survival mechanism mechanism is still in place so i think that the root of addiction is actually i you know paradoxically there is a survival mechanism yet in modern day we refine you know coca leaves into cocaine um we make we make synthetic opioids so that we can pop pills um we we go on instagram to look at keep pictures of puppies when we're bored you know all these different things that are and food is literally engineered to be addictive now so that process that's natural survival process get has gotten hijacked what is the amount of time it takes to break an addiction that's 10 20 30 years old is it possible to break it in a moment a day is it take 30 days to break the habit or start a habit what is the scientific research saying is it the longer you've been doing something the longer it takes to break or you can still break it in 10 days once you hit that rhythm yeah yeah it really depends i'm remembering a guy that came into one of our early studies who was smoking 30 cigarettes a day and we started with the pay attention when you smoke see what you get from it two days later he came back and he'd cut 20 cigarettes and he realized you know i get up and i drink coffee and i don't like the bitter taste of coffee so i smoke a cigarette to cover the taste oh i could just brush my teeth instead so you know so for some people you know really clearly mapping it out and seeing how unrewarding the old behavior is helps them change a lot of the habits pretty quickly okay so and as i mentioned in some of our now preliminary research we're seeing with using these mindfulness apps like the e-right now app or the craving to quit app that i mentioned we're seeing after people are using these these craving tools about you know 10 to 15 times that significantly changes the value of that reward right 10 to 15 times or is that 15 days it really so depends on what the behavior is so somebody could have their um their ice cream craving and so they can't just like eat ice cream 15 times in one day and do the thing and have it i mean they probably feel pretty sick but it really has to come as part of their natural experience so so when you have that that when the craving comes up and you're about to do the addiction you open up the app there's a guided meditation there's a steps the apps actually start with helping people map out their habit loops and so this is some of my uh you know well i learned the most when i fall on my face yeah we all do yeah yeah so when i was first starting this research i had this hypothesis that it would be you know these formal meditation practices that would help people change their behavior you know i've been meditating for a while i'd gone on long retreats and you know we would sit and meditate for a long time i was like this is it it was great for me but it turns out when we looked at our data that these informal practices in the moment practices where people were paying attention as they were smoking or paying attention as they were eating where that's what was really helping to change the behavior itself in the moment not before the moment when you wake up in the morning at night in the moment right so the formal meditation practices can certainly be helpful but we actually start by helping people map these things out because i didn't know you know when i first started learning to meditate it was like pay attention to your breath and when your mind wanders bring it back i was like okay this makes sense but when i went you know i went on my first meditation seven day silent meditation retreat by like day three i was crying uncontrollably on the shoulder of the retreat manager because i couldn't pay i was like i made it through college i made it into medical school and now i can't doctor i can't pay attention so i thought i was a failure and it turns out it's not about forcing ourselves to pay attention right that grit that willpower doesn't it certainly didn't work for me it's really about understanding our mind [Music] i want you to imagine the greatest version of yourself standing right in front of you and in that moment i'd actually never heard the way he told it before that i was like wow i could see myself like with a hundred percent confidence calm poised like the best looking version of myself whatever just like standing perfectly not slouched just every part of me the best version and i was like wow i can push myself to be a greater person by seeing it first and then taking the action steps to becoming that yeah so i was like that was a nice little as long as you build in this kind of sub clause that cause like people can set these kind of goals that last forever joseph campbell i'm sure you know big rider myth said you know you can spend your life climbing a ladder and then realize you had the ladder against the wrong wall you know there's like so there's it's i mean it's wild why are we climbing the ladder right yeah why are we climbing this or yeah well we yeah we spend a lot of time focusing on stuff like this we have this image of this version of ourselves that we're moving towards and it's always out there somewhere it's kind of like all those things that like well that look it's helpful like if you can have a self-image of course why not have a great self-image because we tend to make terrible ones but it's just an image it's just a picture of the head it might as well be a good one yeah but uh in the meantime there's also like the here and now and there's like making yeah your relationship to the to the parts of you that aren't right is or don't feel right and making peace with that and understanding that in a different way like you know if you're in a relationship and uh i heard this as a philosopher in england called atlanta bottom i really love this he said if you go to sleep if you go to bed twice a week with your partner and you're thinking what am i doing with this person this is terrible that's normal right that is like a normal thing to start with and that's to me is much healthier that kind of thinking is healthier than i'm gonna have the perfect relationship and i can visualize that perfect and i'm gonna make it happen because sometimes that's great besides it just sets you up for a kind of why have you know an impossible standard so there's a balance right there's a i think there's a sub clause that goes if if everything turns out brilliantly then yes right but yeah but if it doesn't then that has that has to be okay there has to be a situation that's comfortable and also you know exciting why not you know why there's there's there's why not also be happy with things where you are yeah it's like that's it's it's important it gets me appreciating and being gratitude and all those things what is um do you have any regrets of all the work you've done or just anything in your life where you regret maybe something you did or something you didn't do or something you wish you'd done and i have no clue what you're going to say here but i'm just curious if you have regrets from whether your personal life your career life i i am i always it's difficult i always think of like um a friend said this which i thought was great you know richard wiseman if you come across his work as a kind of popular psychologist it's great so like you know it's like trying to pull out a a um like a big jar with loads of different kind of threads you know you just sometimes you try and pull one out but of course it just all comes out together so how you how you go back and like remove one thread from your life but um so i'm gay but i didn't i didn't come out till i was like 30. so that's like that's kind of late um 17 years 17 years ago right yeah that's right yeah so that's like i do kind of think that's normally where my mind goes like do you regret anything because that was like a really long time but i don't think i'd put half the energy into sort of doing the stuff that i do if i didn't if i wasn't a desperately trying to avoid any conversations about sex and just like basic you know human conversation so that like you you tend to get very good at like deflecting uh attention with you know dazzling amazing things right that's like a good strategy if you're trying to avoid that kind of subject so you know weirdly that kind of helped um and so i don't know you can justify these things as well you're like well i wish i would have came out earlier but at the same time yeah and you know what it really what it what it really did i think it would go straight whatever there we often have things about ourselves that would be good to come out about right stuff that we just carry a lot of shame around about god i could never tell people and what's fascinating and why the coming out thing regardless of what it's about not necessarily about sexual about just anything if it's something to come out about and this is what i found it's liberating not because you get to go oh i'm gay or i'm whatever is that you realize like no one gives a no one cares maybe two or three people or something yeah but they don't yeah but that's it we would the what really settled into my head was this idea that we'd worry a lot less about what other people think of us if we realize how seldom they do right they really don't really get so once you've done that with your big thing that you've carried all this shame around for then you realize oh oh yeah everything's fine wow so because of that i other than i was probably a bit of a dick for a long time while i was like struggling with all that stuff but that's i kind of you know you've got to forgive yourself that came in peace with it yeah yeah so i don't know i don't have any regrets it's actually kind of it's fine i'd like to be you know i kind of i'd like to be a better partner and a better person and better those those are things that i think are you know good to engage with right present yeah is there anything you're struggling with right now is it like or what is the biggest challenge for you because you don't have anxiety oh no no i have anxiety don't think about that i just mean my my i'm i get so good at natural avoiding it yeah i don't have anxiety like some people have anxiety but i there are like there are different patterns aren't there so you've got classically anxiety pattern and avoidance patterns so like if there's a stress or if there's a challenge if there's something in your life that comes up that's stressy do you run towards it like a magnet and try and fix it like some people lose what my partner does is like absolutely like that makes it worse i think yeah but are you drawn to are you drawn to stress yeah or do you just naturally avoid it i'm very good at avoiding it but that isn't both sides have their ups and downs right i like but we then it kind of you know it's kind of nice we work well with each other because we he makes me a little more engaged in things and i you know help him calm down a bit about other stuff but i uh you know i'm kind of what i find interesting at the moment is the tension between the urge it was kind of like what you were saying about the the is that nietzsche you know nietzsche kind of had this line of become who you are that was that was his drive right so there's there's that one idea of that there is a version of you that's out there somewhere that you want to clear everyone out the way so you can just you know focus on that uh and i think as you know if you get married or you've kids and stuff that that kind of tension that sense of like can be very strong and then there's the other completely conflicting impulse which is well maybe the best version of myself rather being out there somewhere which i'm never going to reach right is actually right here here how maybe the self is something that extends and is sort of active and fluid and extends out into the relationships and that you're in now but you know both are important what's what's hard is and i think this you know is just generally in you know in life is is hard is is that uh like you know conflicts ambivalence is important and again real it's part of life that things conflict and things are ambiguous and things are you know messy and and that's okay and actually it's okay to let completely conflicting opposing ideas settle like if you look it was i mean politically you know we're we're so like this now that we each think the other side is just is just like mad and evil and we've kind of forgotten that which is kind of what sacrifice is about we've forgotten that actually the dialogue between the sides forgetting the personalities involved but the dialogue between the sides is actually where where you find humanity and where truth is ultimately going to be found right you've you've got two very different narratives about you know the conservative urge is essentially about protecting the group right it's about holding the things together hierarchies holding that together but it can happen at the expense of the weaker individuals and then the left-wing narrative is about protecting the weaker individuals and it's tearing down yeah and letting it doesn't if that can happen at the expense of the overall structure that's they know that's fine so but you know sometimes we think as sometimes we do have to think as a group sometimes we have to think as individuals and we've we've evolved like along both lines and both sides ultimately are gonna are gonna be important so you know dialogue is important and likewise in life things are messy and they're complex and they're ambiguous and there is a you know growing up is tolerating ambiguity i think that's true what is your greatest fear you're gonna forget about my hand and give me a really hard handshake at the end of this uh i don't like spiders um i don't um greatest fear i don't know uh i think i think kind of you know getting it all wrong you know maybe letting i hate the idea of like letting letting my partner down like you know just sort of letting things and people down letting myself down i kind of i really i really think about these things and try and get them right and i try and communicate them through the work that i do and and uh you can only ever be good enough right again it's not about ever being you can give your best yeah you can't control how people respond or react exactly is the way you show up right yeah so it's not a kind of anxiety fear but in terms of the things that i think about that uh you know i part of me as i said once like everyone clear out the way and i just want to pursue these things but then what am i going to be i think i i think i'd be coming this great fascinating version of myself i'd probably just become some weird old man you know we we cross state don't we we develop like a sort of a hard shell when we're on our own for too long and what relationships do they make you more conscious of all the things that are just mad about you because otherwise you're unconscious of them and it's the things you're unconscious of that will own you and will come back and bite you so relationships are so important because i'm naturally kind of a bit of a loner it's like like i'm really aware at the moment of that tension that for me in the kind of middle bit of life that's kind of that's what i find really interesting at the moment since you are you do like to be alone it sounds like and be kind of in your art and your crafts and your photography like isolated in some sense of the word but i'm hearing you say that you when you are around people or your partner you don't want to let those people down is that what i'm hearing you say it's yeah because that's a potential for sort of right not only letting other people down but just becoming this intolerable horrible version of myself it's that it's just trying to get that stuff you know trying to get that stuff right are you like how old are you 35 35 okay so you've probably got a while before those sort of things start to become uh start to become pressing well i think uh you know i've been talking a lot about this in in uh just in my work that and through all the people that i've interviewed over the years of different backgrounds and stuff there's really three main fears that i've found that most of us have yeah the fear of failure we don't go after something or pursue something or speak or do music or whatever it may be because we don't want to fail that fear of like oh i'm a failure i'm a loser right the fear of success where then we're leaving our pack our community because if we're succeeding they're not coming with us then i'm alone and they're not going to accept me or the pressure that i have to perform again i have to repeat the success right you might have felt that when you had this hit show and it's like it's got to be better it's got to be better right and then the third one spiders spiders yes spiders and snakes and heights uh the fear of judgment oh yeah yeah either way or you know making sure that people like us uh you know fear of like well you're the one if i succeed or fail are people gonna like me and for me the judgment is always was always the fear until i addressed it about five years ago because as an athlete i was taught that you had to fail to succeed and i was the youngest of four i was the the i was this tall when i was like 11 and just like goofy and gangly i wasn't like this stud athlete or whatever i was the one that everyone made fun of i had a you know i was in special needs classes so it was hard for me to read and write all through college almost flunked english in high school all those things so i had a lot of insecurities about the perception people had about me right like my image my ego like what do they think about me what do they say about me am i am i saying the right things like i always thought was off so that judgment was what drove me to be a great athlete to succeed to achieve to perform well and to win at everything so it was like accomplishment driven and i realized that failure wasn't a fear for me because coaches taught me you've got to practice you're going to miss shots that's how you learn so i was like i'm going to fail every day and it's okay that's the foundation for achievement and that's all i wanted was the success but it was like did i slip did i look silly did it you know the fear of like what people think about me yeah so you're still leaving it out there that's what's interesting what's that you're still living that out that same fear of judgment you're still living it out but you've turned it into something aware of it very aware of it i well i started to accept it and five years ago i opened up about being sexually abused as a kid and i've talked about it many times on this show and you know wrote a book about uh all that stuff and it wasn't until i fully opened up about all my fears and insecurities about that and many other things it wasn't until i like opened up about it and my fear was like everyone's gonna judge me everyone's gonna no one's gonna love me no one's gonna accept me like they're just gonna make fun of me even more yeah and i had everything to lose right i had a successful business and career and everything but i was like no one can know about this stuff like no one could know that you're gay whatever maybe that was a feeling i don't know yeah and for me it was like the most shameful thing that i held on to for 25 years or until i was 30. and um but when it happened i was like man this weight like no one no one cares yeah and in fact they cared more about me at that moment they were like i respect you more i trust you more because i felt like something was your ego was in the way and when people don't like that when people have that thing that like people when they're closeted for example without whatever it is there's always a bubble around them like i knew i had it around me and i have friends that have come out since and there's just a bubble and you just can't quite get to them because they're because there's something missing right yes something and that was that was and you were probably doing the same as was i and then so people only people only go ah and they're stepping closer it's not it's really a good experience and all of a sudden everyone was telling me vulnerable things about them that i never knew and i was like wow we can connect on a different level yeah it's a whole it's an amazing thing to kind of discover isn't it it's such a simple thing for everybody else but it's amazing to discover but once i kind of let go listen i still have an ego and like you know i want to you know perform well on all these things i want to do a good job and and do all that stuff but it's like i care so much less about the way i look and the way people are judging me because i'm like they're going to judge me whether i'm doing nothing or doing something either way the people are gonna judge me for a moment and then they're gonna let go and judge someone else like whatever and so i think i've come to the point where i've accepted myself and because i used to not think i was enough and that's why i was like constantly living in one of these fears yeah so and i think once we can start to just accept who we are as opposed to saying well i'm not the perfect version of myself like you were talking about let me be where i'm at right now and appreciate the moment you know i think the most we can vote for often is just being conscious of these things there is a we can't always it's not you know it's not easy just to go oh great and then change anything but being conscious means that it owns you less so like from the word go we are we come into this world and we are given powerful messages from our you know parents our caregivers our authority figures kind of going here is the relationship between you and the world you are you are small the world is big you have no power the world has power we learn very quickly what what that is what what are it's a skewed vision we have you know jung talks about the greatest burden the child has to bear is the unlived life of its parents how great is how great is it yeah yeah so that's like right from the word go put into pressure yeah yeah but we are adapting creatures right the thing that makes us so great at evolution because we adapt really starts to kind of us up a bit with with with this sort of life thing because we we adapt to that we internalize it we go okay so i'll i'll think of myself like this and i'll think of the world like this and we start to kind of live that out we develop a template of what love means from our parents which is entirely realistic unrealistic because you see all the nice stuff like they presumably hopefully please god give us the best side of themselves we don't see the arguments they have when they're you know we know what it's like now as adults what the experience of parenting is like we don't see them screaming and arguing and losing sleep maybe um but very often at least so there's a there's a sure idea of like this template of what love is that isn't isn't really like realistic and we start to bring that into our that becomes our template for our advertising stories that's all we know right and then we're projecting all of that stuff onto our and expecting certain things yeah and we live out these same patterns everything comes back again and again because we we just the stuff we're not conscious of is the stuff that that rules us and if we bury you know we bury one part of us like like if you you know if you're the the homophobic i don't know homophobic televangelist who uh you know preaches against all that and then gets you know caught in bed with some guy and there's like a big scale it'll come back and bite you if you if you bury these things you know so the most we can do i think is become conscious of how we adapt in these ways to skewed messages skewed you know our compasses are all over the place we internalize it we think that's the truth and then we go through life kind of looking for things that in a familiar way repeat that pattern so people can have the same problems with relationships again and again because that's what they know because that's what they that's what's supposed to be is true how do you think no matter where we're at in our lives how do we rewire and master our mind how can we say you're asking me like i know bear in mind that the only reason why i have any language for this stuff is do you study that it doesn't come naturally and if it came from actually if it was all sec i wouldn't have the language that's why you're an expert because you've studied this and with all the experiments you've done and all the people you've worked with just by observing people how do you think i feel like you've had thousands of interactions with people where you've been able to set things up for them tell a story or not tell a story to have them go in a certain direction so how do we rewire our minds to at least be aware of what we want what we don't want and how do we become more of a master over our minds as opposed to it being a master of us i think we set our goals realistically we allow for failure to be comfortable we align ourselves with that x equals y line and not try and crank everything up here because if we're trying to do that we're just buying into someone's system somewhere and we're just making we're going to make life miserable for us eventually we're going to blame ourselves when that happens what do you mean failure comfortable meaning be okay with failure yeah to let to let i mean even is it even failure i mean i don't know it's just the difference just experiences doesn't it yeah how you make that make your peace with the fact that life isn't going to always produce what you'd like it to and make make that okay that's huge and as i said become the best we can do is become more conscious of these things now that so that can happen through psychotherapy right a psychotherapist is going to hopefully um like debt cycle like psychoanalysis that kind of thing increases your uh your sort of dialogue with yourself increases increases your consciousness about those things but it's very expensive and it's long form a lot of people aren't interested but that's one way of doing it another way i guess is to is to look honestly at your life and see well where are these where are these recurring patterns what about what keeps cropping up what am i a bit obsessed by what am i constantly trying to avoid what am i uh what just keeps coming back and biting me what does life keep keep throwing at me that's that's like that's bad and causing problems and then we just try to trace that back see where it goes back to it are there any other possibilities of any other ways of behaving and it's not like it just goes great and then you change but you become more conscious of it and then it's like a little drip by drip feeding into the soul that you know can can make a difference i think i think you know i think these are sort of modest sure what is goals i'm curious who is um more influential in your your your youth your mom or your dad to you more well both my dad may be kind of in a sort of negative sense i mean there was not like any bad blood but this is quite common i think with like boys that are gay growing up is that you tend to have the stronger bond with the mother and the father's sort of it's just kind of a bit of a disconnect there so um but of course both have not been hugely influential because both of those impulses inform who you are as an adult and people ask what are the easiest and most important habits to start building going back to the basics making your bed drinking water this first thing i do is i drink a tall glass of water most people drink coffee right away or tea tall glass of water the brain needs to get activated

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 360,807

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, manifest money, how to make money, how to build wealth, train your brain to make money, investing, how to invest, law of atraction, manifest success

Id: W-jjoQ-xtJg

Length: 167min 58sec (10078 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021