Multi-Billionaire Explains his Simple Steps to Success

you know I'll hit you with a few things okay number one take the word no out of your damn vocabulary okay don't assume something's done because you have somebody do it always follow through I said know your numbers there are no spare customers it's a competitive world no matter what you're selling or what your business is and so make sure you treat every customer like it's the last because there's somebody else out there trying to steal them from you so if you do those few things you'll be successful don't assume no spare customers be friendly and know your numbers [Music] hi I'm Tillman Fertitta owner of the Golden Nugget casinos Lane breeze restaurants everything from Mastro's to Bubba Gump to Dell Frisco's to catch to reign for salt grass chart house and a lot more and the owner of the Golden Nugget casinos and the Houston Rockets and I'm here to talk to you about my new book shut up and listen with Brian Elliot behind the brand welcome to the show great to be here Brian I usually ask my guest how'd you get this job how did I get this job I fell into it because I didn't want to work for anybody else and so just said I'm gonna go into business for myself and I started at an early age and I had to go to work for anybody yet well that's amazing take the chronology back as far as you want to go you know this shows been around for a long time we're one of the originals talking about origin stories before long form was popular and our audience really wants to know how you got started but they also want to know the pitfalls the mistakes you made in order to get it right how far back can you remember won't be an entrepreneur since I was a kid I mean I used to walk around when I was 8 9 years old with my grandfather's briefcase and say this was my business ok I didn't read comic books and in watch cartoons I always talked about business and was always looking for that opportunity no matter if I was in junior high or high school and and then through college or whatever was always trying to make money however I could make it that's awesome did you have encouragement from your family like other entrepreneurs in your family or do they want you to go down a certain path you know it's amazing but but everybody there's a lot of entrepreneurs in my family so it's definitely in the the DNA and not every of course nobody's become as successful as I have but but there's a lot of entrepreneurs and and I do think that you're born with the entrepreneurial gene but that doesn't mean that you can't go out and say I'm gonna be an entrepreneur and and be successful but remember you can be just as successful going up the corporate ladder look at a bob iger who started as a film guy so it don't feel like you just have to be an entrepreneur there's many millionaires and even a few billionaires who work for somebody else there's a lot there that I want to unpack but let's go back to the assertion that entrepreneurs are born and they're not made what makes you say that I I just knew how to make money just like a singer is born a singer or a person who can play an instrument is born with the music music ear an athlete a lot of times as as much as you want to play professional football basketball or baseball you can't make yourself that good you have to be born with the talent and and I do think that I do have an entrepreneurial gene but at the same time I became a sponge and grabbed it to make myself much better I actually agree with you I think there's a large debate on nurture in nature right you know it's the environment that you grow up and can have a huge influence on you at the same time you know I have kids and I hundred percent can see certain things our DNA it's you know it was built in and they're different for me and and you can definitely see those differences but let's go back to maybe identifying because a lot of people talk about self-awareness being a really important thing and I agree being able to understand yourself and maybe there's a lot of people in though they don't think it's age specific that are still trying to figure out what am I good at or what is in my DNA so how do we help those people identify those gifts that have been given you know if it's James Harden you know certainly that DNA helped him get to the NBA no question about it and then he perfected but what are some of the signals that we can look for well and I talked about this in the book is that God gave us all a gift but you got to find out what you're good at because he did make us all special in our own way everybody has something that they're better at than everybody else or they're better at I agree with you okay so so how do we figure that out I think that you have to sit there and look at yourself in the mirror sometime and say what am I good at you might be a great poet you might be a great author you might be a great athlete or you might have a great voice or you might be great at taking an engine apart and putting it back together you might be the greatest painter that don't even need tape that can paint this line in this room but we all have a talent we really do so some people are great people people where they're great charm and so they're great salesmen so so and some people are great academia is but keep you locked up in a room and I'll figure out any issue for you find out what you do well so it sounds like you're saying there's got to be a bit of trial and error you got a you got a try stuff you got to do you can't just maybe guess or wonder or hope you know and once you figure that out what are some of the signals is it well let's go back to you a comment you just made what I think was was interesting that struck a chord with me he said a lot of entrepreneurs in my family but none is success successful as me so how should we be measuring success and let's make it in the context of that level let's say I'm you know just getting started or maybe I'm you know where I'm at right now and I'm pushing reset and I'm on the second time around how do I measure success you everybody has their own parameter for measuring success when I was very young okay I told myself when I'm 35 I want to own my first jet I told myself I want to be in the Forbes 400 well so let's go about how much does a jet cost that you were talking about here you know what you got to remember my first jet was a citation jet that I paid it was used that I probably paid 700,000 for but that was also 25 30 years ago okay and what's that worth in today's money so seven hundred thousand you know probably three million dollars let's say okay and then it's not I have two g fives today so I'm definitely up great so to be able to afford three million four million dollar plane what did your income needed to need to be well I had I hadn't gone public yet I was still a private company and just like I'm private again today I owned a hundred percent of my company but but I think I was making about four or five million dollars a year at that time okay and so I mean life was not bad at all yes good and why did you decide that the plane was such an important benchmark because I truly I hate it flying commercial and I haven't flown commercial since then just for the record you know just the aggravation and have where you sit and you get stuck in a middle seed or whatever you know just jacked with the airport then you sit on the tarmac and I just said this is this is not good and then I was trying to grow my company and and so honestly I was opening a restaurant in Austin Texas and the last flight out of Austin was at 8:30 in the evening so I couldn't even be there really for the dinner hour because I had to get on the plane and come home so I'm going over to the terminal but yet I see down this road Austin jet you know sales rentals whatever and I just walked in there one day and started talking to him and next thing you know few months later I had my own jet yeah I just got a little flash of Elon Musk you know and Elon here in LA he's got a company in Hawthorne not far from here and he hates traffic and so you know instead of he's a problem solver like it sounds like you're a problem solver he's decided he's gonna burrow underground the tunnel underneath all the traffic so it sounds like that's what you were trying to do we'll see I don't I don't need to go underground because I just use a helicopter to get to the airport so you're a problem solver the the the benchmark the goal for the airplane was less about vanity and more about just solving you probably just had a efficiency thing time was valuable you know all the hassle of that that's a pretty big goal though let's face it I mean yeah but you know when I was 21 I won my first cattle i selling Shaklee vitamins direct selling and so I always had goals just like about that time is when the Ford 400 came out list the FIR came out for the first time like 40 years ago so I knew that I just had goals and I said I want to be on that list one day so you're ultra competitive n Ultra yeah this is sport yeah there's a sport you're not they growing up yeah through high school but why didn't good enough to go to the next level and you real you recognize that though Oh 100% you have to recognize what you're good at and what you're not because your isn't from Texas right it's still from Texas and what sport was big growing up as a baseball was a football football yeah yeah yeah did you try sports no I always play them all the junior high school I guess where I'm getting as I I'm always curious about where people come to that you know to recognizing that's a fork in the road right like you just know you just know I'm not quite big enough I'm not quite fast enough it's just not quite good enough to take it to the next level if and that is god-given talent and size and everything but if I was good enough I would would have played professional football or yeah all of us yeah yeah we love sports so it's fascinating to me though you know it's another question I think a lot of people on the show always ask is you know zooming out a little bit from sports and maybe looking this more as a metaphor for other things how long do you give with quotes this great idea before you cut bait you know there's a period where and I think there's a book about this right Think and Grow Rich book I've read in high school I think and the analogy is you know your three feets this it's the the goldrush in 1800s and you're three feet from discovering the next gold right but didn't you quit just a few feet away and a lot of people do that right so how do you know when to keep digging three more feet to get to the gold or when to you know cut bait and go on to the next dig well that's kind of an it's a great analogy but you don't know if you're three feet away or 300 feet away and which that isn't what's happening in the real world in business you know if you're getting better and a little closer yeah and that's what I want to know is like what are some of the signal suck how do we know is it just you just know I mean I'm Emma almost there is this business that I'm trying successful do I feel a lot smarter doing it and I'm more confident in doing it and you just know it's not like oh if I just happen to dig three more feet I'm gonna hit the pot of gold because but you should know if you're three feet away or thirty feet away or 300 feet away and I think that's where people have to evaluate themselves and say am i close and if I'm close I'm gonna keep punching but if I'm not close I really gotta go try something else yeah I hear you on that I just keep I want to stay on this because I'm playing the other side of it which is not everyone can see the value in others right we may be we know ourselves what we're capable of but let's face it we get judged most of the time by what we've already done totally and so that therein lies the problem it's like I feel capable of this and I'm being judged or you know put it in this little box and so you don't always have the opportunity you know speaking on my own from my own experience I think that's why I started this production company I was at the movie studios I was doing big things then I felt capable of doing this and so I did it but I will tell you that almost everyone I told about what I was gonna do said you're nuts you're crazy you know you're you you're leaving this big job you got this big salary you've got all the benefits it's cushy just stay here and you know go with the flow and I said nope I see I see a new road well only you know nobody evaluates you like you do yourself okay but but I've mentored people and told people jump off the cliff before I have a good friend Dave Jackman who was a banker and did all my MA work when he was with Montgomery securities and then Piper Jaffray and a few others and he wanted to go out on his own and was scared to jump off the cliff so I gave him that first deal but now he controls 50% of the M&A in the consumer restaurant industry you know it's magical about that is that you saw the value in him and you gave him permission and he'll tell you that that if Tommen 40 that does not tell me go jump off the cliff I don't do it I love that my question is what do you do if it's the opposite if you feel capable of doing it but the boss says there's no way you're gonna succeed you're gonna you're gonna fail you're gonna jump and you're gonna jump to your death that's the boss not wanting to lose you so obviously they see a lot in you because I don't want to lose you and so don't take them but but nobody ever said to me hate him and just keep going you're gonna be successful I never had that person pushing me I had my dad say to me after I was making a few million a year why in the world are you gonna go take that risk you're so successful you're making three four million dollars a year I don't remember what the number was but but I just knew that I was just getting started I wasn't even I mean I mean my I had dreams you got to have drains to begin with that's a real subtle but important lesson I think you're talking about right now I want to underscore just for maybe if you missed it if you're watching I think telling what you're saying is you really have to be careful of the source because if I'm not mistaken your dad is in the restaurant business he had a restaurant yes right and he was successful you know in in his world yes but you had a whole different vision totally and so if you would have taken his context you know based on his upbringing and his track record you probably could have kept on going at his level but you said no I have a different vision and I think I can succeed far beyond you know what we've already done here right it's all vision it's and it's all what you think you can succeed but it's also what you're made of all of us are made differently and it's such an important thing that you're saying it's so important I want to just make sure we understand they love but it might be wrong usually is it depends though right if that person you know is encouraging like you you encourage that your your colleague to go for it that's the good side of it but you have to think I think take that context into I take that advice into context and make sure that you consider the source of the person you know what's their background what you know what biases do they have before we just start taking blanket advice like you should do this or should not do this agree or disagree totally agree but but at the same time it still always comes back to you and you have to know if you're if you're getting there or you don't the problem is nobody tells anybody darlin you keep singing don't worry about getting a job I know you're a waitress but you keep doing that because you're gonna get a break and you're gonna win a Grammy singing in a couple of years or you know what don't worry about that waitress job you're gonna win an Oscar one day Oh Tillman you know go ahead and open up another wrestler there's a lot of people who opened it start it with one restaurant that are on the Forbes 400 okay so I mean you just got to you got to just feel it and the person sitting over here and evaluating you doesn't get it yeah okay it's you it's in you so the example I was thinking about is the rainforest cafe right so on paper maybe the rest of the world at the time you bought a correct me if I'm wrong would have said that's a terrible investment you know stock is down nothing's happening and yet you saw that as a real opportunity talk about that acquisition or talk about that business plan why did you decide to get that over well once once again how well a company is doing and how much money it makes doesn't have anything to do with each other it's just when you're a high-growth company and your growth slows down your stock goes to to the bottom yet you could still be making a bunch of money I mean look at Walmart when there's a gross slow down Microsoft both of these companies stayed in the dumps for 10 years but they were making billions of dollars a year for the same thing happened with the rain forest was you know first I tried to buy him I wasn't able to buy him because somebody outdid the vote swiff I think teachers fund in Wisconsin because I didn't think I was paying enough and so I bought them for what six months later 450 million less and but I bought this cash flow and I even had like fifteen or twenty million dollars in the bank I mean so it was an unbelievable deal but this goes back to something that I talk about in the book a lot is that if you're going to borrow money you can do a best-case scenario on your deal okay because that's how you should think is positive but one of the reasons that I've always been successful and the bad times haven't gotten me because every deal I do I do a worst-case scenario performance that I keep close to my chest and if the worst case scenario doesn't work then you better not do the deal because you know what happens 90% of the time it's the worst case scenario that happens and not the best case but in the rain forest case what I decided to do was I'm gonna look out three to five years and at these thirty rain forests if I can't make it on just these big five there's three at Disney there's one in the Mall of America and I think there's one in Chicago and I said these are the five that are doing the most money and if they're not gonna be around then I shouldn't do this deal well here it is what 20 years later and I still think there's 26 rainforests and I've made my money over and over and over again because you know what there's new kids every day and they want to go to the rainforest because it has that kind of Appeal yeah I mean I love that lesson I really think that goes a lot to your expertise to be able to see the diamond-in-the-rough or you know one one man's trash is another man's treasure but that's every deal I've done is that it's usually poor management at the corporate level but it has nothing to do with how successful you are at the store level yeah what maybe that's why you know you're a billionaire and we are not I mean you can see you can see the valley but that comes very easy for me but that's every deal I've done when I bought an old California change chart house you know 20 something years ago and realize these are the greatest locations in America I'm gonna change the logo redo the restaurants upgrade the menu and I still have 30 of them 20 years later let's talk about that little bit deeper in the restaurant business so historically one of the worst businesses to get into one of the riskiest so in the highest fail rates and yet you're crushing it what are some of the keys to your success in the restaurant business well number one I write and I have great systems and controls and and I'm constantly changing and these are all things I talked about is that you've got to change change change and just because you're successful that doesn't mean you're gonna be successful tomorrow but that's how I've even taken older brands like chart House and Morton's and and and updated them tremendously by new menus new atmosphere new music new waiters uniforms and keep them fresh especially if they had good food and then upgrade the food to what people are eating today so I prefer to buy something that is having issues and fix it up it's less expensive than building it new yes I'd you bought your jet used you probably saved a ton of money on that I see your face rubs off so we can get some of this but never drink your own kool-aid I mean I always do a worst case scenario and if the deal doesn't work under the worst case scenario don't do it yeah that's smart you know risk reward analysis is super smart right that's why it made it yeah you got to be able to come back and play a different another day the stand restaurant for a second so you know sounds intuitive update the menu and keep the uniforms looking good and you know if your neon sign in a letter fix the light I mean it can't just be that look what else well you just stay ahead of the game you've got a you've got to stay fresh you've got to stay new and sometimes location isn't a good location anymore and you move on but but if you have a great location you just make sure you're always updating everything from your interiors to your menus to your music you've got to change it is an industry when I was growing up you just went to a restaurant to eat okay but today it's an atmosphere that you have to have because people want to go there it's a social gathering it's an experience it is an experience yeah and I think I also heard somewhere maybe I read it that you consolidated the GA to save a ton of money like you had all these companies scattered all over the place and you consolidated didn't you right you know that was they everybody uses the word platform today it's a real buzz world buzzword in the in the business world I was really the first person to ever start doing that in this industry so you go to Chicago and you by Martin Steakhouse and you shut down their corporate office if you go to Minneapolis and you shut down the rain forest office and the ocean air corporate office you go to California and you shut down the Bubba Gump office and the claim-jumper office you go to Portland and shut down the McCormick and Schmidt I just bought Dell Frisco's will shut down their office in Dallas and you bring them all into one corporate platform so you get all these GA synergies because there's only one CEO only one general counsel only one CFO and then you get the purchasing power because this is a multi-billion dollar company and so you save millions and millions of dollars that way and let's talk about the F word for a second fear or failure a lot of people will say failure is not an option but that's there's really no truth to that because there's absolutely no truth to it you have to have failure to have success so in that context what have you what's gone wrong in order for you to figure out how to get it right you can always have failures okay and you just sometimes open up wrong and you just screw up or once again you believed your performer that you gave to the bank instead of the conservative one for yourself thinking up to your restaurant yeah yeah I mean I you just blow openings you have the wrong management in it or just whatever you just you just didn't do it right but your if it's just a numbers game and and if you open up X amount of restaurants you're gonna have some failures but what I try not to do is and it's all right when you're opening a single restaurant and have a failure but you never want to buy a company and it be a failure and that's why you got to do that worst case scenario I'm gonna go a little bit deeper I want to pry a litte more into that because I think all of us want to know a little bit more detail so can you think of maybe I'll try and pin you down on the most painful failure that you've had and again you know I've heard it said sometimes you win and sometimes you learn so it's really not a failure if you're learning from it but like can you think of an instance that still stings and you learned a valuable lesson that helped you get to where you are today do you know probably the one that stings me the most is something I tried to buy and I negotiate it too hard and I thought they would come back to me to buy it and while I was waiting for them to come back to me to buy it they liquidated it and just sold it off because it didn't mean anything to him and and I mean I'm so right they even say it was it was something silly but it was an unbelievable car collection and they even had this historical place and all the real estate with it and everything and there it was so many these muscle cars that are worth so much money today and I really had it bought right and I mean in the sit there and negotiate hard over a couple of hundred thousand dollars and it would probably be worth quadruple that today but it's not even the money as much as it would have just been a great asset to own it would have just they would have just been a great asset to him and it just it didn't change my life at all but it just for some reason and this was 25 years ago it I'm still pissed off it yeah the one that got away it's just the one that got away yeah what did you learn from it I learned sometimes you got to call them back or that could happen again so yeah maybe a little better just a negotiating tactic and that I just played to hardball and I wasn't the the person on the other side was a son selling a dad's asset and so he didn't know how to negotiate and I didn't recognize that he didn't know how to negotiate and that I was dealing with an amateur and he went and did an amateurish move and just sold the assets off and didn't get any more for him but I should have read that I was dealing with an amateur good lesson that is excellent thank you for that that's really really smart that's really the only thing that really just chaps me and stings me I'd love to own that asset today yeah but but how valuable that lesson right because I'm sure the vibrations you know the pain obviously 25 years ago it's right there on the surface right oh yeah I didn't even have to think hard about what it was yeah it was it was something that and I have learned for it and so therefore when I do want something I go at it more aggressively today and do whatever it takes if there's something I really want like I decided I'm gonna buy the Houston Rockets I missed out on it 25 years ago for 80 million dollars but I'm gonna go and do whatever it takes and so while everybody else was trying to figure out how do you justify paying over two billion dollars for a basketball team I wasn't worried about that I was working on how I'm gonna raise the money to do it and so everybody else is trying to justify it already had it done and the reason you did that was because you could foresee you know in the next decade or two or three it just continued to multiply and appreciate everything is content today yes and an NBA franchise is an unbelievable content 45 at the top 50 at the leads with followers in America be a players it's a it's a world sport it's an international sport you know and it's it's such an incredible numbers game to the limit it has on the players I can actually make the NBA there's scarcity right compare the NFL that carries 50 players for its life right it's unbelievable you don't care that that doesn't really affect the the money about of it because it there's a collective bargaining agreement and they get approximately fifty percent of the revenues but but it was just an asset also that of a professional sports team football basketball baseball there's never been one sell for less than it ever sold for but you've always been proud of it very proud of it and and but I can promise you this ten years from now I know that that asset will be worth a billion more or ten exercise I do know that okay because 25 years earlier somebody paid eighty million for it which was a crazy number in here twenty five years later 2.2 billion yeah it's just something that's gonna continue to go right 100 percent I mean it's a it's a very good lesson you know oh it is but there's probably not five teams in America maybe not three teams where somebody owns a hundred percent of a team in their hometown you know a lot of owners have to own teams and other towns or whatever that's pretty special pretty special is this what you consider one of your great accomplishments we know career accomplishments 100% yes because if I feel like I've been very fortunate and accomplished a lot by the time I was 40 I had already taken a company public on the New York Stock Exchange was already the second youngest person inducted to the Texas business all of Fame behind Michael Dell which in a bad business guy had already hosted president a standing president in my home and so it was kind of that one thing that I just felt like I never had accomplished I never got to own I always wanted to own a sports team and feather in your cap yeah it was just kind of that final final thing that makes me happy okay well then that sort of shuts down my next question which is you know what's the next big which what's your next Mount Everest right which what's the next big novel I've got it I've got it right now I've already lion things alia for the next plane now do I feel the need that if I don't get there that I'm a loser no but this is sport to me and so I have to have that if I don't have that I would not function well and so I always have to have that next thing that I want you know just like this book you know getting on the USA Today bestsellers list Wall Street Journal's bestsellers like Chicago sometimes publishers best-selling list it's something that I had to have yeah so give me like a hollywood-style log line you know the log line is it's like a tag line from a show a summary if you know you had the chance to put your hands on the shoulders of the person who's gonna read your book and and tell them this is what I want you to take away and like one short little thought what is it never stop dreaming and know what you're good at and know what you're not good at and you're to separate yourself from anybody else you just have to want to do it well talk about the 95/5 rule what's that about you know 95% of everything is right and 5% is not and that's in any business it's my business every day it's your business and I can walk into anything or any place and and I know that doing 95% of everything right but look for the 5% that's wrong walking into this hotel walking into this room walking into a restaurant you know when you pull up in the parking lot is is there cigarettes in the parking lot is there empty bottles is is there a dead weed over there is there a dead plant or their lights burn out get by the front door the candy wrappers on the ground or somebody walked out through there candy wrappers for their toothpicks now they're smudges on the glass before you ever open the door is the door painted well I can tell you if that's a good operator forever walked in the front damn door because I looked at the five percent and not the 95 percent I got just so Devils in the details Devils in the details always always it's another good lesson that so should we start with the details or or in that sort of as telling that there's a larger problem or you know I guess my question is so where do we start with that do we start from the bottom up or do we start from the top down like so is that a management problem or is that like a cosmetic problem talk about that a little bit most companies a lot of times like every restaurant company I've bought had successful restaurants okay but it's the management up here that screwed them up at the corporate office where they were continuing to grow too fast and signing leases that they shouldn't sign or spending too much capital in a particular box or whatever and and but but I'm down here a lot things are done right it's usually mistakes made in the corner office that screws companies up but the people down here are doing a lot of right yeah I was gonna ask that the example that came to my mind is back to your Cadillac you know here we have this iconic American car brand that had its heyday and then all of a sudden you know Japanese company called Lexus for example comes along and attention to detail and and perfects all the imperfections and then starts the Cadillacs lunch or BMW or Mercedes right but they all did yeah 100% because you're General Motors and you're forward and you never think anybody is gonna come in here and be bigger than us and that gets back to what I talked about in the book there's a paddle for everybody's ass but General Motors at least overcame the paddle and became still a very successful company and and they created the Escalade which is just you know the best SUV of them all I think for the money that it cost yeah we got one win 100% but but that's why you get up every day and and and I worry about that paddle okay and this gets back to your fear I don't fear anything but I worry about everything because I know that paddle is out there and it doesn't take a bunch of bad Moo's to get paddle even as big as you are like me yeah it could be a light bulb or an unpainted door I don't think it's gonna be that solid I think no I think it could be yeah if you know what you let your property start running down okay and you start slipping a little bit and your food slips a little bit the consumer is very smart that's you got to give the consumer a lot of credit and and they know when you're not up to par and that's how companies fall so quick General Motors and Cadillacs a prime example let's go on a slightly different direction let's talk about brand this show is called behind the brand so we're going a little bit behind Tillman's brands there's many of them but I want to talk about branding for a second cuz I think it's really important you know I think the way I'm thinking about it right now it's sort of binary either have a logo or you have a brand give me an example warning your restaurants you know restaurant brands let's talk about it for a second throw anyone you like mash pros okay does Mastro's have a brand or does it have a logo it has a brand so how do you how do we know that it has a brand like how do we build a brand you're a brand builder or you know you're a you're a guy that comes in and fixes stuff and you know makes it amazing again pumps new life into it resurrects it whatever you want to say what's the difference between how do you know you know let's take it another way let's take one that I think will touch even more people yeah let's take the Golden Nugget brand okay okay and and the reason I like that one is is because it's one that I really thought of all the old Vegas casinos and all the great names it's the only one today that it's really still there and as thought of as this big brand and and I can tell you how it's helped me so a Steve Wynn built this iconic he bought this iconic brand back in the 70s and it was his first deal and he made this place so special in downtown Las Vegas and I can remember going there when I was in my 20s and just looking at what Steve Wynn had created but he recreated a brand and then it changed hands a couple of times and and I ended up with it about 15 years ago but what I realize is I could take this brand and I could go to other gaming markets like Atlantic City and right outside of Houston Lake Charles and Biloxi Mississippi and Laughlin Nevada and and and people would flock to this brand because it was a brand yeah so what makes it a brand that's all I don't know well it's because in the consumers eyes it's a well-known brand all over the world that when you came to Vegas you wouldn't visit at the Golden Nugget yeah well when I think of Golden Nugget and you know I'm not this connoisseur of casinos but I just think of like Frank Sinatra I think of all you know the Rat Pack classic vintage Vegas right but at the same time that's great because see you think positive but I've updated it so you go to the Golden Nugget today and even though it's 70 years old somebody says god I can't believe how nice this is for 70 year old property because you keep updating it and therefore what the brand people know it all over the world so then when I go to an Atlantic City and and you have the Golden Nugget brand and you start the internet gaming and people are on their phone or on their computer betting gaming and these other ones are just companies and they say you know what that's a brand that Golden Nugget so I know that I'm safe to bet money with them because that's a brand it's not just some name I know if I don't get paid I know where to go I can walk in the Golden Nugget and ask them where my money is yeah so it's its brand building and that's really what I've done is that I all these companies that I've acquired are all brands the Houston Rockets is a brand yeah let's talk about what the what are the Rockets stand for like what how would you describe a brand on the opposite side you know here's sort of the litmus test now let's go back to casino so if I were to close my eyes walk into any casino look down at the carpet and just kind of peek up at the machines what I know where I'm at the question is I mean the answer is probably nine times out of ten no right if you go to Vegas literally it's like the same kind of colored carpet all the machines are making the same kind of noise and so I would argue that's some of these casinos don't have a brand they have a logo you know Golden Nugget certainly has legacy it has that that history see and you had the advantage of capitalizing on that what's the Houston Rockets stand for I think success they've been very competitive for many many many years yeah if I could say the same thing about Lakers or Celtics they've had success to 100% they've had more success and and I didn't say that the Euston rockets were the number went Brian but they are looked at as one of the better brands in the NBA just from being competitive and star players for over the years is there a differentiator like you know come to Houston because this what we stand for versus you go to LA you're gonna get that brand of basketball yeah come to Houston and we have a lot less state we have no state income tax and to live there is about 35% less than LA so you're much better off living in Houston ok it's a value proposition absolutely I guess and I always comes back to ownership coaching general manager other star players it's all the above yeah I'm always curious about this this brand proposition because I think it's such a big deal you know and you you sort of alluded to it before with the Golden Nugget you talked about trust and people want to do business with people they know like and trust especially if it comes to parting with their money or you know jumping on an airplane maybe that's another reason you want didn't it remains another reason you want to buy your own airplanes because you know you want to bother with all that stuff you just want to go direct to the source I don't know but brand building is certainly think something that a lot of people watch this so think about and and they grapple with you know they think they have a brand but maybe they just have a logo it's an ongoing debate you know when I was doing my television show bein dollar buyer the thing that bothered me the most about people I would deal with this is they didn't know their numbers but they also thought their product was better than everybody else's not being smart enough to realize that I could walk a block away into another store and see basically another homemade organic product or whatever that was just as good but wait so man my grilled cheese sandwiches five kinds of cheeses and and you know one of the things that I think has helped me as I never thought just because I own it it's worth more or just because I own it it's better and that's where you got to look at yourself in the mirror and be objective with yourself and realize I'm really not any better than anybody else so I got to find something to do differentiate myself from everybody else but that's funny the biggest failure that a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they think they're better and they really aren't I love it all right final parting words for entrepreneurs give us sort of your best advice best advice to entrepreneurs trying to you know take it to the next you know I'll hit you with a few things okay number one take the word know out of your damn vocabulary okay don't assume something's done because you have somebody do it always follow through I said know your numbers there are no spare customers it's a competitive world no matter what you're selling or what your business is and so make sure you treat every customer like it's the last because there's somebody else out there trying to steal them from you so if you do those few things you'll be successful don't assume no spare customers be friendly and know your numbers [Music]

Channel: Behind the Brand

Views: 447,012

Keywords: Multi-Billionaire Cuts the B.S., Multi-Billionaire Explains his Simple Steps to Success, Tilman Fertitta on Impact Theory, billionaire, billionaire motivation, billionaire secrets, m2s, m2s billionaire, m2s tillman, motivation, motivation2study, motivation2study tom bilyeu, motivational, motivational speech, motivational video, secret to success, steps to success, study motivation, success, success in life, tillman billionaire, tillman fertitta, tilman fertitta interview, tom bilyeu

Id: U7vAZIQCWqU

Length: 43min 30sec (2610 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019