Kevin O'Leary

there you are with your opportunity you've beat the odds and you don't know your numbers set goals you can achieve and watch things happen because people want to work in a winning it's like playing for brady nobody wants to leave the team there is no business without cash flow you might be able to last for a couple of years borrowing money getting more investors but if you don't have cash flow you're going to zero everybody's a fan right thank you thank you you know you're probably my favorite shark i mean you are your style is just much much more truthful honest like there's no business here there's no cash flow i'm out of here so i like that how many of you like him as the favorite thank you thank you you know i i think in business um it's not like many other things because there's no gray zone either you make money or you lose money pick one and i know which side i want to be on that's that's the way i look at it that's the way i treat you kevin how important is money to a business because these most how many business owners here okay and how many of you work for a business okay so so talk talk about money being important and talking about as it though it's important the way i look at it is the reason that people pursue entrepreneurship is not about the greed of money it's about the pursuit of personal freedom everybody in this room wants to be successful and in entrepreneurship the way you define success is you make money and then eventually there comes a time in your life when you wake up and you say i'm rich i never saw it coming yeah and i could do whatever i want and most of the time what people do is work even harder because they like what they do that's what entrepreneurship's about it's setting yourself free to spend your time your day in the things that you want to do and the great part about it is nobody can tell you what that is it's only you that's the whole deal right there what was your first score my big my first um business was actually a television production company called special event television that made all the intermissions for the hockey games in the original six teams detroit new york boston philadelphia and we used to run around shooting hockey players during the week and then we'd send it up to the satellite for the games on saturday nights and that business was really successful and i sold it and i realized wow this is great so you start a company and then you sell it why don't i do that again and that's what would you sell that company for oh it wasn't that much i think we started it you know with uh ten thousand dollars i borrowed from my mother and i had to pay her back of course and and the and then we sold it was something like four million and there was only three of us but at that time that's the first time i ever had any money at all and i just plowed that into the next deal and the next deal the next deal and then one day um you know we started the learning company it was called softkey in the beginning and we sold that one for four billion dollars i remember the day that happened for what 4.2 billion i mean yeah it was but but i have to tell you guys something that i'll never forget the day you know every there was 10 founders in that company and we'd all been together since the garage and the next morning we were in boston and the lawyers came over and we closed the deal and we signed it and i looked at everybody and said what do you want to do i mean we're all stinking rich what do you want to do and they said why don't we just go back to work we don't know anything else and that's exactly what happened so so how how old how long ago was that how old were you that was back you know 20 years ago and and i've since then i've had some great successes and some catastrophic failures that's the nature of entrepreneurship you just don't know but back then i was an operator i actually you know operated the business i don't do that anymore i'm an investor and i like to think that i can provide you know guidance to my ceos about the things not to do because i've made plenty of mistakes and i think that's what experience is you really kind of want to make it the path of least resistance because not all businesses are going to work i know that and so you know i'll try a great idea but what the difference is and you know this executional skills there's a million great ideas out there but the ability to execute on it and do it really hard so so what what is the differentiator between the the person that can execute and the person that doesn't pull it off because i know you just had this experience with the 54 countries through covet but who's the how do you how can you look out in that audience and say hey who here can execute and who is just an idea and it will never happen well let me give you some data which you may find interesting because i've been doing this for almost 20 years now the majority of the money i've made in companies that i was part of founding and then were operated by another ceo the majority has come from companies run by women now like i'm not trying to start gender warfare here i'd give money to a goat if i could get a return i don't care but you have to ask yourself what are they doing that is making these outcomes and remember these are multiple sectors i'm talking about insecticide companies gym equipment companies commercial kitchens we have a wireless charging company i mean they're all different and yet the outcomes women are better why so we did some research we said we got to figure this out because why don't we find out what the great companies are doing and share it with our portfolio companies aren't doing so well and what we discovered was rather interestingly if you look at women run companies and you look at because you have all the data what do they forecast for sales in a quarter what do they achieve and then look at the ones run by men in the case of women they achieved their goals quarterly ninety percent of the time okay ninety in the case of ones run by men 65 percent of the time but the men had sales targets 30 higher so they were really doing what i call the testosterone stretch really saying let's let's go for it and only hitting at 65 of the time now why would that manifest itself in a difference in cash flow you got to ask that question right here's why in a company where the whole team consistently hits goals the culture becomes very sticky and nobody wants to leave there's no staff turnover there's no disruption in revenue there's no disruption in accounting compliance the team is stuck together and the ones where you they only hit their target 65 time there's a lot of unhappiness in angst particularly in the sales force and there's staff turnovers much higher so when we put this new policy in place you set targets that you hit we did this three years ago now with all the companies i don't care if there's no growth in your target but if you hit the target we started to save lowers turnover and now in the companies that were not doing well cash flow is up 18 that's something you should if it's the only thing you remember today what i'm talking about set goals you can achieve and watch things happen because people want to work in a winning it's like playing for brady nobody wants to leave the team the guy just keeps winning super bowls that's it so so the cash flow is that just another winning indicator for you because i hear you talk a lot about cash flow and i know it's really important to me so um why and why is it important for the audience to measure it let me be clear about cash flow it's the only thing i care about okay because there is no bit there is no business without cash flow you might be able to last for a couple of years borrowing money getting more investors but if you don't have cash flow you're going to zero it's that simple and i think you have to face that reality as an entrepreneur cash flow is the blood of business if you don't have any blood you're dead so you might as well look at it that way respect it for what it is realize that's the only way and people say oh that's not true what about this what about that and i say whatever you're talking about is irrelevant if you don't have cash flow yeah so so you're then how does bitcoin relate to that conversation so bitcoin i mean look i was not a bitcoin guy until very recently i bought some in 2017 but the regulator was not and i'm in many companies that are regulated you know i've got an etf business i have a lot of fintech businesses and the regulator was very much against even talking about bitcoin on tv as soon as the regulators opened up in canada and switzerland australia england they even have etfs in canada and they're about to get them in switzerland now too three three five there's gonna be there's two more just got filed today so it's only a matter of time before um i'll tell you a really interesting story about this because i only came out three weeks ago and i said look i've bought a three percent weighting in bitcoin i'd already had a bunch three percent three percent so i have a rule about investing i never let a single stock become more than five percent of my portfolio i never let a sector like energy or technology become more than 20 percent this includes real estate i once had real estate up to 31 percent of my portfolio because i love real estate obviously it's going through some changes on the commercial side but not residential but my point was when i disclosed that i'd gone to three percent bitcoin i'd never anticipated this would happen all the companies we invest in are sustainable companies in other words we believe in a zero carbon footprint we think people care about that that's why in all of our companies that's what we do and my staff in my operating companies and in my own holding company are all of that ilk of that age where they give a they care the first thing i started to get were hundreds of phone calls from people you know investors of mine companies that my ceo saying these coins you own were they mined in china i don't know were they mined in a way that wasted electricity i don't know and all of a sudden i started saying to myself i better get to know because people care about that on bitcoin and so now my new thing is i'm starting to invest or buy miners myself and i'm going to just take that virgin coin and that's the only coin i'm going to own is it sustainable is it mined in a country that doesn't have sanctions on it or abuses human beings like china does this is the new thing coming grant on on bitcoin you you sound much more loving than than you i'm kumbaya baby i'm getting this humanity i'm totally kumbaya because because i've learned the customers that it's not a marketing scam anymore if you're not sustainable if you don't adhere to what customers want as a consumer like one of my companies is called blue land it's trying to get rid of 50 million plastic bottles where cleaning fluids put in and they crystallize the cleaning fluid and you use a reusable glass bottle and they ship it to you and there's a crystal so you get your detergent whatever it is crystallized that thing started it was a shark tank deal last year zero sales it's doing 80 million a year now wow that tells you customers give a yeah so how important with what we just printed in cash i think 21 of all the u.s dollars were printed last year looks like they're going to load up on another level how important are real assets going forward well they're real important i mean you know i think you got to start thinking about things like real estate there's a reason miami real estate is up 40 percent in the last 18 months or something because it's a hard asset did you mention real estate i own plenty don't worry but i've i've trimmed back a bit on on office commercial i'm waiting to see how that works out getting more into the residential side you know that's a good revenue you know i don't have to tell you this like you're the guy are you talking about apartments yeah yeah this guy owns every apartment in miami like he's the landlord basically no listen you've you have to have had a fantastic mark to market run on your real estate it's got to be amazing it's been just ridiculous yeah and then what what happens now with everybody coming down here in the residential the home price is going up 40 it's just gonna push into renters i'm one of those guys i've been living in a condo my wife is shopping for a home she comes back with sticker prices that i want to throw up on my shoes like yeah the stuff is insane yeah it's crazy but that's the that's the market and and do you think that continues yeah i do i'll tell you why we're we're going to print 1.9 trillion dollars we're going to put it in a helicopter and we're going to just shower it down on the people now you can you can decide if that's good or bad but that's happening as we speak they just signed it into law in the last 48 hours so that's inflationary it will be there's no question so so where does that inflation show up is it going to show up in job salaries no it's first going to show up in financial instruments you're going to see the 10-year probably go to percent before the end of the year that itself is not catastrophic but it will cause some volatility in the markets um it'll continue to accelerate home prices because people would rather own a hard asset than cash when it's being printed i mean it's not like working so so when that happens when the treasury goes up and then when house housing prices go up that means fewer people can actually buy that house because their salaries you didn't mention salaries yet so the the the tenure doesn't affect real estate until it gets past three percent i don't think that's happening anytime soon so you got a ways to go before that occurs it doesn't even affect stock prices till it goes back you have to think of it when does it come competitive when do you make a decision i'd rather own a treasury than a stock that's around three percent that's when it starts to happen so we've got we've got some time to go here but there's no question that you know it's going to be a different kind of market it's going to be a little more volatile um you've got the whole bitcoin phenomenon you saw a piece of digital art sell last night for 60 million dollars the guy that made it you know he just i can't even repeat what he said he couldn't believe it and this is just something he made on a computer that somebody paid 60 million dollars for that's because that person thought this digital code is worth more than the worthless dollars being printed so i'd rather own that so do you understand the nft i don't understand what it is what it is is a an image that he basically made over 4 000 days of in pictures of himself and other things and he stitched together in the cloud on the blockchain and the reason that matters is there can only be one of these images you can't copy it it's it's locked and loaded and what's amazing about it if the guy that bought it sells it again because it's on the blockchain he gets a royalty because he's the original creator so this is going to happen in music too blockchain changes everything when you write a song and you get ripped off it can't happen again because when you sample the song the blockchain goes with it and they automatically pay you the royalty it's amazing what's going on so you think the artist then will go more the the digital way i think because he'll get he'll get paid every time he trades look you could have bought a picasso but instead you bought this think about that that's pretty crazy i mean look it is what it is it was a real trade it was a real us dollar trade everybody bidding was under 40 years old um and they were all big bitcoin guys if you if you have 60 million bucks it's because you bought a ton of bitcoin eight years ago would you tell somebody that's done that though like let's say somebody was in bitcoin at 500 bucks and they're sitting at 57 000 today yeah when does a guy get off that train here's the decision you got to make and i this is advice that's served me well and my mother taught me this because let me tell you equivalent story a few years ago my son who was an electrical engineer was interning at tesla and i was i was about to go on to halftime report on cnbc and um tesla was downgraded that day before all the splits it was trading at 236 dollars and trevor said to me dad why don't you own some tesla i worked there as an intern and i said i want to short that stock it's such a joke it's a car company trading at a ridiculous price he said no you're the joke you don't understand what tesla does i work there it's not a car company it's a data company every time a car drives a mile it goes back to the server and it tells the resolution of that road gets better and better and better because every mile a tesla drives it goes into the database of mapping for autonomous cars and i thought i didn't know that he said no kidding like you you have a ton of money why don't you buy some of this stock because i don't have any money so just before i went on the air i took my phone out and i bought a black of the stock in my personal account not our etfs i just bought it then i forgot about it one day i opened up the thing and i was up like a thousand percent but it was way more than five percent of that portfolio so i started selling it and selling it it kept going up and i kept selling it and selling it so you're selling enough to get back down to five percent i'm yeah i mean it only recently corrected so i bought it back up to five percent but my cost base is zero it doesn't matter what happens to tesla now i made a ton of money on it that's the trick with bitcoin you keep it at whatever you decide i like five percent right now i'm at three if it goes past that i sell it down i and my mother taught me this game she said this way you never cry the blues you always have cash flow that's it you can't go broke if you have cash so biggest mistake you've ever made is there a big one that stands out yeah i've made a few seconds i remember once i'll never forget this one it breaks my heart it hurts me now just to think about it you know because i i i cry like a baby when i lose money but the a friend of mine started a company i gave him 250 000 and he had a forecast it was a real startup and i felt great i'll do it i wasn't 100 into it but he was a friend it's mistake number one mistake number two was 60 days later he comes back and says look i need another 500 000 to make this work and my gut told me right then don't do this do not do this it doesn't feel right maybe you have some stress with your friend but 500 000 is a lot of money anyways i didn't listen to my intuition i gave him the 500k he went to zero 90 days later that's 750 000 please a moment of silence for that money because i i killed it i killed that money i killed it and i'll never ever ever do that again so i don't let emotion get in the way you see it on shark tank all the time i don't care about your feelings i care about your money you know if you're going to cry you think i'm bad wait a little the real world gets a hold he'll rip you to pieces i mean that's that's the way i look at it what would be the best advice when somebody comes on shark tank when they're walking through there like do you know i mean i know a lot of that's you guys have some time it is tv right yeah but if if they were really coming here to pitch you right now what is there one or two piece of advice i'll give you some good advice on this one first of all i'm going to tell you something really strange that's happened to me i've been doing this for 15 years when they come out and they have that moment where they're sitting on the carpet i'm right in front of them like they're right in front of me and they can't say anything because there's a guy with a steady cam which is a camera that goes around them and that's that opening shot and that takes about two minutes you don't see any more than 10 seconds of it but they can't say anything and the floor director saying don't say anything don't move and the guy with the steadicams going around and they're just nervous as hell and and i'm right in front of them so i just look at them i just look at them i swear to you i can tell right then without hearing anything about their product just looking them in the eye the way they look back for that those two minutes winner loser winner loser just the aura just the i'm not kidding i'm not kidding and now i really because they can't avoid my stare i'm i'm the guy right in front of them and i'm just grilling them i may never what do you see what do you see do you know the confidence in their eyes the ability to take the hit to to to to be in that stressful environment 26 cameras all those lights you know these these you know these entrepreneur sharks looking at them and not to just fold like a leaf falling off a tree just like almost a push back vibe and that is the presence you need as an entrepreneur you need to project i'm here to kick ass i'm here to i don't care what you ask me i have an answer for it and i am ready to do business with you and you can tell this is something you should almost practice in front of the mirror you have to have you have to have an aura of confidence an aura of confidence and remember even if you're in doubt even if you're in doubt you must project you're not i am confident i am ready whatever hits me i'm here for it that's what i see in the window do you think that the the seller in this case because they're they're selling to you should have a specific target or be open to all five players you know that goes to valuation but i'll tell you an interesting study a british professor did he convinced shark tank is owned by sony all right they have it on in 23 countries he went to sony and some of the producers said would you let me study the unedited tape because i have a theory that there's a common string between the winners and the losers and here's what he found and i totally agree with this the the deals so this is something you should remember for whenever you're doing as an entrepreneur it doesn't matter if you're in shark tank this applies to everybody can you articulate the opportunity in 90 seconds or less all of the companies that got funded in all 23 countries in multiple geographies in multiple languages all were able to say here's my idea in 90 seconds or less in most cases less than 60 seconds you know hi i'm sarah i crystallize detergent and i eliminate the plastic bottle and i ship it to you to your home and we don't waste plastic that's like 17 seconds i get it okay so that's number one number two if this takes longer than 90 seconds what is it about you that married to this great idea can execute did you work in that business before did you work for a competitor has it been in the family have you failed before and now you know what you did wrong so explaining why you are the right individual and team to execute on the idea now when those two come together you can see it in the unedited tape that all of the you know the sharks in every country sit up and they go oh i'm you know i have a great idea and i have executional skills so my risk is mitigated i think i'm interested but here's the killer the last one number three you have to know your numbers how big is the market how fast it's growing what are the gross margins what's the break-even analysis you have to be able to answer those questions you know in the case of shark tank here stateside if you don't know your numbers i will personally put you in hell myself because you you you deserve to burn in hell because you've made it you have made it past 50 000 applications only maybe 300 get considered only 220 tape and 180 air there you are with your opportunity you've beat the odds and you don't know your numbers i mean of course you're so at that point are you looking at the person more than the idea like like how much is it person and how much idea if there was a ratio well i'd give 70 percent to the person uh 30 to the idea because i won't invest in uh hot sauces there are a million hot sauces there's always a hot sauce every year hi my this is my family recipe for a hot sauce who gives a like there's no way you're ever going to make money trying to break into the hot sauce market when it's already completely saturated yeah so that whole opening thing about oh my mom's doing this the whole story at the beginning you don't care about any of this story right that's just do i care what your dog was called in high school what you know that you're on the cheerleading team i mean what what does that have to do with the investment i'm looking at i mean that's that's just no i know but it's such a waste of time for you you should be spending your time explaining to me why i'm going to make a ton of money that's that's you know i was a cheerleader that's great but how do i make money off that yeah like yeah so is that person that that personality that that we see on tv like was that development was it this is me now and that's me then and i don't change my personality my mother taught me something really great that i didn't really put a lot of value on early in my career but it's a very simple thing always tell the truth and you'll never have to remember what you said right and and and what i it's and it's very hard to do that most people want to please others by not telling them the truth but that kills you in the context of shark tank because it makes you go on a stupid business i'm the only one that says your business sucks it's going to zero you shouldn't do this you should come up with a better idea and then they're crying in front of me have you been wrong on any of those where you said no way and then they grant i'm never wrong there you go what's your mama tell you about me i'm just i'm just saying i'm just saying listen at the end of the day other investors will also choose and the real market will choose too but it's it's very interesting that entrepreneurship really you have to be able to take a few hits you're going to fail makes you better makes you stronger gives you callous when you play guitar you want that callus you want to get that uh you know you need that in business too and once you're an entrepreneur and you're you're you're infected with that bug you want to stay an entrepreneur it doesn't matter if you fail a couple of times i would much rather invest in someone that's felt the sting of failure anyways i can't stand the arrogance if somebody walks in and says you know i'm 26 years old i've never done anything but give me a valuation of 10 million dollars what no i'll let barbara do that so so you're you've mentioned your mom three times yeah like who had the most influence on you mom or dad well my my original father died when he was 37 he was an irish guy a sales guy and my mother what's that how old were you i was like six okay yeah it was really tough and my mother remarried and my stepfather was going to university of illinois in champaign-urbana and i lived in champaign-urbana for bottom-field high school won't forget it there is no colder place in february on earth than champaign illinois i can tell you that i love the place but i won't be going back there in the winter ever again but the whole point is then he took a job with the united nations and we started traveling two years cambodia tunisia ethiopia cyprus you know every two years a different country and that was a huge eye-opener for me because in every country there's expats there's an american community there you kind of get to know them and we just kept moving and it really ended up being quite a ride um and that's sort of you know that's you can't you don't know what makes you uh learn the things you learn but that was it for me yeah the you i read this article about you had some it's the meanie of money i'm not the there were some personalities around money or there was five you you know what i'm yeah i know what you're talking about tell me about that i thought it was really interesting yeah you know it's we we didn't plan any of this by the way we had a yeah i know it's called five minutes stream of consciousness which is always the best the the essence of that is the idea that you know i guess the best way to put it is when you form a relationship with a significant other in your life it's very hard to put it up this way because it's so euphoric when you fall in love but actually you're starting a business is what you're doing and you're you're starting that business to mitigate your risk the rest of your life because you're going to build a family and what i'd like people to think about is because i i did a lot of research in this i've written three books on men women and money the number one reason that people divorce has nothing to do with infidelity most marriages can survive infidelity the reason they they divorce between five and seven years and 50 of these marriages fail is financial stress and and what happens is one of the pair does not have the same objectives financially as the other in other words maybe they outspend maybe they maybe they have huge credit card debts they don't care but if you're not in sync with each other about money it ain't gonna work and and that's what i try and talk about you have to treat it like it's the third person in your marriage you got to treat it with respect the money the money yeah the money that's the whole idea of treating it like a vertical you have to deal with and great marriages that last 30 40 years you find that stability you find that a team because you know let's face it i mean any i've been married over 30 years i love my wife but it's not the same than when i met her you know it's a whole we've gone through the whole thing together we've been separated for two years but we have a family and i that's a business you know and i don't give money to my kids and they're really pissed at me but i don't care they're they're gonna have to go figure it out for themselves but i did guarantee them if they ever have children i'll pay the full freight from birth to last day of college because that's what my mother did to me fourth time his mom had a big imprint on the ladies she hated entitlement she hated and entitled it yeah she couldn't stand rich kids that had their because when i graduated i didn't know she was gonna do this to me she said to me that day from college she said listen kevin the dead bird under the nest never learns how to fly and i said what what does that mean she said no more checks and i said you can't do that i don't have a job she said oh yeah i've paid all the way to this day you've been you i've you you've burned a lot of cash of mine and now you're on your own now go figure it out and i had a tough couple of years but when i finally was you know successful financially i built a trust that was designed based on her wishes birth to last day of college generational skipping trust and my kids were four and seven i went home that day that was on the learning company exit i basically took half that doe and stuck it in in that generation skipping trust and i went back and said to trevor and savannah and they were four and seven this is how this trust works and they went what anyways many years later when my son was failing in high school he came to me one day and said dad you know one of his friends had a trust he said how does my trust work i said well if mom and i go out for dinner tonight and we get run over by a truck you don't have to worry because it's going to pay for you to finish high school because it doesn't look like you have the marks to get into college so you don't have to worry about that and he said okay what happens after that i said well i'm dead and you have no money because this trust only works until you finish school and he went are you kidding i said no it's written in stone and it's run by a bunch of guys that i don't even know it's that's the deal he went you must be kidding i said no i'm not kidding the dead bird under the nest never learns how to fly is what i told him and it was it must have been the darkness that he felt the uncertainty the abyss that he faced so you want him to go to college you insist he went downstairs and he cracked the books from that day on he's now working at tesla as an engineer he became an engineer i thank my mother for that that was her idea how important is when you look at something how long are you spending to make a decision on it is it fast yeah a lot of due diligence it's i have a lot of uh experience now and i feel i live by that intuition i'll tell you a story that i'll never forget and i and i told you i now guest lecture at places like harvard and mit and temple notre dame i love doing it i love doing it and i always tell them this story because i remember it i don't i remember nothing from my mba i went my dad said to my stepfather said you are so all you did is take you know classes in art and psychology and you just wanted to hang with girls in university and now you don't know anything you're going to starve to death and i went uh he has a point there so i went i went to business school for two years and in the last day there was 86 people in my class and to my right the guy that i've been sitting beside for two years barry was his name in comes this guest lecture last day and it's he just looks at us like for about a minute and and didn't say anything it was a weird vibe in the room he could fear he could hear a pin drop and he finally says to us you people think you're so damn hot here you are mbas that you're going to go out there and make it happen and everybody can't wait to see you because you know so much and he said you know you haven't done anything and i lean over to barry and i say what an this guy is and he went on to explain that the reason you become valuable in life is you do something you achieve something and you get experience doing that but you're worthless until you get that done it doesn't matter what you learned in school it matters what you do that's why many many successful people never go to college it doesn't matter it's really hard to make something work in business and i thought to myself this guy is such a dick now fast forward 30 years that guy is me i i i just said that to a this week i did the um virtually i did it virtually i gave the speech to the harvard graduating class and i said the same thing and i said to them i hope you guys sitting wherever you are in all these countries are thinking what a dick i am because then i've done my job one third of you are going to fail you're just not going to make it even though you have a hot mba who cares the world's gonna chew you up and spit you out they don't care and the truth is i don't remember a single thing about any of what i learned in those two years except the people like barry i sat beside were now bankers all over the world so i talk to them all the time and that guy that guy taught me an important list it humbled me so so when you're looking like if if you're going back to college today would you be going for the education or would you be going for the connections connections you know that really pisses off they keep inviting me back to guest lecture and i always say the same thing you're not going to remember any of this crap but all the people that are sitting with you that you worked with for two years the connections that's the that's the why you do it because you're not gonna remember so when you're going into a room kevin even today like are you looking to make connections with people this audience here or should they be looking for how do i connect and do business or it's business is all about connections business is all about respecting people trusting people that's why it's you know this idea of lying to people i mean put it in the context of the marriage like the research i did on divorce when i wrote the first book when you have a a relationship of trust in business or in marriage with somebody and you it's very powerful because they trust you and they're willing to give you the benefit of the debt when you get caught in the lie or you get caught cheating in business or in a relationship you lose 50 percent of the equity of that relationship forever forever and so it would be better if you cheated on your wife to get up in the morning get out of bed and call her up and say i just cheated on you i just know that i made a huge mistake it will alter the relationship but at least she'll trust that you told her the truth you're weak in that moment people never do that and they destroy their relationships in business it's worse once you lose trust with somebody once you do something that was dishonest with them word gets out real fast and you can never get it back what is the give him a big hand for being here by the way okay thank you he could be doing other things today two more questions sure number one why did you agree why did you agree to do this like why do you do things like this do you like this i i really i think there comes a point and i'm you know i'm very fortunate i don't need any more money i i need to keep what i've got because i use it for all kinds of different purposes including investing in companies all the time but i really enjoy giving back i like to share my experiences you may not agree with them you may not agree with some of these things but it's food for thought that's why i spend more and more time guest lecturing because i know things that these kids don't know and i want them to be successful i'm all about entrepreneurship i'm always trying to get entrepreneurs to be successful because the backbone of the american life is the entrepreneur that takes risks and builds businesses and creates jobs and i want to be part of that that's that's why i fight so much against waste and government but that's a different story you know it's sort of this is a time now to recover from this pandemic and kick ass again and i think this country is going to come out of this thing on fire it's going to be fantastic what is the term what does the term 10x mean to you 10x 10x it's an accelerator it doesn't mean money to me it means you're going to be 10 times better at whatever you're doing that's what i ask people to do i say what can you do to accelerate what can you do to be better at what you do people that can perform that have consistency of performance are all 10xers and i'll tell you a practical reason think about it in sales if i can find and these days i hire a lot of women because they're fantastic sales people and the reason i love them for what they do is they actually hit their targets they hit their targets and why that matters to me is if i know they're going to bring 2 million in that quarter i can allocate the capital properly so a salesperson that can actually deliver consistently is worth gold because you're allocating bitcoin yeah it's whatever you know i i'll pay my employees in bitcoin if they want it that's fine with me but it's sort of a really interesting dynamic to talk about consistency 10x means you're a performer and you're growing and becoming better and you're enhancing your productivity that's what it means to me if you like that video wait do you see my next one don't forget to click right over here and subscribe i want you to have a different mindset when you purchase things for yourself and let me give it to you in a lesson that i learned from my own mother and i've told this story countless of times countless times countless times

Channel: Kevin O'Leary

Views: 107,689

Rating: 4.823009 out of 5

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

Id: aZe1bSnqAtM

Length: 40min 41sec (2441 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021