Ep 437 | Traits that Can Make You Rich (REPLAY)

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about wealth, building wealth, and I've been talking a lot recently about author Morgan Housel, who wrote The Psychology of Money, and he recently I wrote the book called Same as Ever. I've been talking about Morgan Housel because I think he has a lot of great thoughts and beliefs around money. And recently I was reviewing some things that Morgan said about money. Specifically, he was talking about the 3 traits that can make people rich. I really liked what he had to share, so I'd like to share it with you today. So as Morgan explains, it's really no secret that many people of course aspire to be rich, but what exactly does it mean to be rich, to be a high net worth individual? And according to Morgan, being wealthy, much like being beautiful, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. There's no such thing as an objective measurement of wealth is what Housel will tell you. For example, he paraphrases this joke that Chris Rock tells. He says, if Bill Gates woke up with Oprah's money, Bill would jump out the window because a billionaire like Bill would be comparing himself to who? Of course, other billionaires. And Bill happens to have a fair amount of more, a fair amount more money than Oprah, but don't get it twisted. Oprah has plenty of money herself. The point is that wealth is in the eye of the beholder, and there's no such thing as an objective measurement of wealth. It's oftentimes just by comparison to individuals that you perceive to be in like status. So as, as Morgan describes the 3 traits that can make people rich, uh, he kind of breaks it down as, and it almost sounds like a cop-out of sorts. The 3 that he gives you. Number 1, luck. Some people are just lucky and some aren't. And that isn't to say that people with extreme wealth aren't smart or hardworking, but luck and being born at the right time in the right place, it does play a significant role. It's something we should acknowledge. We're not going to— Morgan would say, we're not going to pretend that if Steve Jobs was born in Cameroon in 1650, he would have been as successful as he, as he was in his career. Of course he wouldn't have been. So luck played a pretty good role for someone like Steve Jobs. Now, it's not to say he wouldn't have been amazing, but he wouldn't have been the Steve Jobs of, you know, the, the 20th century and 21st century US Steve Jobs. So luck, number one. Number two, Endurance. One reason that people stay broke or that they struggle financially is what Morgan would call short-termism. In other words, they just don't stick it out long enough to reap the benefits of their hard work. An example that, that Morgan Housel gives around endurance is MrBeast. You may have heard of MrBeast, especially if you have some kids. That love watching YouTube. MrBeast is a guy named Jimmy Donaldson, who's a YouTube personality, who, who gives advice to other aspiring YouTubers. And he says something to the effect of, go make 100 videos, and then we could talk about it. 99 of those people will give up before they make 100 videos. 99 out of 100, Jimmy says, would give up before they make 100 videos. MrBeast would tell you, Jimmy Donaldson would tell you that much of his success just has to do with endurance, playing the long game. The antidote to short-termism is in fact endurance. It comes down to whether you have the endurance or at least the stubbornness to keep it going in any business endeavor. That of course goes for investing. We talk about this quite a bit, Warren Buffett's mentality around investing. If you're an investor, you're paid to put up with uncertainty since most people will tap out. So your job is to stay the course. And like Warren and his partner, partner Charlie, stay the course indefinitely, make key decisions every so often, but don't make too many decisions, right? Warren and Charlie would tell you that over the course of their 80-year investment career, They've made really 10 key decisions that made all the difference. That's essentially one decision every 8 years. Now, did they make other decisions? Yes, but they were not as fruitful, but they could attribute most all of their success to 10 key decisions over an 80-year career. What does that tell you? You got to have a long-term perspective. You got to have endurance. Lastly, of the 3 traits that Morgan says you have to have, You have to have a high tolerance for pain. Those who are successful not only have the endurance to wait out tough times, they also have the ability to withstand pain, which can mean different things to different people. You know, when Morgan tells a story that when, uh, Barack Obama met the Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden. Obama said he was stunned at how ordinary they all looked. He said half of them looked like they could have been high school principals, but their tolerance for pain was off the charts. Now, a high tolerance for pain doesn't have to— doesn't mean you have to be a Navy SEAL, right? That's not what he's saying. He's just— Morgan Housel is just saying that withstanding pain meant to be able to handle the possibility of failure. In coming against criticism and persevering. People are going to tell you every day how dumb you are, how, how, how bad the moves you're making might be. And you've just got to kind of bite your lip and you've got to endure it. So you've got to be able to handle the obstacles, the failures, and you have to persevere. You got to have a high tolerance for pain. So these 3 traits, having some luck, Having endurance and building a high tolerance for pain. These are 3 traits that could absolutely make you rich. I love, I mean, it's pretty simple and it does sound like a cop-out, but I mean, if you study those that have had massive success, it's kind of, I mean, you kind of see the recipe there. Even Morgan Housel himself, he would tell you that his personal financial success is probably a culmination of these 3, these 3 traits. Before he wrote a bestselling book, he wrote 3,500 blog posts over the course of 17 years. And he would tell you of those 3,500 blog posts, 3,000 of them probably weren't all that good, but because he had some luck, because he persevered and had endurance, and because he had a high tolerance for pain when people criticize his work, he still dealt with it and moved forward. It helped him accumulate wealth. And it takes a certain type of personality to not just build that wealth, but to stay rich. We've all heard of athletes going bankrupt shortly after retirement or lottery winners that lose all their money within a few years. In order to stay rich, you got to stay hungry. A lot of people that stay rich, they do it by just having the fear of not making it at all. Like they just have this constant, like, will to succeed and drive. Staying rich means you've got to learn how to maintain and grow your money. Getting rich and staying rich are different skills. To stay rich, you got to learn, you got to grow, you got to build a moat, you got to bulletproof your, your, your, your wealth. So the thing, the question for you today, the focusing question for you today Which of these traits, if not all of these traits, do you in fact possess? Where is there opportunity for you to progress? Which trait do you think you could further develop? If you're going to further develop luck, might sound kind of counterintuitive, but put yourself in the right position to be lucky. Get in the right environment, be in the right place at the right time, show up often. Luck will tend to find you. How about endurance? Learn to persevere. Learn to stick it out. One more rep. Do one more. And how about developing a high tolerance for pain? When you get knocked down, don't think about it. Get back up and go. Continue to do it. You're either winning or you're learning. So on that note, that's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.