#80 I Asked 6 Billionaires How To Get Rich

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Coaches are important. I still have coaches. You have to believe in the end of your story.

This week's episode is a totally different format. It is going to be multiple billionaire guests that I'm lucky enough to now call friends or have had on the podcast. And we are going to have bite sized best in class information from each one of them. If you've ever wondered, how do billionaires make all their money? What secrets could I learn from them? Can, can I get a billionaire mentor? And what does it take to make that like, crazy level of cash? How do you explain that at a very simplistic level?

First principles, thinking, you say, what are our fundamental assumptions? What are we doing here?

Running my businesses like a coach would run a team. I became a lot more effective.

Where should a young builder start today?

You serve, serve, serve.

Would you tell them to go take active risk?

Well, first of all, the younger you are, the easier it is to take risks and use that to your advantage.

How do you know if you're moving fast enough on the decisions you want to make in life?

What happens if you thought about that idea three years ago? What if you executed on that? Where would you be now?

Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez. This week is for you only the most tactical, most specific story so that you can learn from these billionaires too. And you can steal my billionaire mentors next week. Back to regularly scheduled programming with like, well, the fastest growing AI startup CEO out there. I'm gonna save who it is. You guys could try to guess, but that episode is also amazing. And it turns out it's the next two weeks is only Billy's, so we're gonna make a lot of money these next two weeks on the Big Deal podcast. Let's get into it.

Coaches are important. I still have coaches. I just, I'm, I have a swim coach. I have.

You had a Navy SEAL memory coach.

I had because I wanted to get better at memorizing names. I wasn't great when I met people at remembering their names, so I brought a coach in to help me with that. I've had sales coaches. I've had coaches in so many areas of my life because I'm not great at everything. I want to go to people that are amazing at what they do. I live with Goggins. I lived on a monastery to get better at my spirituality. Like investing in yourself to get better is so important. If you're working at an organization, two things. One, I think you should make yourself irreplaceable. That's really important. Then you have the leverage. Like, you can't even fire me. I know everybody, every customer. I'm unfairable. Now you have some leverage, which I think. Which I think is really important. And you should learn, network and sponge as much, absorb, especially when you're young, as much as you can. Do everything, learn everything. Gandhi said it best. He said, learn like you'll live forever. Live like you'll die tomorrow. So you want to learn and keep getting better. You know, in as many things as you can.

Do you have a particular way that you lead people? What do you think it is? Is it either you select these people who are going to be high performers and so you have a selection bias, or do you have a particular leadership style that you think enables other people to become something bigger?

I think that you have to put confidence in. Like, I'm. There are so many better.

I.

Honestly, Cody, I'm. I'm like back of the pack entrepreneur. I know. I really am. There's so many amazing entrepreneurs. Like, I don't even put myself.

I'm not.

That's not my strong suit. It's not. It's not. I've had wins. I've had great partners. I've had good ideas. Right time, right plate. Like, a lot of things happened, but there's so many. I still go to so many entrepreneurs for advice, but I am good at giving people confidence and belief. And that's really important because you have to believe in the end of your story.

I think people have beat up this idea quite a bit. But first principles thinking, obviously were created by Peter Thiel. But then you talk about a lot to this day, this idea of getting back to base level. How do you explain that at a very simplistic level? First principles thinking.

Yeah.

And Bridgewater, by the way, was all about this as well, which is a very interesting hedge fund. Right. It's the biggest hedge fund in the world. But it's really important. You've seen this in lots of areas where you go back and you say, what are our fundamental assumptions? What are we doing here? Like, why? Like, what is our firm the best at? Why is there an opportunity here? What are we going to like? What's our core capabilities? Right. These are really philosophical questions as well as how do you break down frameworks for who you are and then say, okay, given these or core capabilities, what are the juxtaposed areas? What are the areas next to it that we can go into that are similar? And it's just. It's a really good exercise to keep coming back to because it reminds you. It reminds you of things. This is why building a deck is really good for an entrepreneur, even if it's a small business, is you want to put together. Here's 10 pages on who I am, what I'm doing, what the goals are, why it's going to be successful. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs say, oh, I'm just so smart and fast, and why would I do this stupid thing? That's for stupid people. It's not for me. And it's actually, it's for everyone because everyone needs to get back to the core of like, exactly. Like what and why and who and how. And sometimes those principles, you'll notice, have actually changed in a way you have. Maybe you intuitively realize one of them's changed, but you don't really find it until you go back and actually write it down. So it's just. It's just such a helpful thing. You know, as a founder, I really admire the founders, not just of companies, but, you know, the founders of America as well. And the founders of America were really clear about their principles.

Yeah.

And we're very, very lucky about that. There's. There's all sorts of debates, there's all sorts of writings from that time. I grew up reading something called the London Magazine, which is the founders of America. And the people, you know, writing things in Parliament and everything would write it and argue back and forth, even as you have all these primary sources of what was going on. And it was the light. The Enlightenment kind of just happened over the last hundred years, and it was really a time where people were really focused on principles in society and what's correct. And so it was a great intellectual breeding ground for founding something like America.

But.

But I find founders in general who are the best are similar to the American founders, like, really debate. These things really come back to them, and it kind of refreshes and renews what you're doing.

Yeah.

It also seems like you have to repeat yourself very, very often as a founder.

And so you do, because you need to make sure people understand the vision of what's going on. I remember early on a Palantir, we'd walk around and talk to a bunch of the engineers helping me recruit, like, and like, what's the mission to you? In your words, why are you excited about it? In your words, when you're talking to your smartest friends and we're going to go over to Stanford or MIT or wherever else we're going to go and recruit, like, tell me as if I'm one of them, let's talk about this practice. And you know, that's helpful. You got to do that.

I think it comes from really where I was, how I was raised. I mean, on a farm, you know, you. You are raised in that situation. You don't have any guarantees, and you figure it out and you work hard until it's done. And I think just that tenacity really saw me through a lot. And certainly building a career from Wall street now into the cabinet from rural America, I think that just really taught me to dig in, keep going, keep learning, and keep the curiosity about how things work and keep asking questions and never accept the first no.

Yeah, yeah. You seem like when we were talking kind of behind the scenes, you're like, I like it. I wanna be in there. I wanna be like, making a difference. I was like, wasn't it scary to run for Senate? That sounds horrifying. You were like, no, put me in, coach. So you got a little of that inner psychopath. I'm into that, yeah. What about. So you owned an mba, a WNBA team, which seems incredibly hard in just every aspect. You know, not as much funding, lower ticket sales, you know, and then there was inner turmoil in the wnba. What was the hardest moment for you running that business?

Well, I think the biggest decision came when my business partner and I, we were 50, 50 owners. But before that, we were minority owners. And there came a point where the majority owner decided to sell. And we had to look at each other and say, do we want to step up and be 50, 50 owners? And I was running a big part of our publicly traded company at the time, and I had to have confidence in the team that we brought on to really run that business day to day. And also the funding, I mean, it was, you know, it's not an inexpensive endeavor to sink money into that every single year.

Was it public how much that was?

No, but I mean, it's a couple million. And it was, you know, we'd hoped to be able to get it to break even, but to the point, you know, back then the bigger decision was to say, is this a go or no go? And I believe that when life opens a door for you to walk through it. And life had opened a door for me as a professional sports team owner. And walking away at that time didn't seem like a good option. And I'm really glad we walked through it. We owned the team for. For a decade, and it was very grassroots. In fact, I was working with a reporter one time and pitching a story. I mean, I was making sure that we got the visibility. I had this vision because of what I'd seen living in Chicago during the Bulls run in the 90s. And I thought, my goodness, I see what sports do for a community. They really bring it together. And I think Atlanta can be a great sports town. And so we invested on that basis to not have this as a hobby, but. But to make this a business and a great community contribution. And we were so glad that we walked through that door and did that for a decade for our fans, for our community, to elevate the sport. And it turned out to be such a good. I learned so much being a sports team owner that applied to business, because in business, sometimes you can kick the can on a problem. In sports, you can't do that.

Why? Everybody's just yelling at you all, well.

Because in sports, the scoreboard shows the results every single day. The ticket sales show the results every single day. The coaching shows the results. And so you have to make those decisions game time. And so I started doing that in business, running my businesses like a coach would run a team. And I became a lot more effective, decisive, and not afraid about what decisions were around the next corner. It just really emboldened me to make those decisions and keep going.

Where should a young builder start? Today?

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Well, I mean, the first thing that. And I just talked to our team about it this morning, a staff meeting, reminding them yet again, one of our core values here is if you help enough people, you don't have to worry about money. So too many times when we start something, we are enamored with our own idea, our own ability, and the idea is the thing rather than the customer. And what I want to do is I want the person that is not inside the building to be blessed, to be changed, to be served, to have their mind blown. The people inside the building all get their mind blown. Not so much. Not so much. That doesn't do anything. What happens is when all those people out there all over the world, I get the opportunity to help one of them with their budget. I get the opportunity to help one of them with their marriage. I get to help one on one their spiritual walk. I get to help one on one their small business. And so we don't build anything for us, we build everything for them. And when you first start, that's not natural, that's paradoxical, because you're kind of into what you're doing and you're like, oh, I'm kind of good at this, and this is kind of cool. And it was for me, anyway. And so when I did the first cassette tapes or VHS tapes, you know, I was like, wow, look at that guy. He's funny and he's good. And it kind of started coming, coming to me. No one cares except your mama and your wife.

And they also don't.

They don't care that much. It's like, but that. I think that's a thing you serve, serve, serve. And if you can find a way to make other people's life better and let them be the hero in the story, as my friend Donald Miller says, don't you have to be the hero? You can be the guide and that kind of stuff. It just makes you have a good, quality life. And you've got a good philosophical, spiritual underpinning to your business, then that you can. Okay, we're about service. We're about service. And when you interact with an organization, a business that is about themselves, you feel the take rather than the give. And when you interact with a company that is all about service, you come away with your mind blown because they're fairly rare.

How did you get comfortable with risk? Or how do you think about risk, especially for young people who maybe haven't had a chance to Take it yet. And would you tell them to go take active risk?

Well, first of all, the younger you are, the easier it is to take risk.

Right.

And use that to your advantage. I started my first company when I was 17, and I was in college and. Or, sorry, I was just entering college, and I think I had this mindset that, like, okay, like, I have this thing college, right? And, like, I could do that well. And as long as I'm doing that well, my parents will be okay. So let me go take as much risk as I can take outside of school and let me go try different things. And I had. I didn't have kids. I didn't, you know, I didn't have to. I was. I was working and paying some of my own bills at the time, but I had, you know, my parents were supporting me. And I use that as an excuse to take more risk. And I think the older you get, the harder it is to take risk. And, like, risk is like a muscle, right? It's like the younger you try new things, and the younger, the earlier you. You sort of train your mindset to know that, like, I'm going to do something and if it works, great, and if it doesn't work, that's still okay too, because I'm going to learn from that, and I'm going to leverage that into the next thing.

How do you think about speed and moving fast, and how do you know if you're moving fast enough on the decisions you want to make in life?

Well, first I want to say, you know, not a dream crusher. I just want to hold you accountable to your best self. Right? Like you, You. You definitely had all the ingredients to. As somebody I would want to bet on. And your. Your dreams, your ideas were much bigger than that. You weren't thinking bigger. And, you know, I told you at the time, I said, the money is easy. It's having an idea that you can execute on. There's tons of money. There's tons of rich guys that don't want to work. They just want to invest in somebody and make a good return. Question is, how do we find these executors? And when we find them, they dump cash into them and they go golfing or flying or doing with whatever they want to do. And so I wanted you to think big because it wouldn't be hard for you to raise money, right? Like, after you went around, you were like, trying to cram me down because these other guys want to come in and this guy wants to come in. I'm like, no, that guy can't get in, right? What happened? If you thought about that idea three years ago, what if you executed on that, you know, a little bit faster? What if you, you know, thought a little bit bigger and moved a little bit faster? Where would you be now? How big would this conference be? How many people would be knocking down your door to figure out how you did it? And so, you know, we're human beings. We're not institutions. We don't live that long. And there's periods in our life, and I just think that life in itself is urgent and important, and your dreams are important. And that advantage of action, you know, speed implies action. You're not just speed running around in a circle. You're moving towards your dreams. And so it's almost taking yourself serious and your dreams seriously by executing what else should you be doing right, according to your values? And so I think it's very important. And it's, you know, my willingness to take risk and my ability or my willingness to move quickly towards my goals are the only advantages I have.

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Mmm.

Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you said you hear about Dave. Or even tea time. Tea time. Tea time you.

Mm.

So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

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