How to Speak with the Richest 1%

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Nobody in the 1% got there by being the smartest person in the room. They got there by being the dumbest first. Plenty of people grind their whole lives and die broke. The brutal and uncomfortable truth is that getting around people who are richer and more successful than you so you can steal their 10,000 hours is the way to go. So today I'm going to show you 3 things: how normal people actually break into the 1% and why it'd look insane to your broke uncle, how many people stay stuck for decades without ever knowing why, and the one question that'll tell you in about 10 seconds, whether you're on the path or just running in place. I'm Codie Sanchez. This is The Big Deal Podcast. Let's get into it. I want to start with part 1 of REAL, which I call respect their time. So almost every piece of networking advice you've ever heard was written for a broke person. And honestly, like, you know, it was right. When you have nothing, networking is pretty simple, right? You meet everyone, you help anyone. When you've got no leverage, showing up is the leverage. So you be the person that drives 3 hours to help. That advice actually works. It'll get you in the room, at least some room. But then there's something crazy that happens. When you're broke, the door gets opened by you doing the crazy things, doing all the unhinged reach-outs, trying to get in everywhere. And when you're rich, that is going to slam the door on you. It's okay when you have nothing to ask how you start relationships, but once you've got something, asking too much is actually how you end relationships because nobody wants to feel like an ATM with a phone number, especially the richer that you get. So when you watch genuinely successful people, they're not dodging everyone because they're cold all the time. They're dodging because everybody, everybody wants a slice. So the fastest way to stand out in that crowd is to be the only person who isn't reaching for a knife to cut it. I've seen this with Tony Robbins. I've I've seen this with Stephen Bartlett. I've seen it firsthand with some really big celebrities who probably don't even like to talk about it. I think the formula, if you want to become friends with the 1% and then become them, is you got a relationship balance when you do this. The value that you deposit minus the favor you withdraw equals how much relationship capital you have. The truth is most people go negative on the very first call, and then they wonder why nobody picks up the second time. So if you're trying to talk to people who already have something, every favor you ask, I want you to think about it like a withdrawal from a bank account. Every intro you request, every quick pick your brain, every can you just is like withdraw, withdraw, withdraw. If you've never made a deposit, AKA given them something, you're overdrawn and you don't even know it. I actually learned this the hard way a million years ago. I was the person who was really overly excited and I met somebody kind of rich and famous. I thought I was doing them a solid by introducing them to somebody else who wanted an intro. Can you see how that might not have been a good idea? I mean, I had the best intentions. I'm like, "Oh, you two are great. You'll talk about stuff." Feels generous, except it's not because this happens to me now. What happens? Somebody makes a blind intro to you and now you're on the hook. This person shows up in your inbox expecting things. In my case, the most recent one using my name like a key I never gave them. The one who helped me by making this intro, well, What are they doing? They're really spending your reputation to look generous. And what happens? I never trusted them with anything again. One unasked intro led to another, led to relationship over. This led to them doing it so many times, we called them the taker. At the time, I thought that was unique to them, but it's actually not. Please listen to me. If you want to get into big rooms, stay there, and get re-invited, never make an introduction without permission ever. Ever, ever double opt-in or die. The only time I won't do this is like if the President of the United States asks to get introduced to somebody who's not anywhere near the same hierarchy level. Okay, fine. We can make that introduction. But almost anybody who is not at a massive power imbalance, I'm going to ask first. Because what happens is early in your career, intros are like, awesome, that's free. But later they're expensive because you're spending somebody else's reputation. You're spending somebody else's time. So you got to ask first every single time because time is the one thing really wealthy people don't have very much of. In fact, without sounding cloudy, I was on the set of Shark Tank the other day and it was really funny to watch in real time as people were like kind of like grasping around all the sharks trying to get them to do different things and, you know, make intros and, oh, let me tell you this and, oh, let me tell you that. And I sort of sat back because respect is what actually gets you invited. And that is the main R in getting into rooms you really shouldn't be. In. Part 2 is called Earning Trust. So the second letter is earn for trust. And the thing about trust is it isn't built on somebody's best day. Here's an unconventional thing I learned. It's usually built on their worst. So when you want to get mentored by somebody big time, just know everybody shows up when you're winning, right? You do the launch, you do the funding round, you do the magazine cover, the crowd swarms. Everyone wants to stand close enough to catch some of the light. Now watch the exact same crowd when the wind turns, when you get a lawsuit, when you have a brutal press cycle, when the deal blows up in public with everybody watching. That will happen to everybody at some point, including me, no matter what. And you know what happens then? Your texts, they ain't dinging. You know, the DMs go silent. The "let's grab coffee" people suddenly super busy. No caffeine here. And so, you know, the room kind of empties out like somebody pulled a fire alarm. But the thing is, powerful people never ever forget who showed up. While it was on fire. Everyone can clap at a win. A loss is the only thing that tells you who's real. I like to think about it like the times you showed up when it was burning minus the times you cashed in right after, that's when you earn the loyalty. Show up during the fire and ask for your favor 3 weeks later? No, no, no. That's not the way. When someone you respect is getting publicly dragged or having a hard time or going through divorce, You know, say, I saw what's happening. I'm thinking about you. I'm in your corner. Then disappear. Don't reappear with them with an ask. You know, don't make them think that you've just told them the whole thing was a transaction, right? This is really important. So I remember one of my friends, Jay Shetty, was going through it at one point and he was having kind of a week and we weren't really good friends then. I knew him tangentially and I was like, hey man, I saw you going through this. I just want you to know that I think it's bullshit. I got your back. Like, you know, you are such a light in the world. Like, this is a silly thing for people to focus on. And if I can do anything or post anywhere or, you know, publicly have your back, just let me know because I'm happy to. And to this day, I think him and I are friends because of that. And so I think, you know, it happened to me too. There's one person who earned my trust permanently with a single message. I was getting hammered publicly. It's like one of those weeks where you stop reading the comments and most people went quiet, you know, or they like negged a little bit like, oh, you know, did you see this? Or this guy's saying that. And then one person I barely knew at all sent 3 words like no angle, no, like, oh, I just saw this. He just said, I got you. Didn't follow up looking for anything. Didn't try to leverage it. To this day, if that person calls, I pick up on the first ring. When you're broke, networking is about meeting people. Once you're successful, it's about being there for them when they actually need it and keeping them. The next part is A, obviously, which is ask for truth. I like the ask because success quietly makes that almost impossible. Researchers at Northwestern found that just making people feel powerful made them worse at understanding others. Isn't that crazy? Feel powerful like the superwoman position and you get worse at reading facial expressions? And you start assuming everyone already knows what you know, the exact skills that got you to the top are the first ones the top actually takes away from you. And it's not only your own brain turning on you, it's everyone around you too. So what happens is the richer you get, the fewer people are willing to tell you no. They like laugh a little harder at your jokes, they agree a little faster, they stop flagging when an idea is mediocre because now there's like a cost to disagreement. And you're not suddenly hearing more truth. You're drowning in more agreement and the two kind of feel identical from the inside. So I remember one of the first times when I realized I had built myself a little bit of a room of sycophants, which we've all done if you're a leader or something before. You even might have done it in high school, like the cute chick in the popular group that everybody says yes to all the things that she built. I kind of immediately go to Mean Girls. It's like building a room full of mirrors where you can't see anything else besides yourself. And so I started doing something uncomfortable on purpose. I'd say, "Tell me why this is wrong," before anyone could agree. And I'd reward the person who actually did it. And that's how smart people actually win because if you don't do that, you'll just get yes after yes. And 500 years ago, actually, one of my favorite writers, Machiavelli, watched the most powerful man in Europe destroy himself with this exact problem. So this was the Emperor Maximilian and he ran the Roman Empire. Brilliant, ambitious, feared, but he was so paranoid about leaks. So he told no one his real plans because he decide alone and only reveal at the moment of execution, which sounds kind of disciplined and it makes sense, but it was actually a disaster because his advisors only learned what he wanted as it was happening, too late to do anything but flinch. And the second one of them pushed back, Maximilian, who secretly craved everybody's approval, would actually cave and reverse himself. So his orders got undone almost as fast as he gave them. One day's great strategy was the next day's reversal. And Machiavelli's verdict was kind of brutal on this guy. He's like, nobody could ever rely on the emperor's decisions because nobody could trust that what he said today would actually survive to tomorrow. So Machiavelli figured out from watching it, a court is always full of flatterers because human beings are so in love with our own ideas that telling the truth feels dangerous. So the powerful man had two options: let everyone speak freely and lose all respect, or let no one in and go blind. Maximilian chose blind. Machiavellian fix is the thing I want you to steal. Pick a small handful of wise people, give them, and only them, explicit permission to tell you the truth, but only on the things that you really need. Then listen hard, and once you've made a decision, stick to it. I don't think the trick is actually being open to everyone. It's engineering a few channels where it is actually okay to tell the truth. Mostly just get flattered into the dark one agreeable nod at a time. And I spot someone like this, and you'll know how to become the sort of disagreeable counterpoint to somebody in a position of power because one, that person, they're surrounded by people who never push back. Two, they're genuinely shocked by what normal life costs and how long normal things take. With much love, uh, Bill Gates. Have you ever seen him tell you how much he thinks a banana costs, which is like $23 or something like that. 3, they read disagreement as disloyalty instead of information. So if everyone who disagrees with you starts to feel like the problem, I've got bad news about who the problem actually is, you. And I also know that this next part is kind of lame advice if you're not rich yet, but remember it for when you are, or I swear you will lose all your money again. The antidote to all of this is almost insultingly simple. Stay plugged in a normal life, like wait in a line, sit on a middle seat on an airplane, drive yourself, keep at least a few friends who will happily tell you you are being a full-blown idiot because success actually removes all the friction and difficulty from life. Your job is to manually put some back in. And if you want to get close to somebody that's a 1%er, it's to be the person who tells them the truth, even when they don't want to hear it. The last part is L, which is live in reality. I think this last letter is the hardest. When you live in reality, that means because the bigger your company gets or the bigger your life gets or the more successful you are, the easier it becomes to believe a version of the reality that isn't true. Actually, a huge part of a CEO's actual job, probably like a parent, is uncovering what I call a stack of compounding lies. I stole that from Elon. Not evil lies, like nobody's twirling a mustache back here, but human ones. Every layer of the org sort of softens the story a little. By the time it climbs to the top, it's been edited so many times it barely resembles what happened on the ground. There's actually a name for this, which is fascinating. It's called the Mum Effect. Have you guys heard of that? So, it's like decades of research show people hate delivering bad news, so they soften it, delay it, or quietly leave parts out. Now, multiply that across every layer of the company and the distortion is real. And so, you actually want to think of, of like the truth that you actually get is the truth times how honest people are with you times how many layers you have in the company. And so each layer passes along, I don't know, let's say 90% hard truth. That sounds fine, but 90% across 5 layers is 0.59%, but 90% across 5 layers is 59%. By the time it hits the corner office, 4 out of every 10 units of reality have literally evaporated. So the bigger the company, the bigger the lie, and nobody actually even decided to do this. That's actually how Enron fell. Do you remember that company? People inside knew the numbers weren't adding up, but the bad news got sort of softened and buried a little bit more. By the time leadership saw the real picture, they had no idea what they're looking at. So, picture your team telling you revenue was up this month. Great. What they leave out is that it costs twice as much to land those customers, so profit actually fell. And it's very annoying to my team. I'm doing this all the time. We just had a big event and we do some ads for our events. And so they were like, "We beat last event's numbers. We have more attendees this time." I was like, "Awesome, but also remember we spent 6 figures more this time. So wouldn't that be problematic if we didn't have more attendees, although we spent 6 figures extra?" They're not lying. That number was real, but it's not the real story. And the missing half is where you go bankrupt. So you got to ask better questions because your team, I promise you, they are not going to tell you, just like your kids are not going to tell you what they're actually up to. Instead of saying, "How'd you do?" You ask, What's missing? You say, what did this actually cost us to get this result? And then you say, hey, I really need you to tell me what aren't you telling me because you think I won't like it. You're not actually hunting for liars. You're making it safe to hand you the truth. It's very funny. One of my producers, Dee, actually, she always goes happy after a shot and it's very cute. But at some point I said, that's not the goal. The goal is not my happiness. It's, was that good? Was that great? If it was great or good, then we're happy. We're not like happy and that determines whether it was good or great. And so, you know, I've run many a business where the monthly numbers look good, right up until they don't. And the reports were technically like in some ways accurate but misleading. Like every team rounded their corner of the truth in the flattering direction and they painted this picture of a company that like when you put it all together doesn't even exist. And so I had to stop asking, how'd we do? And started asking, what are you afraid to tell me? And it's actually why I built something called Pulse, where every single business owner can see in real time their numbers against their projection, their actual, and their peer group. So if you've been wanting to track what you do in real time and get advice based on your progress from our advisors, you might wanna talk to them about the Boardroom and Pulse, which is the tech inside of it. And there's actually a link below. There's actually like a famous Sun Tzu story that fits the L perfectly. So Sun Tzu was a famous war historian and war strategist. He wrote a book called The Art of War, which I love. This is from chapter 13, The Use of Spies. So 2,500 years ago, which is wild to think, Sun Tzu wrote a line that I think should be tattooed on every CEO's wall. He said, the thing that lets a wise leader strike where others can't Win where others can't is one word: foreknowledge. Knowing what's actually happening before you move. Then he says where the knowledge does not come from. It's not from the gods, not from omens, not from sitting in your tent reasoning. He said real knowledge of the enemy can only come from people who've seen the ground with their own eyes. And he was like relentless about this. Sun Tzu argued a commander who'd happily spend a fortune raising an army, then refused to spend a little to know what the army was actually walking into, was, in his words, basically the height of stupidity, like a gambler with other people's lives. And he proved it with history. Like, the Shang Dynasty rose to power because of a man who served inside the regime they were about to topple. The Zhou Dynasty did the same. They won because they had someone who knew the enemy's reality from the inside, not from like a scroll passed up the chain or whatever they did to get communications back there. And so I want you to translate that to your business. Or to your life. The reports or the information climbing up to you have been through 5 hands, and every hand is like smoothed a little edge. By the time the scroll sort of reaches your tent, you're getting crushed in the field has become performances stabilize it. You're not like reading reality. You're reading a story written by people who don't want to be the one to actually piss you off. And so Sun Tzu's fix was to plant his own eyes on the ground. I call this eyes to eyes. Did you go and talk to that person? These days, I think the kiss of death is like, I wrote an update and I put it in Slack. Nobody read your Slack. Like, go see for yourself. Call the customer, call the coworker, sit in the support halls, walk the floor, get like one unfiltered channel to the front line that nobody gets to polish before it reaches you. And if you're an employee, here's how you become impossible to replace. Bring problems early, like bring an idea for the fix along with it. I don't want you to hide the fire. I want you to walk in, you see the smoke, but you've also got an extinguisher. And that's the person who gets promoted past everyone who kept things smooth and happy because success doesn't usually make people worse. It makes people harder to actually get the truth. That's why I think the best operators don't just build businesses, they build systems that keep them honest. So before your next meeting or networking event, think about real, think about how do you respect people's time? Think about how do you earn trust before you need it? Think about do you, Do you ask for the truth even when it's uncomfortable, and do you give it? Think about living in reality. Can you share the actual unpolished version with somebody? If you can do all those things with somebody who's a 1%er, the likelihood not only you get in the room, but you get re-invited back just skyrocketed. And if you can get your employees to do this for you, you'll be much less miserable as a CEO. If you liked this, you might want to listen to the last episode. We're building on this idea, and if you're a builder, It's for you.