How To Think Like The 1%

I don't know if you guys know this, but my very first job, I was super rich. Like, I don't want to brag or anything, but I made $37,000 a year. I made 37K. And I thought kind of that I was like, this guy. I was like, is it a Honda Civic or is it a Lamborghini? I don't know. And it turned out pretty quickly I realized that that kind of money wasn't going to get me where I wanted to go. And so I started doing a thing that I'm gonna impress upon all of you guys, which is an underrated truth, to never take advice from somebody who hasn't actually done the thing they're giving advice on. And I think the truth of the matter is we have to be kind of honest if we want to achieve big things in life. And this world hates honesty. They hate it. They want us to sort of lie to ourselves about the small decisions every single day. And we're not going to do that here in this room. The truth of the matter is, for a lot of us, we think that we need more buddies, more friends, more people to support us. But what we really need are allies who are going to celebrate your wins and be there for your losses. This is a picture. I don't know if you guys know Paul Francisco. What was interesting about Paul is when I first met him, I told him a dirty little secret, which was at the time, I worked at a big company called State Street. I really hated my job. Have you guys ever really hated your job? Like the type of hate where you sit there and you wish that your life would flash forward, you would get minutes closer to death so you could leave the office? You ever feel that way? That's how I felt at the end. I was like, if I could die sooner, I'd like to. And I told this to Paul, and it wasn't State Street's fault. It was my fault. I hadn't progressed right. It just wasn't the right role for me. And I told this to Paul, and Paul changed my life. Because he said, you're acting like a victim, and nobody is enslaving you to this place. That is up to you. He did the opposite of what a friend does, which was like, yeah, they suck. Boss is awful. Go, girl. And instead, he was like, it's your fault. What are you doing? And he taught me this lesson, which is, winners don't whine. In fact, you want to know how you know if somebody's going to be a winner or not? Do they whine? Do they complain? Are they the person that bitches about things as opposed to proposes a solution? And that lesson was a tough one because Paul had to tell me that I was not the winner. In that case. The second lesson that I thought I'd bring is that simplicity always beats complexity. This one took me a long time to realize. Everybody know this guy, Elon Musk? He's popular these days. Or not, depends on the room. You know, Elon Musk is fascinating because he said a line and I twisted it slightly, which is complexity impresses your peers and simplicity impresses your buyers. Or said a different way. What's called the complexity Trap. And we see this all the time in corporations. You guys have probably all been in a meeting where you have somebody who's talking at the head of the meeting and they say so many words and yet so few of anything of substance. Have you guys been in a room like that? Because oftentimes being complex makes you sound smart and it makes you no fucking money. And so I like to present this graph to my team. This is called the Simplicity to Complexity trap. And basically, what you see here at the very bottom, you see a single spring, one function, mousetrap. And at the top, you see one that has six components to it. In life, a truth about getting successful is bigger levels, bigger devils. And so what happens if, as you guys become more successful in life, Let me ask Damian. Does it get easier to run a bigger company or does it get harder? Harder. As you put more money in your bank account, you actually have more issues. My father told me a thing that always stuck with me, which is, I remember one night I was having a really hard time running my own business, and my dad said something to me when I was having a night where I felt like nothing was going to work, it was going to fail, and I was a failure because of it. He said, you're not in the game until you've sat head in your hands, dead in the night, alone, unsure of what to do next. Now you're in the game. And I realize that again and again because we think that we have to be complex to win. And it's not true. It's a lie. In order to win, we have to realize we have to work longer than we want on simpler things that we want. And I want to take you tactically through something for a second. So, Elon Musk, if you can see these numbers basically at the top, 2021. Twitter, 7,500 employees. 2024, 3,700 employees. Now profits have also gone down. But there's a story about Elon Musk that I love, that I tell my team all the time. He had a group of engineers on his plane, and the group of engineers said that the change in the business he needed to make in order to change. I won't get into the technical nature of it, but basically where they stored items was going to take them six months or a year to spin off. And Elon said, turn the plane around. We're going to go to the storage center directly and we're going to fix the problem in 24 hours. And what do you think they did? They did it. It's this crazy idea that we make things more complex than we need because it makes us seem needed. But what this number tells me is that you can run a multi, multi, billion dollar company with much fewer people than you ever think. And as you start running your own business and making more money, you're going to realize that the best part is about running a business is the people. What do you guys think the worst part about running a business is the people. And so I want you to think about this idea. Where in my life can I make things that seem complex a lot simpler? Now, this one I'm going to get a little personal with, and I'll probably talk about something that I don't think I've ever talked about publicly before, which is the truth of the matter is that we learn to fear. We learn actually through what's called conditional formatting. No child, when they are born, is actually born with this fear instinct from, let's say, in particular, what happens from a corporate perspective. And so, in fact, this is something that you can unlearn if, in fact, it was learned. It's not biology. And so I thought about this a lot because I was really successful later in my career. I was working as a partner at a firm, and I was doing really well. And I had an awful boss. Like, a truly awful boss. You guys ever had one? You're like, yeah, Tim, yeah, I did. I had an awful boss, and the boss was so bad. I'm going to call him out. His name is Dan, and he sent me this text. You guys can see it. You're a part of a grand endeavor and you keep dumbing us down. I hope you gained more followers this week because you didn't help the firm. I have saved that text for 10 years. And can I just tell you the joy I get every time I look at my bank account versus that mother these days? Can I just tell You. And the reason I want to tell you this, it's not that there's anything wrong with Dan. We all have moments. Although, Dan, if you want to win, you will be surrounded by Dans. They will be everywhere. And you have to deal with the consequences of that action. In fact, those who can't be controlled, they are hated. And if you don't think that's true, just have some fun. On my Twitter comments, a few of you guys said you follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Anybody follow me? Oh, yeah, have a party. Go into my comments. I mean, look at some of these. I think she's pregnant. I'm calling it early. Not pregnant, by the way. Thanks, guys. You know, bullshit. She's never done any of this. Why is she not wearing a bikini for that? I put on a crop top today just for you. Guys usually don't do that. So the moral of the story is, if you're not getting a little hate, you're probably not doing anything that interesting. And I've taken that with me through my life and I hope you take it too. And that moment that you get, that Dan text, the moment that your boss embarrasses you in front of everybody else, the moment that you get told no, that you don't win, that you aren't good enough, that it's not possible for you, I want you to keep it. I want you to keep a little screenshot of all those haters that. And I want you to thank them later when you get to go. Scoreboard, bitch. Every time you look at your bank account, there are six rules to properly handling haters. Scientific theory. I thought we'd go through them quickly. The first one is, if they don't have your life, who cares? Ignore them. Most of the time, the people who will talk about you poorly have not achieved nearly what you have. I have never had somebody hate on me who had more than me monetarily. I've never had somebody who was in a relationship that was more successful than mine. Hate on my relationship. I've never had somebody who was in better shape than me tell me I'm out of shape. What does that tell you about the people who tell you poor things it is a mirror to themselves. And you will have to remember that. The second rule is don't feed those trolls. They live under the bridge. We leave them there. You know what I'm talking about. And I think if we did that on the Internet a lot more, we'd have a happier place and certainly we'd probably enjoy social media a little bit more. The third is you guys are the 1%. And you know why you're gonna win? Because most people don't want to do what it takes. They want to do what they want. Most people want to look rich. They don't really want to be rich. Most people want to look successful. They're not willing to do what it takes to be successful. And people won't tell you this because they're going to pat your head and tell you that you're enough. And let me tell you the truth. If you want to be part of the 1%, there's a couple things you gotta know. There's a famous monk in India, and a friend of mine became very close to him. I don't know if you guys know Jay Shetty. He was telling me this story picturing a napkin. So you have your napkin flat on your hand, and each corner of the napkin is. Whoever's closest to you could be your best bud, could be your mom, your brother, your sister, a colleague. Well, as you rise up, what happens to those other corners of the napkin for a period? They get left behind, right? And so it's natural that they feel this tension between you leaving them behind as you're growing. But what happens if you keep lifting the napkin? They rise with you, don't they? And so as you are on your career, your trajectory of success expanded. Expect your first stage to be terrible. The faster you progress, the more they will hate you. And that is okay, because at some point, you lifting them up is doing something that no one else maybe in your generation has done. So expect it. The last is, have you guys heard about what crabs do in a bucket? We see this a lot, actually. I ran a large business for years in Latin America. In almost every way, America is the best country in the world for people who want to succeed. We cheer people on here. Whatever your racial background is or your sex, people in us, they want you to succeed. By and large, if you go to other countries, that is actually not normal. And it's a little bit like crabs in a bucket. So there was a fascinating phenomenon. We covered a business and looked at investing in it. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. It was like. So I was in Washington, and they had these crates, kind of like they're stacked on top of each other, water flowing in, no lids on them, full of tens of thousands of crabs. They are on a pier over the ocean. Escape is that far? For tens of thousands of crabs, no lids. Why? They don't let each other get away And I think in some ways humans are not that different from crabs. Now we can change that. We can be the few who push up and we can be the napkin that pulls. But don't expect everyone else to be when you win. The last is a really famous quote from. Have you guys read 48 laws of power? Really important book if you want to climb hierarchical structures. This line or rule has always stuck with me. Careful when you outshine the master. Why do you think Ferrari, Dan, with probably a small man complex, sent me that text? Why do you guys think because I had outshined the master, I had made him maybe not look as good by shining too bright? Now, you could say that that was Dan's fault, or you could say, I actually didn't know the game. I didn't realize the game we were playing. And so be careful when you outshine the master. You start to realize that you go wide in your 20s and you narrow as you get older. And why? Because the 1% is constrained. There's only so many people that are in it. And I wish somebody had told me that when I was younger. Now, if I could tell you one thing that would make you more money than anything else in the world, it is this. It is that the faster you are, the more money you will make. That your bank account is actually a reflection of of how fast you move, which is hard for me to take at times. The reason why Uber became a multi billion dollar company is Travis Kalanick, the founder at the time, was a psychopath. That's why he got pushed out. But he was a psychopath in one way that was really good. He created one of the first tech to service feedback loops with the speed at which he could launch cross nationally faster than the regulators could catch him. And that is why they are a multi billion dollar company and they didn't get shut down. And there's lots of ways to play this game. There's lots of matrices that can help you. I like the urgent versus the important matrix. Because how many of you guys get into the office every day and you're like, I got top three things I need to cover today. I'm going to handle those. And then what happens? 300 other things. 300 other urgent things that are not important. Everything. I was sitting with one of my mentors, Bill Perkins, who wrote the book Die with Zero. I asked him, bill, you're worth a lot of money. You've made hundreds of millions of dollars. You've given away tens of millions of dollars to charity. Why do you think you've been so successful. And he kind of looked at me and he thought for a second, and he said, I move really fast. By the time somebody else has thought about an idea, taken it to investment committee, I've already started, made three mistakes, and found a better way. And I take this with me nonstop into every one of my businesses, because the truth of the matter is, most people are not that smart. They just move fast, they take risks, and they work a lot. That's kind of it. And if you can find that truth where you can take a thing that is normal and compress the time to action, you will win. And you don't have to be smarter, richer, or better positioned. At our company, we have something called the 24 hour rule. How many times have you heard somebody say, yeah, let's circle back on that? When? When do they say, say it louder? Next week. We'll circle back on that next week, Right? Super standard at my company. If Tanner was in here somewhere, he would tell you, not allowed. Not allowed. Why next week? Where do we come up with that number? Why can't we move faster than the average person? If all we do is we say, let me circle back to you on that tomorrow, 24 hours. We don't have to be smarter, better funded, or anything, but faster than our competitors. And I took that to heart. The last thing that I realized when it comes to speed to action is this truth, which I'm sure you guys have heard from Peter Drucker, very famous management consultant. What gets measured gets managed. You guys heard that before. The truth of the matter is we don't do that so much, right? And so I. I like to go to the greats. Jerry Seinfeld is one of the greatest comics of all time. Do you guys know why? Any ideas? It's really one word. Jerry Seinfeld wrote jokes and spoke jokes publicly every single day for his entire comedic career. How do you keep up with a guy who every single day is doing the thing that most people only do maybe once a week on Friday or Saturday? He wasn't really funnier. He just had so many reps, he made the competition irrelevant. And the truth of the matter is that consistency beats quality every time. Most people are the guy on the right. They prep, they prep, they prep, they prep. Be the guy on the left. Show up. Do the thing that sucks. Repeat. I thought today that I'd share one thing with you. Two things, really. One, I thought I'd share with you some cheat codes that I have. So, one, if you want these slides, take A screenshot. You get them. I'll send them to you afterwards. 2. I wish I knew earlier, mathematically, some of the businesses that have the highest success rate, because the truth of the matter is, even if you are the guy who shoots shit, but you aren't aiming properly at the right object. You're not going to win. And so I wish I knew that sooner. But there's an unfair advantage to being the person in the room who is the dumbest. This is. Do we know who this is? Buffet Sage Omaha, one of the best investors of all time. So a friend of mine had dinner with Buffett. By the way, this is not my friend, but he was too cool to take a picture, so I pulled this off the Internet and plagiarized the photo. But my friend had dinner with Buffett, and I asked him afterwards. I was like, alex, how's that? Like, what happened? Alex is a big hedge fund manager. I sit on the board of his hedge fund, and he's like, you know, the weirdest thing happened. Buffett asked me all the questions, and I realized I told him everything. And I didn't really ask him any questions. The richest man in the world at that time was being the dumbest one in the room. How often are we the ones talking a lot, when in fact, we probably should be the ones sitting back and asking the questions. And Alex taught me that. In fact, I remember the first time that I came to an event just like this, stole a VIP badge. And I stole the VIP badge because I couldn't afford it at the time. And it was sitting on a table, and it was, like, looking at me in the eye, and I kind of was getting closer to it and getting closer to it, and I knew that the person had already left because I. I had watched them. And I grabbed that bad boy, and I went into a VIP room, except I made a fatal flaw. And the fatal flaw was everybody in the VIP room knew each other. So all of a sudden, I'm turning the badge around, I'm kind of, like, holding it, because I'm definitely not Nancy or whatever name was on that badge. And as I'm in the room with all of the other VIPs, they're like, who are you? Because it was a group of CEOs. I was at a CEO roundtable, not a CEO. I was in college. And so you could imagine how much I stood out. And from somewhere, I don't know where. Like, you ever hear that little voice in your head? And I heard this little voice that was like, I'm here to take notes on behalf of Nancy today because she can't be here. And I was not, in fact, associated with Nancy at all. So I sat down in that room, and all I did was take notes. I didn't ask questions. I just kind of shut up and wrote notes. And it's one of the most formative moments of my life to. To realize you can get into the right rooms even, and maybe especially when you don't deserve it. One of the other lessons I learned is that when you start out when you're young, you're going to do everything. Then as you get older, you specialize in a few things. This is my friend Eamon, who took a company from a million bucks a year in revenue to $85 million. And he told me a lesson that I hope you see later on, which is in the beginning, you're the janitor. See, CEO of a startup equals janitor who's an owner that realizes this. Yes, you do everything, but after a period, you go through a cycle. It's called the generalist to specialist cycle. And here's how it works. The first cycle, you're the generalist. You do everything. The second cycle, you hire generalists who do things for you. The third, you hire specialists who run the generalists. And finally, the specialists run everything. If I had learned this earlier, my business would have grown faster. But most of us hire generalists to do just about everything. I want to talk about luck for a second. So there's a concept in psychology called the luck surface area, and it has two components. One component is the luckier you get is due to the action you take, plus the amount of telling about the action that you did. How many times have you been on a team and you're the one that's doing all the work, but somebody else is getting all the credit? Does that ever happen to you? The unique component of winning is this balance between doing and then being your biggest cheerleader. And there's sort of four components to it. So we all know typical type of luck, how we think about it, no ability to affect the outcome. Blind luck. The second type of luck is from more activity. It's called luck from motion. So if I do more, it turns out I seem to get luckier. Right. The third is luck from awareness. I'm doing more. Plus I'm talking about doing more, which means my luck increases overall. Why do you guys think I won't shut up on the Internet? Do you think it's because I want to be famous? No. Worst thing in the World. I don't shut up on the Internet because when I talk about the things that I do, what do I get? I get more deals, I get more investors, I get more employees, my luck surface area increases. Who else does this? Although he's not that popular these days, some stuff going on with Jimmy, but Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is really, really rich. How rich? He makes about $700 million a year on YouTube, which is wild to me. He's like kind of stuck at that 14 year old range. But the reason why Mr. Beast is so rich is because Mr. Beast has put out 809 videos. He has been putting out videos since he was 11 years old. So he just doesn't stop. And then there's this type of uniqueness that only comes along so often. This type of uniqueness in luck. A friend of mine, Jack Butcher. Does anybody know who this is? Yeah, what's fascinating about this guy is he's kind of famous in like one tiny segment of the Internet. Jack Butcher got famous on the Internet for doing what you can see here, which is kind of creating these very simplistic graphs on the Internet during the NFT craze. What do you think he sold this NFT for how many? A million? 5 million? 69 million? Mother. This guy has sold $104 million in fake online graphic designs. And nobody's mad about it. People are happy because Jack knew about NFTs, he knew about graphic design, he knew about a movement in Twitter and he took action. And as you get more successful, you're going to find this unique blend of your skills aligning to success. And I think what happens with this type of luck is you start attracting things to you instead of you having to chase them. The last thing I want to talk about here is do a lot of people these days talk about work, life, balance? The truth of the matter is you guys have incredible competition today. If you want to win today, this is who you're competing with. Much love to these people. I don't want to work anymore. I don't want to work anymore. Do I have to go to work? Not to mention they put this on the Internet. Do you know how hard it is to get a job after this? I think it's sad in some ways because I do believe that humans were born to labor and there's dignity in it. But I want you to think about this for a second because the second that you get intimidated or that you think you can't just save this screenshot, just put this on your background and realize that most Young people are here and that's okay for them, that's their choice, but that's who you're competing with. Because the truth of the matter is if you want to earn like the 1%, you got to work like the 1% did when they were the 99%. And for some reason in society we've stopped thinking, telling people that, and we've lied to a generation and said that this isn't actually needed when it is. When you know what I think we should be doing instead, we should be realizing that we stand on the shoulders of our parents who did some crazy ass shit to get us to this country, to get us the opportunity to work here and to put us in seats where. My father didn't go to college. I don't know, he didn't have a chance to do that. He was a carpenter and then he was a small business owner. And he would never call himself an entrepreneur because that word probably, it just didn't exist in his lexicon. He was like, I sell rocks. Because that's what he did. He sold marble and granite. But that's what he said. And I think we've forgotten that this is where we come from and we got to go back to this a little bit. The truth of the matter is that it is never too late. So I see most people in the audience are pretty young, but I wish maybe I knew when I was a little bit younger that it's never too late. But you can have regrets. I didn't do a lot until I was in my 30s. I was working in corporate, I was growing my skill set, but I didn't actually start my entrepreneurial journey until I was in my 30s. So a lot of times I think kids these days think, man, am I going to be able to make it? I'm still, I'm 22 and I don't have a Bentley. You're going to be fine. You're going to be totally fine. And the truth of the matter is I thought I had peaked at 30, and it kind of just keeps getting better. Also, wild thing about money makes you look younger. You know, if you guys see my videos, old school, I got a different nose. I bought a new bad boy. I upgraded, we got a whole new look. And so the truth of the matter is you don't need to worry about it being too late. You're gonna be fine as long as you do the things now that you need to do. I was too much of a wuss to leave my corporate job too scared. So I had to Build up my income on the side before I even left my paycheck. So start wherever you are. But I do want to be honest with you guys. Everybody see this David Beckham thing? How good was this? She's like, be honest. It's a great skit if you haven't seen it. Highly recommend. So I'd like to be honest at the end with you guys. Is that okay? Small room. We're all best buds. Nobody will tell anybody on the Internet, right? All right, here's the truth. I think today in society, we've lost our collective minds. We are pointing at each other and blaming each other. And we are turning ourselves into victims. Nobody gets to label you a victim, except you do not accept this label. That it is harder to be a Latina, that it is harder to be a woman, that it is more difficult out there, that you won't get funding, that you're not going to be able to make it. F that. You know why they tell you that? Because energy is contagious. Who cares what your melanin is one way or the other? I don't care. I've never hired somebody because I was like, melanin right in the right angle. Never once on my job description. And I think that is more true than we ever realize. And yet nobody says it. You're not your race. You're not your color. And in fact, you're something beautiful. Way more beautiful than any of that, which is that you're a human placed here to provide dignity to work. There's a saying. Have you guys ever heard about putting red and black ants in a jar? And what happens when you shake the jar? So if you don't shake a jar and you put red and black ants in it, you know what happens? Anybody? Not a damn thing. The ants are just like, yeah, I'm chilling. You're chilling. We look a little different. No big deal. But when you shake the jar, they start ripping each other apart. And so today, especially for the young generation, I think you gotta ask, who is shaking the motherfucking jar? And do not let them shake yours. You are. Yes. You guys are so much more capable than I was when I was younger. You're smarter. You have better tools. You're better educated than I have. Have you guys seen the Olympics? Like, in the 70s, before Simone Biles won an Olympic medal Back then, it was like this. This was like winning an Olympic medal back then. And then you see Simone Biles act today. It's a whole different caliber. And that is exactly what you guys are you guys are the Simone Biles. You guys will be more successful than I will be, but we have to push back on dudes like this, who tell us capitalism is dead, who tell us the American dream is dead, who tell us that you can't achieve. I'm going to tell you this. It's not dead. It is under attack. And it needs a change of hands. And. And it's asking you one thing, which is to get your fingernails a little dirty. One of my favorite quotes about the American dream is, it's the land where there is no ceiling on your ability, no foot on your neck of progress, and where man can be an owner and not owned. I do think people have their foot on our necks, but I do think you guys have every opportunity to win as owners, so it's your chance to go and take it. Thank you so much for having me here today. Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys. If you haven't, make sure to subscribe to the channel. We just did this crazy analytics where we saw the percentage that subscribed versus the people who keep coming back. Spoiler. A bunch of you guys are missing out. So make sure you hit that subscribe button and you guys can actually get a bunch of numbers and math to help make you money instead of a bunch of nonsense and news.