3 Hours That Can Change Your Business Forever (Zuckerberg, Bezos, Buffett Lessons)

The world will not wait for you to be ready. The ones who win in business aren't the smartest or the luckiest.

They're the ones who refuse to stop.

If you can outlearn, outlast, and outlead everyone else, you don't just survive, you take everything. In these speeches, Mark Zuckerberg rips apart the illusion of perfection.

Speed and relentless action crush hesitation every time.

Warren Buffett shatters the myth of overnight success. Patience isn't just a strategy, it's the difference between those who build empires and those who fade into nothing.

And Jeff Bezos delivers the hard truth.

Leaders don't follow trends, they create them. They don't fear execution, they thrive in it. They don't just win today, they build dynasties that last forever. The path is brutal, the stakes are real, and the choice is yours. Adapt, endure, and dominate, or stand still and watch the future leave you behind.

And if you make it all the way to the end of the video, leave a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you in a future video.

You know, I view the product strategy less as any one specific thing and more as how do we iterate and learn as quickly as possible how to make each thing better for, for the people we're trying to serve.

Right.

So like I define our strategy as we can learn faster than every other company. We're going to win. We're going to build a better product than everyone else because we're going to get it out first or early. We're going to have a good feedback loop. We're going to get, get a bunch of feedback. We're going to learn what people like better than other people. And then over time, by the time you get to, you know, whether it's version 3 or 4 or 5, I mean, they're not even discrete versions because we ship so frequently.

It's, you just, you learn faster.

So I think that's basically the formula. Be a technology company. Build good foundation, like learn from what, what people are kind of focused on in the world, and, and just iterate as quickly as you can.

Warren, you say you like to buy businesses. How do you know what a company is worth?

I look for a business where I think I know what in a general way is going to happen. Because if you buy a bond, you know exactly what's going to happen. If it's assuming it's a good bond, a U.S. government bond, if it says 9% coupons, you know what the 9% coupons are going to be for maybe 30 years if it's a 30-year bond. Now when you buy a business, you're buying something with coupons coupons on it too, except the only problem is they don't print in the amount, and it's my job to print in the amount on the coupon. And some companies I feel capable of doing that with, and others I don't have the faintest idea.

You seem to stay away from high-tech companies.

You name 10 high-tech companies to me and ask me where they're going to be in 10 years or 10 months, and I don't have the faintest idea.

So that would be exactly like buying cocoa beans or something.

I just don't know what's going to happen.

Do you ever really get a big, big hit just buying these predictable stocks?

Yeah, you do.

You do?

Not very often.

But occasionally sensational businesses are given away. In the mid-'70s, the whole Washington Post Company was selling for $80 million at a time when the properties were worth not less than $400 million, and no one would have argued with you about the properties being worth $400 million, and the price was there for all to see, but people just didn't feel very enthusiastic about the world then.

You have been talking this philosophy for years. It's no secret.

It's no secret.

Why doesn't everybody do it?

Well, it requires patience, which a lot of people don't have. And people would much rather be promised that they're going to win a lottery ticket next week than that they're going to get rich slowly.

Gus Levy used to say that he was long-term greedy, not short-term greedy.

And if you're short-term greedy, you probably won't get a very good long-term result. Big leaders only have to do a few things. Big leaders have to identify the big ideas.

They have to enforce tough execution against those big ideas, and they need to grow the next generation of leaders.

That's really it.

So two things.

And so my job, part of my, one of my jobs right now is to make sure Andy, you know, Andy Jassy and the whole leadership team are successful.

I take that job very seriously.

That's what I was going to ask. As a parent, Yeah, your parents, your kids can go off and pretend once they do things you don't want the kids to do.

Absolutely.

I just, I've got kids in college age and just out of college and I still have to Venmo them money every once in a while.

Just happened.

You are enough to be who you want to be and to create what you want to create. You have to make sure that beyond the intention that you put out there, you put action to support the intention. Don't say I want to be a millionaire, but don't take the activities to do it, or I want to be the best at something, but don't practice it. It's important to understand that you are enough pieces, you know, you know, put in the vision, have the vision of what you want to become, but you have to put consistent action behind that vision in order for that to manifest. And it has to be consistent. You know, I have the good fortune to be— I was invited here by one of my fraternity brothers, Louis Tobias, And I remember many a day, Louie and I, Friday night, we're gonna go to the party, and we went to the party, and we finished the party at 2:30, and 3 o'clock, we were back studying so that we could do well on an exam on Monday. It is the importance of knowing that it's your own intention and your power and your actions that can actually lead to you know, the outcome that is good, that you want to have manifest.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight our favorite lessons from the video that will inspire you to remember what you learned today and actually apply them. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below.

Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business.

I'll see you there.

What's most critical about leadership and leading in uncertain times, and I would emphasize that I think anyone at any level can be a leader, business, civic life, personal life. And what they have to recognize is if you want to lead, you have to be willing to serve. So you've got to have that servant leadership mentality. But what you have to do is stand for something. And organizations are guided by values and behaviors. That's the way you're creating a culture. And so in a time of uncertainty, what do you need to do? Well, one is you need to give people context. What's happening? You can admit that you're anxious, that there are reasons, in fact, to be nervous. But what's important is you need to emphasize to people the reasons why you think that we can get to the other side.

Intelligence can create huge profits, and in fact, you can actually make more money being smart than you can being strong or fast. Okay, and so the importance of developing intellectual intellectual property cannot be underestimated. Because I want you to think about something. Intellectual property, no one else can take that from you, point number 1, if you manage it right. Point number 2, it is constantly evolving and it actually takes no capital. If I wanted to go into real estate business, it takes me a whole lot of money to go buy a building and get in the real estate business. Intellectual property, I just have to think through how it actually works and then develop it. And that's what really launched me on the path to saying, you know what, you know, as good as I thought I was playing football and all those wonderful things, and my mom was a wonderful governor to my ambitions, she said, you're a far better scholar than you are athlete, which kind of hurt my feelings at the time. But she was absolutely right. And I started to turn my attention to what I call developing my mind.

This idea of really putting people first as you're developing your technology. But it's not just about people.

I mean, there's also—

you're thinking about responsibility in terms of the environment and responsibilities to communities.

And yeah, it's critical here. Fundamentally, what I have always believed and certainly have articulated over the last 30 years is companies exist because society allows us to exist. And so we have a responsibility to society. When we're developing products and services, shouldn't we think about who is in, who are we serving, and who might be negatively impacted by a product or service that we're offering? As we're building companies, Let's start in the beginning and say, how do we build a more diverse workforce in that company? How are we thinking about the environment? So what's very important is we can do a form, if you will, of social due diligence side by side with the financial due diligence. But what's important is, as we're building companies today, Let's have a broader mindset. Let's have a higher level of intentionality.

And no one—

I think most people, obviously there's some exceptions— start off building a company saying, I want to build a company that will hurt people.

Right.

But that's not enough.

What you've got to say is, my intention is to build a company that will address the following set of issues. And actually, I want to from the beginning build a company that will have a positive impact on society as well as generate attractive economics. Now, that's simple, but it is hard. And people need guidance. People need the tools. And that's what we're trying to do with responsible innovation.

I start with the mind and emotions. And to me, that's not— I don't tell people to believe spiritually or religiously, but I believe prayer is a very useful thing. Reminding yourself you're not the center of the universe. And asking for guidance and help and having things do that. I personally believe that, but not everybody does. And I don't tell people they have to, but it starts there. But there's also, when you have a spiritual side of your life, there's a lot less anxiety because you believe there is something greater than yourself. And then you do your part. Like you said, I use a similar metaphor and I say it's, you know, trust in God and tie up your camels, you know, that type of thing, right? But what most people don't know is the power of their mind. So there's an entire, last 2 chapters of the book, if no one reads anything else, I'd say please read those 2 chapters. 'Cause if you do everything physically well and you don't manage your mind and emotions, you'll get sick.

My parents drove us, uh, cross-country to— we were going to California for a family reunion, so we drove to the Grand Canyon, and we got there, and I, like, I remember having a deeply meaningful experience of how beautiful it was, but I was terrified to walk up to the edge. And all my brothers and sisters and my whole family walked up to the edge, and I stayed back, you know, just scared to, to take in beauty. If you're scared, you're not going to take the chances that you need to take to, to realize your dreams. And that was the thing for me. I don't mind being scared. But I'm still gonna do it.

What would you say to be the turning point in your life that kind of shifted to who you are today? And what could we take, like, from that?

Like, if there's any advice that you can give to us from something that's happened to you in your life that made you to who you are today? I don't think there's something super clear, brother. I think what the real answer to this question is, something happened to me between 9 and 14 that isn't very clear to me still that flipped me to a level of self-awareness and confidence that guided me my whole life. Like, one thing that is very bonkers to me is how completely non-penetrable I was to peer pressure in high school. I still don't fully even understand it, to be honest. Like, when I recall the things I didn't do in the face of why it would seemingly be so easy and so obvious that you should do that if you're a kid. Good parenting, good DNA, circumstances. I do think there are some big advantages of growing up in the dirt, you know, um, but what I would tell you to give you an answer that maybe brings value is how quickly can you fall fully in love with yourself? Like that you're so in love with yourself that you don't need validation from anybody else, while you balance that love of yourself with extraordinary levels of humility to offset the vulnerability of loving yourself.

And today we have both good news and bad news. And the bad news is the world economy is collapsing. But the good news is the number one investment that everybody in the world can afford is silver. Everybody. And that's the good news. But will most people buy it? No, they'll save money instead. And they'll save money in spite of the fact that they're printing trillions of it. Gresham's Law is in full force right now. Bad money is pumping into this system and all these idiots, you know, it's called financial stupidity, they're saving dollars.

You gotta be kidding me.

And they're printing, they're printing so much money. And the beauty of silver, let me say it again, everybody in the world can afford $20 or you can afford a dime. You know what I mean? You can go to a coin store and say, I'd like a 1963 dime. You might pay a buck for it. But that's how stupid people are. They don't realize that Silver has not only been an industrial metal, but it's also a monetary metal. It's been used as, you know, payments for years and years and years.

Next question is from Daniel Breeze. Hi Tom, I go to bed at 9. My man. Alarm at 5:30. Shame on you. It's still not enough sleep. Get more. I want to wake up without the alarm. Any tips on how to feel rested with less sleep? I have absolutely no tips on how to feel rested with less sleep. My only tip is how to feel rested, which is to get as much sleep as you need. Now, while it's really annoying to me that right now I'm sleeping 7 and 8 hours versus my normal 5 and 6, it is what I have to do to be cognitively optimized, and therefore I do it. I won't say that I don't complain, as you hear me doing right now, but I think that the priority remains being cognitively optimized, not being tired. I think being tired is a unique form of torture that I absolutely I absolutely despise. And to get the most out of my day, to make the most of whatever hours I'm awake, I would rather be super sharp and well rested than try to wake up really early, be tired, be slow, be miserable, and quite frankly not have the ideas coming from my subconscious, which I find is slowed or even muted if I'm too tired. So while there are rare occasions where I will set an alarm, I wake up to an alarm certainly less than 10 times a year. So a year, a year. So if you can do what I've done without setting alarm more than 10 times, then I just truly, truly go to bed early, sleep as much as you need. Now what you're probably gonna find is in the first couple months you're gonna sleep a lot. You might be sleeping 8 to 10 hours because you've been so sleep deprived. But sleep is just incredibly, incredibly important. I read a study, this is so fascinating. Your brain reduces in size. So think of it as inflammation and then reducing that inflammation, not actually, you know, growing and shrinking, but it reduces in size, which allows it to flush out— I'm going to use the word toxin, I hate that word— but it allows it to flush the system clear of things that it wants to get out of the brain. And the only way that it can do that is by reducing the inflammation, which it only does when you sleep. So that's but one of the many things that they're beginning to uncover is incredibly potent and powerful about sleep in terms of its relationship to the brain. So I just cannot stress enough, get whatever sleep you need, suck it up. If you have to start going to bed at 8 in order to make it to work on time, do it.

If you have to go to bed at 7, do it.

And I know people always push back, I need to unwind, all of that. No, if you're watching me, I make the assumption that what you need is to become great. It is to really actuate and actualize all of the potential that you have latent within you, and that you're trying to do something extraordinary with your life. And you're trying to do that, by the way, because it is the thing that makes you feel most alive, not because there is some moral imperative to do so. So that's what you need to do, and the only way that you're going to be able to get that is to get your sleep.

Everybody has a different talent, and the reason we're all so messed up is because you're looking at everybody else's talent. And wishing you had some of their talent. All the energy that you spend thinking about, wishing about, being jealous of, envious of anybody else is energy that you're not only putting out that's going to come back to you negatively, but you're taking that away from you. All your energy should be forced on what do I have to offer? What do I have to give? How can I be used in service? Because Dr. King's message of not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service. And there is not a job in here that you can do that you don't switch the paradigm to service and not make that job more fulfilling. I don't care what the job is. If you say I'm a singer, I'm a dancer, I'm an artist, I'm a teacher, I'm a nurse, I'm a doctor, I'm a janitor, I'm a, I'm a clerk. If you say, if I look at this from how do I use this in service to something bigger than myself, it no longer becomes a job. It becomes an offering to the world.

Everyone talks about sales and you are a great— you are great with sales, but I think you are a marketing genius. I have to be honest. For me, you're one of the greatest marketers, right?

I'm a better marketer than I am a salesperson.

Oh my goodness.

And I'm a great salesperson.

When I—

And I would rather be a better marketer than a salesperson.

Why?

Explain that concept.

Because most people don't like sales.

Okay.

And to become a great salesperson takes a lot of time and energy.

Okay.

And almost even a certain kind of personality, which I don't think most people have. And also, even if you become a great salesperson, it's not what you want to end up being. Oh, you know, great business people are not great. The great business people, you go from a worker, then maybe to a salesperson, okay, and then a sales manager, and then a CEO of a company, or an executive, and then a CEO, and then maybe one day you own the company, and then, and then ultimately you'd own multiple companies and run corporations, right? That's the evolution. Well, as you get up here, you'll depend on sales. but somebody else is doing 'em down here. You're dependent on sales to make your extra, that extra hustle. So people like look at this thing, I, I gotta become a great salesperson. But no, you wanna look over here. You wanna start running things. It doesn't have to be your business.

Mm-hmm.

But you wanna be running sales teams. So in this evolution, uh, you have to become a great marketer. You, the, to the degree you become a great marketer, anybody can become a great marketer because you can hide behind the marketing. I don't have to be front.

Well, you like to be in front, right?

No.

Well, do you like it?

It's not that I like it, it's that I do what I have to do to get, to, to get attention on the, the offer.

If you remember when you were in middle school, there was like the preps and the goth kids and then the bros or the athletes or whatever. When we're growing up, we're trying to figure out our identity, and maybe some of you weirdos actually switch tables once or twice because you were figuring out who you were. And what happened is we learned these identities that come with these sets of beliefs. You see this a little bit in the political scene. If you're a Republican, all of a sudden you have to wear flannel and trucker hats, 'Murica, and shoot guns. And on the flip side, if you're a liberal, you have to just say all homeless people can do whatever they want whenever, and we should let everyone across the border no matter what. We all should raise taxes. Basically ridiculousness on both sides. What happened to the real middle people who just like, hey, you can marry whoever you want? Please don't tax me too much. There's this middle, and that's why people like Rogan have blown up, because people are like, he's a Republican, he's a liberal. It's like, he's just Joe Rogan. Like, Joe Rogan is interested in UFC. He's also interested in aliens. He's also interested in stand-up comedy. He also has like this kind of fitness carnivore whatever thing going on and biohacking. So he has these like very different interests that he's super deep on, and no one would be like, Joe, so what we're thinking is you need to increase your biohacking by 15% so we can capture this audience.

No.

If you want to stand out in your marketing, or even a personal brand, just actually saying what you really believe, the thing that you're afraid of saying because maybe it's 2 or 3 or 4 beliefs that don't go with the uniform that you wear every day, actually makes you significantly more unique. Most people wear their clothing as a uniform to say, I am this type of person. People will look at you and they'll assume you're a goth or a prep or whatever. Here's where it gets cool. You start talking and then all of a sudden there's something over here and then there's another belief over here. And what happens is they start paying more attention because you don't fit the mold. It's my favorite way to differentiate any of the portfolio companies or even my own brand. This may sound crazy, actually just be myself because as soon as someone feels like they have figured you out, they'll move on because they're like, I can predict all of this person's behavior. They don't need to stay in tune or stay updated because they know everything about you already. And I'm sure you've met people like this. He wears this uniform, he says these things, he believes that he is this person. He's category 17.

Boom.

Don't have to think about it again. Everyone knows the starter kit for real estate. You know, the haircut, they cut the side here, right? Buzzed on the side, hard part, hard gel over the suit. Don't forget the glasses, very important. Maybe the high-level BMW mid-series wax with rims. Maybe a picture of the watch. He's like, yeah, just bought this beauty. Those guys are all the same. And so what they think they're doing is they're like, well, that's what everyone else is doing, so I need to build my personal brand. You're not building anyone's fucking brand. You're just reinforcing an identity that everyone already knows about and does not find you interesting because you're the same as everybody else. I think that you would be better served actually doing you. Comes with all the weirdness that you are. Because I've met some of you. Y'all are weird as fuck. And if you stop pretending to be this identity that you wrap into the starter kit of whatever Instagram influencer you're trying to copy, and you just were you, what happens is your unique individual personalities are like weirdness. Because everybody had different parents. Everybody was born in different cities. Everyone has unique things. Like your dad might have been a mechanic. You might know a bunch of shit about cars. And if you bring that up, all of a sudden people look at what they expect from the real estate starter kit. And then all of a sudden you've got these points over here and you become interesting. And people lean in. They pay attention. Because you don't match the mold. It's really easy to be original if you're just not looking at everyone else's shit. The act of consuming everyone else's stuff, what ends up happening is that their thoughts become top of mind for you and you become another Mickey Mouse, another Instagram influencer starter kit. They've got the watch, the car, 100% hustle, 0% grind. If other people copy you, it's a good sign because it means that what you're doing is working and most people aren't original. If you copy them, what it means is that you accept the position of second place. You accept that they are inherently first. You literally say you you are better than me at this. And if you claim to be the best at whatever it is that you're trying to do, or at least that you're trying to be the best, you copying their identity, their look, their feel, their brand means that you are accepting to lose. You will never win because you aren't going to beat them at being them.

When you get to winning, for me, it's come down to maxing out. And what maxing out means is you do one more at least than you think you're capable of. So when you're done, whatever you're doing, whether it's at the gym, or phone calls or meetings, or in sports, one more shot, one more throw, one more swing of the golf club or the baseball bat. The separator is for the winners, they do one more. I'm addicted to one more. And so I want your mantra going forward to be one more. What does that look like if we're working out? That means when we're in the gym and we say, I'm gonna do 5 sets of 10, I'm crazy. Like I'm a psycho, 'cause I wanna win. I wanna be somebody. I wanna see I want to compete. And the way I do that isn't with my giftedness because I wasn't born with a bunch of gifts. And I think gifts are crap. I think for the most part gifted people struggle in life because things come easy to them. I like that things haven't come easy for me in my life. I like to have natural talents in every area. And maybe you like that about you too. Maybe you've looked at yourself all your life and thought, man, I don't have that natural beauty or that natural talent. This gift for creativity or intellect or humor. I don't have any of those things. But what I got is I will outwork you. And so at the gym, one of the things I focus on, they say it's 5 sets of 10. When I'm at 10, I go one more, bam, 11. If I'm running on the treadmill and it's a 45-minute run, I never finish at 45. I always go one more minute, 46. If I'm at the office and I'm supposed to make 25 phone calls that day, When I'm at the end of the day, I always do one more. If I've got meetings, I always do one more. My mantra for 3 decades in business has been one more.

Why?

Because we get out of life what we think we deserve. And I'm the kind of guy that I know when you do 45 minutes on the treadmill and I do 46, I deserve to be fitter. I know that when I'm lifting weights and I watch you do 5 sets of 10, and every single time I do one more. When it's a set of 5, I do 6. When it's a set of 8, I do 9. When it's 45 on the treadmill, I do 46. When it's supposed to be 20 phone calls, I make 21. When it's supposed to be an 8-hour workday, I work 9. Whatever it is, I always do one more. And what that does is it makes me eventually think I'm doing things other people aren't willing to do, so I should get things other people aren't going to get.

Reading your book, The Changing World Order, you can see how prophetic a lot of the content that you put in there is.

So I was kind of hoping we could start with the big picture, the global macro view for you today.

Yeah, it's like watching the same movie happen over and over again when you read history. So, uh, there I learned in my life that many of the things that surprised me happened— didn't happen in my lifetime, but they happened many times before. And there were 3 big things that are taking place big forces that are happening in our lifetimes that happened many times before. And they are the creation of an enormous amount of debt and the printing of money to service those debts. And so the economic consequences, inflation and what it means for growth and tight money and all of that. The second is the levels of internal conflict are the highest since the 1930s, the '45 period, and other times before. Lots of internal conflict, the emergence of populism of the left and the right, the largest wealth gaps since the 1930 to '45 period. And so a lot of internal conflict fighting. Populism on the left, populism on the right, that's threatening to our system. And number 3 is the external conflict, which some people call, you know, the great powers conflict, the rising of a great power to challenge an existing great power and to challenge the world order. You know, the way it works is you usually have a big disagreement, you have a fight, you have a war. The winners of the war create the new system, the new order. And that happened in 1945. And then they're a dominant power and they sort of set the rules. And then there's the emergence of the other power and, and that conflict. And so those 3 things, each one of them, last time they happened in this magnitude was 1930 to '45. And when they come together like that, it's sort of a perfect storm. And so I studied, I needed to study what happened before. And I, because these rises and declines take place on average about 75 years, give or take about 50. I mean, these ups and downs, I needed to go back about 500 years and watch them, and I watched the same thing, uh, happen over and over again for the same reasons.

How were you able to, in spite of, you know, being freshly married, in spite of all the things going on, in spite of the market crashing, all types of stuff, were able to say, in the— in these circumstances, I still want to open my own business?

Yeah, so I think you have to also know yourself very well.

Yeah.

Because for me—

Self-awareness.

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm talking about from a different side. So for example, think about it how many, like, look at, let's go through 5 presidents.

Cool.

Let's pick 5 presidents and you tell me which of their styles you relate to the most.

Okay.

You ready? Just kind of think about it yourself. And we're talking about you, right?

Okay, cool.

Okay, so Reagan used humor to win people over.

Yeah.

Okay? Humor Reagan humor. John F. Kennedy was very charming, and he used his context. He had charisma. He was charming, good looking. So people kind of saw him and said, "I just like this guy," right? So Reagan humor, JFK was charm, okay? Clinton seemed like he cared for you. He was a good listener. You're like, "Oh my gosh." Empathetic is a good word. Sympathetic, okay. Trump is a bully. You bully him, he's gonna come at you 100%. Like, you don't push that guy. By Iran, right? So, so far we have what? We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 different presidents. And let's add another one. Okay, and Obama spoke about dreams. Okay, so he knew how to get us to—

Imagine if—

Inspire. Okay, so you got humor, you got charm and charisma, you got I care, sympathetic, empathetic, you got you're not gonna push me around, I'm gonna stand up 'cause I'm a man's man. And you got, listen, what if one day we can dream and we can do this? Who do you relate to the most?

Inspiring.

Okay, so check this out.

Yeah.

How many people relate to him? Not everybody.

Yeah.

So how many people relate to Trump? Not everybody.

Yeah.

How many people relate to Reagan? Not everybody.

Yeah.

Or Clinton or JFK. It's irrelevant. It's finding out which one is you. And then if you find your style, and if you can find your style and can position yourself in areas where your style and personality is able to, really grow and magnify than play often.

When I was coming through, I had a great group of classmates, and they were actually introducing computers for the first time. And so my computer instructor was telling me about— I was asking, well, how does this actually work? And was telling me about the transistor, and, you know, it was developed at this place called Bell Labs. And I found out there was one in Colorado, so Denver Bell Labs. And I called them, I said, I'd love to get an internship, uh, do you have it? And they said, yes, if you're between your junior and senior you're in college. I said, well, that's great. I'm a junior in high school taking AP classes, just like being in college. They said, well, no, it isn't. And I said, well, you know, I'd love an internship. And so I called every day for 2 weeks. They stopped taking the call after the second day. And I called every Monday for about 5 months. And one day they called back and said, a student from MIT didn't show up. We have an extra slot, and if you'd be interested, we're not guaranteeing 'cause remember, they never met me. So I put on the one suit that I owned and put $2 of gas in my car and drove out there and got the job and basically worked there for the next almost 3.5, 4 years as an intern while I matriculated with my degree at Cornell. I think they appreciated the fact that I really wanted that job and I really wanted to, you know, better myself.

Nice is way undervalued. You know, particularly in this day and age, you know, if you turn on the news, everything seems like it's gonna get blown up. Being nice just makes life so much easier. And look, I learned the hard way. I had to have my partner Todd came to me one day and he goes, I like to curse. He goes, I don't care about cursing, but you curse too much. Not everybody's as accepting of cursing as you are.

Calm the fuck down.

And I took that to heart. Not so much the cursing part, but But I just— it became apparent to me that the nicer I got, the more effective people around me got, the more productive they got, the more sales we had. I was undervaluing nice. You know, I started my first company after I got fired from a job, and I was 24, just turned 24, my first real company, if you will. And I was always go, go, go, go, go, all consume, right? Live it, eat it, sleep it, breathe it. And I knew people couldn't keep up or work as hard as many hours as me, but I wanted them to. And we were successful, and we didn't have much turnover, but I could have done a better job if I were nicer. And broadcast.com, I got a little bit nicer, right, as things— but then once I got to the Mavs and some of these other companies, and Todd reminded me, you know, and really told me, you know, just nice works. And so when you find yourself going to work, when you're finding yourself dealing with customers, when you're finding yourself making decisions, we all get that ajita, right? That feeling in our stomach, that tenseness, that stress at various points in time that we all have to go through. But sometimes you just need to calm the fuck down, right? Take a deep breath and be nice. Because you'll find out that people will do much more, If you reduce the stress of people and you're nice, you're going to have such a huge advantage. No matter what your technology is, no matter how it compares, even if it's a download for an app, people will still have to deal with you. Your culture will come through. Being nice, being, being supportive, reducing stress, that all comes through even in an app.

It's one of the things I'm behind. I've got a dozen really important things to me. Feeding people is most important to me. Yeah, providing fresh water. I do that in India for 250,000 people a day personally. I'm going to get that to a million people the next few years. It's about infrastructure, uh, freeing, you know, boys and girls, women, or about 80% of them. I mean, there's a new child abducted every 30 seconds. There's 6 million people in slavery around the world, children in slavery, sexual slavery. We've saved about 3,800 just in the last couple of years. I've gone on the operations myself undercover. And but what I work with Underground Railroad, because they're former SEAL Team 6, CIA, FBI, and we teach the local local government what to do to capture these people. So it's not just save some kids right now, but showing them what to do for the future. But I'm also, you know, I'm involved with so many different things, and my answer is, if I think it's core to humanity, then I'm interested. Food is, air is, you know, I planted 10 million trees in the last year and a half. You know, I'm fortunate to have my own private jet, but I'm conscious of that. So it's like, how many trees does my whole lifestyle take? It's about 3,000 trees. I said, I don't want to plant 10 million, I said, screw it, I'll plant 100 million. So I planted 10 million already, I'm on course to do the 100 million, just like feeding a billion people. So it's the things that matter, that's what got me. But I do things spontaneously. I was in San Francisco and I read in the newspaper that while I'm there, I was there to see Marc Benioff, and I see that the toughest part of San Francisco is called the Tenderloin District, and there's these nuns there that feed the poorest of the poor and they're being evicted. And it's the richest, one of the richest cities in the world, more billionaires there, tech billionaires than anywhere, no one's doing anything. So I just, I went over, knocked on the door, introduced myself, Found out who the person was that was evicting him, called him up and said, look, I'm an owner too, you have the right to evict anybody, but do you really wanna be the hatest man, hated man in San Francisco? I said, why don't you let him stay 9 months? I'll get him out within 9 months, I'll pay you the additional rent. And I did, and then the nuns, they're looking for a place to lease, and all of a sudden I get a call from the realtor, he goes, they're looking for a place to buy. And I called the nuns and said, do you have some money I don't know about? They go, God will provide, as they share with me. I bought him a place there, you know, and then, and my friend Mark Benny often bought them a home to live in. So, you know, I do things spontaneously. I love those things as well. But I mean, like, the secret to living is giving. I know it sounds corny, but I had a tough time in my life. I remember I was driving on the street in this 1968 Volkswagen. I was working so hard and I was so frustrated. Things weren't going the way I thought they should. And I was like, what's wrong? And then I pulled over to the side and I still have it today, this written journal. I wrote, the secret to living is giving. I started to cry because I lost the giving mode. I was just— I've gotten into the business mode. And to me, like I said, business is a spiritual game. If you're focused on giving, if you're doing more for your client or customer or anybody else, you will dominate. Doesn't matter what industry you're in. And that's what I've been able to do with, you know, my 50-plus companies.

Denzel was the only person that I looked at on screen, I was like, I just can't do that. Like, I, uh, you know, he just, he just got a thing that was so extra that I just felt like I couldn't, I could never live up to that. But for the most part, when I look at people, when I look at things, I always feel like I can. When I look at Jay right now, I see I can't do that. I see stuff I can't do. When he writes, the way he writes, the way his mind works, I look at Jay, I'm like, I can't do that. I looked at Eminem, I was like, I can't do that.

I don't know about that.

You know, it's just like, but for the most part, I don't live in a space of I can't. I live in this space of I feel confident that if I put in my 10,000 hours that I can achieve anything.

The mainstream media and social media are doing a phenomenal job of talking about negativity and what's wrong. Just so everybody knows, fear sells. Most of the parents in this room use fear to control what they want their kids to do. It's how, it's how humans are wired. The problem for me is I got lucky in the DNA game, and I have the greatest mom in the world and a lot of great circumstances that made me the reverse. I look at everything I just talked about, like if I'm sitting in this crowd listening to this, I'm pumped. I want to run through a wall and like take everyone's money. If you tweak your perspective on how the world's operating, and instead of buying into the propaganda for control of your mind, you look at the optimism that these tools can create for you, if all of a sudden you look at your employees like your teammates— literally, I'm so affected by this— if you look at your employees— I have 2,000 employees at VaynerMedia media alone, I genuinely think I work for them. I swear on my children's health.

I work for them.

Of course you do. If you're a great leader and you want to build something meaningful, you work for them. I was raised by a dad who taught me the reverse. That's why I know the difference. And I used to be mad at my dad, but then I got kind of like a little bit older and realized my dad grew up in the Soviet Union where the country controlled everything and the employees stole everything.

Everything.

The whole country ran on the black market. Literally, this is the first, oh, I'm so pumped I didn't mention it earlier. So it's my birthday and I'm going to the liquor store and I'm super sad. No, it's not my birthday today. I'm going back to the story. But it was my birthday a couple weeks ago, so if you wanna clap it up, I'll take it. So it's my fucking 14th birthday, I'm driving to the liquor store. As you may be able to tell by the way I'm talking, I talk all the time. My dad does not talk. We were completely the opposite. We lived 45 minutes from the liquor store 'cause my dad wanted to have land 'cause he likes cows and pigs and shit. So we're 45 minutes from the liquor store driving on Route 78 in New Jersey to the liquor store. My dad says no words. I'm talking a mile a minute like, I'm coming in, Dad, and like, wait till you see what I got. I'm gonna sell every bottle of wine. Like, I'm like hyped even, You know, like I was, I didn't realize I was gonna get paid $2 an hour at this point. We pull up to the store after 45 minutes. He says not one word. He turns to me and he goes, keep an eye on the employees, they like to steal. That's what my dad taught me. I grew up in that environment. I grew up in an environment where I watched an owner be in constant fear conflict with his employees. And then I've run businesses for 25 years where I've done the reverse. I'm an investor in over 500 companies and watch closely, I'm on tons of boards, I'm watching, this is my passion. If you cannot deploy empathy and compassion for your employees, I once said something to my dad, he brought it up this weekend actually. I said, Dad, if everybody who worked for you was you, they wouldn't work for you. I tell a lot of my friends who struggle with their employees, I'm like, I had a buddy who's like, I just want them to work as hard as me. I'm like, then give them equity in the business equal to you. We have to reframe this conversation. You have to make it enjoyable and interesting, not because you're soft, but because you want to make money.

I get a little disturbed every time, 'cause it happens like 5 times a day, a young man or young woman come up to me, I'm getting my real estate license. "Wow, I'm buying real estate." I said, "At the top of a market?" So the reason I highly recommend, if you subscribe to only one newsletter, there's lots of 'em out there, is Bert Dohmen, D-O-H-M-E-N Capital Research, his Wellington Report. And again, he has his free book, I mean his free advisory, "Surviving Soaring Inflation: The Opportunity of a Lifetime." And this is it here, just, you know, you can get it. And the opportunity of a lifetime. And I agree 100% with him. You have no idea what it was like. Some of you were too young. I'd go into a Chinese restaurant and they had whiteout on all the menus. I like Chinese food. But anyway, so one day rice would be a buck, next day it'd be 2 bucks. And they had to keep whiting stuff out. You know, I'm going, holy mackerel. And then I put together when I was flying in Vietnam, why my rich dad who was Chinese said, Watch out because they took the dollar off the gold standard. They're gonna print money. It's called money supply, not interest rates. That's exactly what Bert was just saying right now. So they're gonna try and raise interest rates to slow down the economy and they're gonna exacerbate. We're in a recession already 'cause things are slowing. The velocity of money is slowing at high rates of speed, but also it's gonna crash the economy and we may be going into a depression. Now, oh, you're such a bad news guy. I tell you something, I learned more in the '70s than I do today. Because when I was trying to put our real estate together, when interest rates are 20%, you get really smart. I mean, I had to be creative and all this and still make it cash flow. So ladies and gentlemen, it's only how smart, you know, how creative, how smart you are in the future and how resourceful and resilient you are. Because I'm afraid Bert's correct. This is May 2022. I think we're heading into a depression. There's gonna be a recession, that's a given. We're already there technically. But a depression's gonna be a whole nother magilla. And some people will be wiped out exactly as Bert says, the last depression gave us communism.

Okay, now that the blinds are opening, we can actually see something. So I keep my clothes right there next to my bed. Keep headphones right next to my bed. That way I am ready to rock and roll as soon as it happens. As soon as I get out, first thing I do is put my headphones on. I start listening to a book or a YouTube video. Then I would come in, I would brush my teeth. Again, I did all of this earlier because I didn't want to wake up Lisa, but just by way of recreation, that's it. So I would come in, brush my teeth, then I snatch up the dogs, feed them. Then, as of right now anyway, it would be off to the gym. The key part of any morning routine is the order in which you do things. So for me, depending on what's going on in my life, I may prioritize the gym or I may prioritize meditation, but one of those two things is almost always going to come first.

It's going to be pretty rare that I don't do that.

Now, as the time that we're recording this, we're going into the summer, so right now I'm really prioritizing the gym. Also coming off of the the quarantine where I was maybe a little bit more lax, hyper-focused on the business. The gym was something that came a little bit later in the day.

The problem is, depending on what your priorities are, and mine is definitely marriage first, then business, then physique, that if something crazy is going on in the business and, you know, I'm trying to get things done there, then whatever I haven't done first thing in the morning, it's possible that it just the rest doesn't happen.

So right now, because I'm really focused on the gym, even though my ultimate priority list hasn't changed, the reason I'm recording this now is because, as you guys know, I wake up so early that there was nobody to film me doing this stuff.

But the way that I think about the gym right now, it's the first thing I do.

So I wake up, I put my gym clothes on, I immediately beeline to the kitchen.

If I'm completely honest, I feed the dogs and then And then I will drink a bit of water, and then I head straight to the gym.

My biggest frustration is not just with young women. My biggest frustration is also with young men, young people who think that— and I have a lot of this with my girls in college— they think that success is supposed to happen like that.

Yeah.

They think.

That there isn't a process to it. They think that they're supposed to come out of college and have their brand. And I recognize now that I am a brand, but I was resistant to being called a brand for many years because I was like, I'm brand? I'm not a brand. I'm a person. But how I got to be a brand was not trying to be a brand. How I got to be a brand was every day making choices that felt like this is the right move, now that's the right move, and now that's the next right move, the next right move. And so my frustration with young women and young men is that they think it's supposed to happen like this, and they don't understand that there's a process to it.

Social media.

Yes, social media. You did not get to be editor of Vogue magazine by not working and working and working and working and working to get here. I love the theory of that there's 10,000 hours behind anybody who ever gets to be successful.

3 things you got to know about money, and the same 3 rules hold true for attention. Number 1, you got to get it. You don't need to make it, it's already been made. There's trillions and trillions of dollars. There's more money on this planet than there are iPhones, okay? Endless supply. Okay, it's like— it's garbage, by the way. You need to understand it's garbage. Once I get it, the thing to do is once I get it, now I don't want to lose it. How do I not lose it? I take it and I convert it to something more valuable than money. So as fast as I can, I'm gonna take this cash that I earned. I don't spend it ever. Never spend this money, no matter how big the bag is. I take the entire earned bag and I dump it into something that becomes— that will produce passive income for me. The only thing I ever spend is the $100 that comes out of the building, not the bag that I earn because of my talent. I take my talents, I get paid for them, I shift it into the building, the money goes away. Money can't be lost now. It's been converted to concrete, glass, steel. Tenants, leases, uh, real property. Okay, it goes up in value over time. This gets destroyed over time. It can get burnt, it can get torn, it can get lost, it can get, uh, stolen. So I want to get rid of this illiquid. I want to get illiquid in the building, convert it to something real, and then I want to wait. When I get paid passive income This passive income is not taxed. It's only taxed— it's taxed up a small tiny percentage of what earned income is. So I keep most of it, and this is how I live. I live off of this money, and, and I could spend all of this, or I could take this and start investing in more buildings.

The way you talk to me, get it, get it, keep it.

Number 2, you got to keep it. How do I keep it? I don't save it at the bank. When you put it at the bank, the bank is going to tax it. Cash is taxed. All cash is taxed. Okay, cash is not king. Cash flow is king. So what you want is you want this, you want passive income. And the third thing you want to do is you want to figure out how it can multiply. That building will multiply over time. There's nobody that's going to tell me that building will not be more money. Right location, Like, like the cities we're buying in— Austin, Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, uh, the Carolinas, Nashville, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia— if we're gonna on fire— Savannah, Georgia— anything in the, in the smiley part of the United States. Where New York, when the vaccine— when they came out last night and said, hey, we're mandating, I got calls from 3 buddies. I'm done with New York. I thought they were going to change. They're not. New York is going to feed that building. 20% of our tenants right now are from New York City. 10% are from California, moving from LA all the way over to Miami. So people are tired of the bullshit, man. And, and, and, and when they're tired of that, what they do is they move. And when they move, they rent first. They don't buy first.

Respect is always earned, and the younger you are, the more you have to earn it. And you can either resent the world for not giving you respect that you do not deserve, or you can go get it. Hustle across Age, gender, culture is always respected. It's one of the universal currencies of respect. But the problem is that people want the respect before they do the hustle. What the killers look like in their 20s who become the killers in their 30s don't look like the kid with the Lambo and the watch. What they look like is hungry as fuck to learn and work. If you can humble yourself and you realize the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, that you think you know more than you do when you start because you don't know anything, It's why Socrates said, the more I know, the more I realize I know nothing. One of the smartest, wisest people in the world says he knew nothing. I'm going to flip to my employer hat for a second. If someone comes in, if they're in the earning season, I will work you because I know that this is the only exchange. If you come in and I know you're in a learning season, then we will be so generous with how much we can give and reinvest in you. The exchange when you're coming in and I have to pay you above to get you to come here means that I have to extract more value from you than I pay you. That's the fundamental of business. But if you come in with a learning hat on, then that business owner understands that maybe in 5 years you're not going to be there. They could be like, cool, how can I assist you in your career? What skill sets do you feel like you lack? I can pair you with people in the company who are further ahead than you and help you get mentorship within our company, and you learn for free. And not only that, I'm going to pay you to learn. So the most important thing you have to realize when you're in your 20s is what season you are in. You have to stop comparing yourself to people who are earning more than you, because it means that what they're doing is often shortchanging their long-term earning for short-term earning. There is a time for the earning, but the moment that you decide to make that red hook, it's going to be hard to come back because you're going to earn more. And you decide that from here on out, you can't really learn much from people ahead of you because they're not going to give to you the same way you would if you were in their business. Your ability to provide value will compound with time. Especially as you start pairing skills. If you think about Jay-Z in the beginning of his career, the first thing he did was he learned how to rap.

Jay-Z's a baddest thing.

You're time master, nigga.

The rhyme master, nigga.

The last Jay-Z rhyme, so you can say I'm the pro feline.

And then he started learning how to promote, another skill, significantly more money. And then after that, figured out how to do a record label and distribute, even more money. And then after that, he figured out how to recruit other artists and get them signed on his label, even more money. And so what happens is that he still needs these early skill sets even though he didn't monetize them hard there. He monetized them big later. Skills will compound. If you have 1 1 1, it doesn't equal 3 when it comes to skills. If you are good at math, cool. If you learn bookkeeping, a little bit more. If you learn how to become an accountant, even more. If you start understanding taxes and insurance, all of a sudden you're a CFO. Now if you start understanding M&A, and mergers, entity structures. All of a sudden you're not only a CFO, you're a rainmaker. You're somebody who can bring in deals, execute deals, etc. The earning potential difference between somebody who's an accountant and a rainmaker is tens of millions of dollars per year. So one of my heroes, Warren Buffett, he finished top of his class at Columbia Business School. Somebody finishes top of their class at Columbia can get a job paying very well in most places. But guess what he did? He asked Ben Graham to let him to work at his investment firm for free. Ben Graham was one of the GOATs of investing at the time when Warren Buffett was just a kid coming out of college.

The chance to study under him, it shaped my professional life.

And guess what Ben Graham said to him when he asked him to work for him? He said, you're overpriced. Ben Graham knew, just as Warren Buffett knew, that even though he was working for free, it was going to cost Ben Graham more to deliver all of the skills and all of the things that he would need to be successful than the monetary compensation. But because Warren Buffett is smart, he realized that he was in a season of learning and not earning yet. He was willing to invest as one of the greatest investors of all time in the thing that was most important and valuable to him at the time, himself. And he did it for free. I'm gonna flip this real quick and tell you a little bit on my own story. People know this. I finished magna cum laude in 3 years at Vanderbilt. I could earn decent amount of money at most places graduating like that. I then took a consulting job that was paid less than most of my other people were, but because I could work directly with the CEO, so I was going to learn more. I then gave up on the consulting career to do fitness. The first move I made was I asked 40 different gym owners if I could work for them for free. Mind you, I was a magna cum laude graduate, vice president of the powerlifting team. I was president of the fraternity, came from a consulting background. Like, I had a lot of skills. But I realized that I was going to be getting more out of the exchange than the person who I was working for. And so I asked to work for free. He started to employ me and he eventually started paying me minimum wage. I would have to swallow my pride in order to take that job, but it was one of the best investments I ever made. And rather than compare myself to the people who are earning more than me, and I'm going to be real with you, I did and it hurt. But if you learn from one of the best in the industry at anything, you should be paying them. And the fact that they will accept you at any price is worth it every time. It would be like me going to Elon Musk and saying, I'll be your assistant. He offers me $100,000 a year. Alex, I would like to offer you $100,000 per year to be my assistant. And me being like, I'll come for $200,000. Actually, you're stupid. Never mind. Think about how stupid that is. That's the decision 20-year-olds make every day. I'm hoping that Mozi Nation, you aren't like that. You're willing to make the long-term trade. Because when you have this track record, this stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are, you have done what you say you've done, you don't need to pretend, you don't need to front, because you have the experience. And then people will respect you because of what you have done, not what you say.

And it's a race that started that first day when you were born to the last day of your life, and that race is to finally reach the ultimate version of you. You're chasing down the person you were born to be. That you were destined to be. And since that day started, the world, the people around you are trying to get you to conform to average. They're trying to get you off that track to finally meet your twin someday, the best possible version of you. Every single day has to be a pursuit to get better, to improve, to grow, to stretch, because you are ultimately chasing the destiny version of you. Do you hear me on that? Say yes.

Yes.

So every decision you make in business, every call you have, whether you go to the gym or not, you need to put it through this paradigm, through this barometer. Does this decision, does this relationship I'm in, does this choice I'm making right now put me closer to becoming that man or woman or further away? Listen, you got to get a little bit more intense about your life, about your business. You got to stop being so dadgum become casual. You got to get in the game. If you're gonna play the game, let's play to win it. Let's play to max it out. Let's play to 10x it. Right or wrong? Right. I want you shaking. I want you feeling it. I want your intensity level to go up. Not in this room, but when you leave this room, you're focused on more energy, more intensity, more focus. Because these people you see speaking here, they're not smarter than you. We're not better than you. I don't like when we get up here, "I'm rich, I'm rich." You know what? Who cares if I'm rich? I care whether you're rich. I want you to live richly. And I can tell you, I don't like it sometimes when we come to events like this because you always see the after. If this was a weight loss ad, we're all ripped up here. The power of the weight loss ad is you see the fat lady, then she's the skinny lady, right? You don't see the before. Seeing afters here. The before with me is an introverted, shy guy, insecure guy, low self-esteem, afraid of public speaking. That's the before me, a broke me. And I'm not getting into the details of that, but I want that to give you hope because it's decisions we make to chase that best version of us every second, every day, that every day alters the direction of the course of our lives. We've all made decisions that we regret But that decision took me off course. That decision put me further away of being the best life I could have, the best version of me. When you were a little girl or a little boy, there was somebody who knew you were special. It was your grandma, your uncle, a coach, a teacher. There's been one person in your life, hasn't there? They're the one who knew you were special. There's always one. If you're blessed in life, you may have 2 or 3 of those people. Just picture their face for a second. Who was that person that when you were a a little girl or a little boy, they just looked at you a little different. They just knew you were special. They knew you were great. They knew you could do something great with your life. See, I think the key to being great in business is being that person in other people's lives.

When there was the position that interest rates got a lot below the inflation rate, you're losing buying power. There's no good reason to own that. And there's a change in psychology because before there was, I own bonds, the bonds go up in value as interest rates go down. So I'm getting a price appreciation even though I'm getting, you know, let's say a low interest rate. But inflation isn't a problem until it's a problem. Then when it's a problem because they print so much money and they put it out, then inflation goes up and a light bulb goes off. That light bulb used to be, okay, how much am I earning? Okay, I'm not earning much, but it's okay. Price of the bond or whatever's gone up. And, but anyway, I'm holding it and it's safe. And then people realize it's not safe because I'm losing money to inflation. So now you have the central bank wanting to rectify that imbalance by, you know, real interest rates were -1.7%.

Meaning that inflation was chipping away at your buying power?

Yes.

If I look at inflation index bonds as an indicator, um, or other indicators, I'm losing percentage points to inflation by holding that bond. And then when they— and people realize that, well, you don't want to do that. And then the other side of it was you want to buy borrow and buy stuff because, you know, money's free. So companies borrow and buy stuff and individuals borrow and buy houses because interest-only loans on the houses. I mean, like, okay, I can buy a house, I can buy an apartment. And so, but that creates the imbalance where it's terrible to be a lender and a creditor, and it's good to be a borrower and do that. So that imbalance takes place, it produces inflation, and then when it produces inflation and so on, and then you say, I don't wanna own these things anymore. And also the Federal Reserve says, I better fight inflation. They change things. And so by raising interest rates to levels in which it goes from -1.7% in inflation index bonds to +1.7%, and it makes it, and it raises the short-term interest rates, you know, real interest rates much higher, then Lo and behold, all the people who did all those things get hurt. Okay? They borrowed, they bought the bonds, they bought all of those things and all of those debt instruments. And also companies. Look at the companies that are affected because yields got so low. Tech companies and others, those who have a dream. I'm going— they don't have to necessarily make profits. They're selling a dream and the money's got to be invested. And so you see all of that change radically when there's that tightening of monetary policy.

I graduate high school, I'm going to Glendale Community College. One night I run out of money. I ask my sister to let me live with her. So one night, this was in Encino, California, Burbank Boulevard and Havenhurst. I'm in her apartment. She has a studio. It's not even a one-bedroom. I'm sleeping on the floor. The jacuzzi downstairs, I had like 8 friends downstairs at the jacuzzi. And we were drinking a little bit. We were contributing to the stock of vodka around the world that night. And next thing you know, it's 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock, just bad situation. And the management comes, wants to evict my sister. And, you know, I go to sleep. I don't make it to my job in the morning. So I get fired by Burger King, which out of all the jobs in the world, if you're going to get fired from one of them, Burger King is not a bad one to get fired from. So I get fired. And then that morning when I go downstairs to go to my car so I can make to work and go to school, they stole my car, the 1983 Toyota Corolla that 6 months later we found it in Tijuana when I got a police report that the car ended up being in Tijuana. So that day I called my dad at 10 o'clock in the morning when I woke up and the car wasn't there. I said, "Hey dad, I need you to take me to the recruiting station 'cause I'm joining the Army." I didn't call a friend, I didn't call my girlfriends, I didn't call anybody. I just said, And my dad hung up, came, picked me up. He said, "That's exactly where you need to go." I went to the recruiting station. I said, "If you can get me a job that I leave tomorrow, I'll join today. If I need to wait 3 to 6 months, I'm not joining the Army." They give me a Hummer mechanic position. 4 weeks later, I was in the Army.

Wow.

Yep.

How long did you stay in the Army?

2.5 years. They had a delayed entry program at the time that was 2.5-year program. I think I got $25,000 of GI Bill that they were given at the time. But yeah, I went to the Army 2.5 years. Just one of the best decisions I ever made in my life is joining the Army.

Why is that?

You had to do laundry on your own. You had to fold your clothes. You had to clean. The expectation was higher. You had to wake up early. You worked 100 hours a week. I'm in an environment that people are from Mississippi, Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota. They've never met an Iranian before. So, taught me to learn culture. I learned about other cities, other states. I learned how to handle people that had a lack of education about Iran and stereotypes. And I had to learn how to overcome that and communicate that with them. Just a lot of good skills, a lot of good things that military offered, lots of them.

You're doing very well out there.

You're now living in San Francisco area. You're making a big success by investment banking standards.

I presume you're highly compensated and so forth. What propelled you to say, I'm going to give all this up and go start my own company?

Right. So the interesting thing that occurred, as you know, again, as an engineer, I realized way back in my Goodyear Tire and Rubber days the impact that software really had on business. The thing that I noticed that there's very few software companies were actually efficiently run.

Well, why?

The big part was most executives who started software companies, well, they wrote code or they knew a market opportunity and they sold the code. There was never anyone who taught them how to run software companies. So I then run into this small company, I'll say small, in Houston, Texas, that is the most efficient software company I've ever seen. They had some very basic things things that they just did extremely well. And I said, wow, if you took those basic things and actually applied them ultimately to other enterprise software companies, you could run those businesses very similar to the way they ran theirs and would create tremendous value in those companies. That was the idea. That was the conceit.

And they said, that's a good idea.

Why don't you do it?

Well, yeah, in essence. They said, well, if you actually thought about taking some of these best practices and putting them, buying enterprise software companies and driving them forward, you could actually do pretty well. And I said, that's a great idea. Would you do that? And I said, well, you know, and they gave me one of those offers that looked quite interesting. And I remember my lawyer said, this is a bad deal, Robert, but you should take it. Right.

So you went to Goldman and said, I'm leaving.

Right. Did they try to talk you out of it?

Of course.

Of course. They made the pitch against it. But, you know, like all things, David, at some point in time in your life, you know, you got to look yourself in the mirror and said, you know, you have to take a little risk and go see if this is something.

How old were you when you took this?

I was 39 years old, and it's so interesting. So of course I started doing research. It was the same age that others left what they were doing to go start their businesses. So I said, well, let's go give it a run.

I was never the one to like chase the sector. Oh, this is hot. Because you have to ask yourself, who are you competing with? And whatever you do, you have to ask yourself, what's your edge, right? What is the one thing that gives you a competitive edge. If you don't have an answer, you can't start that company. You're gonna lose, right? I said before, if you're trying to compete with me, you better know a whole lot more than I do about whatever business we're in, because otherwise I'm gonna kick your ass, right? So you have to ask yourself, what is your competitive advantage? And with that competitive advantage, what's the best way for me to get customers who are willing to write me a check? My— one of my skill sets has always been I've been able to walk into any type of business and understand their company, you know, understand how they make money, understand how they compete. So I can walk into a shoe store, I can walk into a hospital or whatever and say, all right, here's my technology, here's how it gives you an advantage. And I try to do the same thing on Shark Tank. You hear us say it all the time, what is your competitive advantage? Just saying it's my passion Do you ever walk into 7-Eleven and say, wow, I'm shopping here at 7-Eleven because they're really passionate? No, right? And when you go and you make your— think about your own buying decisions. What makes you decide to buy? Now you might want to support veteran-owned businesses. I always, when it's a toss-up, yes, right? At some point you have to grow beyond the community and you have to be able to say, you can walk into any situation and know without any doubt in your mind this is why you are the best product or service and you are the best company to provide that product or service. Period, end of story. If you can't do that, you have to ask yourself, who is doing it? What are they doing that gives them that edge? Allows them to compete or help their customers better than you can. Right, 'cause that's what it's all about. We all as consumers make buying decisions. And we, the people who are buying our stuff, product or service, use the same thought process for those buying decisions. So always put yourself in your potential customer's shoes. What is it that I have that makes it a no-brainer for them to buy from me? If it's, I'm nice, I'm passionate, you're in trouble, right? There's got to be something, because even if you can get some customers, how are you going to grow it? How are you going to sustain it? And what's going to keep the next person from coming in and doing the same thing? Because look, with success comes additional challenges. The more you succeed, the more people say, damn, Okay, that's an opportunity. I think I can do that better. And so success isn't look where I'm at. Success is go, go, go, go, right? I mean, people say, wow, you've done this. I'm still going, right? To me, business is the ultimate sport, and there's nobody on the face of the earth that's more competitive than I am. I've said that to Magic Johnson, Michael Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, you name it, right? Any athlete, any business person, it is the ultimate sport, and we're competing all the time. What is it that gives you an edge that allows you to compete? How do you sustain that, and how do you find more people that say yes to buying that? That is going to be the key to your business. And how do you sell it?

I'm not here—

I'm not—

I don't believe I'm everybody's teacher or I've got it all handled, but I've spent 42 years looking for answers. So when I was growing up, you know, they called me a motivator, they called me a guru, and I hate those terms because I'm not better than anybody else. And I thought, who's influenced my life? I'm an athlete, so coaches did. And I was actually a much better athlete than some of my coaches, but they still were invaluable to me because they saw what I couldn't see, because I was in the forest, I was on the court, right? They were outside of it. And so that's why I started to call myself a coach, not a guru. And also because I want people to know there's nobody broken. You don't need to be fixed. You might have some behaviors that don't work, you might have some habits, you might have some thinking habits, emotional habits, and We're the only humans, the only creatures, I should say, on the planet that can think a thought and get ourselves angry, think a thought and get worried, think a thought and get excited, think about, feel grateful, think about and be pissed off. And most of us just don't know how to run the show. And so what I try to do, that documentary is a kind of a 2-hour summary of a 6-day seminar I do called Date with Destiny. But you get to see somebody who's suicidal. There are many people, like in a room of, you know, 2,000, 3,000 people, there's always a half dozen people, dozen people are suicidal. So there's a woman there that was in this cult down in Brazil.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Remember her?

I just saw her. I was just in Brazil, literally a week ago. And that was like 5 years ago that film was made, right? And she has written a book. She's gotten out of the cult. She's got other people out of the cult. She's become a healer. And she's— I'm just really, really proud of her. So seeing the change last, because most people think if you're going to change it that fast— first of all, they don't think it's possible, but it is. You know, you get upset that fast, you get wired that fast, you get conditioned that fast.

But to see 5 and 10 years later people's lives are changed.

It's important for people to see so they know that you really can produce change in a moment that is lasting.

You was always challenged for that, right? Like, oh, you're soft, you're different than other rappers.

Your positivity was always challenged.

Like, people always wanted you to justify being positive. Being positive, right? Absolutely. Yeah, no, that was a difficult time coming up because it's like, I'm from Philly, right? So during that time, in Philly, it was Joe Frazier and Rocky. So a fistfight was common.

So you grew up—

Right.

You grew up—

I got those handshakes.

Yeah, Chuck D used to— he called it Pug City. He's like, Pug City. He's like— Chuck was like, damn, you can't go to Philly without getting in a fight. So it was like I grew up in that. So for me to— it was always difficult for people to say I was soft and I was, you know— my music was cotton candy and all of that. So I always wanted to fight to try to prove myself. But fighting yourself to maintain positivity is the hardest fight you ever going to have, right? And it's like that struggle to just stay my course, to be the person in the world that I wanted to be, no matter what people said. And it was I started to call it offensive positivity, right? Like, you know, I wasn't going to be on defense with my positivity. I was going to be on offense with it.

When I was doing SEO and SEM in 1999, that was underpriced attention. How many people here have been doing SEM for their business for over 15 years? Raise your hand. Anybody? Right. Just a couple. Some of you remember, like, remember how good of a deal that was? The stuff that you used to pay 48 cents for is now $73. Supply and demand. I need you to understand supply and demand of attention, and I need you to understand that it's going to be content for a long time. We are within the half decade of people watching TikTok on television 24 hours a day. Social networks have won the next decade. Brand and business is built in social. You could do other things. You've got tactics that work, I'm sure. Direct mail, outdoor, networking. You know what to do. It's tried and true. To get value out of me being here today, I need this to be the moment you finally said, fuck it, I'm gonna go try it again, or fuck it, I'm gonna try for the first time, or fuck it, I'm gonna go 4x harder, because it's really this wild moment in time where all the attention's reshifting, and the macro industry is going to decrease, which means the winners in this space are gonna win, and the winners, in my opinion, are gonna be the content producers, and you've gotta find your way. And it's tough because the platforms I'm telling you are video-based. You know, everybody loved Instagram 'cause it was easy. I'm gonna take a photo, and it's gonna look real good after I filter the fuck out of myself, and then I'm gonna write a couple sentences, and it's gonna be super cool. That is not the current marketplace. I know you want it to be, 'cause that's a fuckload easier than what you need to do now, but whether it's a podcast, a local show, one-offs, you're gonna need to figure out what your pillar content is so that you then can cut up and produce. You're also more than welcome if you love the game and you've got the time to produce for it, but I know it's not gonna be sustainable for most of you, which is why I'm pushing this pillar and I put this out a long time ago, and a lot of people built businesses in many different industries off of it, but I think if you Google, and maybe somebody here can confirm it right now, but if you put Gary Vaynerchuk content model 84 pieces, I put that out a long time ago. It's obviously, the macro's right. Some of the details obviously change, but it'll give you a sense of what I'm talking about of like, Make a macro thing, post-produce. Again, so many people here raised their hand following me. It's all I do. It's very obvious to you. You see what I do. I bring up stuff from 9 years ago and then clip me talking about something about 9, like you just have to put yourself in a position to actually do it, but I'm telling you, and I'll leave with this and we'll go into the chat, it's the answer to the quiz. You cannot leave Las Vegas and not produce a lot of content. If you want to grow or sustain. You can do whatever the fuck you want. You're not my children. I actually give no fucks. I would just prefer you win because it's nice, and I like getting the emails 4 years later, 3 years later, like it's nice. I'd like you to win. This is the one thing you can control the most. I know it's around self-esteem and self-awareness of how to produce the macro thing. Written word Audio, video, figure it out, but figure it out.

I just know that, like your father, you know, he went to military school and I went to military school. And notice the people that have had really tough mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual training, they're tougher.

Yeah.

So I came out of the, I came out of academy like your dad. He went in the Navy. I went in the Marine Corps. And we come out tougher. You know, internally stronger. And I don't know how you guys get that. You know what I mean? I call it spiritual intelligence at this point. And let me draw this picture. You guys have seen it before, but again, if you look at it this way, this is intelligences and this is what makes us up. This makes us human beings. We have mental intelligence, We have physical intelligence, you know, like Tiger Woods is a fantastic golfer. I suck, you know. And then you have emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence, they call it EQ, is the most important. Because I get my feelings hurt all the time. I get angry. I hallucinate in my head, I think things that aren't true. But the biggest one of all is the spiritual. And the difference between mental and spiritual, it's very simple. Mental causes two. So man, woman, good, bad, up, down, where spiritual is one. So I'll give you an example. Why do I do my work? Yesterday I was driving down the road and I saw this young guy, God, just broke my heart. You know, he's standing there in hot Phoenix sun. He's unemployed, needs money to feed the kids and all that. Now mentally I could say, well, get a job, you idiot. But spiritually, I am him. I feel for him. So in my work, I work for this. You know, like, I don't need the money. But I, as my teacher was Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, and he says, I don't work for me, I work for everyone. And that was one of the biggest lessons I got from the military. You know, from the military was very high spiritual intelligence. That's why your dad and I get along so well. 'Cause when we went into combat, which is a horrible experience of good and bad people, enemy and friends, you know, but when we climbed into our aircraft, there was a crew of 5, we became one. It is the best feeling, as horrible as it is, flying into combat, 'cause we might not come back, but it was the highest feeling of all. It was spiritual. And I'm afraid it's not just millennials, it's human beings, you know. Well, you know, is this good? Is this bad? Is this the best Vuitton shirt? Can I get it at a better price? Oh, he's cute or she's cute, you know what I mean? But is there somebody better?

Right?

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what's going on.

So you guys are stuck in your head. And I think you should get more into your spirit, you know, like saying, what can I do for my fellow human being?

Yeah.

What can I do for the environment? And I think the biggest secret of my success is I have all, we all have these. We all have some degree of physical things we do. Emotionally, I'm a basket case a lot of the time. I get upset, I get angry, I get sad, I get my feelings hurt. And I'm always, this is good, this is bad, this is, you watch politics, it's all good and bad, it's a bunch of BS. But what keeps me going is this. And it's spiritual. It's how can I serve others? How can I serve the planet? How can I fix this problem? Millennials, it's not just millennials, it's just human beings in general. If you can get back to being one, being compassionate, you'll always have idiots here. You'll always have idiots here and idiots here. But just stay in your spirit. So like when I saw that guy, he's probably 45 years old. I couldn't imagine being a father saying, I need money for my kids. And I gave him a few bucks, but it doesn't help.

All I was—

when I gave him a few bucks, I was just saying, hey, we're one. I feel your pain. And so what's happening, I think, it's not just millennials, it's human beings are idiots, you know? We inflict a lot of pain. But this is spiritual intelligence, is how do we make it one? Like, my love are trees. When I see people cutting down trees, I wanna kill them.

I wanna kill them.

You know, but, and then the oceans, you know, it just breaks my heart 'cause I grew up in the ocean.

Oh yeah.

So when we're in our spiritual, in our heart, in our silence of the brain, of the mind, then we're most effective.

I know a lot of people out there, if you're new to the building your knowledge game, one of the things you're struggling with is reading a lot but not making progress. So one of a couple things could be true. First of all, if you're reading things that don't matter to you, then odds are that it's sticking, and so you want to make sure that you're reading in topics where you have a goal associated with that topic, so reading that thing really matters to you. That is one of the most important things you can do is get a hyper amount of clarity around what your goals are so you know exactly what books you need to be reading in order to bolster your skill set so that you can move forward. Most people lack the clarity, and because they lack the clarity, they're not reading, they're not excited about the things they're reading. And when you're not excited about the information that you're intaking, then forget it, it's never going to stick. The next thing is, if you're not progressing, I promise a big part of this is that you're not deploying what you learn. Most people are afraid of embarrassing themselves. Stop immediately. Stop worrying about embarrassing yourself. It doesn't It doesn't matter. What matters is on a long enough timeline, you can be anyone at anything if you're willing to go and fuck up. But most people are so afraid to make mistakes. They're so afraid of looking stupid that they're paralyzed. They're indecisive. They won't move. I make mistakes all the time and it's embarrassing and it still sucks. It's not fun. but what I know is that I will get better. And people may laugh at me in the short term, but they all give up. They all give up. Everyone stops. Everyone quits. Everyone quits. Whenever I encounter somebody and they are wasting time making fun of me, the one thing I know, that motherfucker's gonna quit. Because if you've got energy to waste time making fun of somebody, your priorities are so FUBAR. You are trying to self-soothe yourself from feeling like an idiot by making fun of me. So I don't waste time on what somebody like that thinks because I know that skills have utility. If I can read, I have this goal, I have massive amounts of clarity about what my goal is. I'm reading this thing, not because I'm gonna check a box, but because I'm going to turn potential into usable skill set, which is going to let me do something, which allows me to outperform other people, but it requires that I deploy it. It requires that I use the things that I'm learning so that I can make them concrete in my own mind so that they become a skill rather than an idea. Don't collect ideas, collect skills. Push yourself, figure out how you deploy all this stuff. How do I actually use this in my real life? What is it good for? If it's not good for anything, you're not going to have the energy to keep learning about it, and you're not going to make the progress that you want. So make sure I got my goal, I care about this thing, I'm reading this not to check a box, I'm reading this to get good at something, and then I'm deploying it to make sure that it sticks so that I'm making progress. And I don't care if in the moment I make a mistake, I don't care if in the moment I fail, I don't care if in the moment other people think I'm ridiculous, I don't care if they think I'm stupid, because I am acquiring knowledge, and knowledge stacks. Knowledge stacks. You get good at this thing, it allows you to understand this thing, which allows you to understand that thing, which allows you to understand that thing. And each one of those things is minor unto itself. But just like a Lego piece by itself is not very interesting, you can build virtually anything you you want with Legos. You have to be willing to take the time to put them together and have people look at the incomplete thing and say that that doesn't make sense. I don't see it. I don't understand what that is. That's going to take too long. Why are you doing that? Legos are stupid. But when Legos are knowledge, it will change your life. But you've got to be willing to deploy it. So Don't waste time lamenting your stupidity, your frustration at being slower than other people. It just is what it is. Focus all of your time and energy. I have a goal. That goal makes demands. Those demands require that I get better at something that I'm not currently good at, and I'm going to to read about it and then use it, because it is only in the using that I will make progress. So if you do that, if you follow that formula, learn in the morning, use in the afternoon, not research for 6 months and then try. Learn in the morning, use in the afternoon, or learn during breakfast and use immediately after breakfast. The faster you can begin using the things that you are learning, the faster you will make progress. And remember, progress is iterative. It's not overnight you go from nowhere to somewhere. You go from one step to the next step to the next step, one foot in front of the other, and you make these tiny little incremental bits of progress with every new thing that you deploy after learning. But if you don't deploy it, if you don't use it, one, it's not even gonna stick because a lot of these ideas are just gonna go in one ear and out the other. You're really only going to retain what hits you emotionally and what you use. And if you want it to hit you emotionally, there better be a goal driving you to read that thing. When you read something, I remember one time I was on an airplane, this was the craziest shit ever. I was reading the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And I'm going through the book and he's talking about how, hey, there's a secret to this book and I'm gonna give you that secret to the book. And I'm, oh my God, Think and Grow Rich, I wanna grow rich, this is amazing. I'm broke at the time, so I'm reading and reading and reading. And every page is like, I'm telling you the secret, I'm telling you the secret, I'm telling you the secret. And I'm like, what? And about, I don't know, page 52 in, he's like, I've told you the secret to this book on every single page without fail. And if you don't yet know what it is, you're in trouble. And I was like, what has he said on every page? And I was on an airplane. And I remember it finally dawned on me, the only thing that he had said on every single page was if you believe you can, "you can, and if you believe you can't, you can't." And I was like, "Holy shit." I got goosebumps all over my body. I remember I looked up and looked around the plane 'cause it transformed me as a human being. You can draw a line in the sand, me before realizing that piece of information, me after realizing that piece of information, and it felt, it rocked me so hard, some weird part of myself my subconscious was like, surely other people just felt that. And I looked around to see if anybody else was feeling what I was feeling. Of course they weren't, because I was the only one reading the fucking book. But that's how hard it hit me. And when you have an emotional reaction on something like that, you remember it, but you've got to want that information so badly. I was so desperate at that time to get rich that I was like, oh my God, I need to understand what's going on in this book, I was desperate for that information. And when it hit me, when I learned the thing that that book was trying to teach me, it rocked me to the degree that I remember to this day where I was sitting, what it felt like when I realized that thing. And I will never forget the lesson, if you believe you can, you can, if you think you can, you can, if you think you can't, you can't. It's just facts. So understand that, you have to have a goal, there has to be a reason, in order for that thing that you're learning to hit you emotionally, and then you're way more likely to remember it, deploy it, deploy it with immediacy and aggression. Don't be afraid to fail or look stupid, because no matter how dumb you look in the moment, knowledge stacks, and on a long enough timeline, you can beat anyone at anything. It isn't literally true, but it's so directionally correct, you should live your life as if people have good internships over to someone that might pay $15, even $20, $25 an hour, which is good money for 2 or 3 months if you're a sophomore, junior.

Yeah.

What advice would you have for them to do if they come away with $5,000 gross?

What should they do with the money?

Well, dude, they should invest the money. You should get rid of the $5,000. You started broke, you should always be broke. Okay, you should get money, take the money, invest in assets. You should be broke in cash and rich in assets. Start building assets now. Also, for you guys that are interning, you're interning in the field that you're in, but you really need to intern— you need to learn those skills that you don't want to learn, okay? Like, you need to learn sales, marketing, scaling. Like, why would you work for $25 an hour when what you really want is $25 million? So, so, like, right now you guys should be leaning into how do I become an Elon? How do I become a you know, somebody has tremendous amounts of financial independence so that you can literally mold an industry, not just work in an industry. And if you're going to do that, you need sales, you need marketing, you need scaling, big think, you need, you need wealth creation formulas. You need to know, how do I create wealth? How do I, you know, sustain myself and an organization so I can, I can scale something big enough Look, man, Mark Zuckerberg was what, he was 23 years old and he was a billionaire. He wasn't interning on the weekends for $25 an hour, bro. He wasn't hunting 5 grand and he wasn't hunting the, the poontang. He was looking for the big score. And this is what I would tell all the kids, man. Your world is— you have so many more opportunities than I had when I was 25 years old. The whole world You had more, you have more opportunities. You have availability to this, just this right here, okay? The fact that you and I can do this, it costs us literally nothing to do it, and we can reach tens of thousands or millions of kids and say, look, you don't have to do it the way we did it. You don't have to go the old slow way. You can literally hack into the experience of— I'm 66 years old. You know how many losses I've had in, in 46 years of being in business. You don't need to have those losses. You need to learn from mine and avoid that. I spent 5 years in college. I shouldn't have done that, okay? If I was going to go to college, I should have done that in 2 years, not 5 years. But I was fucking around all the time. I had no focus. I had no real initiative. I didn't understand why I was there. I was just doing something. Then when I went and interned or got a job on the weekends, it was just to pay bills and party. Dude, it was all— it was all this vicious cycle of stupidity. So I ended up with more debt after college than I had. I shouldn't have had debt, okay? I shouldn't have ended up with debt. I should have been working the entire time. I should have done my— my entire 5 years should have been under 2 years, and I should have been working when I wasn't studying.

And I'd be—

I'd be worth $4 or $5 billion today if I'd have taken the advice I just gave I tried to get in contact with Arnold Schwarzenegger when I was running Gym Launch.

I thought it would make a lot of sense. I wanted him to endorse my book. That was like my whole goal. Turns out nothing worked. It also turns out Arnold doesn't really care. But in order to get his attention, what Leilan and I did was we donated $1 million to his charity, and then we ended up sitting down with Arnold multiple times. When you show kindness and generosity towards others, they're more likely to return the favor and like you as a result. The gifts you have to do is proportional to the the person you're trying to give to. So for example, if you pay for your friend's lunch, that person now feels obligated to return the favor. They're like, hey, I'll get the next one, right? And it's the same reason that outside of a retail store, as soon as you come in, they offer you cold water. It's not because they're nice people, it's because they know that you'll feel indebted to them and be more likely to A, stay longer, B, listen to them, and C, ultimately buy. Imagine how much it costs a store owner to give everybody who walks in the door a water. I don't know, $5 a day? And if they get one person to buy extra a week off of that, which they probably get a lot more, is that worth the investment? It's probably the highest return on investment thing in his entire business. Now, Cialdini gives a really beautiful example of how to leverage this in business. And he shows an example for a waiter. So if a waiter puts a mint on the bill, they get 3% more tips, right? People get something and they're more likely to tip them a little bit more. The waiter gives the person 2 mints. All of a sudden the tips increased by 14% and the The third way they did the waiter example was that the person put a mint down, walked away, turned around, and put another mint on the table. And that created a 23% increase in tips. It's worth paying $5 a month for a big bag of mints just to make sure you get paid. But the thing is, is that in business, there are tons of these $5 mint bags that are laying around that you can immediately implement into your own business. Years ago, I actually had this done to me and I saw the effect and it was wild. All right, so there was this guy that I thought was a complete weirdo. Whenever I saw him, he would try and ask me like 100 questions. So he was local to where I was, he was in like some entrepreneur networks, and he would just like try and corner me. And I was like, dude, just get away from me. Eventually I had to confront him, be like, stop talking to me, like go away. And so what happened is he was so ashamed of the whole experience, whatever, he started sending me gifts every single month. So I'm talking about like $500,000 gifts every month, like Cutco knives and like clothing, which is kind of weird, but it was expensive Lululemon stuff. Anyways, for for 9 months. He sent me birthday cakes that were custom made in high school. Like, it was wild. After a while, I just started feeling bad because he just kept sending them and saying like, so sorry, I hope everything's awesome, blah blah blah. And I was like, you know what, maybe I just saw him the wrong way and I was just like, got him off on the wrong foot. Even though I knew what he was doing, it still worked. And I ended up going out to meet him again. Turns out, still a weirdo. And so that's to show you how powerful this stuff is. You can just start by giving people free gum when you're in class, which is first time I learned it when I was in middle school. People weren't as mean to me when I gave them gum earlier that day. And so it was a tiny little thing that cost me almost nothing that made my life in middle school a little bit easier.

Some of you done so much work to get out there to finally catch the wave. Anybody ever caught a wave in business, or a wave in the ocean for that matter? You catch a wave in the ocean, you know what that's like. A perfect wave or a good wave. All of you probably done at least a little one, and it's almost inexpressible, isn't it? It's an incredible feeling. You're kind of connected to God and the the ocean and yourself in those moments, and it's just a wonderful journey. And these waves can take you places you would otherwise never get without them, and you can get there faster. Also true in business. You gotta paddle and kick and scratch and claw and move, and you're using things you've never used before. You're finding assets you have that you didn't even know you had to get out there. Then you catch these waves in business, and it's wonderful, and it can take you places, and it feels a certain way. Way it's never felt before. And many of you caught waves. I'm sure you've caught a wave in business in the past, or multiple waves. Some of you probably even got some pretty darn big ones. But let me ask you a question. What if when I got out there, I started to say to myself, well, you know, heck, I've caught 3 or 4 of these waves, this is pretty darn good, I could probably float, and I'll probably just keep catching them if I float? But would I? Well, you know I wouldn't. What would happen if I stopped completely moving my arms and legs and kicking and paddling, I'd sink. And if I'm not careful, if I don't do it long enough, I could drown. And I see that happen all the time in business. See, in my business, the paddling and the kicking and the swimming is recruiting and developing people, leadership, sales skills, running a system in a particular way. Those are the things that are the paddling and the kicking and prospecting in my business. In In your business, it may be something different, but nonetheless, I'm not immune to the laws of nature. If I sit in that ocean and I stop moving, I stop paddling and kicking and doing what you got to do, I won't float. I'll sink. I'm not immune to the laws of the ocean, nature, the universe, gravity, you name it, and neither are you. I'm also not immune, and nor are you, to the laws of business, the laws of success. The laws of success say if you stop doing those things, you don't float. You never grow, or you never just stay the same in business. You're either growing or dying. You're either sinking or swimming. I want you to be swimming. I want you to be riding waves. By the way, the bigger the waves, the harder you got to work to go catch them. But what most people do in business is they fall in love with the delusion or the illusion of the fact that I can stop at some point. I've seen people stop quickly in my business. Couple weeks into the business, you know, they get an award for bringing the most people to the meeting. Oh, I can stop kicking and paddling now. I can stop calling people and seeing people. And I see them sink. I've seen people a year or two later get a promotion to a certain level, and they go, oh, now I can stop paddling and kicking, and I'm going to float and keep riding these waves. And I've seen them sink, and sometimes I've seen them drowned. And that's a sad thing to see someone drowned and go out of business just simply because because they fell in love with the illusion and the lie that they can float and stop moving. I've seen it happen 5 years in, 15 years in, 20 years in, a million a year, 2 million a year, you name it. I've seen it when they've developed a bunch of people, when they haven't. You say, well, Ed, that's not true. I mean, not everybody sinks. I mean, I have friends back in my own business who they've stopped paddling and kicking, and they still ride a wave or two here and there, and they're pretty happy.

Really?

Are they really really happy? Will they ever know what it would have been like to ride the biggest and best waves of their life? The answer is no. If you stop paddling, kicking, you'll never know where you could have gone. More importantly, you'll never know who you could have become. See, the people who paddle and kick forever and make that decision, they've got a chance to become the highest version of themselves, the highest expression of themselves, which I think is what life's about. See, the champions in fitness, in faith, in the water, in every area of life, make a decision early that they are about the paddling and kicking, because that's the ticket to the biggest, the next, and the biggest waves of life. Life isn't about catching a few and stopping. Life's about the next wave. Ask any surfer. They're chasing the next big wave. They're chasing the great one. And once they catch that, they want to chase another one, because it's about being out there. It's about being in the game. It's about riding the big waves. It's about finding the highest version and expression of you. And I want to challenge you to do that in your business. I want to challenge you. See, the great ones decide. See, the average, they, they look for reasons. They look for reasons to stop paddling, kicking. Oh, now I can. Oh, now I can't. See, the champions don't want those reasons. The champions want to keep paddling and kicking to ride the big one, the great wave of their life. And I think you agree with me that life can only get better if you'll keep paddling and kicking. Please don't stop. Please don't fall in love with that lie and know the truth, that the winning way is the way to keep paddling and kicking. You're not about floating. You're not about sinking. You're not about drowning. You're about riding the biggest waves of your life in the future. And whatever area matters to you, whether it's your faith or your family or your fitness or your business, make the decision that you're going to do the things that's required to ride the next big wave and it will take you places you can't even imagine.

There are short-term cycles that build up to create a long-term cycle. So for example, we're used to what's commonly called the business cycle or the short-term debt cycle in which there's a recession when economic weakness is, is economic weakness and low inflation. And then the central bank provides credit and that stimulates activity. And then you have the pickup and the good time in the economy, but then it raises inflation and tightness and so on. And then they create tight money and then you go through the contraction again and so on. So since 1945, there have been 12 and a half of those cycles. On average, they're about 7 years long, give or take about 3 years. So if you say, okay, where are we in that cycle? We're in the business cycle. We're about halfway through. We're in the part of the cycle where the tightening of monetary policy to fight inflation begins to cause the cracks. And, and that's where we are.

Okay.

Now, those add up to a big cycle because debt rises relative to incomes through that because everybody wants the higher up. And so they just keep doing that. And so we have a lot of debt assets and debt liabilities. You know, we think of there's a debt that you owe, but one man's debt is another man's assets. And so you have to keep interest rates high enough that it compensates for inflation for holding it, because if you don't, Nobody's going to then wanna lend and you have a problem, but you have to have interest rates not so high that they crack the economy. And so when you have debt, a lot of debt assets and a lot of debt liabilities, having that balancing act is not easy. And so because we had the imbalance, the central banks of the world had to come in there and be buyers. They had to print money and buy that debt to make a balance at an acceptable interest rate. So we have that problem that produced inflation, and we have the financial problem. Now that's connected also to what's happening in the world order, because the United States and China most importantly are approaching a war, the greater risk of war. And also Russia is in that, that there have been, you know, supply lines, supply chains have been broken and supply lines and so on. And that has worsened the set of circumstances for reasons having to do with geopolitical and so on. So we are in that spot.

I'll give you a funny story here. My teacher in Glendale High School, if you're listening and you're from Glendale and you went to Glendale High School, you need to go and ask if anybody there knew a teacher named Mrs. Collins. Okay, Miss Collins. My gosh, this woman gave me nightmares. We used to read two books. That was Then This Is Now, and the other one was Of Mice and Men. I don't know if you guys read it as well when you were in high school. Mice of Men was the Lenny, you know, he would pet the rabbit and it would kill him because he was so strong. And so I took this class and there was a girl sitting in front of me. Her name was Carmen. She was one of the cheerleaders. And I would try to hide in front of this girl so Miss Collins wouldn't see me. She would say, Patrick, read the next paragraph. Oh my gosh. It was like the most embarrassing— think about it this way. The entire day when I go to school, I had one dread. You know what it was? 6th period, Miss Collins is gonna ask me to read in front of my 30 peers, right? So I hated reading. I couldn't stand it. I was a bad speller, the whole nine. So I go in the Army. For me, it was a math class. When I was in the military, I'd get bored. I'd go buy a math analysis book and I'd do formulas because math to me was very interesting because you're figuring life out. You're figuring out a formula and everything in life is math. If you look around everything in this room, this is purely a mathematical setup.

Up room, right?

And so all of a sudden I get out of the Army. My sister recommends me a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. And my first boss from Bally's recommends me How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins. And then I read those two, and then somebody recommended me Rich Dad Poor Dad. Those are my first three books. And then I said, you have got to be kidding me. I felt like I found a secret.

We are truly in the, the early stages of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. There is a digitization of every single industry on the planet, and ultimately that will lead to the digitization of every single company in one way, shape, form, or another. We have these talks about, oh, you know, everybody wants to be a king, right? No, you actually want to be an emperor, okay? And that's what Bezos has done, if you think about it, because now you can actually, you know, disintermediate entire industries. If you have the right platform. The next thing I think about is, you know, what creates, you know, as a chemical engineer, I like to think about the world in states of equilibrium. What is the next state of equilibrium in an industry? So that's the next lens through which I look at an industry. And if you can do that, you're going to know what's going to participate in that ecosystem of equilibrium and what is no longer necessary for that ecosystem to remain in equilibrium. So to a great extent, if you take the insurance business, well, do you need underwriters or do you just need underwriting? And then you have to ask yourself, well, do you need underwriting or do you actually need to just have some way to manage risk? And then you say, well, on the investment side of the house, do you really need investors to manage that risk or you just need to match assets with the liabilities over dated periods? So think about the equilibrium equilibrium states, what is going to be the equilibrium state that has, that can be achieved leveraging current elements of technology which have now accelerated through true machine learning, true artificial intelligence, and through true cognitive development associated with it. You see what I mean? Let me give an example. If you are in the automotive business and you are a very large-scale automotive company and you make cars or you make trucks, You participate in only one slice of that industry, but the equilibrium of that industry is going to be supplied by the parts, the insurance.

Oh, the supply chain, the supply chain and the changes.

All of it.

Massive, yeah.

Right, but you can't control that whole ecosystem. So from an opportunity perspective, the way we think about it is how do we become leaders in the ecosystem as opposed to participants in the silos? So that's to give you a sense for where we go and how we—

Interesting way to think about that.

I focus on things that are AI-driven, artificial intelligence-driven, whether it's machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, medical applications. But within AI, AI is a buzzword that everybody's using right now, you know, every— and, and to that point, you know, we as old guys, we go back and it's like 1995, we talk about the internet, and I would say to people back in 1995, '95, look, if you don't understand the internet, you're not going to be able to do business. And now that's just blocking and tackling, it seems obvious. Back then it wasn't. I could even take you further back to my first company. You know what we did, it was a company called MicroSolutions, and we did local area networks and wide area networks. And I used to walk into companies and say, you're going to have to hook these PCs together at some point. That'll make you more productive, more effective, you know, give you a competitive advantage. And people are like, from now, I just carry this floppy from this PC to that PC.

Yeah, okay.

But today we're at the same type of inflection point with artificial intelligence. You don't have to be an expert and be able to put together your own neural network. You know, you don't have to know what weights and biases are. But, but you have to have more than just a cursory understanding, just like you have have to know the difference between, you know, different types of websites, and you have to understand e-commerce if you're in e-commerce. You have to have a cursory understanding of how apps work. You're going to have to have at least, if not more, cursory understanding of artificial intelligence, because it will change everything we do. And if the internet was 10x in terms of change to business, artificial intelligence will be 100x or more. There's going to be disruption and change in the types of jobs, that's going to impact your customers, that's going to impact your businesses, that's going to impact the future of business. And so I can't— I don't want to be, you know, I want to be as clear and as forceful as I possibly can, because as fellow entrepreneurs, we always have to look for an edge. We always have to understand how our industry is changing. We always have to understand not only how we differentiate ourselves in our companies. But you always— I always want to know who can kick my ass, right? In all my businesses, who can kick my ass? And can I kick my own ass first? Because if you can disrupt yourself first, you're— the person who could otherwise do it is not going to do it, and you can compete and be successful. So pay attention to AI. It's important. I mean, look, if you go to my house right next to my bed, there's a book, Machine Learning for Dummies. If you go into my bathroom, there's Deep Neural Networks for Dummies, right?

If you go in—

there's a something for dummies in every room of my house, you know? That can go two ways, I know, but I'm just telling you, put the time— I mean, I've taken, you know, I can't even tell you how many hours now I spend every week. If not daily, working— like I'll go into Amazon AWS and go through their machine learning tutorials. Don't think to yourself, I'm not technical enough, or I'm not going to get this, or I don't get into this, or it's too much. Try it. Get as far as you can, because it's like doing a basic website and a little bit of HTML. Just having done that, you feel smarter, and you feel a little bit more confident about this. You know, I don't want to be an alarmist, but I'm trying to scare the hell out out to you because it's important.

To me, a breakthrough is a moment in time. It's a moment when the impossible becomes possible, and you don't just think about it, but you act upon it. You know, it's like you can have a concept— that doesn't create a breakthrough. The breakthrough is when you get to the point where you're actually going to do something about it. And I ask people all the time, I ask your listeners or viewers as well, it's like, I'm sure you've had a time where you struggle with something, right? You're gonna do something about this relationship, but you keep not changing it, right? You know, pulling back, or you're gonna stop smoking, or you're gonna go lose those 25 pounds, or whatever it is, and you start to make progress, and then you pull back, and you get disappointed, and get frustrated, but then there's some times where finally you hit this threshold, you hit this moment where your brain says, "Not another day, not another hour, I'm changing this relationship, I'm losing this weight, I'm making this happen," and people create that breakthrough, and it can happen, it's the difference between what triggers it, versus what makes it possible. What triggers it is usually pain or massive inspiration. Nothing in between does it. Most people, they hit a threshold of pain and say— it's like, you know, I ask people, how many of you ever been in a relationship way too long? And everybody raises their hand. I go, why? Why'd you stay? You weren't happy, they weren't happy. It's just because of the unknown, the uncertainties, the, the idea of change. It could be worse, you know, to be alone. But then there's that moment when you finally hit the threshold, you go, it's been painful It's painful in the past, it's painful now, it's gonna be painful in the future, I'm gonna change it now. So the trigger that finally made that happen, I'd ask your audience if they think of something where they finally broke through, what was the trigger? Usually that moment, that day you hit a threshold of I can't take anymore, I'm changing, or something inspired you. You saw something was possible and if they can do it, I can do it as well. But that's what makes it possible. What makes it last is a change in your emotions. Or changing your belief system, or a new strategy, right? You and I both know, because you're both strategists, the right strategy— hell, you can consume a book and remember more of it in 30 or 45 minutes than you did when you used to spend 10 days on the damn book, right? You know, it's the right strategy, but you're not going to find the strategy until it's a must for you, not a should, you know what I mean? Or it's that change in belief. It's like, okay, I've put up with this crap long enough, I'm better than this. There's something more in me that you finally find in yourself, or you finally get pissed off enough, or you get excited enough to make that real change. And so what I've studied is I like to take complex things and make them simple, because I found that, you know, the more— you know, when I was really young, I tried to make things more complex, I think to try to convince myself how smart I was, or other people, I don't know what, but it's stupid. 'Cause complexity is the enemy of execution, and the only way your life changes or your business changes is execution. So it's like, how do you make it simple? And I started looking at all these, you know, I've been doing this, this is my 45th year doing this. I started when I was 2, of course. And I started seeing these patterns all over the world, working with the greatest people on earth, athletes, business people, the most challenged people in prisons. Like, what are the common denominators in all these cultures? Cultures. And I began to see there's 3 things you need for a breakthrough, but most of us do them in reverse order, so we don't get the breakthrough. The number 1 thing most people do when they want to have a breakthrough— they don't— they want to change their body, want to change their finance— they look for a strategy, which makes common sense. That's what I used to do. But the problem is, strategy could be the problem, and maybe you need a better strategy, but that's not usually the real problem. Right? Like, for example, 3/4 of America is overweight or obese. If we're the fattest humans in the history of the world, we all know COVID, other than age, the number one risk factor is obesity. That's number one. And yet very few people do anything about it. And why is that? Is it because, you know, the strategy for being fit and strong is so complex, or only the 1% know it? Or it costs a fortune to do it. No, you have to be fighting not to see all the strategies to make your body physically better. They're around you everywhere. So it's, you could have the wrong strategy. Like I remember years ago on the COVID of Time Magazine, they had the Atkins diet and they said, I think it was 15% of Americans were doing it. Well, if you gotta pee on a stick so you don't get too acidic and your breath is that bad, it's pretty obvious that's not sustainable. So sometimes it's a strategy strategy problem. But when you work for the how first and you've never figured it out, your emotions get in the way. It's the wrong sequence. It's like the dog bit Johnny, Johnny bit the dog. Same words, different experience if you're Johnny. So strategy naturally is where people go, but rarely do they change with that. What the real problem usually is, the story they've developed. And a story is just code for all the things you've told yourself over and over again until you believe them, right? There's an old language pattern that says, tell a lie big enough, loud enough, long enough, sooner or later people believe it. That was Hitler who said that. And so most of us are Hitler in our own mind. So it's not that you can't— you know, what do people say? How come I can't lose weight? I can't lose weight because, you know, I've tried everything. No, if you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? They didn't try everything. I've tried millions of things. Really, name 'em. Well, I've tried hundreds, name 'em, and then they'll tell you 3 stupid things that don't work that they did over and over again, right? So it's the story. I don't have a relationship 'cause all the good ones are gone, or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they're not, or whatever the story is. The story is what'll keep you. Like, I'm sure, you know, Jim, you have so many great strategies you share with people. Have you had times when you give someone an answer right there in front of them and they just can't even see it, right? They don't believe it because the story is literally blinding them. In psychology, we call it a scotoma, a blind spot. But then there's one level deeper than even the story, and that's your state, the mental, emotional, physical state you're in. Because when you're in a low mental, emotional, physical state, you can have all the brain capacity in the world, but you're not going to use it. And so when you're in a lousy state, you come up with a lousy story, and then no strategy works. It doesn't matter what it is. I don't know if you've ever noticed, have you ever gotten really angry at somebody and then suddenly you remember all the ways they've ever screwed you over? You've been upset with them, right? But on the other hand, you fall in love and what's wrong with life? Nothing. I have no money, it doesn't matter, we're in love, it's all wonderful, right? So the sequence in which we do things accelerates or decelerates or stops progress when it comes to a breakthrough. And what I found is change the state first. You and I can talk and give people a million strategies, but if I'm sitting here at home in this state and I'm just listening like this and nodding like this, yeah, that makes— nothing's gonna happen. So the reason that I've done events over my lifetime and the reason why I do immersion events, you know, 10, 12, 14 hours a day— you learn a little bit at a time, like language. You don't remember the language a few years later, but I drop you in Rome and say, you got no teacher and you got 60 days, I'll be picking you up. I'll pick you up 60 days from now, you're gonna be speaking Italian, right? Especially if I put you maybe with some passionate people who are really going for it in their life, you're gonna have a whole different state about you, you're gonna develop a new story and you're gonna figure out the strategy. So I think the challenge for most people, especially with COVID is we've all had our state dropped. People have been isolated, they've been pushed at home, They've had expectations that have fallen away. Like, I remember a year ago, a lot of people are like, all right, we got vaccines now, it's a new year, it's going to be a brand new thing, you know, 2021. Now this year, you talk about it, people don't even have any goals or anything because they've gone into learned helplessness because they've been disappointed so many times. They start thinking the problem's forever.

No problem is forever.

No war is forever. No pandemic is forever. Your, your mind is weak now. And it's gotten weak habits and you're in a lowered state, so you start to believe that. And so it's like, you got to change people's state first, then you got to give them the story that it can help them, then you give them the strategies that work. And they're— even if you don't give them the strategy, they'll figure out their own strategy. You're a perfect example of that, right? You figured it out because you got yourself to the point where it's like, I've got to turn this around. And then you have something that you can give, and that expands your life, as you've experienced, Jim.

Me and Jeff had come out with our smash hit, Parents Just Don't Understand. We made a bunch of money, we won a Grammy, The album was triple platinum. I had motorcycles and cars. I called the Gucci store in Atlanta and I was like, "Hey, will y'all close it down if I bring my friends?" And I'm smiling, but that's stupid. We released our next album and it was like a flop. It was a tragedy. It went like double plastic. I spent most of my money, like all of it. I spent all my money. And I didn't forget, but I didn't pay the IRS.

In my mind, I mean, I wasn't like trying to avoid paying taxes.

I was just like, "Oh damn, they need their money." The IRS took all of that stuff. So I was like broke, broke, broke. Being famous and broke is a shitty combination, 'cause you still famous and people recognize you, but they recognize you while you sitting next to them on the bus. And the stuff they ask you to sign on a bus, you know, like, "Ooh, can you sign my baby?" That's a Sharpie. I probably shouldn't just write on the baby with that. "Oh, you too big to sign my baby." Well, nah, I mean, you know, so I signed it. So I was like bland, around, and my girlfriend was like, dude, we're not doing this.

Like, you're not just gonna be laying around this house all day.

You gonna go do something.

I was like, what?

What I'm supposed to do?

Go where people is, is doing it.

Where are people doing it?

Go to the Arsenio Hall Show.

Just go stand around at the Arsenio Hall Show?

Yes.

That's stupid.

So I went to the Arsenio Hall Show. And I met a dude named Benny Medina. Benny Medina is the real-life Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, except he actually went from Watts to Beverly Hills. Same basic concept, way shorter distance. I meet Benny, and he pitches me the idea for this show, and I'm like, you know, I'm not an actor. I'm like, "Cool." And he says, "Hey, you know, I want you to meet Quincy Jones. Quincy Jones is producing with me." So I find myself at Quincy's, And it's actors and artists and celebrities and politicians. It's like everybody that Quincy's out. It's like The Wiz without the costume. So Benny walks me in and introduced me to Quincy. Hey Q, what's up, man? He said, hey man, you know, I saw your music videos. I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing.

Tell me your rap name again.

They call me the Fresh Prince.

All right, good.

That's what we gonna call the show.

And he handed me a screenplay for a film failed Morris Day pilot. Like, I don't have the time.

So I need you to do this.

I need you to go ahead and take a few minutes, take 10 minutes, study the script, and I'm gonna clear all this stuff out the living room, and we're gonna have everybody sit down in the living room.

We're gonna do an audition.

He had movers that could reset his furniture.

I was like, this dude is real.

So goes out, tells everybody, come on, come on, come on.

And I was like, hey Q, hold up, man, hold up. I'm not ready to do no audition.

And he said, oh, Oh, all right, all right. Well, what you need?

Tell me what you need.

Just set the meeting for a week and I can do it. He said, yeah, yeah, you know, Brandon Tartikoff, the head of NBC, is out there. I'll get him to schedule for next week. And then you know what's gonna happen? Something gonna come up and then he's gonna have to reschedule. Oh yeah, yeah.

So 3 weeks from now, Q, we can do it 3 weeks from now.

I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, 3 weeks from now would be good.

Or you could take 10 minutes right now and you can change your life forever. And I was like, Fuck it then. Yes, give me 10 minutes. I said yes, and I let it rip, and I got to the end, and everybody is clapping. Quincy looks at Brandon Tartikoff, the head of NBC.

Did you like it?

And Brandon said, yeah, yeah, I liked it. Quincy says, no, did you like it? And he's like, yeah, I liked it. He's like, good, you're his lawyer, draw me up something right now.

The first time we met, you mentioned that we are the future of the company, and And in this residency program, I've been having that as a mindset.

Going into the next 5 years, what is the best mindset and the learning path that I can take to become the future of this company?

And I'm not saying become where you are, I'm just saying like to grow in this company and to be a big part of it.

It's a great question. I think a couple things. One is self-awareness. You know, let me give you an example of what I mean by that. There are plenty of times, and I'm as happy as it gets professionally, and there are still plenty of times that I say, huh, I wonder how cool it would have been to have the DNA that would have made me— like, I'm envious of a lot of my senior employees. I'm like, you know, you know, like yesterday, like being sick, that was it was not only bad to have 103 fever, it was even worse knowing that I was missing things that were really important. And like, I can't like rely on anybody else to do that role. So I think first of all, self-awareness. When you have ambition, you know, even you asking that question, my fear is that you push yourself into places on an ideology versus the reality of who you actually are. So I think the best way people can be the future of this company is, one, they have a good sense of themselves. Two, they have a good sense of what they want in life financially, creatively, work-life balance. Three, this is a big one, I want everybody to pay attention to this one. Three, that they have the capacity to change their mind 5 years from now. So some of you right now might be like, I actually do want Gary's job. I want to be the C— global CEO of VaynerX in 20 years. And I think that's rad. On the flip side, you may fall deeply, deeply in love in 7 years and then start a family and be like, fuck that, you know, I want to be like my mom or dad, or I want to be the reverse of my mom and dad. And I want to be at every recital and every ballgame. And that's not going to let you be the global CEO of VaynerX. That's just real talk. So I think that If you have a good sense of who you are, if you're comfortable in who you are, and if you're willing to change your mind of what you want, that's a huge starting point.

So John and I, like I said, rugby players, played for the Hawaii Harlequins rugby team. And I'm talking to him and he's telling me about all the rich people we knew in Hawaii who were going broke. I'm going, you gotta tell that story. Because as I said, I, you know, in 1974 was the first 401(k). 401(k), it was called ERISA, Employee Retirement Income Security Act. And I was still in the Marine Corps and I was flying out of Hawaii and I went to listen to these pitches on how to sell a 401(k). And I said, these guys are lying through their teeth because the advantage I had is I had a rich dad and I had a poor dad. And my poor dad was the village idiot. He was a PhD, which stands for poor, helpless, and desperate. He ran the school system for the state of Hawaii and he thought the 401(k) was wonderful. I'm going, you gotta be kidding me. And my rich dad was my best friend's father. He goes, oh my God, boy, talk about a license to steal money from stupid people called employees. So I came from a different, so this is '74, I'm still in the Marine Corps and the first thing My rich dad said to me, if you're gonna be a rich man, you better learn two things right now. Be an entrepreneur, you know, but he says, you've got to learn how to sell. And secondly, you've got to know real estate 'cause real estate is debt and taxes. And that's, what do you mean debt and taxes? So in 1974, I took my first real estate course and opened my eyes up because you don't, You don't need money to buy real estate and you pay no taxes on top of it. So just before I get out of the Marine Corps, you know, I got a job with Xerox, learned how to sell. So I got sales and then I understood real estate. So why am I rich man today? Because I took two courses, learn how to sell and learn about real estate. And my poor dad, the PhD says, go back to school, get your MBA and get your PhD. I'm going, then I'd wind up like you. A poor, highly educated man with a 401k.

Next question is from Rusty Pang. This comes from Facebook. It said that the way you are thinking now won't work for where you want to be. So how does one break the old thinking and replace it with new thinking? To me, that comes down to an ability, and this is one of those scary things because it's hard to gain this ability, but the ability to assess accurately accurately whether or not you're actually moving towards your goals. So everything starts with this hyper-specific goal, and this is why you can't in any way, shape, or form be nebulous about what it is you wanna do. And I think that a lot of people are super fucking vague about what their goals are, and the easiest way for me to explain it is to say most people have the equivalent of a goal in their mind of something like this. The words they actually use, this is the single most common, I wanna help people. Okay, great, That's really noble and I love that, and I love that that's something that I hear all the time, but the problem is that's like saying I wanna win a gold medal in the Olympics. Okay, well, summer or winter? Summer? Great. Tennis or swimming? Swimming?

Great.

Which event? Because until you get to the exact event that you want, you don't know what to train, you don't know what skills you need, you don't know what muscle groups you need to be training, you don't have the goal in mind, and if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. So you need to create some environment where you know, here are the things that I'm going to measure that I need to get good at in order to win that gold medal. So if you want to win the gold medal, then you need to understand what kind of time do you have to swim in that event in order to qualify historically for a gold medal. That's a really good place to start. And then looking at the contemporary competition and understanding on their best day where they're setting the bar for a gold medal, and either you're swimming you're either moving that fast or you're not. And so it all becomes entirely measurable. You can find trainers and coaches that understand how to get you there, but it all started with that really, really specific goal. So if you don't have that specific goal, then you can't even put a roadmap by which then you can see if you're actually making progress towards that or not. So invariably in the beginning, you're almost certainly gonna be doing the wrong things. You're gonna be doing things that aren't moving you as rapidly towards your goal as you want. But when you can measure it and you have that roadmap and you can accurately identify whether or not you're taking steps, then you can adjust, tweak, and move on. So I'll give you guys an example. The whole reason that I'm here in New York was to meet with the former head of one of the major comic book companies, and literally I said, I have two questions, and I spent two days with him. Over the next two days, your job is to help me answer two questions. Question number one, why Why am I going to fail? And then question number 2, once I understand why I'm going to fail, how do I ensure that I succeed? And then you really look at just the really fucking hard answers. And once you have that in place, then it's like, okay, I've got a rough idea of what I need to be executing against, the things that I'm going to need to learn, the people that I'm going to need to talk to, the problems with distribution that have to be solved or accounted for, of that, and then you go build out answers to those problems, and you see which ones work, and then you change and adjust as you go. But that really is, at a very high level, one of the things you have to do. Talk to people that already know, get them to break down for you the things you need to be doing, and that's how you evolve your thinking over time. All right, next question is from Carolina Wilk. This is from Facebook.

Tom!

Exclamation point. How do you make yourself do things that you don't you don't want to but have to. There's really only one way that I know to do this reliably, and that is to really care deeply about the thing that you're trying to do. So to me, it's about identifying something that you get more energy out of than it takes from you. And I think people try to sum that up by saying find something that you're passionate about. And first of all, you have to be really careful because you don't find You're going to create passion. Passion is created, it's not discovered. So how do you learn to create that excitement around something that you care about? So do that by encountering a lot of things until you find one that really piques your interest, and then engage with that heavily. And as you engage with that, learn to fan the flames to really create it as an obsession, which one of the easiest ways to create it as an obsession goes like this. Say in your head This is something that I really enjoy, I love, it interests me for all these reasons. Like, loop back over that as to why it's something that really drives you. Focus on the things that you like, repeat it in your head. Man, I really got into that, I got into it for this reason, this is why I'm excited about this, and then externalize that. And a huge part of this, and one of the things that I do, one of the reasons that when I'm doing a live like this, like these guys will tell you in the room, 2 seconds before we started rolling, I was talking in a totally different manner than I am right now. I'm using much bigger physical expressions, and I do that because I, for these lives to give me more energy than they take, I need to embody the excitement. I need to remind myself of connecting with you guys and why that's important to me and why that's fun. And in doing that, it makes me want to do the next live even more because I remember how it gave me energy instead of just taking it away. And I think about connecting with you guys, and I think about the people that write in and all that stuff. So I'm intentionally doing that I'm intentionally looping around the things in the community that bring value to me. I'm intentionally embodying my excitement during this so that then as I replay this later in my mind that I remember how it was exciting and it was fun. So learning to do those things, learning to take conscious control of that process is gonna give you the excitement that you need. Then when you hit those things that you don't wanna be doing, you're so excited and you so embody that enthusiasm enthusiasm for the thing you're trying to do that you believe in, that mission, that goal, that thing that like you would die for and you've built into your life to live for it, that thing is giving you that energy. It becomes your passion. And that passion is the thing that's gonna see you through. But you created all of that. So make sure that whatever you're trying to do, you actually give a shit about. That's the real answer.

One of the things I started to get around mid- mid to late '90s, is that everybody that I had on the show, at the end of the show, would say something to me like, "Was that okay? Was that okay? How was that? Was that okay?" At the end of the interview. And I started to then track it. It didn't matter if it was— I had gone and done a show where I was in a prison. I was interviewing a father who was in jail for life for murdering his twin daughters. And at the end of the interview, even behind bars, he said to me, "Is that okay? How'd I do?" And Barack Obama said it when he sat in the chair the first time, and George Bush said it. Beyoncé said it at the end of— she taught me how to twerk and then said, "Is that okay?" Right, right, right.

So that's an acquired skill. That's a required skill, isn't it?

Yes, it's a working thing.

But this is what I learned sitting in that chair for 25 years, that at the end of the day, whether you are interviewing me or I get to interview you, whatever your profession is, wherever you are in your life, in your relationships, every person that you encounter, every experience, A person wants to know, was that okay? Was that okay? And what I started to hear was that what people are really saying is, did you hear me? Did you hear me? And did what I say mean anything to you? And so I started to listen with that in mind, with that intention of validating that your being here, your speaking to me, your taking the time to do you matter. And that's true for everybody who's watching or listening, that every argument that you ever have, every encounter, the person just wants to know, did you hear me? Did you see me? And did I say anything that mattered?

One of the things that to me is the most difficult thing in my entire career is becoming a top producer. Because the moment you become a top producer, you become susceptible to acceptable to thinking you have the life. I grew up in a little town in Louisiana, a little small town, about 60,000 people. You probably hear the accent. And I grew up in a middle class family. My dad died when I was 10 years old. My mother raised us, and my mother constantly told me how proud I should be of myself. How many of you got a mother like that? You should be be so proud of yourself. Okay? Every time my mom was my best friend and every time I would have a success, it didn't matter whether I was 18 years old or 48 years old. Anytime I had a success, she was the first person I called. I wouldn't call my girlfriend, wouldn't call my wife, wouldn't call any of the people that were closest to me. I'd call my mom. I'd say, Mom, you'd never believe I just bought a real estate deal. I started this company. I bought my first real estate deal. It's 38 units. It's $4 million. And she'd be like, that's awesome. She said, "I love you just the way you are." And I'm like, "Okay, okay, thanks." She told me that 1,000 times. How many had a parent tell you, "I love you, that's great, that's great you made $160 grand last year, but I love you just the way you are." How many hear that? Okay, that's right out of the 10X Rule.

I don't know if you know that.

That's right out of the 4 actions. Anybody know what action is? Average, average, I'm doing well. Okay, there's 4 levels of action. Number 1 is I do nothing. If I rewrote this book, I would take that out. That's actually impossible. To do nothing at all is impossible. Try doing it right now. To do nothing means you had to make a decision to do something and not do it. This is actually not true. I wouldn't put it in the book if I rewrote it. The second level of action is to retreat. This is what most people do, by the way. How many had a commitment commitment to work out today and didn't. Okay. Okay. Yo, I was up late, whatever. You came up with whatever reason. I'm going to make the call. By the way, any retreat in life, any single retreat is a discipline and a commitment to retreat when it matters. So, so every time you make a decision, you just need to be aware that what are you doing here? Okay. There's only 4 things you can do in on any given day, right? You could do nothing, you could retreat, or you could do this average. Now I know you guys are being told that you're the top, you're the top, you're the best, you made it to Miami. But I'm just going to tell you right now, ain't, ain't not a person in this room is above number 3. No, I'm not there, okay? And I know how much I'm grinding every day, how much I'm pushing I do every day. How many, how many hours I put into a day. What's the maximum number of hours you can do in a day? Not if you add people. If you added people, you got to think beyond the 24th thing. Once you guys get committed, once you get committed, then you will come up with solutions outside the physical universe. Okay? You're already doing that. Your space is, your space is bizarre. Okay?

Here it is.

Bunch of people in the room that, that, like, I don't know anything about technology. I'm 61 years old. I was born in 1958. I am supposed to be outside of that moment of technology, yet I'm probably one of the top 5 social media people in the world today, banging on Instagram and Snapchat and LinkedIn and Google+ that'll go away, using all these mechanisms to try to get attention so that I can operate at this level, 10x thing, this massive level that is always changing, by the way. You can't 10x something. People are like, man, I'd write the book— if I wrote the book, I'd write it 11x. I'm like, that's because you don't understand 10x, dude. 10x is a multiplier. It's 10x, which is 100. Okay, so what I do, what I did in when Lehman collapsed, I wrote The 10X Rule. And I wrote the book because I realized I had done something wrong. That book was written for me. And the reason when I closed the book, the reason I was like, eh, whatever, I had figured out what I had done wrong, okay? I had to embrace the idea that $3 or $4 million in a bank and a house paid for and 2 cars and a marriage and I got it better than everybody else and my mama loves me just the way I am was all this, this middle class, this American, particularly here in America. How many of you live in America?

Okay.

In America, the middle class, it is the sleeping chamber on planet Earth. Okay. People come here, people come here, they come from India and China, come to here to get a middle class. Dude, I don't want anything to do with this. You're middle class, you will not change the world. You might change your house. You might change the education your little kids get, okay? They get to go to Texas A&M, big deal, right? He told me that he went to Texas. I said, oh, that had to screw you up bad, just going to a college. Why? Because what do they manufacture at college? They manufacture average people at college. So I want to challenge you today. Okay, I want to challenge you today. I want to challenge you today to start thinking, hey, wait a minute, am I even a top producer?

I read that you said if there's one skill you have, it's making offers. What do you mean by making offers? So offers are the terms of exchange. So I— right before I started my first gym, I went to this weekend workshop to learn how to market. Get this, this is 2013. It was on Facebook ads. And so I got lucky. So I learned how to run Facebook ads in 2013, 2 weeks before I started my gym. This is when you're getting penny clicks and you could put a girl with a bikini and say weight loss, click here, and it would run. And so at this thing, I hadn't opened my gym yet, and the guy was like a gym marketing dude. And he said, do you want to know the secret to sales? Because he could see I was way over my head. All the other guys there were gym owners except for me. And I was like, yeah, because I'd never at that point had never sold anything. I didn't even know the word sales was a thing. That's how out of it I was. And so he pulled me over to the side and he asked me that question. I like pulled my notebook out to like learn the secret to sales as though it was one line. And it kind of was. He said, make people an offer they'd be— they feel stupid saying no to. And I like wrote it down and highlighted it. And that actually became like a core concept that we do in every business, in every business that we have, which is like How can we make this offer better? How can we make it more valuable? And that was why defining value was such a key thing, because people like provide more value, make valuable content. I'm like, what does this mean? And so we boiled down value into 4 variables. And then there's things that enhance value, but like core variables and then things that enhance it. So like one is like, what is the overall dream outcome of the customer? And so a difference in juxtaposition is like for guys, if I say I can help you make more money versus I can help you lose weight, most guys would pay more for the thing that would give them more relative status. And so in that way, between two types, two categories of outcomes, this one would be more valuable. Okay, cool. Now within everything, and let's call it weight loss because that's an easy one everyone can understand. Within weight loss, every other thing between a $5 e-book and a $50,000 liposuction surgery, the difference in those prices are the other value variables. And so the second variable is perceived likelihood of achievement. Which is if I buy this thing, how likely do I think I will get the outcome? And so if I have a surgeon that's going to do this liposuction, for example, and it's the first surgery they've done out of medical school, and there's another surgeon that has done 10,000 and has 10,000 5-stars, which one would I be more likely to go to? The 10,000 5-star surgery, even if it actually takes that guy less time to do it. How unfair. But my perceived likelihood of getting what I want is significantly higher. So it's actually the equal opposite of risk. Those are the things that we try and enhance in the offers. We try and have a very compelling dream outcome, try and make it very likely that they're going to succeed and give— there's lots of elements that make someone feel like it's likely that they'll succeed. On the bottom half of the equation, so it's a fraction, there's 2 on the top, 2 on the bottom. You have time delay between when they buy and when they get. So if someone were able to click a button on a website and immediately look at their stomach and have a 6-pack, that would be incredibly valuable, right? On the flip side, if it takes them 2 years in order to get that, it's significantly less valuable. And so for that same reason, you have to arm wrestle someone to get them to buy a personal training package. You have to spend an hour and a half to get them to buy a 20-pack of trading sessions, whereas women walk into the doctor's office to do liposuction and drop 20 times that amount of money because the time delay is nothing. You get on the table, you wake up and you're thin, right? Then the last, the last variable is effort and sacrifice, which is two sides of the same coin. So effort are the things that you have to start doing that you don't want to do as a result of this purchase. Waking up early, getting sore, like in the workout example, eating foods you hate. On the flip side, the sacrifice are the things that you have to give up that you don't want to give up as a result of this purchase. And so that might be sleeping in, eating the foods you enjoy, Margarita Mondays, whatever. And so when you look at these variables, each of them has a, has a, has an evil twin, right? So you've got perceived likelihood of achievement, which is the positive, and then you've got risk, which is the negative. You've got time delay, which is the negative version. You've got speed, which is the positive version. You've got effort and sacrifice. You've got ease, right? And so when we're trying to make an offer, we try and think through each of these elements of value and think, how can we maximize the upside, make it super, super likely they're going to hit it, paint the vision that they have it, and then on the bottom side, minimize the time delay between when they buy and when they get, and how much they have to do. Because in a perfect world, the moment someone says, I want that thing, that beautiful dream outcome, they'd be virtually guaranteed they would get it. It would happen immediately and it would be effortless. And I think that is the perfect ideal that we look at in terms of value. And as entrepreneurs, we innovate our way to just keep trying to chisel towards that perfect ideal outcome that we'll never actually get to. You want to know the truth?

If you're going to have a long-term relationship with somebody, this is something people don't talk about ever, but I'll say it. You better stay attracted to them. You better have physical intimacy with them. And if you don't maintain that part of your relationship, like you keep dating, like, man, you start keeping it spicy all the time. Physically, I'm talking about what starts to happen over time is you start living with just your friend. And in most relationships, I have a lot of friends. I don't want to lay next to them every single night.

Yeah, right.

I got a bunch of really good friends that are male and female, and I don't want to be married to them. And if you allow your spouse to turn into just your friend, that you lose that intimacy, that physical connection. One of the keys, I would say, is I'm super attracted to her still, and I think she's incredibly—

incredibly—

for no reason whatsoever, miraculously attracted to me still. And so I think that's one part of your evaluation. How often do you touch each other? Do you hold each other's hands? At different stages of your relationship, physical intimacy can look different ways. I doubt at 80 years old we're going to be doing what we do now, But I'm going to be dancing with her in the living room, I hope. When I was dating her, man, interesting thing. It was hard because her parents had a great marriage. It was their second marriage, which usually those are great, sometimes better, because you figure stuff out. But every time I go pick her up for a date— not every time, that's not true. Many times when you'd walk up to her front door, you could see in their living room. And I get emotional even saying this, but I would walk up to the front door and I'd expect it almost after a while. I'd see Howard and Patricia, her mom and dad, slow dancing in the living room, and there's just music on, no TV. They would just dance together slow. And I don't know what they were doing after that. I don't want to know. But the point I'm making to you is they kept it romantic. They kept physical intimacy in their relationship. And he was in his 70s and she was in her 60s, but they kept that going. It was such a good example for me because my parents, who are very much in love, never touched each other. I never saw them say I love you. They weren't physical at all around us and didn't even touch us very often. I'm real conscious of always touching my kids and hugging them and always making sure they feel me. And so I think that's been one of the foundations of our deal. We do a date night once a week, so we're actually out doing something. And we're very, very different people. She doesn't have an ambitious bone in her body, no achievement. She could have any clothing she wants. She wears jeans and a t-shirt. I'm sure there's nothing about her that's that way, but she believes in me. She believes in me. And people can love you and not really believe in you. She believes in me. And that's always given me strength and confidence throughout all of our ups and downs or whatever they are. I feel like that's one of the great gifts is her belief in me.

What is that? Those three things, money and credit, wealth and political gaps, and the rise of China.

What does someone like myself or some 30, 40, 45-year-old, 20-year-old, what should they do with that information?

What should they be aware of?

How should they apply it?

Does it apply to people in America, general America, or does it only apply to the wealthy?

What should we be thinking about? No, it affects everybody, you know, it affects, like, we know Let's start with ourselves. Most importantly, forget about the outside thing. Can we be healthy and strong? And what do we need to do? Like, to know that you, you have to be in it together. Like, if we can row in the same direction, okay, if, if we can have thoughtful disagreement and get past that, if we can be in it together, like the wealthy and the poor, And, you know, and if you figure it out, and I know it sounds so difficult, but at the same time, if you read history and you see what happens when it's not, when you have a civil war, like we could be on the brink of a civil war. That sounds so crazy, but the truth is in most countries and in almost every century, there was a civil war or a revolution, some form of civil war or revolution. So it's almost inevitable that we're gonna have something, okay? You either resolve it or you start fighting so badly that you really do terrible things to each other.

Until you resolve it, yeah.

Well, once you cross a certain line, there's no coming back. Okay, because you do the damage, you demonize, and that person's such an enemy, or that class of people is such an enemy that the communication's gone and the fight— Well, you see this in politics today. In other words, is there a respect for the system and a mutual respect of trying to find, resolve these types of things, or will they go to any lengths to win? Because a constitution or law will only carry you to so far, okay? There has to be an element of respect for it, right? If you think about the presidential election, it's quite something that we as a country, as a people, when somebody might win the popular vote, somebody else wins the electoral vote, There's not even an argument. Like in other countries, you might say those who had the popular vote would say, what the hell, I've won the popular vote, I think it matters. And somebody says electoral vote and so on. Okay, there's not a question about that. Okay, now when you start to say, okay, is it this vote or that vote or this thing or that? And how far are you willing to go to fight? And does Do rules matter? When you start to get across that line and you do harm, you hurt, and you alienate, then you go to accelerate this process. And people should know what that looks like, how terrible it is. So maybe if they know what it looks like and how terrible it is, and they can empathize a little bit. But I see people don't, don't, See it. I'm living in Greenwich, Connecticut. Connecticut has the highest per capita income in the country, and it's got the largest wealth gap. Most of the people in Connecticut are pretty poor.

Really?

Some cases, very poor. Oh, I'll give you an example. This is the community my wife works to help high school students. 22% of the high school students in Connecticut are either disengaged or disconnected. What that means is disengaged means they have an absentee rate which is greater than 25% and they're failing classes.

They don't show up to class.

That's right. They show up, you know, three-quarters of the time and they're failing. Or that's disengaged. Disconnected is they don't know where they are. They've dropped out of school. 22%, 1 in 5. So school is not working for them, and they're in desperately poor areas. Like, okay, we have the coronavirus, and so her efforts and our efforts are philanthropic. That's what got her involved. They don't have computers. They don't have connectivity. They, they don't— they have, they have problems getting food. They get food in school. They need the food in school because they don't have adequate food, okay? And This is Connecticut, and it's right up the road. So we had to, we bought these kids, 60,000 kids computers, and then we're trying to get connectivity and so on. And you start to see this, okay, this is the same world. Now, so I live in one neighborhood with my community, and then there's the other. They don't understand each other. They haven't lived there, they haven't empathized, and in fact, there are resentments on both sides, right? Like the people in my community, they don't feel that they're very rich by comparison to those other people, but also to take care of their families, to educate them, they have their own challenges, the work-life balance and so on. They have their financial insecurities and so on. So that's what they're focused on. And then they might think, oh, these other people, they're not taking care of themselves. Why don't they pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Do you know what it's like to be a kid growing up in that neighborhood and trying to— what, what are you talking about? You can't pull yourself up from— I mean, well, you know, there's a problem. There's not enough food. There are gangs. They even walking to school, past neighborhoods that are gang shootings, and you can't, and there are not enough police to do it. Okay, so these two worlds exist. And then the others say, you know, well, here we are and you're walking around with your fancy cars and your, you know, fancy clothes and so on, and we're suffering. I mean, come on. And so they don't understand each other and so on. We have to get past this. We have to be in it together, I think, otherwise we're gonna kill each other.

For a lot of people, sometimes they put themselves in positions that are not areas of strength. So if you wanna do what I do, and I say, well, you know, I wanna go do what this guy did, you better have your core values, principles, vision, purpose so crystal clear like I had in, you know, '09, because before I was gonna do this, 6 months prior to that, I had a meeting with a man named George Will, who was an advisor to 2 different presidents before. And we sat down and we had a conversation at Miramar Hotel. A friend of mine introduced me to a man named Larry Arnn and Larry Greenfield and Pat Boone and all these guys. Jon Voight, you may know Jon Voight, the actor, father of Angelina Jolie. So I'm with these guys and I ask 'em, I said, "Look, I'm trying to figure out what my next move is. And it can't be just money 'cause money's too easy to make. This is America. What is my next move?" So they said, "Why don't you go study why immigrants came to America?" And that's what I did. Post that, that got into my blood and my veins and my bones, and I couldn't help myself. Once that became real, then from there it was very natural for me to say, look, if I sink, I'm okay, I'm gonna swim. But if I lose it all, I'm totally fine with that. So one cannot make that decision that blatantly, that reckless that you may call it. I may not call it reckless, but to you may be reckless. You can't do it if you don't have the clear purpose. If you have it and it's crystal clear and you're determined, that you're not willing to live your life without this becoming a reality, go do it.

I just remember growing up in, call it, recently desegregated schools in Denver, and you grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood. There was a Japanese family that lived around the corner, and I know why they lived there. If you think about how they were, Japanese Americans were treated during the war, etc. But, you know, we had our own grocery stores and own doctors, and I had— I lived next to the Lieutenant Governor of the state, who was black, in two states, and a state senator who was a representative who was black. But I looked at how we lived, I said, you know, everyone tells me education is the key, and it wasn't bad, but I could tell the kids who I went to school with lived a whole lot differently than we did, and none of their parents had PhDs, right? So I said, something there's a gap here, and I wanted to understand what that was. So that's what led me to actually think about, you know, what is it? It isn't just education, that's a part of it, there's no question, but it's access to opportunity, access to mentorship, access to know-how, and it gets back into that intellectual property piece. You know, it's knowledge, and I tell people in America we have really 6 exports, all of them intellectual property-based at the end of the day. It's knowledge and insights and information that if you don't have that, no matter in some respects how much capital, how much desire you have, it's going to be hard for you to move along the wealth chain and expand the opportunity set for yourself and your family.

How can I be successful, you know, in one of your companies? If you want to be successful as an entrepreneur or as an employee, reduce the stress of those around you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, you'll find like in every company, we've all— every organization, every unit, whatever, you'll find that there's people who think they're indispensable, right? And 9 out of 10 times, they're the ones that create the most stress. And they create all that stress and they think, look at all this stress around me. I must be indispensable because no one else could deal with all this stress. But what I found is the people that— wait, Ryan, I haven't heard from Ryan. Oh, he's killing it, right? I got his report. Yeah, I've been seeing his reports. He's doing well. Ryan's just doing his thing. The people who are doing their thing and getting results and getting things done, like Sean Patel is here. He's one of my Shark Tank, you know, bottle breacher, our riveter. I get— the way I work with my Shark Tank investments, I get a weekly report. I always ask for bad news first. Fast so that I can deal with the issues. Because I expect good news. That's why I invested in you. But these guys that you're going to meet coming up here next, they just get shit done. Right? The problems they have is maybe they're selling too much and they run out of inventory and somebody gets upset and then they fix it and learn from it and anticipate it so they don't deal with it again. But one of the tips, if you're going to write something down, write this down. If you want to be successful, reduce the stress of those around you. Everybody wants to work from, with, work for, buy from, partner with people who reduce their stress levels. Would you like to work with somebody who increases your stress level? No, right? So keep that in mind.

So if you're feeling sad or frustrated, COVID, and you don't know what's happening in the future and you're uncertain, you go like, oh, what do I want? I don't know. Because your mental emotional state is the single most important ingredient to not only success but fulfillment. And most of us do not know how to manage it. And when I say manage it, I'm really talking about your mind and your emotions, right? Those are the two things that if you can master those, because most people are trying to master the outside world and you can't control the outside world, you can influence it. But the one thing you can control is how you use your mind, what you do with your emotions. And if you think about the quality of your life, you know, again, look at people who supposedly have everything and they're miserable. I get those phone calls from the people that are so quote famous, the great actors, the great musicians, they won the Academy Award, they just won the gold medal, and they're literally depressed. And the reason is because they thought getting something would eventually make them feel a certain way, and it does for this long, and then you're off to the next thing. And then, well, when you work so hard for something forever like that, it's not there. So what I really like people to understand is that the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions. If you have a billion dollars and every day your habitual emotions are feeling frustrated and stressed and overwhelmed, overwhelmed, your life is called frustrated, stressed, and overwhelmed. If you have 3 beautiful children and a great husband or a wife or boyfriend or girlfriend, and every day you worry, your life is not love, your life is worry. It doesn't matter how you have this beautiful family. So think of it, emotions control the quality of our life, and we have habitual emotions. That's why you'll see people who, you know, they're always angry about something. I'm sure you know somebody like that, or they're always worried about something. If they're not worried about somebody they know, they worry about something they don't even or some people that think they're funny and they're not, but they have a good time. Who do you want to hang out with? So learning how to direct our emotions, and emotions create everything, everything you want in your quote-unquote success will be driven by having certain drives of emotion. And think about it, emotions create wars, emotions create peace eventually, emotions are what get you in a relationship, emotions how we all got here. You know, somebody had sex and that was driven by emotion. So we are incredibly emotionally unfit today. You know, we're fearful about everything. It's nobody's fault. It's just culturally we've been conditioned to get everything instantly by having it in our fingertips, in our phone or our iPad or our computer, whatever the case may be. And so now when people don't get what they want immediately, I'm sure you've seen somebody standing on the street corner and they're banging on their phone like, give it a minute, it's going to a satellite and back, you know. People today have zero patience, and then that messes up the next part that's really your life. Quality of life's quality of your emotions, but your emotions are magnified by the quality of your relationships. If you have terrible relationships, it's going to be hard to stay in a great emotional state. And so what I try to teach people is, what do you do to take control of your mind and emotions? And fundamentally, the most basic thing you got to do, especially at a time like COVID, is you got to every day have a couple of simple practices. One of those is every day you got to feed your mind. And when I say feed your mind, I mean consciously seek out something that's gonna give you new insight, new inspiration, new way of looking at things. 'Cause otherwise today the news follows you, right? It's in your pocket. And the news people are good people, but they're doing their job. What's their job? Make as much profit as possible. How do you get the most profit? Get the most people to watch. How do you get the most people to watch? Fear. If it bleeds, it leads is the phrase they use in journalism, right? And we've seen so much fear built up now that most people have lost their faith. And you can't lose it, fortunately, it's just a muscle that needs to be regained. But you have to fill your mind, you have to pursue it. Great ideas are not going to interrupt you, they have to be pursued. And the good news is today, if you get away from just the traditional news, you can do go to podcasts like Boss Babes, you can go to different locations, you can get another perspective and you can feed your mind. If you don't feed your mind, my original teacher was a guy named Jim Rohn, and he used to say, "Tony, I got a question for you." He said, "What if your worst enemy puts sugar in your coffee? What's going to happen to you when you drink that coffee?" I said, "You're going to have sweet coffee." He said, "What if your family member, your friend, your love by accident drops one drop of strychnine? What's going to happen when you drink that coffee?" I said, "You're going to be dead." And he goes, "That's right. Life is sugar and strychnine, so watch your coffee." Like every day you gotta stand guard at the door of your mind, especially at times like this when there's so much fear. So you feed your mind. And then the second thing you gotta do is the mind and the body work together. Meaning fear is physical, but so is courage. Have you ever been so scared that, you know, like you have a hard time swallowing or you feel like in your gut, you know, that kind of fear? That's physical. But courage is not that you're not afraid. Courage is you're scared, you know what, Liz, but you're gonna do it anyway, right? That it's a muscle, and courage comes from doing something physical. So every day you got to feed your mind and you got to do something physical to push yourself beyond what you're normally comfortable with. Meaning go for a jog or a run or walk really fast or go lift some weights a little more than you're used to. Because every time you push yourself to go beyond what's comfortable, you get more comfortable with a bigger challenge. And pretty soon what was hard is easy. And it isn't just the weight or the run, It's what happens to your mind and emotions because they work together. And then what you got to do is really you got to find a great role model and decide, what do I want to go after? And let me have them show me a way, show me the way, at least the pattern, rather than me learning by trial and error. And then I got to take action. And then ideally, I got to help somebody who's worse off than I am because that'll give me fuel to remind me that my life is there. You know, you know, I feed, you know, 100 million people every single year now. But it's because somebody fed my family when I was young, and it wasn't the food. It was that Thanksgiving somebody showed up with a surprise, and it showed that they cared. So I think if you learn to take control of your emotions, then you can take control of your entire life. But without that, it's just a pipe dream. It's just more New Year's resolutions, and within 6 or 8 weeks, you're back to where you were before.

You're like the prince, but now you're the king of Instagram.

I know.

So it's like, how come you've embraced social media in this way?

Like, 'cause for the longest, you know, you have this mystique behind you.

Well, you know, when I started, the only way to be a movie star was through distance and mystery and mystique, right? That was the way, is that, you know— That's down. Yeah, you could see me on July 4th in the movie theater, or you're not gonna see me, right? So that was the way keeping that distance was how you maintained— Star power.

Star power.

And in the last 5 years, that shifted much more to a friendship model. Like, people support artists that they feel like they know thoroughly, that they're friends, right? So that the social media, the daily interaction is much more like a family friendship kind of interaction that is an audience demand for, you know, their loyalty. But is there such thing as revealing too much? Not in this world. Too much, that's personal, you know, like it's what can you handle? You know, I think one of the major, one of the beautiful parts of social media that I think is a beautiful beautiful evolutionary thing is that social media demands authenticity, right? So social media pushes you more and more into having to reveal what's true. And 'cause if you don't, you know, TMZ is going to, right? You know, so it's, you know, it's a beautiful thing. And I'm actually enjoying the pressure pushed, right? Nobody's happy who doesn't get to be themself, right? So the eyes and ears of the world are starting to demand more and more authenticity where you gotta say what's true for you and live or die by what that is. So I'm enjoying the social demand for authenticity. I'm coming into a space—

How have you maintained your authenticity?

Because I mean, you come from Philly, you've gone through everything. Everything, like your journey's been crazy. Like, how have you maintained that?

You know, it's really interesting. It's like the idea— I haven't maintained my authenticity per se. I've maintained my character, right? I've maintained my beliefs, character in two senses. I've maintained my character of Will Smith, and I've maintained my personal character of what I believe in. So, but in terms of authenticity, the character Will Smith signs every autograph and is always happy and wants to see the fans and is always in a good mood, and that's actually not authentic, right? I actually, I do want to slap somebody, you know, every once in a while. So in terms of authenticity, I have successfully maintained positivity, and now I'm working more to maintain authenticity. I'm granting myself the freedom to not give a fuck when I don't give a fuck.

Right?

And now I'm working into a space of much more authenticity.

So the world's currency of humanity is predicated on using fear as a weapon, and that starts at home. The reason we're conducive to it, to politicians, is because our parents deployed it from the beginning.

Then speaking to a dad, so I'm hearing you, brother.

This has got me going like you can't imagine. I am the byproduct of a mother who, it's so emotional for me, it's like tough to even talk about publicly. I'm literally writing a book called Perfectly Parented. Of course, I mean, I could sit here for 6 hours and tell you what my parents did wrong, but they so did right on accountability and loving and cheering for the right things. My mother didn't, she punished me She punished me for bad grades, but there was never a day where I thought my self-worth was tied into my schoolwork. My self-worth was tied into the things she cheered about and made important, which was how I treated other human beings. When, I mean, these are real stories of my life. When somebody would fall and trip and be hurt when we were playing in the '80s Nobody thought about any of these feelings and ideas, and I would stop playing and I would run over and care about the kid. That's the story my mom would talk about over dinner. Right? When I would stand up for the kid that was getting picked on, that's what my mom, not my parents overvalue grades, which teaches kids to believe in systems that grade you subjectively every 100 days. Parents overvalue other parents' opinion of their kids, which teaches kids to value other people's opinions. Parents use fear to stop kids from doing things that they're scared of. I'm scared shitless of dogs and water. This is real. I, Gary, at 46, deep down, am not super comfortable around dogs, and I fear the water. Why? 'Cause my mom did. And it's one of the few things I have fear around, 'cause it's one of the few things that my mom instilled fear around. If you fear getting a B, you will work for a company your whole life. We need a, you know, this is not Facebook. I love when everyone's like, Zucks, Zucks my asshole. People want to blame the algorithm, social media, politicians, governments, We have no level of accountability. Parents shit on technology all day long, and then the second that they're having a good time drinking wine, they give the iPad to the kid 'cause they don't wanna be bothered. Parents' hypocrisy at scale, parents being way too involved in their kids, thus overprotecting them, thus telling children that they don't trust them to be able to handle their own shit, has led to the moment we are in. And until we accept that truth, until the older millennials, Gen Xers, or boomers that shit on Gen Z when they're the ones who parented them, until they become accountable for their shortcomings, and until we teach Gen Zers, don't do what we did, play it different, we'll just have a perpetual machine of insecurity.

What is happiness? I love what I do. I don't think, I really don't think about those things.

Really?

Yeah. I have work to do. You see these here? I was a pilot in Vietnam. I went to school to kill people. Okay. I killed a lot of people. Went to military school. We think differently. I fought for my country. I fought against communism. They killed us, we killed them. Now I fight with education, the same intensity. I fight for the freedom of people. So if you can understand this, I don't care if I live or die. I went down 3 times in Vietnam. My friends don't come back. I came back to America, this is in 1972. I lost so many friends. And the hippies, you know, the hippies and the peaceniks and all the Maharishi who the Beatles went to see, they were spitting on us and hitting us with eggs. So I don't play that game. I said, I treat everybody with respect. You do your job, I do my job. So when I came back from Vietnam, you can tell I'm still a little bitter about it. Eggs were hitting me, people were spitting on me, and I lost my friends. But we fought for our country. We fought for freedom. If we don't fight for freedom, we've lost our freedoms. That's why I don't like this guy Biden. Okay, so just hear, I have my values, you have your values. But I fight for the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and none of this racial stuff.

You have a lot, a lot of really dumb beliefs that you have mistaken for objective truth. Everybody gets trapped inside their own minds. Nobody more so than me. And because we all get trapped inside of our own minds, if you you really want to make change in your life, the first thing you're going to have to do is recognize what those beliefs are, unwind them, and then you can begin to layer the new beliefs in. And that's the second thing is you need to build up a set of beliefs that's going to take you where you want to go. Now, we live in what many people refer to as a post most truth world. Well, I'm here to tell you, boys and girls, that the truth is going to slap you about the head, neck, and chest. As much as you would like to avoid it or hope, pray, pretend that it isn't real, we are all beholden to the way the world works. And the world works in some kind of way, and we all filter everything through our brain. And that is the third thing, that you are having a biological experience there is a reality to be faced. So let me thread the needle between these two things. So you're gonna be building up this set of beliefs, and you're gonna be doing it in a way that recognizes the truth of the way that the world is, including your own biology. So what do I mean by you have to layer on beliefs? So you have all these false beliefs that you're mistaking as reality.

You're going to recognize those, you're gonna begin unwinding them.

Now you're going to figure out what the truth is. The truth, very simply, is that which most efficiently moves you towards your goals. Now, what do I mean by that? So if you think, in the beginning there was Newtonian physics, and that helped everybody understand how the planets were revolving around the sun. It helped describe the motion of large bodies, as they say. But then And then Einstein came around, and even though Newtonian physics opened up the world and answered a lot of questions and moved us a step closer to the truth, and at that time you could have said, hey, Newtonian physics are the truth, and you would have been effectively right. It was the most effective thing that we had to move us forward. Now, instead of it being a post-truth world when we realize, oh, actually Einstein has a version that allows us to even more efficiently move towards our goals. So for instance, we could not have had GPS with Newtonian physics. It wasn't until we had relativity and special relativity that we were able to get so precise that we could nail down someone's position at speed to within a couple of feet. So it required us to get even better at predicting the outcome of our actions. And so when people ask me, me what the truth is, what I tell them is whatever belief allows you to most accurately predict the outcome of your actions. Now, that doesn't mean that you're making it up. It means your ability to predict the outcome of your actions is tied to what is real. So the reason that you're more able to predict the outcome of your actions when you understand, in the case of physics, Einstein's general relativity and special relativity is because it gives you a higher degree of accuracy. So it isn't that Newtonian physics were wrong, they were directionally correct, it's just that we're always refining. Now, as most physicists will tell you, there's actually something beyond Einsteinian physics. I think that's how you would say that. And that is what they call the theory of everything. So there's a gap between relativity and special relativity and quantum physics, and nobody quite knows what that thing is that's going to bridge all of that together. So even though we're not all the way— the progress that we've made from Newton, from like, uh, the Bible tells us everything that is true, to Newtonian physics, and then to relativity and special And now there's gonna be something even beyond that. And each time that we get closer to the truth, we're able to predict more and more things. That's how you need to think about unwinding the poor beliefs that you have, which are moving you away from your goals because they do not give you a frame of reference with which you can most accurately predict the outcome of your behaviors and your actions. And so you're trying to then strip those away, get to the ones that more efficiently move you towards your goals. And again, the only reason that you're gonna be moving more efficiently towards your goals is because that belief is more accurately aligned to the way the world actually works, including your own biology and your brain and the way that you distort and interpret the world. Your brain, unfortunately, is not designed to give you an accurate representation of the world. Your brain is designed to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids. And the difference between what evolution thought would be most useful to keep you alive long enough to have kids that have kids and what actually is most useful in a modern context There is a gap, and that gap leads to things like obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, all that kinds of stuff, because all of our impulses lead us to behave in a way that made sense when food, for instance, was hyper-scarce, but now that that food is not hyper-scarce, we find ourselves in a position where we're just constantly overeating, and people get themselves in trouble. So once you begin to realize, oh, wait a second, just following the impulse to eat is not a useful way to determine whether I should consume something or not. So I'm gonna refine my beliefs around that, that sometimes I'm actually going to ignore hunger, or I'm gonna get a better understanding of macronutrients and how they act as signaling molecules. And so in the case of diet, this is a bit like going from not knowing anything to Newtonian physics, right? Then to getting all the way to like the really fancy stuff where we're able to use food science to do things like a fasting-mimicking diet, so on and so forth. So just to re-anchor us, you start with all of these beliefs that are cobbled together through run-ins with your family and what they believe to be true, run-ins with failure in life, embarrassment, your friends, pop culture, all of that. Stuff, and that steers you to want things, to think of the world in a certain way, to love certain things about yourself, to hate certain things about yourself, all of that, which is creating this jumbled mess in your mind of how things should be, which is further complicated by the biology of having a brain that was created slowly and blindly over millions of years of evolution. And as you begin to understand things, things like, and this is not, this again is a partial truth, but it will get you directionally in the right direction, that the brain is comprised of 3 layers. Again, only directionally accurate. And you have what they call the lizard brain at the center, all instinct all the time. Then you've got the mammalian brain, all emotion all the time. And then the outer layer, you have the human brain, we'll call it, which is the part that is able to process higher-level cognition. And so, when you understand that you have a brain directionally that's made of those three layers, then you can begin to realize, "Oh, so I don't just need to," just like I'm not going to use hunger as the determining factor whether or not I eat. I'm going to have a more nuanced understanding of my biology and why I might feel hungry even when I don't need calories. I'm not just going to listen to my emotions. I'm going to realize that my brain works in some kind of way, and I need to layer in a belief system about how the brain works that allows me to more accurately predict the outcome of my actions. So instead of just being emotional, which is going to lead me to a suboptimal pattern of behavior where people get angry at times where building a bridge would be a more appropriate response, or even just calming yourself down, or they are fearful in the face of an opportunity. Take speaking in public, for example. Much of my success at Impact Theory has been built on my ability to speak in front of a camera or in front of a live audience, but nonetheless, I had all kinds of fear, especially in the beginning of doing that. And so, recognizing, oh, that fear was meant to keep me alive when I was a part of a hunter-gatherer band of people and I had to be very careful about pissing off anybody that was in charge and I could find myself isolated. And so, I had to fight through that emotional layer to get to a cognitive logical layer that allowed me to come up with a belief that it was okay if I failed, it was okay if I risked things and embarrassed myself, it's even okay if I get pushed out of one group, I can always find another, right? In a modern context, all of that makes a lot more sense. And so as we refine our thinking and build this new set of beliefs, we can actually get closer, again, to predicting more accurately the outcome of our behaviors.

You guys are just getting started. You're not going to start right here. You're going to start down there, okay? Probably in another city, another town. I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. No money, raised by a single mother. I was in debt at 25 years old. The first thing that I had to do in my life was not learn a new skill. First thing I had to do to get my life moving in the right direction was self-development. It is It was vital, it was vital for me that I improved myself and I could start depending upon me. I had to show up every day with some rituals, some disciplines, and start getting myself to trust me. Not trust others, but trust myself to do the right thing every day. One of the things that I started doing was beating the sun up every morning. I'm gonna beat that sun up every morning so that I have the discipline and the control of over my life. So I knew, hey, before that thing pops, I'm gonna pop. I'm gonna get out of bed, depend on myself, get up at the same time every day. And for me, that time, regardless of where I was, was beat that sun up. No matter where I am, I'm gonna beat that thing up. So it gives me a sense of control over my own life. Second thing, I had to start cleaning up my life and my friends and my environment. When I was I was younger, between 15 and 25, I was doing crazy stuff in my life, wasting my weekends. I have the saying, weekends are for the weak. I was drinking, fooling around with a bunch of bad things, bad people, making poor choices. At 25 years old, I cleaned it all up, quit going to those places, quit using those things, quit hanging out with people that did not ethics and discipline in their life that weren't committed to the same things that I was. I wanted to build something in my life. I wanted to become someone, and to do that, to become someone in the eyes of the world, the first thing I had to do was become someone I could depend on. So put some things together, 3 or 4 things you can do every day to start the day, kickstart your day, get going in your day, and to give you a sense of respect for yourself, accomplishment for yourself. Look, just beating that sun up every morning gives me the sense of accomplishment that I did what I said I was going to do, that I woke up when I said I would wake up, and I start building respect for myself, start believing in myself so that I can go out into the world. And maybe, maybe, maybe today, maybe today when I go into this meeting that I'm dressed for, Maybe they'll believe in me as much as I believe in me, and that'll show up in a contract, a deal, maybe even some money.

What does it mean to Alex to own your future?

So, I mean, I think it means high agency. So, meaning like, when we're kids, it becomes real. We learn what the world means through other people. And so, like, you're, you know, you, you have Luca, and he's like, what does that mean? And what is that? And so you're literally telling telling him what things mean. And so, like, the first things we learn are only from the few people around us that tell us how to interpret the world. And then once we turn 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, all of a sudden we're like, I don't know if everything that every one of these people who told me what things mean were right. And so we spend the rest of our lives trying to unlearn what everyone has told us meant and then make up that meaning for ourselves.

What a—

that's an amazing and true, because the word that came to mind, you're trying to decipher, is that my father's perspective?

Yeah.

Or is that reality?

And what is reality?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so that— so my, you know, my, my goal personally has been to dissect decisions and think like, is this a decision that I'm making because I believe this or because of what I want other people to think about me as a result of this decision? And we're social beings. We care about what other people think. And I don't think we're ever going to like get completely rid of that from us. I mean, you'd have to be, you know, Gandhi or whoever, you know, Buddha, right? But at least if I can try and be aware of how much something might influence me, then at least gives me the wherewithal to say, okay, warning flags. This is a sensitive subject that your dad always wanted for you.

Be extra careful.

Careful around decisions that impact, that go in this direction. And so I can just take that extra pause of space and say, okay, is this really me, or is this because I want him to think this about me?

Wow.

And, and like, Dad is really just a foil. It could be your brother, your sister, your spouse, your ex-wife, you know what I mean? That rival or the competitor, whoever it is. The, the moment that I realized this in my life was I was 19 years old, and at the time I was an angry teenager, like some of us are, and probably unrightfully so. But I really disliked both my parents really heavily. And I remember thinking to myself, like, they messed me up. I have all these anger issues, like I hate everyone, I'm a lone wolf, whatever. And I remember catching myself blaming them and thinking to myself, that means that I give them all the power in my life. Like, they're wherever I point the finger of blame is also where the power follows. It's like power follows blame. And so I was like, well, what am I gonna do about it? Because maybe they did wrong me. It doesn't really matter. It's only me who can own my own future. 'Cause otherwise they're gonna own my future for the rest of my life. And then the thing that made it crack for me was the idea that the people that I hated the most owned me. Me. That was the thing. So like, so it was like, so these people that I hated and blamed, then flipping it from the blame to they own me, they have power over me. I was like, I never want them to have power over me. And then that was actually the first real crack I had in like the dam of trying to like make my own life and start. That was when I decided to not be pre-med because that was what my dad wanted me to be. And like, there were many steps on this, you know, this journey. But the first one of like just not being a doctor like him and being just saying like, I want to get into business because it's like I'm way more interested in this stuff. Like, you can imagine I was like shaking to try and tell my dad this. But yeah, it was like I blame them. They owned me. I don't want that.

So as cool as you might think my life is, I have a recurring nightmare that I've had for 26 years. I'm somehow walking outside a stadium, a baseball stadium, and I can hear them announcing the starting lineup to a baseball game. I'm not kidding you. And I can hear the music playing and they say, leading off in center field, number 8. And I know it's me. I played center field here and I led off, right? Number 8, Eddie Mylett. And I hear him yelling. But I can't get in the stadium. I'm like, I'm supposed to be playing, right? Like, I'm supposed to be, and I cannot get in the door. Like, I'm running around, I'm in my uniform, I'm in, I'm in. They're like, we don't know who you are, man. I'm like, no, you need to let me in. They just announced me. I'm the starting center fielder, man. They're like, I'm sorry, man, we don't know who you are. You can't play. And then every single time I have the dream, I lap around the stadium, around the stadium trying to get back in to the game, except I can't get in. This is a true story. I'm 47 years old. I had this dream last month. I had it the month before that. I had it the month before that, okay? And then I wake up and it's a nightmare. Every time I'm in the dream, I know I'm having it, but I can't get out of it. And the reason I have that dream is because I miss playing so much. And the real reason I have the dream is because when I was here, listen to me, okay? When I was here, I did not give it everything I had. Over and over and over again, you must be working on how great you think you are, what you're worthy of, what you deserve. 'Cause you get out, the way you change your identity is this. You change your identity, listen to me on this, remember this when I leave, you change your identity 'Cause it's based on what you believe you're worth, what you believe you deserve. We take it more serious, we have more fun, we're laughing our asses off, but we are outworking everybody in the conference, everybody in the country. We hit the gym that way, we stretch that way. You become a team nobody wants to play. Now if you did that, you know what starts to happen to this team? You start to believe you deserve stuff you probably aren't good enough to get. Will literally win games you're not supposed to win. This team outworks everybody in their at-bat. They battle on every pitch when they're in the bat. I want you to think about that for a minute. I mean, what if you didn't give away a single freaking pitch all year batting? Not one, dude. You grind every pitch, you battle every pitch. What if someone would have told me this when I was here? Battle every pitch, man. Every pitch is a fight. Every pitch is a battle. It's you, it's a team, but it's you and the the wrong lid on, on the mound. Battle his ass.

Whenever there's conflict, I recommend that you go to a higher level, one level up. Whenever you have a disagreement, just sort of go to one level up with the person that you're having the conflict with, or even yourselves when you have a dilemma, and look and come up with an agreement of how you how you should be with each other. In other words, let's say you and I have a disagreement. Okay, rather than being caught in the anger of that disagreement, to go above and you should say, "How do we disagree? How should we disagree?" Form a contract of how you should be with each other and make that a practical modus operandi. That's what we do and then there's also then the ways we do it. So the ways we do it to it are certain things. First, to know that decision-making is a two-step process. There's first taking in and then there's deciding. The capacity to take in the other person's point of view, the knowing, noticing how your How your body is reacting, noticing how you are reacting. Am I having my heart rate rise? Can I pause? We have something like the 2-minute rule. Said, "Can I have 2 minutes?" Then that person has the 2 minutes to say what they want. Having those kinds of protocols, there are a number explained in the book, where there's curiosity, where there's not blocking. You know, somebody in a discussion will do a lot to block the taking it in. So these protocols— I won't go through them all— but those protocols, having those protocols in place that you practice, are fair.

If we lived in a different time, maybe if we went back, let's say, 40, 50 years, Would Patrick had been a gangster?

I think if a Michael Francis was a father figure type, probably. And I would have probably done a pretty good job at it.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

If I had a father figure like a Michael or a Sonny or one of those guys, most likely.

Gotcha.

Do you think you think like a gangster at times?

You have to.

There's no question about it in the business world.

Sure.

Oh, you have to think that way.

Interesting.

Oh, you have to, especially in the world of— look, we're friends. We're compa— you know, we may talk here, but within your world, the bigger you get, there's a lot of people that are not happy about your brand getting bigger.

Sure.

You opening up more gyms, this is not exciting to a lot of other people that own gyms. It's not even exciting to somebody that runs a different model when it comes down to franchising.

Right.

So you're not helping people. It's helping competitors. You're hurting them.

True.

And when it comes down to it, if it's between your 5 locations versus my 5 locations, they are going to be competitive. So you get in the world of business being very— everybody wants to help, everybody's this. And then you realize there's a part of it that some of the people would take their side over you any day.

For some more incredible business knowledge in 3 hours, check the video right there next to me.

I think you'll love it.

Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

I wake up and follow my curiosity.

I've always been a wanderer. And I even organize our, you know, our Amazon meetings with this.

I want crisp documents and messy meetings.