Here's What Separates People Who MAKE MONEY and the Ones That DON'T!

But I don't do things for money.

Goal really was not so much to make a lot of money.

I never chase money.

Chase the vision, not the money.

Which is not money-centered.

Money has never been our goal.

Money.

Money.

Don't chase money.

Yeah, I'm not interested in the financial outcome. I want to continue success, but there's no, uh, specific mark of finances that'll work. Because to be honest with you, if I'm sitting here with you a year from now, 2 years from now, and they're like, you did it, you're a billionaire. I'm gonna still be saying, yeah, but I got another idea.

Right.

I got a new idea. And it's what I think is representation of a person who's truly ambitious because ambition isn't a learned behavior. It's a part of your natural character. And you always find something to be passionate about or a new goal or a new— you see guys sell companies, $5, $6 billion and go, yeah, okay, now what's the next one?

In your book, The Art of the Deal, you said that money really isn't that important. It's just a means of keeping score. It's playing the game that excites you. I love the game. I like the money, and the money is certainly a method of keeping score, but I don't do things for money. I do things because I enjoy doing them. That really sometimes can translate into more money than you would have made if you went just after the money.

Our goal was to get— we started with 4 employees, and our goal was to get to 50 employees. And the goal really was not so much to make a lot of money. I wanted— to me, a lot of money in those days was I wanted to own a house, I wanted to have a nice car, and I wanted to work with interesting people and do interesting things. And I thought if I could control my own environment, have a small consulting company— and Oracle started out as a software consulting company. We worked for Tandem Computer, if anyone remembers those guys. We worked for IBM. We worked for a lot of different tech companies in Silicon Valley doing contract programming, fixed-price contract programming. And we did pretty well, actually. And again, the idea was just to have a small software contract, software company, a bunch of, you know, we thought we were hotshot programmers and we thought we could make a decent living doing just that. And quite by accident, we built a product.

Most of the people that watch this are relatively rich people, right? I mean, and most of them are gonna earn a living. They'll eat, they'll live, you know, they'll be fine. Beyond that, there should be something to do that's useful that's something that says, okay, I did something. I didn't just work on a door latch all my life or something. Not to say door latches are bad, I mean, I'm sure guys work on their latches and it's awesome. But at the end of your life, you wanna say, did I do something of value? Or in the beginning or in the middle. If every day you go to work and it's like Office Space, where, yeah, do I care, does anybody care? If that's what it's gonna be, then get paid less. Do something useful, you're gonna be way better off. And chasing money, I never chased money. You know, people ask me, well, when did you decide to give it away? I never, the problem is I never was interested in having toys, right? But it's one of those, if you're trying, don't try, it happens. It's the cool factor, you said. It's sort of, when I was young anyway, if you were trying to be cool, you weren't.

Right?

It's sort of if you do that which has value, you're much better off.

The great companies had a vision that had a higher purpose beyond just money or profits or being number one in a market. And kind of the irony there is that by not making profits the number one priority of the company or the higher purpose of the company, it actually enabled these companies to make— generate more profits in the long term. So, sometimes when I speak at entrepreneur conferences, I get asked, "What's a good market to go into where I can make a lot of money?" And my response to them is, "Instead of thinking about where you can make a lot of money, think about what are you so passionate about doing that you'd be happy doing it for 10 years, even if you never made a dime, and that's what you should be doing." And kind of the ironic thing is the money will actually follow. We've all heard of Craigslist. He didn't set out to make money. He was passionate about the community, and now it's one of the top-trafficked websites on the internet. So I like to say, "Chase the vision, not the money." There was a movie that came out, I think a couple years ago, called "Notorious." I think it only lasted a week in the movie theater, but I saw it. And in it, Biggie Smalls, also known as Notorious B-I-G, is— well, Puff Daddy says to Biggie Smalls, "Don't chase the paper, chase the dream." I just want an excuse to put this picture up here. Anyways, so if you're an entrepreneur, say, think about what would you be so passionate about doing that you'd be happy doing it for 10 years even if you never made a dime from it. And if you have employees, Thinking about what's the larger vision and greater purpose in their work beyond just money or profits or being number one in a market.

Everything that we do in the business world is focused on making money. That's what the indicator that you try to assess how successful we are. In the business world, there's nothing else. So that kind of squeezed out all kinds of social orientation of human life and human activity. And that's not a tenable situation. And that untenable situation is created by the structure that we have. I said business doesn't have to be always money-centered, always self-centered, always, or many times, obsessed with money. Because human beings are not always about money. Human beings are much bigger than just money-making machine. We are not robots. We are human beings. We take care of ourselves individually. At the same time, we take care of everybody else. We take care of the planet itself. And business world doesn't have that orientation at the moment. We can do that. We can create a different kind of business which is not money-centered.

I don't think it's about— money has never been our goal. I never knew I was going to write a book that sold millions and millions of copies. And so I don't take a salary from the church now. But it's about, you know, money is simply a tool to fulfill your destiny. But I teach people—

Do you give money away?

Do you help?

We give millions of dollars. And Victoria and I never dreamed that we'd be able to do to be able to bless people like this. So it's never been about, you know, how wealthy can we become.

Airbnb, we created the company not because I wanted to be some successful entrepreneur and make a bunch of money. If I was going to do that, I would not have started air beds for conferences around the country. That was not going to be a good idea. In fact, I had a mentor, I told him about the idea of Airbnb, and he told me, I hope that's not the only idea you're working on. And my mom growing up, all she ever wanted, because I went to art school, she said, just make sure you get a job that has health insurance. And so I created— when we created Airbnb, she said, I said, I guess you never got that job of health insurance. This is what happens. You start having to let strangers in your homes.

What motivates you to keep working as hard as you still are?

You know, that's an interesting question. A lot of people don't seem to get it. It goes back to the time when I discovered that I was something called an entrepreneur. Until I was 32, I thought I could hold down a job. I gave a talk at Babson College, a business school in Boston, to something called the Entrepreneurial Exchange. And I asked the people— there were about 300 kids in the audience— and I said, how many of you think you're entrepreneurs? And everybody raised their hand. And then I asked them, I said, how many of you are in in the entrepreneur business or want to be in the entrepreneur business for money? Nobody has ever guessed how many people raised their hand. Too many people to guess here, so I'll tell you: one. That is the answer to the question. What is the reason why people want to be entrepreneurial? My answer is the sense of achievement, to accomplish something. It's not the money. Now, I'm not going to send the money back.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what you think about the topic, not chasing money. I'd love to know why you started your business and what your main goal is. For me, I've always been driven by impact. So the things that I do that get me really excited aren't the things that I can make a lot of money on. It's what can I do that will have a big impact and touch a lot of people's lives? That's what gets me really fired up and excited. I'm curious for you, which one of the clips had the biggest impact on you and why? Do you do things for the money, or what are you motivated by? Leave it in the comments below. I'll join the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.