How to Build a Fortune with Purpose | Lessons That Will Change How You Think Forever

Do something you're very passionate about and don't try to chase what is kind of the hot passion of the day. I think we saw it in the internet world quite a bit where, you know, at sort of peak of the internet in say 1999, found people who were very passionate, so they kind of left that job and decided I'm gonna, you know, do something in the internet because it's, you know, it was almost like the 1849 Gold Rush in a way. At that time, everybody who was within shouting distance of California in California was, you know, they might have been a doctor, but they quit being a doctor and they started panning for gold. And that almost never works. And even if it does work, you know, according to some metric, financial success or whatever it might be, I suspect it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied. So you really need to be very clear with yourself. And I think one of the best ways to do that is this notion of projecting yourself forward to age 80, looking back on your life and trying to make sure you've minimized the number of regrets you have. That works for career decisions. It works for family decisions.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I make these videos because the thing that saved me as an entrepreneur was watching the stories of other successful entrepreneurs, and I learned from their advice. I learned from their motivation, and honestly, I have no idea where I would be if I didn't have those videos to inspire me. I still need them for myself today too, and I hope that they can inspire you as well. So today, let's learn some lessons from billionaires on how to build a fortune.

Enjoy.

Rule number 2 is make sacrifices with Bill Gates.

I think you can overworship and mythologize the idea of working extremely hard. For my particular makeup, I mean, it really is true that I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations. I mean, you know, I knew everybody's license plate so I could tell you over the last month when their car had come and gone from the the parking lot. So I don't recommend it. A, I don't think most people would enjoy it. Once I got into my 30s, I could hardly even imagine how I had done that, because by then some natural behavior kicked in, and I loved weekends, and, you know, my girlfriend liked vacations, and that turned out to be kind of a neat thing. Now I take lots of vacations. My 20-year-old self is so discouraged disgusted with my current self. I was sure I would never do anything but ride in coach. Now I have a plane. So it's very much counter-revelations have taken place at high speed. But yes, it is nice if during those first several years, if you have a team that's chosen to be pretty maniacal about the company. And how far that goes, you should have a mutual understanding so you're not one person expecting one thing, another person expecting another thing. And you'll have individuals who have health or relatives or things that are distracting. But yes, I have a fairly hardcore view that there should be a very large sacrifice made during those early years Rule number 3 is stay in your circle of competence with Warren Buffett.

How come you haven't bought Amazon?

Is there still time to buy? Would you still buy it?

Oh, I always admired Jeff. I mean, I met him 20 years ago or so, and I thought he was something special, but I didn't realize you could go from books to what's happened there. No, I mean, he had a vision and executed in an incredible way. But there's a lot of games I miss. I would have missed, you know, I would have missed Microsoft even if I'd gotten to know Bill. Earlier or something. Those just aren't my games. I don't worry about the things that I miss that are outside my circle of competence of evaluating.

I do—

I have missed things that were within my circle, and that's a terrible mistake. Those are my biggest mistakes. You haven't seen them. It's not a mistake because I miss Netscape or something like that at all. I would say that maybe 5% of the companies or 10% of the companies at most are within an area of my circle of competence. There's something I should be able to understand.

Rule number 4 is grow from mistakes with Elon Musk. What were your biggest obstacles or mistakes that you have faced and how did you overcame it? And maybe you can also give us the students here a piece of advice, and that will be very amazing. Thank you.

To be frank, I've made so many mistakes that it would take far too long for me to list them all. So I don't want to bore people with the extremely long list of mistakes that I've made in the past. The higher principle here is that it is always to aspire to be less wrong over time. So to acknowledge that you'll always be to some degree wrong, but that you wish to be less wrong over time. And if you can be a little less wrong every day, I think you're doing great. It's hard to be less wrong every day, but frankly, even if you could be less wrong most days, that's a pretty big victory. A number of things that I've said, I've said before publicly, so I think it's important to place weight upon both the heart and the mind, not simply the mind. Some of the biggest mistakes that I've made in terms of hiring people have been when they were strong of mind but not of heart. Just assume you're wrong and you want to be less wrong and just try to be less wrong every day. Seek critical feedback, especially from friends. Often your friends will know what you're saying is wrong, but they don't want to hurt your feelings, so they won't tell you. But if you ask them to tell you and say that it won't hurt your feelings, then they will tell you. So I think getting critical feedback from friends is very helpful.

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 all of the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. 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. Rule number 5 is shift your thinking with Ray Dalio.

Once you have a fear that you might be wrong, but you have still the audaciousness and courage to go forward, you're a lot smarter than the person who thinks they know. There's a quote that Jefferson said, he who knows he knows not is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods. When you know that, and then with your character and your determination, you go forward. The smartest people I know are the most humble. The more you learn, the more you realize, oh, I'm eager to take in. So that's right. But back on your audience, I think your audience ranges from— there's a wide range that you have in your audience. And I would say that there are many people in your audience who can plan for a simple lifestyle that can be wonderful. Sometimes we acquire these needs that aren't anywhere near as big as as we make them out to be. And, you know, do you have a bed to sleep in? Do you have food to eat? Do you have basic healthcare? Okay, if you start to think, okay, what are my needs that I really need and I'm okay? And how can I make provisions for those needs? Then once you've got that in your mind, You're free. Okay? You can go beyond that. You may say, listen, oh, I can do that for a year or 2 years or a month or whatever. But I think we visualize too much the things that we're used to. One of the good things about this exercise is that it brings you back to basics. You can be brought to basics. And like I'm saying, if you have a bed to sleep in and you've got food and so on, and you have those basics and good relationships with people who care about you and basic healthcare. So if you budget for that and you figure how do you have it, maybe it isn't in the luxurious place you're in, maybe it's in the country and so on. Once you visualize that and you get that down in your head and you say, oh, I can get that. then your stress will disappear because as you visualize that, in many ways, that's a happy life. It doesn't take a lot to— there's stimulation, there's nature, there's relationships. These fundamental, wonderful things, the most important things can be obtained. And so for many of you, I think if you look at that and you budget for that, I'm seeing a number of people who are going broke. And I've watched this over many years. And really, it's just the adjustment process. Once they get to that point where, ah, you know, they get settled, they're fine. It's the ambiguity, it's the worry, it's the stress. So if you do that from the beginning, and you have that played out in your head, then you know everything from there you can play with and it's icing on the cake. So I wanna emphasize, you can budget for that, you can look at that, find that scenario, find what that looks like so that you know you've got it down. Then you know you're safe. Once you've got safe, everything beyond that is luxury.

Rule number 6 is always keep learning with Mark Cuban.

How do you identify What's next? You know, I just read a lot, right? I'm just one of those guys that just consumes information.

The internet or where?

Everything. Yeah, everything. Anywhere I can get. I just try to learn.

You've always been this way?

Yeah, yeah. I've always been like a knowledge geek where it mostly tech, but it could be anything. I just— anything business related, technology related, marketing related, you know, culture related. I want to try to stay on top of it. You know, Steve Jobs had this one quote that really stuck with me. He said, everything's a remix. And if you look at the early days of the Apple products, there was this company back in the day called Xerox PARC. And Xerox came out with the first mouse-driven PC, but their marketing sucked and they had no idea what they were doing. No one knew what they were about. Steve Jobs came in, a little bit of this, a little bit remixed, and bam, right? All of a sudden you got Apple and then a Macintosh and then they're—

yeah, he made it sexier.

Yeah.

And then even he got fired, right? He got fired from that company and then they had to bring him back to make it work. And so, you know, for me, the more you learn, the more you know how to remix. And that's what this is all about. So, you know, how do you go from YouTube, which was the first platform for video that got big, to Instagram, to Snapchat, and know, okay, do I want to be on Discover? Do I want to be on Reels? Do I want to be on TikTok? You know, and if I do this, you know, how's YouTube going to treat me? And all the decisions you guys, you guys have got to make on a daily basis, you know, and the fact that like we were just talking, you created all these products and you want it to be organic. That's a business decision too. And then you have to learn by trial and error, right? You were curious about what might work. You know, obviously you're, you know, you're walking proof of what does work, right? And now you've got to be able to continue to make those decisions because in this business with all the margins on these products, everybody's coming at you all the time, right?

Yeah.

And they think they can do the exact same thing, but it's not that easy. But for me, it's like, that's why I try to stay ahead because whether it's artificial intelligence, whether it's VR, whether it's crypto, whether it's metaverse, all these things may not be prime time yet, But I want to know when they will be, and I want to be out front when they are.

Rule number 7, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is solve a problem with Richard Branson.

There are so many problems in this world, and trying to prioritize which problems to solve and which you just feel you don't have the energy for or the resources for is a really tough one. Which is why we're trying to get every single business in this room, even if you're a really small business. I love this kid of whatever it was, 8, coming up to me and pitching me earlier in the corridor and giving me one of his products. He shouldn't give away the products. He must sell them. Anyway, you're gonna have trouble getting out of here now that someone knows that you were pitched in the corner. But I think that if every single person in this room can adopt at least one problem, and, you know, like, you know, if it's just, you know, trying to find a roof over the person you keep walking by who's sleeping in the street every day, you going to your office, something, but just a problem in this world, I think every single person in this room will feel that much better for it in 50 years' time when they look back on their life and their careers. Obviously, as businesses get bigger, you can adopt bigger and bigger and bigger problems, and you can use your your entrepreneurial skills, your resources, your teams to take on some of the really big problems of this world. And I think we cannot let government try to sort the problems of the world out. They haven't got the entrepreneurial skills generally to do so. And it's great fun. I mean, you know, we have something called Audacious Ideas Gathering on Necker every year where we get some of the more successful people together and we get throughout the year with TED, we get maybe 300 companies— sorry, 300 organizations to pitch and then we choose 10 of the most important things in the world to try to resolve. and then we go out to try to resolve them every year. You know, it could be a particular kind of blindness in Africa, you know, it could be, you know, how do we sort out methane leaks around the world, and, you know, can we use satellites to spot them and then alert the companies to these methane leaks, and so on. And as your businesses get more successful, you become more entrepreneurially aware as to how to look at situations in this world, then you get into a position where you can actually start tackling some of the bigger issues.

I am not here to satisfy you. I am not here so you like, oh, Grant, I like him. I don't care if you like me or not, man. I want to move a handful of people in the room to go from $400 grand a year to start thinking about how do I make $4 million. Big boy right over here popping out. What did you make last year? What'd you gross last year? $2.7 million. How does anybody live on $2.7 million a year? You need to make it impossible, dude. I cannot, I can't, my plane eats $2.7 million a year. This dude needs to think different. He's running out of time, man. You guys all in the room, man, you're running out of time. You're in a space that is so frothy with opportunity, it's unbelievable. You're making sense of less than you can get. This is my mama. My mama's saying, I love you, boy, just the way you are. Mama, I made $10 million on one deal. That's great, but son, I love you just the way you are. I'm like, I don't love me just the way I am. Because I'm doing deals where I know I could make $100K. Okay, how many of you in the room are operating below your potential? Let me see a hand if you know you're operating below your potential. Man, please tell me you operate— how many of you, let me see a hand again if you're operating below your potential. Okay, your finances should indicate that. Your finances are a way to tell the truth about who you are, your space, Like if you're an Uber driver and you're making $2.7 million a year, pat on the back. You're in this space making $2.7 million a year? Come on, man. Your company's doing what, $2 billion? $2 billion and you guys aren't getting it all. Would you say that you're not getting it all?

We got a lot of room.

A lot of room. He's telling me he's in the first innings of his game. So I'm like, hey, what do I need to do? Let's say 400 is the number. Then I'm gonna take this and I'm just gonna 10x that and I'm gonna build a business plan for $4 million. And I'm gonna quit thinking, I'm gonna quit thinking that I got to do a 4-minute mile. I'm gonna quit thinking about the physical universe. What can I do to produce $4 million worth of income? Is it here? Is it outside of here? Is it here and outside of here? How many customers would I need? This is what my goal for you today is to leave here and say, dude, I ain't satisfied.

Satisfied.

Okay? I want to raise the numbers on this room. So the next time there's 75 people here and everybody adds a zero to your income. Oh, by the way, if you love yourself at $400 grand, mama, if you love your son just the way he is at $400, would you love me a little more if I add a zero? No, she couldn't love me anymore. It wasn't up to her to love me. It was up to me to love what I'm doing every day, right? You guys are showing up, you're working your ass off every day, right or wrong? How many of you are making calls every day, you're like, I do not want to make this call, and you make it anyway? Good, then get paid for it. Get paid some real money for it, man. Okay? Get paid some real money, just add a zero. How many calls would I have to make? Is this even possible? He's doing part of it. He told me he's not tapped into all of it. He's hitting 70% of that number. If everybody walked out of here and said, hey, I'm going to build a $4 million plan. I'm going to tell you a little game I play. I got 14 little companies. I run 14 little companies while I'm doing deals, while I'm speaking to you today, right? I'm still running them in my head right now. I got them all open. I got browsers open all over the place. Counselor said, you got ADD. I said, I ain't got ADD. I don't know how to add. I multiply. I'm done adding. I'm done adding a customer. I want to multiply customers. I want to— I don't want to add orders. I want to multiply my orders, okay? I consider myself a decent salesperson. But it doesn't matter if you're a great salesperson. If you don't add business to the sale, if you don't become a business person, you can't build out zeros. Because you're gonna hit a place where they can't pay you anymore, right or wrong? You gotta start thinking about being a business inside the business. How do I add zeros? How do I grow the top line of my business, okay? So today I'm thinking, man, I'm gonna build a $10 billion business. I just go into it backwards. I'm gonna build a $10 billion business. I'm gonna take the 14 little things that I have, probably get down to 3 or 4 of them. How do I build $10 billion? I know the money's on the planet. Say yay if you agree there's $10 billion on planet Earth. Dude, you could suck $10 billion off planet Earth today and you wouldn't— they wouldn't even give you— like, you wouldn't even make the paper. I just got to think different, and I can't compare it to my upbringing.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below, I on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. To learn how billionaires think and get some success advice from the top, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

Everybody has a different talent.

And the reason we're all so messed up is because you're looking at everybody else's talent.

I don't fear anything, but I worry about everything.