Episode 316: Make Money Out of Thin Air with Pioneer Jay Samit

It's a great joy to be a mentor, and you learn as a mentor as well. And everybody will need a series of mentors during their life. That's one of the 12 truths. In future proofing, you don't fly solo. And the reason why some people don't seek out the mentors that are right for them is because they have this zero sum game attitude about business. They were taught at elementary school, if Jay buys a banana for a dollar and sells it to Larry for $2, that's how you make money. That implies that the only way I make money is by taking money from you. Well, if you have that attitude that when someone else gets the job, they're taking our jobs, that country's taking our jobs. You have this mindset of scarcity. On the other hand, last company sold for $200 million. Hey, Larry, I'm starting a new company. I'll sell you 10% for $10,000. What do I now have? $10,000 in cash and $90,000 in equity. I can buy things. I can hire people. Most of the world's billionaires make money out of thin air. They don't get it from the Federal Reserve, from somebody else. Pre pandemic, every 48 hours, there's a new self made billionaire. Now it's every 26 hours. So you can do it the old fashioned Warren Buffett way. And I'll admit Warren is worth more than me. He's now worth 100 billion, but he made 99% of that after he was 50. Kylie Jenner hit a billion dollars at 21. I can tell you you can have a lot more fun with a billion at 21 than at 50.

Absolutely. Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell, and before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and Again, go to wydellonwinning.comwebinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind. We're talking with Jay Samet, Executive Chairman at Greenfield Robotics, and having a lot of fun after an incredible life of all kind of jobs. Working with executive vp, Senior VP at Sony Universal Studios.

No, I got to work with the Pope. I got to work with presidents. I've had a great career, but it means nothing if you can't pay it forward and make the world better than when you came into it.

And in line with that, he's written a couple of books, Disrupt Yourself. Best selling in many countries around the world wrote it in 2015 and future proofing you and 2021 where he went out and for as an example test case got a homeless person and helped him turn himself into a self made millionaire inside of a year. And what it's just lots. You know I would direct you and he has also got a website that I would direct you to jsammit which you know, we're just going to touch on a few things here in this episode. But Jay has been there, done that when it comes to winning and he can, he can communicate this as well as anyone I've ever talked to. So Jay, talk about you were it kicked off the thing, one of your principles in your book 12 principles that don't fly Solo. And you were talking about most of the top CEOs, entrepreneurs in the world make money out of thin air. And I wanted to let you finish that thought or elaborate on that real quick.

Yeah, I'll give you the most extreme case. Somebody came to me with a company didn't have any traction. They'd gone through all their capital. They had less than 30,000 in lifetime revenues. And I said, okay, give me half of your company and we'll change it. I got half of the company for free. 90 days later we were public on NASDAQ at a $600 million market cap. That's money out of thin air.

And can you share those steps? What happened?

You go on a roadshow, you go and sell institutional investors on the future. Deal structure is one of the chapters in future proofing. Most people don't understand how you can even today when you're just freelancing a side hustle, change the way that you're hired. Someone's hiring you to do sales or marketing of something and they're going to pay you $5,000 for the month, let's say. And you're making them a million dollars. That really doesn't make sense. But you could say to them, if I make you 2 million, can I have 100,000 bonus? Or can I have 5% of your company if I make you 5 million? And there's always a way to get a bigger piece of the piece.

Absolutely. Talk about part of the thing in communicating and teaching is to get people to understand. Fortunately, I heard this concept early on in my career that great ideas are a dime a dozen, but the people who use them are priceless. And it's the using of the ideas, not the knowing of the ideas that makes the difference. And the other side of that coin is great ideas don't Care who use them. And you obviously operate off that same principle.

Yeah, when I speak all over the world and when people want to pitch their big idea, I always tell them before they talk, your idea sucks. I can guarantee it. Before I even inherited. Most ideas suck. There are obvious things from the outside. It's not until you get in the weeds and go further than everybody has that you really fall. Find the real gold. So for young people that don't remember dating before swiping their thumb, there was computer dating and there were. You'd have a picture, you'd have a bio. And when broadband was coming out, three guys had a brilliant idea. They said, we'll put videos. We'll let you see the person, hear their voice, their personality. It was called Tune in Hookup. Perfect idea, great business plan, excellent interface, good execution. The first video was some dork in front of the elephant at the zoo explaining why you should go out with them. I can't make that up. And there was a fatal flaw. No one wanted to date these losers. Their business was dust. But they looked at the data because they went far enough in and they noticed something that wasn't in their business plan. Nobody wanted to date those losers, but they sure as heck wanted to show those videos to their friends. So they changed the name of Tune and hookup to YouTube and became billionaires without a penny in revenue. Wow. Twitter was a music site. I can go on and on. Plato was designed to take wallpaper off. There's always a way to pivot. And most people think you have to have an idea out of whole cloth. You just need to make something that makes life easier. Entrepreneurs don't sell things, they solve things. Solve for five people, you have friends. Solve for a million, you make money. Solve for a billion, you change the world. So start looking at the problems in your life, and odds are others have those problems in future. Proofing youg There's a mom that every parent can relate to. Middle of the week, her daughter has to make a presentation for school on poster board. And she messes it up. And it's like 10 o' clock at night and the girl's crying, please, mom, go to the store, get me another piece of poster board. So the mom relents. But before she gives her daughter their poster board, she takes a yardstick and makes thin lines on it so the girl will write straight and won't mess this one up in the morning. She's like, why don't they sell poster board like this? Make a long story short, she gets the patent Goes to the biggest seller of poster board. She makes about $5 million off of that patent.

Wow. Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move. Hey, by the way, all of this journey started because you had those two boys. How the boys do it.

The boys make me look like nothing. Both are super successful. If you go to the movies, coming out next month is the Addams Family movie that was written by my son.

Really? Congratulations.

It's a ton of hit movies. And the other one's an exec in charge of television, Disney. So both of them I learn a lot from.

You're a proud dad.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I would always pull him out of school if I was doing something interesting. Go to school or do you come to hang at the White House with the president? You know, there was always something. And it's funny, in the early days of ebay, my youngest was like seventh grade and we had an ebay convention where everybody that sells stuff and all these self made millionaires have booths and everything. And I said, I've got to do some meetings. You just go walk around. At the end of the day, he comes back to me, goes, dad, I know what business I'm going to start on ebay. And I'm like, this is fascinating. Okay, seventh grader, tell me. He goes, first of all, I learned if you sell a product, somebody else could sell it for less. So don't sell a product. Bundle a bunch of things together to obfuscate what the pricing is. I go, okay, that's genius. Goes number two. Do you know that there are companies that will ship direct? So you just have to make it, make the placement on ebay. You don't have to ever have the product or sell it, you know? And I go, yep. So, yep. So I said, so what are you doing? And he says, I'm going to sell martial arts weapons. And sure enough, he launched a business, made a bunch of money the first month. Thousands of dollars in seventh grade. And then he didn't do it again. Unfortunately, if you grow up in my home, having the drive to make money isn't a priority. But the fact that he could think it out. The fact that every day there's new opportunity, and I have one whole chapter on a new trillion dollar opportunity. My clients, Facebook and Google and Microsoft are spending billions setting up a new world. And it's just like when the iPhone came out. Nobody thought about what apps to do, and fortunes were made off of those apps. So I really want people to jump into it and give them that head start.

Well, tell us, what are you doing with a robotics company? Robotics?

Yeah. I had no desire to run another company. I resigned off of most of my boards. But an engineer who worked for me 20 years ago, who grew up originally in Kansas, before he got his degree and went to the big city, went back to the farm and realized how insane it is that for the past hundred years we grow food by slathering it in poison that will kill weeds and bugs and small mammals and birds. But that poison couldn't possibly be hurting us, because there has to be a better way. So when I tell you the better way, I felt morally obligated to make sure this company succeeds. So I stepped in to be chairman. So we have these little robots the size of an ice chest that go up and down broad acre crops. Think of rows of corn, milo, soy. And they just cut off the weeds. They don't hurt the plants. They can tell the difference. They're autonomous. They're like a Tesla. They go out in the swarm of them in the field. But here's what it does. Now the farmer is growing organic. He doesn't have to for you. There are robots as a service. You can rent the robots to come in for the day for less than it costs you to spray the chemicals. Now you make 40% more on your crop, but because you're not tilling the soil, you till the soil to break up weeds. Since you're not doing that, that is the single largest source of carbon release and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Farming is heating up the planet more than all the cars. These robots not only make healthy food for us to eat by taking the poisons out, they make the planet healthier by not tilling the soil. And you don't have the runoff of pesticides into the Gulf of Mexico, which wiped out the fish. So farmers make more money, we eat healthier, live longer, and the planet survives.

Where's this company based out of somebody who wants. I've got a.

They're in Cheney, Kansas. You can just look up greenfieldrobotics.com.

Okay, and do you have like outlets around the country? People you say come in for a day.

Right now we're pretty much at the stage where we're just doing farms in Kansas, Nebraska area. There's 300 million acres of broad acre crops in just the U.S. so but again, this is another example of a startup. Somebody came up with a better idea and it's a little more complicated than some ideas, but it's inevitable.

Now you've had success with a lot of major, major companies. You could live anywhere you want to live. Where do you live?

Los Angeles, Louisiana.

And tell me about living in LA these days because we hear, you know, it's like any place, you always hear the downside. So why are you in LA and where in la, by the way?

Bel Air.

Okay, well that explains it right there.

Best weather in the world. Yeah, for 365 days a year that we're having another drought surrounded by trees, there's raccoons and I've had deer, I had mountain lions drinking out of the pool. And yet I can walk on the beach every day. I mean, I've worked all over the world, I've run companies all over the place, but can't beat California.

Well, especially can't beat Bel Air. So congratulations and I really appreciate your time, really appreciate your energy. I always know when I talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about is we cover the ground pretty quickly. And you have done that. What would you like people to know about your books? You probably got your mind more on your most recent book is to leave.

Them to go together.

Okay.

I did this to help people that want to help themselves. There's no alternative motive. And if you're hearing my voice right now, and you've never heard this from anybody, and Tom Bilyeu, who wrote the foreword to this book, said this in the intro, so I'm paraphrasing him. I believe in you. I haven't even met you. And I believe in you because you're human. And humans are amazing, resilient, adaptable creatures and no one's ever showed you what you can do. People spend a whole lifetime well wishers that wanted to shield you from the pain of failure, telling you not to try when if you talk to grandparents or seniors. People's biggest regrets in life are not the things that they tried and failed at, but the things that they failed to try. So if you're going to a job that you're trading a day of your life, you're going to wake up, it turns into a week, a month, a year. It turns into that you've given up the most precious thing you have for what? So why not take control of your destiny? Make a better life for you and your loved ones. And at the same time, if you believe by principle that you're solving problems, you're helping other people by making products that make life better.

Well, thanks so much. If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works you in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, Go.