4 Steps To Attract Financial Abundance [MASTERCLASS] EP 1374

What is the foundation of what I'm starting the day with, right? What is the sequence of what I'm gonna be doing next? In my mind, the biggest key to success, almost anybody I see that takes it to a whole different level, the highest levels, the difference between them and.

Other people is their-- Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Welcome to this special master class.

We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.

It's going to be powerful.

So let's go ahead and dive in.

You know how everybody talks about what is the key to success? You know, the key to success is marry the the right person, save money, work hard, go to school, get a degree, love people, faith, God. You hear so many different things. And we were having this debate one time. And I would ask everybody. It's just a basic question. Everybody, what's the key to success? What is it? I'm like, you know what? Years later, I said, in my mind, the biggest key to success, almost anybody I see that takes it to a whole different level, the highest levels, The difference between them and other people is their sequencing. And what I mean by sequencing is the following. So you and I may have the same vision of what we want to do in life. You want to get here? I want to get here. This could be anything. We both want to build a billion dollar company. Fine. We both want to be building a company that does 100 million a year. We both want to go into football. We both want to go play at the highest level. We both want to go out there and be great salesmen. Whatever it may be, that's the ultimate, right? If my order of steps I take to go here isn't as efficient as yours because your sequencing is better, you're going to get there faster than I am. And I may not even never even get there. Because I'm trying to do move 14 on move three, and that's the most common thing that you see. One day I woke up, I was in a relationship, and this is I'm 26 years old, 27 years old, 26, 25 years old, and I'm trying to get my business going. I wake up 6:00 in the morning. I get a text. Babe, I have to tell you this. As much as I love you, I don't see this relationship going anywhere. One of those texts. Because I think my mom is right. You love your business more than you love me. And I barely see you. I only see you once a week. You're working so hard. First text, then message. I press the message to listen to it. My mom. You know, there used to be a time they used to love me and you would call me and tell me, you love me. What happened to those? What happened to my little son that used to love his mother? Call me every day. Yes, that's the part. So now I got a breakup on the line. I got a guilt trip from my mom. That's still 602 right now. Then I get an- you- haven't even got out of bed yet. I haven't even gotten out of bed yet. Then I get an email that's been in the box for a while and I look at it. It's from my number one client that I was about to expect like a $15,000 commission, and that's a lot of money at that time. And my number one client says he's leaving me for the following reasons. And then at the same time, the next email is my agent saying I resign. My number one agent resigns.

Wow.

This all happens before 605-610. So I'm in bed, anxiety is high, panic is high, I have no idea what to do, In that moment, all I thought about is, what are my next five moves? What do I need to do next? From that moment on, everything I did with business, I would ask myself, I want to do this next, my next 10-15 moves. What would this guy do? This guy that built an empire, what would he do? What are we going to do here? What can I do to be better than this guy? What can I do to be more efficient than him? What can I do to speed up the process to get here? But everything came down to your next five moves. So you're asking the questions, the first move, the most important? Absolutely it is. If you don't know your next move, your next move can hurt the chances of you even getting to the fifth move.

Yeah.

So it's always your next move that matters the most.

What is the next move that everyone should be thinking about?

So the first thing you have to do is you got to, last night I'm at Rafi's place and I'm having dinner with my three buddies. None of us are supposed to do anything in life. One of them is Steven Afo, they're running a $300 million a year business. Steve was the Michael Jordan of our high school. Okay, he was a great basketball player, but we're all 2.0 GPA kids.

Right. And Armond-- Makes great salesmen.

2.0 guys. Yes. And Armond was always a fighter. He would always get in trouble. Like he was a guy that, he's a 5'6 guy, you don't want to fight. Like you go to a party, you know the smallest guy, you go to a party and this 5'6 guy would go to a party and he would stand there and he would say, that guy's looking at me. I'm like, bro, he's not looking at you. No, I know he's looking at me. He's looking up, I'm like, I promise you he's not looking. He's the kind of guy that would walk up and just punch the guy in the face. Just for no reason. Just for no reason. What is the matter with you, right? That's his wiring.

Yeah.

But we're all together yesterday. Now we all have kids. We have two, three and Armon has four kids. We're sitting, we're talking. Armon runs Rafi's Place. If you've been to Rafi's Place, the restaurant in Glendale, if you've not been, you gotta go. It's the best Middle Eastern restaurant. We're sitting there yesterday and we're having all these conversations. challenges men go through, whether it's marriage, money, health, what happens at 41, oh, everything that you don't want to talk publicly that men are insecure about, we just talk about it right there, right collectively. And the biggest thing that I talked with one of my friends yesterday is, listen, your number one move is you identifying who you want to be. Not who Tiffany wants to be, not who it's who do you want to be, not what Patrick wants to be, not what Bobby wants, not what your older brother, sister, mom, dad, who do you want to be? If you and I can figure out who we want to be, and it's as transparent and as clear as possible, I don't have to compare myself against your success. Now here's a problem though. Say for instance, I sit there and I say, honestly, I just want to be a person that's just a regular person. And I'm glad if I make 80 grand a year, 100 grand a year, I have a nice place, I'm married, I'm happy, my kids are with me, I have good relationships. I'm totally happy if you say that.

If that's what you want to be.

If you say that's what you want to be.

But if you say, I want something.

Else and you're not doing it, then what?

Exactly. But watch this one. If you say that's what you want to be and you're content with that life. But behind closed doors, your buddy Louis House is making millions. He's doing great. He's all over the place. People are talking about it. If an ounce of envy or jealousy comes in, you either weren't being honest with yourself because that's not exactly who you wanted to be or you got asked the decision, am I living my life or his life? That's the toughest thing to do. The other side of it is that let's just say you got a big upside. In sports, a lot of times, Stephen A. Smith did an interview the other day and they asked him about Vince Carter and it was the toughest question that was asked. They said, so Vince Carter, he just announced 23 years of retirement He's leaving the NBA. Stephen A. What can you say about Vince Carter's legacy? Okay, now I don't know if you guys know who Vince Carter is. This guy dunked over the seven-footer in the Olympics. The guy retired afterwards. Got dunk contest with the elbow. Dunk contest with the elbow. Sick what he was doing in Toronto, McGrady. Just beautiful when you watch this guy play. I remember one time he dropped 50 in the playoffs. You thought this guy's gonna win the championships. He came from Tar Heels, North Carolina. He's gonna be the next Mike. But here's what Stephen A. said about Vince Carter. Very difficult. He said, you know how Stephen A. does his thing?

He's just kind of like, you know.

He typically is quick to give the answer. One second goes by, two seconds goes by, five seconds goes by. He still hasn't said a word. Then all of a sudden he says, well, I've got to tell you, this is a good brother. I love this man. He's a great man. You know, he goes into building them up, and then he says, But it is the most unfulfilled talent we've ever seen in the history of the NBA.

Really?

He says, this man should have been competing with the Kobes of the world, the LeBrons of the world, the Jordans of the world, but we never saw it. I wish I would have seen the best of him. And it's like a minute and 13 seconds. It's so awkward. If Vince Carter watches that and it doesn't bother him, more power to you because you were happy to be in the NBA and you were cool with that. But if you watch that and it bothers you, you know deep down inside it could have done more. So you as the individual have to make a decision. Either I'm going for all the marbles and I'm willing to go be embarrassed, lose public humiliation after another one until I get there, or I'm going to live a simple life and I'm okay with this. But you have to be clear about that. That's step number one. Once you're identifying that part and once I know my talents, where can my talents be used? If you're a numbers guy, what industry can use your talents? Well, maybe it's finance, economy, investment banker. Maybe it's on that side. If it's a creative side, maybe I'm going to go be on the marketing side. Maybe I want to be behind the scenes. I don't want to be in front of the camera. I want to be the support person. Then you say, well, I'm not a good number one guy. I'm a good number two person. I'm a number three person. Then you have to find out your positioning at the point of your life. Tom was the former president of our company, PHP. One of the best decisions was hiring this guy. When I hired Tom and brought him on board, He introduced me to Vistage years ago. This is just kind of like a YPO EO. You're familiar with YPO. So Vistage is an element of that. It's very similar, but it's a little bit older crowd. YPO is a little bit younger. Vistage has 50-60 year olds, and I want to be around 60 year olds. So he introduced me to Vistage. And over the years, we became very good friends before I hired him. And I said, so Tom, let me ask you a question. In your life, you guys sold Jamdat for 780 million. You got a massive exit. But you were the number six guy. How come you don't want to be the number one guy? He says, Good question. He gave me the best answer. He says, you, realize I'm 54 years old at the time we were talking. He says, It took me 54 years to realize I'm not a good number one.

54 years.

54 years to realize I'm not a good number one.

What would have happened if you had.

Realized that at 30?

That's the point. Every one of his biggest checks he ever got, he was a number five. the number four or the number—every time he was number one, the company didn't do well. Interesting. So sometimes we want to be number one, but maybe you're not a number one. Sometimes you want to be MJ, but maybe you're Scottie. Sometimes you want to be MJ and Scottie, but maybe you're John Paxson and Steve Kerr. Maybe you're somebody that later on is going to be the general manager of the, you know, Chicago Bulls. Your name is John Paxson. Maybe you're going to be a great coach, years later winning three out of five championships. Your name is Steve Kerr, but you've got to play your game with your strength.

And in the season of life.

Exactly.

And in the season of life. Because you may be a number six right now, but you may eventually be a good number one. Maybe it's just a different role, in a different package. Yes, but it's the sequencing, man. Everything is sequencing.

What does sequencing mean for you?

Sequencing to me means, okay, if you wake up every day, you have a sequence of what you do. Okay, like what's the first thing you.

Do when you wake up?

Mostly meditate. Okay, what's the next thing you do?

Make my bed.

And then what's the next thing you do? Brush my teeth, shower. Okay, that's a sequence. Okay, so that, now what if I wake up and the first thing I do is I shower first, okay? Then I go eat, then I put my clothes on, then I go to work and I say sometime throughout the day I'm going to meditate. I just mess the whole sequence up. What is the foundation of what I'm starting the day with, right? What is the sequence of what I'm going to be doing next? If every decision you're about to make next, whether it's marriage, having kids, business partnership, a joint venture, if everything you did, you stepped away from the world, your girl, your mom, your dad, your peers, your family, you went to a restaurant, you sat there with a piece of paper saying, okay, I'm thinking about marriage. What do I need to do next? What's the next move I need to make? Then you go, I don't know if that's number one. I think that's number three. And you play that game. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It's like playing chess. -You know these master chess players, they know their next 10 to 50 moves. The amateurs were like, oh, here we go. This is what I'm gonna do. And these guys are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing? -Yeah.

-They see it in the future.

-It'S all sequencing.

-But it takes the steps to get to the future. You can't just jump to the future. -I mean, it's the story of Bob Iger, it's the story of Ted Turner, it's the story of Kirk Kerkorian. You know how Kirk Kerkorian went from being a regular guy in Bakersfield who didn't graduate past eighth grade, goes and pays a guy a dollar to let him fly a plane and eventually becomes a pilot for Bugsy with the mob and eventually goes and becomes a pilot, buys TWA, turns it into a big company, sells it for a few hundred million dollars, then decides to go to Vegas, then he decides to buy a couple hotels, then he buys 80 acres of property across the street from Tropicana, then he buys MGM. He's not the founder of MGM. He turns it into what it is, dies at 98 years old as a multi-billionaire, gives a billion dollars to Armenia, after the earthquake of 1988, this is all sequencing, man. This is all sequencing when you go through it. Everything is sequencing. And when you look at it that way, you tend to make better decisions.

What was the time in your life where you tried to sequence, but it was the wrong sequencing and you got bad results? And then what has been the time.

Where you had the best sequencing, where.

You actually mapped it out in your.

Mind, this is the sequence, you did.

It, and you created those results?

Yeah, so there's two answers to that. I'll give you both of them. One, I tried to sequence to get married at 23 years old.

You tried it.

It would have been catastrophic. Now, I love the girl. Great girl. We have a friendship till today. My wife sold her a policy. I mean, we met, when we met, me and my girl would double date with my wife and her boyfriend. Very weird story.

We just switched.

We just switched. They should have switched as well, but we switched, right? Five and a half years later, she's single. I'm single. I'm like, let's go on a date. But at the time, I was forcing marriage because, you know, you're looking at everybody, saying, everybody's getting married and I think it's my time and family and I'm Armenian, I'm a Syrian, and one day I'm like, dude, you are not ready. I asked the question. I said, would you let your daughter marry you? I said, hell no. You asked the question to yourself? I asked the question to myself, would you let your daughter marry the 24-year-old Pat right now? I said, absolutely not. I said, you ain't ready to get married. and we got the ring married. The whole thing was lined up.

You got married.

You were getting ready to get married. We were getting ready to get married. She wasn't ready, I wasn't ready. It would have been catastrophic for both. But that journey of going that direction had set me back three years. Completely set me back. Because I was dead set on wanting to live a life of other people. I was dead set on making the decision that's going to please the people that want me to get married yet I don't even know what marriage means. I don't even know the complexities of marriage. I don't even know if I'm done being single. I don't even know the fear about like if I get married. So do I still, that's a lot of challenging stuff and it set me back. Like I said, three years. The other part is, Louis, that when you say, When did you do it? I've also done it where I've said, Here's what I'm going to do. That maybe was premature of a decision. But then in that moment, it's fight, flight or freeze. You rise to the occasion. You rise to the occasion. Then like when I started a company, I shouldn't, you know, at that time- You weren't ready. I was not ready. There's no way I was ready. I had a half a million dollars in a bank. I'd been around for seven and a half years. I don't know what it is to get insurance contracts. I don't know what it is to get E&O. I don't know what kind of things insurance companies want. I don't know what I'm going to face. We started it and I went in without knowing anything, no website, no product, no nothing. It wasn't the smartest decision. One night I come home, my wife has the miscarriage. It's 1:30 in the morning. My bank account's at $13,000. I have no idea what to do. When I tell you, I have no idea, I have no idea what to do. I came back, I said, listen, you put yourself in this position, now it's too late. So some people may be watching, they're saying, well, I have to have a fresh start with my marriage or my business or this and this and that, and let me just close shop. Well, no, that's also not the case. Also the case is maybe what's the best thing you can do with the current situation you have. And in that moment, had to make the best of it, and we made some right moves, and we did get some, you know, we experienced some luck, and we worked hard, and the next thing you know, things grew. From having a few hundred agents to now 15, 16,000 agents in 49 states, we weren't expecting that. We were not expecting that. And I'm not talking about being in a company having salespeople. This is having to hire CFOs, raising money, founding. It's very complex without a four-year degree, without a two-year degree, without a finance. It's very complicated. But somehow it happens. So yes, I would say sometimes there are many times where the sequencing wasn't right, but there are times that also wasn't right, but you had to make the best of it.

You made it work.

You got to make it work.

And what's the difference between entrepreneur versus intrapreneur?

And how do you know if you.

Should be entrepreneur and entrepreneur, or if.

You should be entrepreneurial with a team and a mission that has funds and.

Resources, and it's not all on your shoulders?

Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things we talk about in this book, you, Next Five Moves, is knowing when you decide how you want to create your wealth and who you want to be. meaning. Okay, so who do you want to be? I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be a solopreneur. I want to be a content creator. I want to be an influencer. I want to be an inventor. I want to be an investor. So you kind of figure out what angle you want to go and who you want to be. And then you figure out which one you want to do next. You may want to be an entrepreneur, but entrepreneur may make sense next. You wanted to be an entrepreneur may make sense next. So this movement of entrepreneur got a lot of people to become entrepreneurs who should have never become entrepreneurs. They just should have never become entrepreneurs because they did not experience the element of being an intrapreneur. An intrapreneur thinks, works, is wired, looks at money, people, talent, recruits, sells, sells the dream. Everything an intrapreneur does is identical to the entrepreneur. The only difference between the intrapreneur and the entrepreneur is the entrepreneur put up the money. That's it. Meaning there is nothing else that's different there. The same amount of sacrifices this guy's willing to make, this guy's willing to make.

He just didn't put up the money, right?

Which is a whole different level of sacrifice. Whole different level of sacrifice. Pressure, stress. You got it. And that's one of the reasons why the entrepreneur respects the entrepreneur. It's like the hidden code. Listen, man, I'm willing to do everything you're doing, but I didn't put up money. Salute. I respect you. This is why you're number one, I'm number two. But I salute you. What do we need to do, right? And there's that element of respect for one another. The entrepreneur has to be willing to allow an entrepreneur to exist. So, for example, Bob Iger's story. Bob Iger starts off with ABC years ago, a young guy coming out, doesn't know what he wants to do, accidentally gets a job, he starts working at ABC, then he works his way up, then it's his dream to be a CEO of Disney, then eventually becomes a CEO of Disney, he's the CEO of Disney for 15, 16 years, he ends up closing George Lucas and buy Star Wars. He ends up buying Marvel, he ends up buying Pixar from Steve Jobs, and he ends up buying Fox. You do these four trends. His salary was $67 million a year.

Wow.

Not net worth, salary. Never was an entrepreneur.

Right.

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Bob Iger was never an entrepreneur. Clippers, right here, Ballmer. Ballmer's worth $56, $57 billion. He's not an entrepreneur. He was an employee, number five or number six. Yeah, he was an employee at Microsoft. And then eventually, Paul Allen didn't want to do it anymore. He kind of wanted to step down. Bill Gates comes and gets Ballmer. Ballmer takes it to the next level. Ballmer now owns the Clippers. So there are many entrepreneurs that started the company. that own 100% of their business, but they're making 80 grand a year. They're making 600 grand a year because they wanted 100% of control. Palmer's like, Listen, I'm good. Gates started it, but I'm worth 58 billion. So the road to what you're solving for, you don't have to say, I have to be an entrepreneur. No, you don't. Maybe the better option for you is, if you can find a killer on the way up, if you can find a killer on the way up. If you looked at everybody as a stock, let's just say we started looking at everybody as a stock. So you have small cap, mid cap, large cap. What's the difference between a small cap, mid cap, large cap? It's a dollar amount. You know, $5 billion less, $5 billion to another. And then you have the large cap, all these Disney's, Wal-Mart's. These are large cap, right? But the key is if you can figure out when they're a small cap. The key is if you're at the PayPal Mafia group and you see somebody who says, that guy's going to start Yelp. I'm going to go run with that guy. That guy's gonna start, you know, Tesla.

Uber.

Uber. That guy, Peter Thiel, I'm gonna go do something with him. I don't care if I'm as number two or number three. I want to go with this guy. He put a half a million dollars into Facebook, worth a couple billion dollars. This guy's coming up. I want to go work, like Maverick Carter is gonna be somebody in the next 20 years, right? If you can figure out a way to run with him because you are one contact away from LeBron. So if a guy wants to get into media, and let's just say you want to do something in the African-American community, figure out a way to go work for Maverick Carter, his stock's gonna be high 20 years from now. I mean, it's big today, but I'm talking really high. So if you can make a list of guys where you can have an eye for it, it's almost like picking a husband or a wife, you know, because picking a husband or a wife, there's a risk factor. You go to dinner and say, Babe, I love you so much. You're so beautiful.

You make my day.

When I see you, I'm just like, I'm in heaven. It's like, I don't see anybody else. It's just clouds around me and angels. You know, and I see birds when we're together. And then the marriage conversation comes up in your brain, you become a mathematician all of a sudden. I don't know, I say 72% chance we get a divorce, but I'm willing to take that 28% chance risk. So there's an element that we get judged for our friends, we get judged for who we marry, we get judged for our girlfriend, our boyfriend, we get judged for career industry. You also get judged on who you decide to lock on to and run with. as a right hand person or as the person that you want to be their right hand person.

What do you wish we taught everyone from the ages of 10 to 20?

Sure.

Five different things around money.

First thing would be what is money? Because money as we know it is fake. Our dollars are just pieces of paper. I grew up thinking that our paper dollars are like the holy grail. You want to save this money because it is the most valuable thing there is. as I became older, I started to realize that that's not the case. Our paper dollars are just pieces of paper. It's Fiat currency, which means it's issued by the government and the value is backed through the strength of the government. Now, we're lucky here that the United States is the world's superpower. We have the world's strongest military, we have the world's strongest economy, but we can't stay on top forever. And, you know, inflation is when the value of a dollar goes down. So these dollars, which many of us think that if we hoard this, we'll become wealthy, saving money to wealth is actually keeping you poor and it's making you poorer each and every day. So the first thing you have to understand is what is money? Second thing you have to understand is what do wealthy people work for? And most of us, the majority of us are taught to work to get a job and climb that corporate ladder, but wealthy people are doing something completely different. they're working to own the corporate ladder. They're working for something called equity. And this thing really blew my mind because wealthy people are not working for that paycheck. They're working to own a piece of the company. That way they can get a piece of the profits. So the best way to understand this is, you know, a lot of times people complain about how much money I'm making. I wish my boss paid me more. And this is where if you start to understand the system, you'll start to ask the right questions. See, a big company, you have to ask the question, who are they working for? Are they working to take care of their employees? Are they working to take care of their customers? Neither. They're working to take care of one person, their shareholders. It's this concept called fiduciary duty. I learned this in law school. The executives of a company have a fiduciary duty not towards the employees, not towards the customers, but towards the shareholders, the owners of the company. Now, what that means, an easy example of this, is you're going out to dinner with your girlfriend or your wife, and you're on a date, and you get a text from one of your good friends, Hey, let's go play Fortnite right now. Your fiduciary duty at the moment is to be with a girlfriend, to be with a wife, to be with a partner, to spend time with him or her. If you go out and leave, you're gonna get in trouble, right? So it's who is your alliance to? And the shareholders, the executives, the CEO and the executives company, their fiduciary duty is to the shareholders, the owners of the company. So what are they trying to do? They're working to drive up the valuation of the company. So once you start to understand that, you'll realize why there's this big discrepancy between what people are paid and what people want to be paid. And when you start to understand that, you're going to change what you do with the money. that's why I said a minute ago or a little bit ago, wealthy people are working to climb, not climb the corporate ladder, but own the corporate ladder. So how do you get the equity, the ownership? You have to own a piece of the corporate ladder. Now, if you work for a public company, that means that you can take some of your income and you can buy stock in the company. Maybe they pay you with equity. Maybe they give you some sort of revenue share. That's what we do in my companies. Or if your company doesn't do that, then you have to start taking this money that you're earning and you have to start investing it into a place where you're getting equity. Maybe that means stocks, maybe that means real estate. It could be a number of different investments, but you have to work towards that equity.

Yeah.

The third thing is that you have to think bigger. I know I grew up thinking that somebody who looks like me, somebody who's brown, somebody who wears a turban, somebody who didn't have entrepreneur investor parents, could go out and do this because you think that somebody like me can do this. My parents also told me that I couldn't do it. I didn't know anybody doing it. I didn't know any investors. But you have to be the one to take that first step. And once you start to take that first step, you're gonna learn and see the second step. Then you take the second step and you're like, oh, I can start a $100 investment here. You don't have to start with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Start with $100. Apps on the internet make it so much more accessible. Anything is possible. If you live in America, you speak English, you have more opportunities than really anybody else in the world. People will literally risk their lives to come to this country because there's opportunity here. And so if you're here, you have the ability to understand what you and I are saying, and you have that technology to do it, you're blessed. That was what do you do with this?

Right?

You have to go out and start learning. You have to go out and start doing. And then the next thing that you have to do, number four, number four is you have to understand the concept of debt. Because we live in this consumer culture and it's interesting where, you know, we want to live this flex lifestyle, right? I want to show off on Instagram. I want to show off my new car, my new Chanel Gucci purse. And we kind of get caught up where I need to live a certain lifestyle that way people can think that I'm rich. But what you're doing now is you're living broke, making everybody else rich so people think you're rich. Your product rich, you have a lot of nice stuff, but you're broke. And so when you live that type of lifestyle, you are the reason why Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel are making so much money. but it's keeping you broke. The richest person in the world, sometimes he's the second, sometimes he's the third, is the CEO of Louis Vuitton.

No, why really?

Yeah, Bernard Arnault. And why? How did he get there? Because everybody wants to look rich. Everybody wants the Louis Vuitton. You know, I saw this in the pandemic especially. We were in a recession in 2021. but luxury sale of products were breaking new records.

Come on, really?

They're breaking records in 2021. Why is that? Stimulus checks went out, people had cash, and some people used that money to save, some people used that money to pay down debt, some people invested that money, but a big chunk of people took that money to places like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and now you go and spend it.

You would think when the economy is, well, I guess when people are losing their jobs and there's financial, uncertainty of the future, you'd think people would be saving or investing, not spending on luxury goods, especially if you can't even go outside to flex it.

You can only do it on social.

Media in the comfort of your own home.

You don't need to go outside anymore. You can just do it on social media.

Yeah.

And so if you don't have the cash, do it. People are going into debt to buy it. And it's becoming easier and easier because of now things like buy now, pay later. It is one of the fastest growing industries in FinTech. I love financial technology, but it breaks my heart. I mean, it just, it rips my heartstrings when I see the growth of this buy now, pay later, because what does that mean? I can go out and buy anything I want, not pay for it today, pay it off over three months, and then if I don't, I get slapped with 25% interest. And if you are 18, or let's just say 21, I give you $6,500. you never invested another penny, but you invested those $6,500 and you could get an 18% return on that money and you retired 65 and you look at this investment portfolio, you would have over $11 million. Wow. Now everyone watching this thing, where the heck am I going to get 18% on my money?

Exactly.

But your credit card company is doing it every single day. $6,500 is what the average American household has in credit card debt right now. and you were turning around paying these companies 18, 20, 25% a year, and they're the ones that are getting rich, not you. So what's happening? You're going into debt to buy liabilities, which are things that lose your money, and then you're paying interest on top of that, which is making everybody else rich, which leaves no money in your pocket to make yourself rich. And you have to break out of that mindset.

So what do we need to know about debt then? How do people get comfortable understanding about debt, either using it in the right ways and eliminating the debts that don't support our financial growth.

Yeah, so the first thing is never finance anything that isn't going to pay you. Okay, so- Give me an example. Gucci, your vacations, your car, stop financing these things that aren't paying you. And people are going to get upset when I say your car because they're going to say, Wait, how am I supposed to buy a car without a car payment?

Don't buy a $100,000 car unless you've got the money in the bank to buy it. Go plus more. Buy a used car for six grand.

Exactly. Go buy a used car, good working condition car, with cash.

Ride it for 10 years.

Exactly. The first time I made a million dollars in a year, my car was 500 bucks.

Dude.

My employees had better cars than I did.

I had a $4,000 car for the first five years living in Los Angeles. $4,000 car, used car, 19, 97.

I love it.

Was the car when it was made. And that thing was great. It was comfortable, got me from A to B. It didn't break down.

Exactly.

I didn't need to be flashy.

Exactly. I still have my $500 car.

That's great.

I still drive. And it's one of those things where, you know, because I fell into this trap where the first time I started making money, in my culture, cars are a big thing. The Punjabi culture, people really want to put money in their cars. They want to look cool, right? So when I was 17, 16, 17, I started making a little bit of money because I was doing my side hustles. The first thing I did was I put new rims on my car. Then I put tints on my car.

Then I put the HID lights on.

I had two 12-inch subwoofers in my trunk. I put the tints on, I put.

A new sound system in there.

Lights around, glow in the dark. Yeah, I had a Toyota, right? And then the next thing I was gonna do is I called up my cousin. I said, I guess what? I got three grand in the bank. I'm about to put Lamborghini doors on my Toyota. That's crazy, man. And he's like, Just mean, you're stupid. Don't do that. And so he sat I sat on the phone with me for like 20 minutes convincing me not to do it. Luckily I didn't. I'm really glad that I didn't. But that's where all my money was going. I looked cool. My car was cool. And that's where all my money was going. I had $1,000 in my bank and I went out and I bought $1,000 watch. I was like 18 years old, right? Because it was like, I was in that industry, the entertainment industry. I wanted to look cool. And then, you know, I start to read these money books and my mindset starts to shift. And now all of a sudden, it's.

The comp, like I went from one polar extreme to the other polar extreme.

I don't wanna spend a penny. On anything. On anything.

Unless it's making me money.

Exactly. I don't wanna spend anything unless it's making money. So now I'm saving as much money as I can. I'm investing my money as much as I can. I'm trying to build my business. And I mean, I'm talking like, I'm running my shoes into the ground. They have holes in them. I put a piece of tape, wrap it up, I'm going to school. I got rental properties, but I got my shoes that are taped up, right? And it's like, I realize that I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna make those same mistakes again. and you have to break out of that mindset. The first time I made 100 grand a year, I was in school, and I was living in an apartment paying $400 a month, including my water, my electricity, my cable, my gas, my internet, everything. And the reason was because I didn't have a room. I slept on the living room floor. I had a little mattress. I used to pull that into the living room, put that down, go to sleep at night, wake up, fold up the sheets, put them away, drag the mattress back into the hallway because I'm like, you know, I realized that the power of compounding your money, I realized the power of putting your money into the right assets, and I'm like, this is my time to build. I've been blowing this money that I'm earning on things that are making everybody else rich. I'll spend money on that stuff a little bit later. Right now, I want to make myself rich. And so, you have to just first understand what it is that's worth spending money on and what's not. And then, if you do have that debt, you've got to come up with a strategy to pay it down as fast as possible. First thing you can do, if you have a lot of credit card debt, call up the companies, see if they're going to be willing to just give you a lower amount. See if they're willing to work with you and say, look, I got $10,000 worth of debt. I'm never going to pay this off. It's not going to happen. How about you work with me and give me $5,000 and I will work to pay that off, right? You start to work with them, see if you can do something. Then you can consider moving some of that money to a 0% APR card if you have 12 to 18 months to do that. That way now you can aggressively, you got to do the smart, 'cause if you're just gonna keep doing the same things you were before, don't do it. But you have to start aggressively paying it down. You stop spending money. That way now you can pay down this debt as fast as possible and then you work to earn more money. And the money has to go somewhere as you're earning more money. You live the same lifestyle, if not smaller, and you take all this extra money and you use it to pay down your debt. That way now you can start building, right?

You got to lay that foundation. You got to start working to grow upwards.

But you have to get aggressive.

Is there ever a time where people should go into debt, the right type of debt? The credit card debt, student loan debt, buying a car and going in debt on that, those things I'm understanding is not helping your financial future. When is the right time or is there a right time in your mind to take money out and spend interest on that money?

Depends, right? If it's something that's going to make you income and you can manage the debt, then yes. But it's not for everybody. Some people don't have it in them to manage the debt. Some people don't have it in them to manage investments. Some people don't have it in them to run a business. If you're not the entrepreneurial investor type and you don't like looking at numbers, you don't like managing money, you don't like trying to grow this, stay away from it. Now you go up, maybe you can get debt to buy a home, but that's it. But if you are more the entrepreneurial type, you have it in you that you want to grow. if you're using debt, you should only be using debt to buy something that's paying you with income, something that's going to make you more money.

Do you have any debt out right now?

Right now, I do not. I have people paying me loans, but I personally don't have any debt right now. And I kind of went through this phase where I have all this real estate, but I have no debt on it. And the reason is, is because I'm waiting for the right opportunity. I will, I will have more debt.

Really?

Yeah. Just waiting for the right opportunity because right now all my real estate is paid off.

You've paid off all the real estate.

How many properties do you have? Units in the dozens, a number of units. But now I'm just waiting for the right opportunity.

And it's all paid off.

All paid off.

So now it's just cash coming in.

It's cash coming in.

And you know, do you still have that $5,000? That's rented for $850 a month.

That $8,000 place? $8,000 place. That's just bringing in 800 bucks a month.

$850 a month.

Clear and free. Just, yeah. You got to pay your expenses, your.

Property taxes, insurance, your maintenance, your management fees.

But right now I have no debt on it. And so now what I'm waiting for is.

And how much could you sell that for now?

Probably a hundred thousand, hundred twenty. I mean, I don't know the exact.

It's not bad.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's crazy because I never, I, when I buy real estate.

I never look at what can I.

Sell this property for? I'm looking for one thing.

Cash flow.

Cash flow. Yeah. And so this is a big mistake that leads people into a lot of problems in real estate because. When you start buying real estate, hoping that you'll be able to sell it for a higher price in the future and things don't go as planned, then what? Yeah, you're screwed. Now you're screwed. So, you know, for me, I look at one thing, cash flow. And will I be able to see more growth in this area? So I look where businesses are moving, where is money moving to? And then that's where I want to invest because I know if property prices go up, hey, it's icing. Property prices go down, it's okay.

I'll look, I'm gonna rent, which is, which is covering my costs. so what's your goal, right? With the, the dozens of units for the opportunity for something bigger or what's the plan?

Something. Yeah, it can be anything, something bigger in real estate. And I'm looking for the right opportunity. But again, my focus now isn't in real estate like it was before. A few years ago, I was heavy in real estate. Now I was doing everything that I can there, and a lot more opportunities were there. I bought a property in 2021. Haven't bought anything in 2022 yet, but my focus now is building my business because I, I see a bigger opportunity there for me. than real estate. That's why I've been kind of, I'm still involved in real estate, but not.

The way that I was years ago.

Because you can earn more with your business if you put the attention and the energy and the money into building the team and the resources and the technology and those things.

And it's more fun because it's a lot more active for me. And then, you know, once this gets bigger, then I'll go back to real estate. But right now, like for the last few years, I've been kind of phasing slowly away from real estate as I can transition more into the business because, you know, it's just this is more fun for me.

Yeah.

Okay.

So understanding debt was the fourth thing. What was the fifth thing you wish people learned from 10 to 20 years old about money?

You have to be willing to make mistakes, take risks and start. And this one is hard and it sounds simple, but a lot of people that I know, a lot of people, they are so hesitant to making that first investment because what if I do something wrong? What if I make a mistake? What if my investment goes down? And so the simple thing is- that's happened to me multiple times. Yeah, but you learn every time, right? It's your tuition, it's your real tuition, and you have to be willing to try things because if you don't, you're going to get stuck in the game of what if. What if I lose money? What if it doesn't work out? But what if it goes up? What if you learn? I have made a lot of mistakes. I made a video on my YouTube channel where I went through my worst real estate deal ever. It was my third property that I ever bought. Home in the city of Detroit and I made every mistake possible. Now I'm still in college, right? I don't know what's going on exactly with real estate investing. And I mean, I bought the property and I bought it because my contractor at the time told me that we can make a lot of money on this deal. We'll be able to rent it out. We could flip it if I wanted to. And he was like, don't even worry about getting a home inspection. Now, when I buy a property now, the first thing I do is I get a property inspection where somebody walks through the deal, make sure a third party, an independent person, And they tell me anything wrong with the property in the foundation, in the plumbing, in really anything with the property so I know what I'm getting myself into. And so he told me, don't do that. He said, don't worry, I already walked through. He's a contractor, so I figured he knows what he's talking about. All you have to do is spend $5,500 and I will make sure this property is ready to go. So I said, okay, let's do it. So I bought the home. I gave him a check for half, maybe $2,500 or something around there, $3,000. And a week goes by, nothing starts. Two weeks go by, nothing starts. And I call him, I said, Hey man, what's going on? I thought we were gonna have this done in two weeks. Here we are two weeks later and you haven't even brought your materials here. So I got caught up with something, something's going wrong. And so now two more weeks go by, he brought some materials there, he started painting one wall and that was it. And so, you know, I'm getting upset because now it's like, you know, every day that this property is now leased out, it's costing money.

Losing money.

Yeah.

And still nothing's getting done. Another two weeks go by. And now I'm like, okay, look, what's going on? We got to get this taken care of because now we're six weeks into this deal. You haven't done a single thing. You keep putting me off. You. You took my money and nothing's happened. And so long story short on that, he ran away. He was having financial difficulties. That's why he wanted me to close on this deal, because he needed some cash, and now he's gone. So now I have another property that somebody was working on a manager and he was having some issues at my property. He was causing some problems. So I figured he's causing problems there. How about you come work at this property and you need a home. You can live in this home for free.

Fix it up.

Just fix it up. And so he said, okay. So now I thought, all right, you know, I found a good deal here. I've got somebody who'll fix it up, he'll live there, take care of it, and it's gonna cost me less money and. So now he's living in this property and he's like, how about this? How about you just open up a Charge account at Home Depot and I'll just go buy stuff and take care of it at the home? I said, okay. So I go open up this Charge account. He starts buying materials not to work in my home, but to work on other people's properties.

Oh my gosh.

So now I'm like, dude, you're spending my money to go work on other people's properties so you can make double profits over there. You haven't started any work on my home. You're not paying me rent. you have a dog that you're not taking care of who's pooping everywhere in the property and it's not being taken care of. And so now how do I get somebody out of this home? I got to evict him out of my own property. There's no lease in place. So now we're going into all these legal issues of how do we get this person out of the home? We get him out of the home. It took me months to get him out. The property now is destroyed.

-Oh man.

-There'S crap, little crap all over the home. He damaged the place, did not take care of it and now it's like, we have to start all over from negative to start fixing this property up. So now we start fixing it. I get a licensed and insured contractor. We're months into the deal and he wants, I don't know, like a lot more money, at least 10 grand, if not more, to start doing the renovations. And we start digging deep and we start to see problem after problem after problem. So now it, you know, every cost keeps adding up. Now the home is ready to go. And I'm like, all right, fine. And everybody told me, just please don't license this home with the city of Detroit as a rental because nobody does it. And this is, you know, again, after the 2008 crash, Detroit went through its bankruptcy. They were having their own issues. But I don't like to play games. I want to play by the rules. So I said, I'm going to get it rent. I'm going to get a license for rental. When you get a license for rental, they're going to send their own property inspectors out to the property and they're going to inspect it and make sure that it's okay. So now the property inspectors come out and they say, I need to lift up the home. So what do you mean, lift up the home? They're like, yeah, we need to raise the home. I don't even know that you could do that. Apparently you can, and it's very expensive. So I lift up the home, and then we start running the water in the property, and it turns out that the water is not draining to the main city line. Apparently somebody previously living in this property had poured cement down the main drain. Now, in order to get this property working, we have to bust out the cement in the basement, take out this pipe, put in a new pipe, repour the cement, and then these property inspectors start disagreeing with one another. One person says that you need a 10-foot electrical riser. So we make it 10 feet. The next one comes, says, why is it 10 feet? It needs to be 13 feet. I'm like, your first person said 10, and now they start fighting with each other, and we have to keep paying for these inspectors to come back. They keep charging me permit fees for everything. If I want to paint the window sills, it's a $100 permit fee. change the smoke detectors, $75 permanent fee. So this goes on and on and on and on for months. Finally now we're approved for rental. I was like, oh my God, like this is the biggest headache of my life. We get a tenant in the property, we get licensed, tenants in the property, and now we have the license and the property inspectors just decides to go back to the property. They don't tell us, they just go back there. Even though we're fully licensed, they had no reason to go there. They knock on the door and apparently we didn't know this, the tenant was having a babysitting operation in a property. So now the inspector sees this that the tenant is running an illegal babysitting operation. He tells us, he finds us, tells us we need to evict the tenant. And now we have to start this process all over again. So after that point, I was like, you know what? Just sell this property. Wow. Because this is the biggest headache and that was the only deal I ever lost money on. But I learned a lot. It was my tuition. So you have to be willing to learn, be willing to make mistakes, and then be willing to grow from those mistakes, go on, and keep willing to go.

I mean, if you could predict, obviously no one knows, but do you think there's going to be a bigger recession or some type of crash in some way in the US economy or in the world? And when do you think that will happen?

I see, I already feel it in 2023. 23. So we think next year. Because a lot is going to happen with the US election and also the potential conflict in China and Taiwan and also the gas shortage and everything. And also so many tons of food is wheat is stopped at the port of the grain, which could cause a starvation in African countries. So we're going to see a lot of chaos in the next few months.

Really?

Yeah.

And we're going to experience a lot of gas shortage in European countries, which they're thinking about because the gas stopped coming to Germany. So a lot of change is going to happen in the next few months.

What, for everyone listening and watching right now, what would be the next three steps they should take after listening or watching to this? around their invisible assets, their visible assets, or just the next three steps they should take in life to prepare for this.

Right.

So mentally, you have to be ready to find your peace of mind so you can start counting your blessings, start appreciating what you have, and enjoy the flow of happy money. So when money comes in, you can say thank you for the money. given to me when you pay for the bills, thank you, I have enough abundance so I can pay the bills and start blessing people that you're giving money to. So by doing that, you can find your peace of mind and whatever you do, and I think that's the basic.

That's number one.

That's the base. And also, secondly, you have to start figuring out your inventory. what you have and who you are.

What type of inventory?

Both emotional and also your gift. I never knew I could write until I was 33.

Really?

My parents were so surprised and my brother and sister. And many of my friends were so surprised that I became an author. And I was the one who gets surprised most, by the way. So I didn't know. until I started writing. So I'm sure they have, you have some kind of gifts buried in you. For example, Luis, you are an athlete, so definitely you knew your gift as an athlete. But probably you didn't know that you had a gift as an interviewer.

No, I had no idea.

Speaker.

Yeah, writer. I know.

Right.

Writer.

Right.

And also somebody who can motivate people.

Right.

You know, you use it for you. to motivate yourself. But you didn't know you can impact millions of people.

I had no idea.

Right.

So, like, when you are young in your 30s and 40s, you never knew. And so you have to start looking at.

Sure. What you have, what skills, tools that you've developed, right, you could use if you need.

Yeah.

And you have to multiply them because only single gift is not taking you far. But if you can multiply your gifts of speaking, for example, and also listening and a sense of humor and the care, generosity. If you combine all of them, you become so unique.

Yes.

So once you become so unique, people start just coming to you because you're more attractive.

Right.

Yeah. So.

Okay.

Okay. So that's number two is find out your inventory of your assets and your gifts. And I'm also assuming your inventory of, like, how much money you have, your investments, what you've.

But it's not so important. Because if you are not making much, it's not right.

What skills do you have? Skills, yeah.

Right. So if you, a net asset is less than $300,000, don't worry about investing. I think you should invest in yourself.

Invest in you.

And take your friends out for dinner, because it's going to pay more dividends.

Be generous with your energy, your time, your gifts.

Yes. And then the third step would be start getting support from everybody. You know, I have say, for example, more than 10,000 people sending me money every month as a form of subscription online salon.

Yes.

So, and I haven't promised anything to do for them. So it's just a love money. So can, you know, this is what type of money? Love money.

Love money.

Yeah.

So 10,000 people pay you money every month.

Yes.

Just because they love you. Yeah, $10.

That's how I feel.

Wow. Are you offering them any? Are you giving them any?

I can just say, I had this funny interview with Lewis today, and I'm in Stockholm, I sent some videos, but I'm not promising, like, I do this, you know, so I'll give you this, so give me this. No, it's more of a casual thing. That's cool. So I have enough trust from people, so the happy money almost is given. in my custody so I can help other people.

That's cool.

So if you start getting fan clubs or cheerleader, cheer supporters, so you can start with five people and you can start having 10 people, 30 people. So the next economy will be very interesting because a lot of people support one another. So instead of working for one big company, say I have 300 people supporting me. Say, and you can increase your monthly support money, say $100 per month. If I get a support from 30 people, $100 a month, that's $3,000. And if you get 50 people who are supporting you with $100, you already have a $5,000 income. So whatever you do, you don't have to be the next entrepreneur of the world. you can satisfy it, or at least you can have deep connection with 50 people or 100 people who love you so much and who's not gonna let you down when you fall. So if you have that strong trust from people, you don't have to worry about money for the rest of your life.

Wow.

What should be financial goals that people create for themselves? Should they have financial goals?

I don't think financial goal is necessary. If you want to buy a big house, you may need to have that.

Sure.

But.

Financial goals people come up with, it's because they want to feel safe, sense of security. So you don't need to have a goal of $1 million because when you reach $1 million, you feel like this is enough.

I need more, right?

I need two. And when you reach two millions, No, no, no, I think I should have three. Yeah, so instead, what I would recommend is once again get support from 50 people, and at the same time, if you can, imagine a joint account with your wealthiest acquaintance. You can think of me, for me, I think of my mentor, Joaquín Takeda, or Warren Buffett. Think about your imaginary joint account, and when something bad happens, you can withdraw as much money as you want.

Really?

So this fun illusion, you know, like imagination.

What does that do for you when you have that imagination?

You feel that you're not alone. And if you're lucky, like I, when I was young, I had three millionaires who endorsed me saying, you can do whatever you want. And if you fail, I'm gonna support your life for the rest of my life.

Man, does that happen in Japan a lot?

I think I heard a few Americans who experienced the same thing. So just imagine if you get that sense of security, you know, Louis, I'm gonna just keep you afloat. as long as I live.

Wow.

And so go for it. Okay.

I'll text you if I need you, can?

Yeah.

So if you get an endorsement from wealthy people like that, that's cool. You don't have to worry about it. Just so imagine.

How does someone get an endorsement from someone who has a lot of money like that?

I think what can they do? I think you have to live your life purposes. That's another subject. But if you are living your life purpose, a lot of people support you.

It's so true because when I see someone who's coming up in business in their early 20s or something and I see that they have a gift and they're using the gift consistently to create some type of value for the world, I notice it. I see it. I'm like, you,'re doing an amazing job. You know, I'll reach out and message people and say, I love what you're doing, keep it up. And I think even just doing that, showing people, Hey, you're doing a great job, gives them encouragement to keep going, whether you're giving them money or not, but that's something you can do. And I think that's, it's hard to see that when someone's not using their gifts. You're not gonna endorse someone if they're just like, everything is against me, the world is challenging, and I don't care about life. But when someone says, I'm gonna take a risk, I'm going to use my gift and put myself out there, that's inspiring. In your book, which I love by the way, again, I want to get this book, Happy Money. You talk about, I think you use a concept called money magnet or like humans are like magnets for money, right? And some people, it doesn't matter if you are a good person or a bad person, right? You have an analogy in the book where you say, you know, if a rock is falling, it doesn't care who it hits. It could hit a good person or a bad person.

Right.

It's gravity is pulling that rock to the ground and it's gonna hit whoever it hits, right? Based on where they're at. So, and you also talk about how most people think that it's not fair when they see someone bad or mean or greedy making all the money. Can you just talk about this concept of being a money magnet and how someone can become more of that?

So, once again, we experience life according to our beliefs. And some people have better luck than others. And some people work so hard, but they're getting minimum wages. So, you have to find your place, your seat, your reserved seat is what I call it. A lot of people try to sit on other people's seat. which is wrong because your seat is reserved somewhere else. And if you don't see it on other people's seat, what happens is that you get so depressed and then you feel so meaningless, you know, so and all that. Because you cannot really feel life. But once you sit on your seat, you are so deeply connected with your life purpose. Then your magnetism stats gets turned on.

So how does someone know where their seat is and know how to sit in it and be happy with their seat?

Yeah.

So the only thing is ask your heart what your heart tells you. If you're excited about it, you're going closer. And so like, it's like hot or cold, right? so if you feel more excited about like doing this, this is it, this is it, this is it. So you have to have your heart guide you where you're supposed to be. So always listen to your heart, you know, and then if your heart gets excited about a certain thing, you're just getting closer to your seat.

Do you have a meditation or affirmation process for someone on how they can trust their heart, listen to their heart deeper to know they're on the right path.

Right.

Do you have something that you, you use yourself or that other people can use?

Yeah.

So I always try to have a few minutes. Say you're waiting for a car, you know, a Uber or just waiting for something. I find a few moments and then just try to find my Center. you know, and then I just go deeper and figure out where I want to go and just listen to my heart. What does my heart say? Am I excited about this or not? Am I trying to get money? So I'm not excited, but I have to do this to bring money on the food on the table. So I always check what my heart tells me.

You're always listening to it. What happens when your heart is not excited? Like you have, let's say you have a project you're working on.

Right.

I'm assuming all of your books you're excited about, but maybe there's an event you're supposed to go to or I don't know, something that you said yes to. And you realize your heart is not excited about this. What do you do then? Do you do it, but then you don't repeat it the next time? Or what do you, how do you navigate that?

So I want to be a nice person. So once I said yes, I would do it. But I try to be very careful with what I say when I say yes. So I have a great team. They'll just check. They'll check. Because I want to be nice to everybody, so I'm likely to say yes too many times. So my secretary and my team says, Ken, are you sure about this? Yeah, probably not. So can you come up with something?

I'm glad you're here. You didn't reschedule this interview.

Yeah, so, but in general, I'm trying to listen to my heart.

That's good.

That let me hear.

I think a lot of people don't understand the power of a daily affirmation or a daily check-in with yourself, just like you talked about for two minutes. For someone that doesn't believe in affirmations, what would you say to them?

So, even if you don't believe it, you must be saying something. to yourself. Like, this is a terrible day. It's so hot. I don't like this. So subconsciously you're saying something about your life or about yourself, about your friends or about your clients. Well, I hate working with this person. Something like that. So I think it's a affirmation by itself. So just write down what are the things that you say to yourself. subconsciously, you can probably figure out. And is that a happy thought? And then unfortunately, a lot of the things that we talk to ourselves are negative. Yes. So do you want to feed negative thoughts like this, or do you want to pour more positive thoughts? You have a choice. But unless you write them down, you never know it. And then you may find that the reason why you get depressed, because some get depressed about life. No wonder I feel depressed. So if all the things you talked about to you about you are positive and loving, it's what you get.

Yeah, exactly. And can you tell me how we can think about money as energy? In the book also, I saw you writing about how money is energy and sometimes people try to make it and hold on to it. They want to hold on to it, they want to stack it in their bank as high as they can go and they don't want to spend it. Sometimes that happens. What happens when we hoard money, when we keep it and we don't let it come and go as energy? What happens?

So I have seen so many interesting things. Like when you, if you hoard your money, A few things happen. You get sick and then you have to pay for the medical bills.

Really?

Yeah.

Or like your kids do something bad and then you have to pay for the damage. So money needs outlet. So it's so interesting how money flows. And if you don't let out your money energies outlet, it's gonna get bad. It's like a pond. If there's no flow, the water gets bad.

Right.

It's like think about your health. If you eat and don't go to the bathroom, you're gonna get sick. What's gonna happen?

Yeah.

So for to stay healthy, you have to eat right, you have to release right. So for hoarding money, I want to ask them, you're eating so much, But what if you refuse? I'm not going to go to the bathroom for the rest of my life.

Oh my gosh. You'd be sick. You can't explode.

And you cannot eat well. So you have to let your money flow, and then the next flow comes in. So here comes money EQ, the trust part. Trust is the hardest part of money EQ. You have to have the trust that once you let go of money, it comes back. So you don't have the trust. That's why you start worrying. That's why you have doubts about yourself. So instead of attaching to your money, you can say, thank you for staying with me. Just go, bless the world, and come back with your friends.

When you control from the inside, Like we're in control of our self, we're in control of our world. So it doesn't matter what happens, you figure out how to get to where you're going. The goals don't change. Sometimes the methods of getting there do, but I have never, I think probably I had great teachers. I had a half a dozen phenomenal mentors, and I think I was raised the right way. You stay in control regardless. you know?

Yeah.

What would you say are some of the habits that you have that people wouldn't expect that you would have? Maybe they would expect certain things like waking up early or journaling or, you know, getting eight hours of sleep. But what are some habits that you do differently that maybe are unexpected in the personal growth space?

I study every day. Every day. I've studied every day now for 60 years. I started to study this book in 1961 and I read it every day. Same book, Think and Grow Rich. I have just here behind me, I've got the Laws of Success, the original ones that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1928. And then he came up with this in 1937. And the man that gave it to me, he said, if you'll study this every day, he said, you,'re going to have a wonderful life. And he pointed out Napoleon Hill spent his whole life studying the lives of 500 of the world's most successful people. He was mentored by Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. And he said, since he spent his whole life putting this together, he said, it would be a prudent move on your part. If you spent the rest of your life trying to understand the ply, what he is teaching and Right. You know, that just seemed to make some sense to me and that's what I started to do and I've never stopped.

If there was only one principle inside of Think and Grow Rich that you could only live by and only talk about and you want to be able to talk about anything else inside the book, what would that one principle be?

Persistence. He said there, he said in the book, he said, There may be no heroic connotation to the word, but the quality is to the character of the human, like what carbon is to steel. See, I think the trick, Louis, is get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. Because you're either going to grow or you're going to die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And some people think they can just hold it where they're at. but they can't do that. You're either going to go ahead or you're going to go backwards. It's create or disintegrate. And so if you have good habits, you're going to keep growing. Way back, I think around 1938-39, Albert E. N. Gray worked for the Prudential and he wrote the Common Denominator of Success. It's a great article. And he said, the common denominator of success is informing the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do. And he was speaking one time, a young guy said, why do successful people like doing these things? And he said, they don't. That's why they've turned them into habits. I thought that was beautiful. He said, that's why they've turned them into habits. They don't like doing them. And of course, a habit.

What do you think?

Well, a habit is something we do automatically without any conscious thought. We just, it's part of our paradigm. We're programmed.

What do you think are the three most difficult habits to develop that actually will support us for the most growth long term if we can take these habits on?

One of the things I think the most difficult is repetition of studying the same thing. I have a book here on my desk. It's in a book holder.

And.

When I went to visit Earl Nightingale way back in 1968, no, it was earlier than that, it was around '66, and I saw he had this bookstand on his desk and I asked him what it was. he said it was a book holder. And I said, why do you have it? He says, because I want to read those two pages every day for the next month, maybe two months. I said, really? The same thing. And he said, yeah. He said, then they'll become a part of me. And he said, that's really the success. The secret of success is repetition of an idea. You see that in sports. You play ball. I mean, It's definitely part of your game, you know. How many plays would you have in your head? Whoo.

Well, a lot of different plays, but in football, there's really only like nine different routes a receiver can run.

Yeah.

That's part of the tree of running a route, but there's so many different variations within plays that that one receiver could run. and then another person could run in tandem with that.

Yeah.

So you have to, there's a massive playbook that you go through at the beginning of the season and you've got to remember a lot of different things. But if you typically know the route you need to run and what other people are doing around you, then you can figure it out.

But it's repetition that enables you to do that, isn't it?

Over and over and over and over. You see, it's the same route over and over.

That doesn't just apply to football. I think that applies to life. And if a person will really understand that, it's through repetition that you program your subjective mind. And it's your subjective mind that controls your behavior. Doesn't make sense to some people, but if they would study it and start to understand it, they would start to do it.

What's the most important thing on those two pages that you have open in front of you?

Most important thing here, read it to you. The lesson to be learned from the practical aviation of the present day is that of triumph of principle over precedent, of working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experiences to the contrary. With such a notable example before us, Can we say that it is futile to inquire whether, by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are the back of external and visible conditions? And then, by bringing these unseen causes into a better order, make practical working reality of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams? They were talking about the Wright brothers. He said there was a secret they got off the ground because nobody knew how to fly and neither did they until after they got it in the air. But he pointed out that it was principle over precedent. We let precedent control us too often.

What's the difference between principle and precedent?

Well, precedent, you're letting something that has happened in the past control you. The principle is that there's always a better way. Doesn't matter what you're doing, better is a beautiful word.

What's something in your life that took a long time where you were holding on to the precedent of something for a while. Maybe it was months, maybe it was years, decades, that eventually the principle finally started to fly and you had a breakthrough. Is there an area of your life you can think of?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Just as soon as you said it, yeah. You see, when I started in this, when I first got this book.

I.

Was such a loser. And I mean, in every every way you look at it. I went to high school for two months and I didn't quit. They kicked me out. They didn't want me there. And I was kind of happy because I didn't like it there anyway. I held dumb jobs. I never had a half decent job. The idea that I could even get a good job never entered my mind. I had such low self-esteem. I didn't understand that at the time. I didn't even know what self-esteem was. And letting go of the fact that I didn't have a formal education, that I never had any business experience.

The.

Man that gave me the book, he said, none of that matters, Bob. That's the past. He said, let it go. Well, I had a difficult time letting that go because we're programmed that if you don't go to school, you can't get a good job. That if you're going to earn a lot of money, you've got to be really smart. Well, you see, I didn't think I was very smart and I didn't have any formal education. That's a hard thing to let go of. But through the repetition of studying this, over and over and over. And as he pointed out to me, Edison had grade three. And he pointed out different people that had no formal education. And I finally made a break, got it, left it behind. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but I let it go.

Yeah.

What would you say are some deciding factors that can help someone with their self-esteem because you and I are very similar where my childhood, I didn't, I didn't have much confidence in myself or esteem because I was in the bottom of my class in school because I was, you know, had tutors and special needs classes because I just wasn't able to understand it and comprehend that well and felt awkward and goofy in my life. What are some, some things you think people that in their teens or even in their 40s and 50s who don't have confidence yet, what are the things we can be doing differently to gain confidence, to build self-esteem? Because I think this is one of the key factors of success is believing in yourself. It doesn't matter if the world believes in you, if you don't believe in you.

What can we start to do to change that? Well, I think a person has to start to study themself. Most people know very little about themself. They think they're their body. You're not a body, you have a body. and you have a marvelous mind. And when I first started to study this, I thought, you know, studying the mind, that's for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists. And the man that told me, he said, no, it's not. He says, that's for anybody. That's for little kids. And so I think as we start to understand something about our mind and something about our higher faculties, See, we're all programmed to live through our senses. We go by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch. Well, I've got a little dog at home that you can see here, smell, taste, touch. All the animals in the world, they're completely at home in their environment. They blend in. They operate by instinct, which is perfect. We had instinct removed and we had higher faculties put in our place. in the place. And if we would study these and gain an understanding, your self-image would automatically start to improve. You have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory and intuition. Those six faculties will give you the ability to create your own environment. See, we're totally disoriented in our environment. where all the other little creatures are completely at home in theirs. And we're disoriented in ours because we can create our own, but we don't know that. School doesn't teach us that. School is more interested in the development of your intellect than in the development of awareness. A person doesn't earn $100,000 a year because they want $100 a year. they earn a hundred a year because they're not aware of how to earn a hundred a month. Awareness is really the key. And when we become aware of who we are and what we've got working for us, you know, marvelous things start to happen to us. And that's really what happened to me. I never went back to school. I I built a very successful company. It operates all over the world. I didn't do it myself. I have a tremendous team of people. I've got a just an absolute genius of a business partner, a woman who's an attorney. I mentioned to you before you should have her on sometime. You'd be fascinated with her. She's that interesting. It was a group of people. We've attracted a phenomenal group of people in our company. And we're operating now in 91 countries.

Wow.

Teaching this information. I don't know another company that teaches what we teach. Like I think Tony Robbins has probably done more for our industry than any individual. The secret has probably done more for it as much as Tony has, the movie. But there's, I don't know anybody else teaching what we're teaching. And what we're really doing is teaching people how their mind functions and.

How.

To expand their understanding of how it operates.

What are the six faculties again? You shared this before, which I, which I love. And I think if people really understood Perception. Help them build theirself in.

There's perception, the will, imagination, memory, reason, and intuition.

Which one is the hardest for people to...

I don't think any of them are...

Awareness.

They're all equally valuable. You take your imagination, think of this for a minute, Louis. Nothing is created or destroyed. Look here, here's a little cell phone. What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it. Well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a phone because we didn't have any money for the first reason, but the second, not everybody could have a phone. We were not aware that there was an infinite number of frequencies. Today there's, what a zillion phones, because there's an infinite number of frequencies. This phone is on its own frequency. Yours, it's on its own frequency. If I have your number in here and I hit send, you and I connect We're on the same frequency. Won't matter where you are, we can see each other, we can communicate because we get on the same frequency. Well, the good that we desire is already here, it's on a frequency. The way to build this has always been here, we weren't aware of it. But somebody took their imagination and went off into no place. What they were really doing is going on to a higher frequency. And if you'll stay on that frequency, you'll attract everything that you require. That's why Dr. Wernher von Braun, when President Kennedy asked him what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a man to the moon and then bring him back safely to Earth, von Braun said, the will to do it. The will is the mental faculty that gives you the ability To hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions. See, if you take your imagination, do it. You have goals, take your imagination and then take yourself there, see yourself already have completed the goal. And then hold that picture with your will. When you go there with your imagination, there is a place. Whatever it is you want, you went there with your imagination, there is a place. You stay there in your imagination. You will attract everything that's required for the manifestation of that picture. You saw Brady doing it last Sunday.

Yeah, it's a machine.

Yeah. absolutely phenomenal.

So holding the imagination, the picture that you want in your mind, and then attracting it on the steps to get.

Yeah.

You see, we don't work toward the goal. We work from the goal. You get the goal in your mind. Our problem is we measure everything on the physical.

And.

Yeah, you look at the physical and you say, well, I haven't got it. yet. If you think your conscious mind, if you get an image there of your goal, you've already got it intellectually. If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me, but if you have it, you can share it with me. You can share with me the idea that you've got in your mind. So you've already got it there, haven't you?

Right.

As you get emotionally involved with that idea, You've got it also on an emotional level. You've got it there. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. The only place you haven't got it is physically. Now, there's a period of time must elapse for that idea that you have intellectually and emotionally for that idea to move into physical form. We understand how much time. Pardon?

How much time does it usually take?

We don't know. We don't know. that's the only thing we don't know is the gestation period for an idea. We know what the gestation period is for wheat. We know what it is for a carrot. We know what it is for a baby. Moment of conception is about 280 days. We didn't always know these things, but we do now. We don't know what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and that's what an idea is. But it grows by exactly the same law. And so if we hold that idea in our mind, it must by law manifest in form. It moves into form. Now that is called the perpetual transmutation of energy. It's one of the laws of the universe.

Wow.

There was something that you shared.

Just.

A moment ago that reminded me of an interview I did with Joe Dispenza. recently where he said we're really good at remembering the past and actually building a story in our mind about something traumatic that was actually way worse in our mind than it actually probably was in person. We're really good at remembering these stories. But what we need to do, he said, is to remember the future. And when he said that, it kind of triggered something different. It's like what you just shared. It's like, have an idea of the future of what we want to manifest, and hold on to that idea. And remember the memories of the future as opposed to holding on to the memories of the past, so we can move into that, as opposed to be stuck in the past.

That's hold Dure that is,., that's hard.

Whyh is it so hard why is.

It hard for us to hold on to, or maybe not hold on to, but keep in our minds and imagine the idea of a greater future for us, as opposed to constantly being stuck in the past. Why is that hard for so many of us?

Because we're programmed to go the other way. You know, what language do you speak?

I barely speak English.

How about Russian?

Privyet, cag dila. That's all I know.

Well, the point is, You were raised with the English language.

Yes.

You don't know another language. I was raised with the English language. I don't know another language. I was working with people over in Kuala Lumpur a number of years ago and they had a little boy four years old, that little boy could speak four languages. They thought nothing of that. There's people speak many more than four languages. Because that's the way they're raised. We're the product of our environment from the time we're born. But prior to that, genetically we're programmed. You're genetically programmed at the moment of conception. You get all mom's DNA and all dad's DNA. And God knows how far it goes back on either side. Well, that is programming. That's in our subconscious mind.

And.

That'S called a paradigm. That's what it is. It's a program in our subconscious mind. Now, here's the crazy part. You have programs in your phone or in your computer. The people that write the code for these programs are really smart when it comes to writing code. They really know what the hell they're doing. The people that wrote the code for our biocomputer had no idea what the hell they were doing. They don't. They did not. They were writing a code For my subconscious mind and for yours, that's our paradigm. And that probably controls our life to an enormous degree. It did with me until I was 26. Now I was fortunate when I met Ray Stanford and he got me into the Think and Grow Rich book and that led me into God knows what else. I have been working at changing that program since I was 26. I'm 86 right now. so I've been at it for a long time, and I work at it every day. Most people don't even know that they have the problem, so they stay stuck their whole life. Listen, you interview some pretty interesting people. I watched the interview here a billionaire a while ago.

Which one?

I forgot. I forgot who it was.

Anyway, Ray Dalio, Charles Koch.

It was a pretty interesting interview anyway. But the point is, anybody can become a billionaire if that's what you want to do. You say, well, wouldn't everybody? No, everybody wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put all my energy into that. Now, does that mean I don't want money? No, hell, I earn all kinds of money. And I probably want to earn more. But that's not my focus. We are programmed to live a certain way. and rarely do we change that. Now, I change it and I teach people to change it, but most people don't. Stop and think of how few people are really well off. 3-4-5% maximum, if that. And 95% are struggling. And some of these are really bright people. you've got people that have a. A doctorate degree in Commerce and Finance, and they're broke. How the hell could that happen? Well, they never learned how to earn money. They learned how to count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn it. School doesn't teach us how to earn money. It's absurd when you stop and think about it.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out.

There and do something great.