"A Once In A Lifetime Opportunity To Build Wealth IS COMING!" | Dave Ramsey & Lewis Howes

I mean, the chances of you being in the exact situation you're in in a few months is almost zero. Your life is not a snapshot. You're not trapped in this moment. It's a film strip. There's very few people who you see a meteoric rise in their wealth or their success.

What are you telling to people right now who are saying, you know what? I didn't follow your advice. I didn't do what I should. I should have done. I I still love off credit cards. I overbought. I paid for my house and I've got this expensive lifestyle and credit cards that I know I'm wrong. I made a mistake. I own it and now I'm screwed. And I just got 50% cut of my work. I might lose my job in two months. I got all these bills. How do you even respond to something like that?

Well, I certainly don't say I told you so. That's not the message because I've been there. I've done stupid stuff too and that's not helpful. and it doesn't bring any healing. The thing is this, we all get wake up calls. We get wake up calls in our relationships, our spiritual walk, our leadership styles. We get wake up calls in our finances. And some people, the phone's ringing off the hook right now. They're getting wake up calls on a bunch of things. They're at home with their family and they're starting to realize I was disconnected from my family. I haven't been plugged in. They got a wake up call on their relationships at home. They've gotten a wake up call on, you know, I don't have any savings and I've got, I'm deeply in debt. This isn't working. And so the, you know, the cool thing is when you get the call, then you have to make the choice. Are you going to answer the phone? If you pick the phone up, that means maybe it's time to change. And you can look back and you might be, 27 years old right now watching this and you're screwed. You lost your job, you got no money, you got no savings and you feel like it's all over. And I remember in 1970, I was 10 years old and I was in my grandpa's backyard. We were tearing down an old deck and I pulled some nails out of those old boards as we were taking the boards off and he taught me to put them down and straighten them with a hammer and save those used nails in a coffee can. Now, my grandpa Ramsey was one of my favorite people on the planet. This is 1970 and he was still answering the phone that rang in the Great Depression. It changed his life. He was frugal and careful and wise with money the rest of his life. And so someday, 27 year old, and you're gonna get that opportunity. I was 28 years old when I lost everything. It was my fault. It was the SNL crisis, the banking climate changed. I'd built a house of cards. I was stupid. And the phone rang. And it was my wake up call. Are you going to answer the phone? Are you going to change your life to where you say, never again, I'm going to control the controllables to where I'm the little pig in the brick house. Never again.

Preach to me, Dave.

Come on now.

I love this.

What'S the biggest wake up call for.

You that this has had? Maybe it's not the financial side of things or business because you guys are thriving. Is there something, you know, relationship, family, friendships, health? Is there anything that's woken you up now or in the near future and recently?

Well, I've spent the last 15 years pouring into our leadership team and the Ramsey personalities creating this succession plan of and so It's not a wake-up call, it's more of a source of pride as to how our leadership team and our Ramsey personalities are reacting in the moment here without me coaching them. They already knew what to do.

They're leading.

They're out there doing it. They're doing it. They're out there.

They're not waiting for grandpa Dave to say, what do I do? Tell me the steps.

They already did it. They already did it and then I found out about it, you know, and that's awesome. And so it's just a sense of, ah, this is starting to work, you know, I mean, when Rachel Cruz and Ken Hogan and these guys are doing, Ken Coleman are doing all these hits, and Chris Hogan, all these guys are doing all these hits, these radio and TV and appearances and all this stuff everywhere, and the networks are calling and asking for them, which is awesome. And so, you know, that kind of thing is, I don't know if it's a wake up call as much as it is, it's very satisfying to say, you know, all that work of the last decade and a half of getting everybody ready to win, because we were winning in a winning environment. But then when you get the pressures on, and you get squeezed, you see what comes out and it's good stuff coming out.

What was the last, I mean, what year would you say was the last big wake up call for you around, you know, one of the main areas of your life? Do you remember when that was where you're like, oh, you know, I'm eating a little too many candy bars or, you know, my relationship or, you know, what? It sounds like you've had the finances down for many years, but is there.

Another, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where you're like, oh, you know what?

I really didn't do as good as.

I should have done here.

I guess it's probably leadership and I probably get one of those calls every day. There's some days I'm a world class leader and some days I'm just a butt.

In what way? Like how are you?

I mean, sometimes I do a better job than other times as a leader.

And.

I own it. I get it. But you'd think as old as I am, I'd be doing better. So, but I know what I'm supposed to do, but sometimes I just just don't have the energy to do it. I don't care.

Yeah.

And I should just care more. I really should.

I shouldn't be such a grouch.

Oh, no.

You care a lot about a lot of people. I'm curious. What's the best. What's the best dad joke you share?

Oh, Lord. I can't. I don't have no idea. Oh, you got me. I'm not a dad joke guy, really. Other than just stupid stuff off the cuff that doesn't even make sense generationally, so.

Yeah, no good dad jokes.

What?

What is the most common thing that you're hearing with the people that are calling in for you right now? What's the thing that you hear over and over again that they need the most support with?

I think there's a sense, I think when hope gets gut punched the way it has for folks right now, the answers fall, a lot of them fall in the category of this is not going to last forever. because there's this sense that, you know, stock market's down, do I take my investments out? Well, only if you think it's going to stay down forever. Right. Because, you know, you're 35, you're going to be investing for 30 more years. You don't think it's going to come up in 30 more years? I mean, really, you're predicting the end of America? I mean, that's silly, but your emotions tell you lies when they're based in fear and when they're based in anger. and they tell you lies and, and they tell me lies. We believe those lies in situations like this. So, you know, I lost my job. I know, but that's happened before and probably happened again. Just get your people right now.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's jobs. It may not be the one you want, but you can get some food.

Yeah.

I mean, get you a leaf blower. And rich people are afraid of leaves, you know? I mean, you can make some money. So there's some stuff to do out there, but, I mean, the chances of you being in the exact situation you're in in a few months is almost zero. Your life is not a snapshot. You're not trapped in this moment. It's a film strip. The story is going to continue to unfold. And so that when hope takes a gut punch though, and we get down in that fear or we're mad or however it is we manifest that stuff, that those negative things, the emotions that we all have in these situations, that's where a lot of my questions are coming. They're all built in that. And I'm spending all my time going, yeah, but it's not gonna last forever. Yeah, but it's not gonna last forever. Yeah, but let's visit this in May. I think you're gonna be okay. You know, some people are gonna have devastating, horrible things that are gonna be life changing. But that's a very small percentage compared to the number of that are worried about it. Yeah. And so, you know, you- and you're.

Gonna get out of it. You're gonna get out of it.

I'm gonna be okay. I mean, you're gonna be okay.

I like Preacher Dave, man. This is a, this is a big Preacher show. You know, I like this. What is the worst investment people should be making during this time and what's.

The best investment they can make?

In my life, when I have become desperate, right after that's when I become stupid.

Yeah.

And explain it. The other one is when I.

Get.

Scared and you go rushing towards something out of fear, that sense of desperation, this thing, when you do that, you're getting ready to screw up. I mean, just count on it. And the other time you do that is if you're greedy, if you think you, okay, I got this one. I can take advantage of this. And I mean greedy as a lack of virtue greedy. I don't mean greedy in a positive way where I'm being ambitious, okay? I mean the negative sides of greed. And so if you're functioning in desperation or in this no holds barred, I'm gonna just clean up on other people's pain thing, that's when you're getting ready to screw up and you're getting ready to make a major mistake. And so you're set up also for con artists when you do that. And so if you're functioning in high emotion, your brain just doesn't work good. My friend Art Laffer says, when you're panicked and when you're drunk, you don't make good decisions. And so, you know, when you're on high emotion, your brain is your critical thinking skills shut down. And so that's when I've made the biggest mistakes in my life, is when I was desperate and the few times that I was greedy where I thought, oh, I'm gonna slip in there and that's gonna be easy money. What was that?

Easy money. Can you share a story of one.

Of those greedy times where you tried to jump in and get a chunk of money? Yeah, a buddy of mine, I was in my 20s and a buddy of mine was buying gold. And now this is in the 80s. Okay, it's a million years ago. And he's buying gold and he had this friend that was a gold, he was a gold bug. He was picking gold and this guy had picked the gold prices where they were going within a dollar, like 14 times in a row. And so we both dropped five grand into this thing. And if we had hit, it was a margin deal. And so I would have made 50 grand. And I thought, I'm putting $1,000 in here, I'm gonna make 50 grand. But it's a margin play, which means you're either gonna make 50 grand or you're gonna make zero. And so he picked it right 14 times the time I got in the 15th time. Missed it. I got zero. Turned 5,000 bucks into zero instantly. Last time I bought gold, last time I played stuff on margin, last time I got greedy.

Is there ever a time where... So what's the difference between greed and a great opportunity of being ambitious? Can you make money fast in certain things? Or is typically most things take a certain amount of time and energy and.

Effort The vast majority of people who are successful financially and successful have done it incrementally. There's very few people who you see a meteoric rise in their wealth or their success that's keep it. And I think because you build your character along the way to be able to hold on and be able to do it, I think that's my theory on it. I mean, I got rich quick. I started with nothing and by the time I was 26, I had $4 million worth of real estate. I built a house of cards. you know, and I had a million dollar net worth. I made $250,000 in 1984. I was making 20,000 bucks a month and in my 20s, so I mean, but you thought I had it all figured out, meteoric rise to the top. But the very thing that caused me to be the incredible overdrive of ambition caused me to go so fast that I missed the blind spots. I missed the detour signs. I missed the bridge out signs. And so I built this house of cards I thought was a stone house. But I was naive and didn't know and along comes some regulations changes, a few shifts in the economy, a little SNL crisis and couple of...

It comes down.

All of a sudden Dave looks like an idiot instead of a genius. And so it turns out I was a little of both because you don't build something like that at 25 if you're not somewhat of a genius. But I was obviously an idiot in the way I built it and so I get to do it again. Get the wonderful opportunity to start over.

And it felt the right way. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, in the midst of that, as I was falling, it took two and a half years to lose everything we owned. I had stuff presented to me. I almost got conned, serious conned, like people just a real con artist type guy. There's not many of them out there. Most of the time you get screwed by well-meaning ignoramuses. But these were real con artists coming into my path and I was about to give them money because I so desperately needed to turn quick money into big money to save myself. I was desperate. And right about the time you get desperate is when you get stupid. So don't make those decisions.

So there's not really, so what I'm hearing you say is the wealthy, wealthy people, it takes time and it's incremental. It's not an overnight thing. It's not a quick rise. There might be some spikes here and there, but it's typically over time.

It's okay to take a spike, but anytime I get a spike, I'm always a little suspicious of it.

Really?

It makes me even more careful. I draw back and I go, well, that's really cool. Is it okay?

A friend of mine, mentor of mine, we've had on this show many times is Tony Robbins. And he wrote this book, Money Master the Game, Seven Simple Steps to Financial Freedom. And some of these principles are talked about in this episode as well. And he says that the worst exchange in the world is trading time for money. And obviously, if you're trading time for money and you're not maximizing that money, that's one of the worst things. you really want to maximize the money you're making and figure out how to multiply that money in different ways. And I agree for even when I was doing something I loved playing professional football, I wasn't making a lot of money. I was doing the thing I loved, but I wasn't optimizing the money I was making. I was trading my time to play professional football. I was trading my time for dollars and that was great, but I wasn't optimizing it to go to the next level. I wasn't using that money to multiply for me. So you got to find ways to multiply the money that you have. So no matter how much you're making or how little you're making, hourly wages will always have a ceiling on how much you can earn because you can only ever be in one place at one time. So even though I was playing football and I was getting paid for that, it was limited to what I could make. So even if you're the highest paid consultant in your industry, you might be making a lot of money currently, which is great, but if you want to build long-term wealth, then you need to make sure you're generating passive income with that money that you're making or at least moving towards it and that's the key. I want you moving toward this. And this is the kind of money that you can multiply while you sleep. And I know many of you might be thinking, but Louis, I don't even have enough money right now to invest in real estate or buy a franchise or any other investments that might have an asset that we're typically thinking about when you hear the words passive income. And I hear you, I get it. I remember this feeling when I was barely making anything, so I understand. But there are other ways to make your money multiply even if you aren't in the position to invest in those higher ticket assets like real estate right now. And one is looking into stocks, bonds, IRAs, index funds, mutual funds, and even a 401k. Now, some people might agree with some of these things and others might disagree, but you can really double down into these once you have your savings situated. So the savings first is key. These don't require a huge amount of money upfront and they compound over time. And one of the things I got into early on was index funds. And Tony talks about that in his book as well. Tony often tells a story about how Warren Buffett who's famous for his long-term investments like Coca-Cola, Gillette, See's Candy, and more, when Warren was asked what made him wealthy? First, he credited his genes that made him live longer than everyone else. And second, he credited compound interest. Meaning, because he was patient and let his investments multiply over a long period of time instead of taking them out, when times were tough and the market were down, he was able to generate massive wealth. He lived a longer period of time and he has been able to compound his interest. The amount you put into these places can be $100 or $10,000 or whatever you can afford right now. And Ray Dalio, who we've had on and I mentioned earlier, he got his start in the stock market by investing the spare money he earned from caddying on a golf course when he was really young. He used that money and then he invested it in the stock market. So just like savings, the most important thing to remember when trying to make your money multiply is to be consistent. That's the key. And there are a ton of other ways to make passive income as well. And I'll end this section with an example from what I've done here at Greatness Media. So back when we first launched Greatness Media, if we wanted to make more money, it had to involve me in one way or another. I had to be working and making it happen. I had to be the one speaking at an event. I had to be the one reading an ad on the podcast. I had to be the one coaching a client and more. And don't get me wrong, we were doing well, but it was exhausting if it's always you doing the thing. And I was doing this for myself and also paying other people. So it all fell on me. I had to be everywhere and have my hands on everything in the process. And it was intense. Then I shifted our focus as a company to start creating scalable products. that could make money without me being 100% involved every moment. And today we have membership programs like Greatness Academy and Greatness Coaching. We're investing more time into YouTube that makes more money on a recurring basis for us. We have dynamic advertising on the podcast, so it doesn't rely on just me each time, and evergreen content that continues to drive sales and leads. And these scalable products allow us to keep growing no matter if I'm asleep, if I'm awake, if I'm traveling, if I'm at the gym, or taking a day off. And it's one of the most important and best decisions we've made as a business so far. And you don't have to create five new revenue streams today, but look at your current situation and figure out what the next best revenue stream could be and start there. And I've learned to create new ones over time, but it doesn't all happen at once. So that's lesson number three. Moving into lesson number four, I hope you're getting a lot of value out of this. If you're over on YouTube, leave a comment below of what you're learning and how this is supporting you so far. And if you're listening over on the podcast, make sure to share this out with a friend who you think will be inspired by these money multiplying strategies. So lesson number four, protect your money from losses. Now this point comes down to reducing the level of risk in your investment. You've heard it a lot when people talk about the stock market in playing the long game versus the short game. Now, if you're an entrepreneur, this can be a tricky one. As entrepreneurs, you've got to be willing to take risks. When it comes to building long-term wealth, we need to approach money differently. And I had the opportunity to speak with a financial advisor and bestselling author, Ramit Sethi, a while back on the show. And he's master when it comes to the stock market and investing. Something he said really surprised me. He told me that he only signs in and checks his portfolio about once per month. He does this to avoid making short term reactive decisions based on where the market's at. Oh, the market's up, the market's down and reacting. And this goes back to avoiding buying something just because it's hot right now and focusing instead on more secure, stable long term investments. And since Ramit's accounts are all automated, he doesn't even have to think about where his money he can sit back and let the long game work in his favor without lifting a finger, without having to check and react and obsess over these things. And this brings us to another important point when it comes to reducing risk, and that is diversifying your portfolio. And I know it can be fun to make daily trades and try to beat the system, and I get it, it can be fun, but the reality is some of the world's largest firms spend hundreds of millions of dollars on market research. So that's who you're up against. It's not a fair fight, I get it. So the best way to increase your chances of investments panning out is to diversify your portfolio instead of putting all your eggs in one basket. Now this doesn't mean you can't have some fun with Bitcoin and crypto and other less stable investments. You can try all this stuff if you want to. But Ramit and I were even talking about how we tried out Angel Investing for many years and neither of us have ever earned our money back from it. It was a lot of fun and we approached it as a gamble, not an investment or money we'd see in the future. And that's an important distinction to remember here. You don't wanna spend money that you can't afford to lose. So even though I have tried a lot of different things with money in terms of investments, some things have worked and continue to work, other things haven't yet, like angel investing hasn't really paid off for me yet. for some people, that's where they generated a lot of their wealth. But that doesn't happen for everyone. So just like Bitcoin or crypto and NFTs have been massive for some people, it also means a lot of people have lost a lot of their money. And you just have to be willing to understand what you're investing in. You have to be willing to do the research. You have to be willing to know what you can and cannot afford to lose when you're investing your money, because there is no guarantee on any investment you make. So just be aware of some of these things and really try to diversify your portfolio. Lesson number five, own your own home. Now this is kind of an analogy we want to bring here. We've all heard the importance of owning your home or your condo or your apartment that you live in. It's a stable asset that usually increases in value over time. So it's a good idea to eventually own it. Dave Ramsey talks a lot about this. but the principle doesn't necessarily mean it has to apply to real estate. It can also apply to business investments as well. There are some people that say, you shouldn't own your home right away. You should take that big chunk of money and invest it in yourself first. Once you really have another level of savings and income, then you can own your home. You want to understand where you're at when it comes to real estate, owning your home. The analogy is you want to own your home by investing in yourself. So whatever industry or career you're in, you should aim for some type of ownership. And this is your own skill set. This is a part of a company. This is building your own company on the side. And this goes back to the passive income point and making your money multiply. And if you're in a position at work to get a stake or some shares or some equity at the company at some point, then great. It could be an effective way to do this. Or if you wanted to build something on your own on the side, that's a way to do this as well. And if you own a business, this can mean investing money back into the company to help grow faster and further. Even if you aren't in one of those positions right now, we all have the opportunity to become partial owners of a company through the stock market. This is where a lot of people build their wealth. You may not be able to buy into the company you work at. You may not start your own company. but you can invest some of your money into the stock market. And David Bach says there are only two escalators to building long-term wealth, real estate and the stock market. So if you haven't already, start to empower yourself by getting involved in either one of those. And it doesn't have to be much. And you can start with as little money here and then build up to your portfolio and increase your investments over time. And this will allow you to accumulate wealth over the long term. That's what this is about. For me, some of my best investments have been putting money directly back into this business, into my own home. My home is this business for the sake of this example. And whether that's hiring new team members to join Greatness Media, whether that's you know buying software to save us time and money, hiring consultants to improve our processes and workflows, the list goes on and on. These investments have paid dividends for me and our business. And you won't always see the return on the investment right away, just like the stock market or real estate. But over time, the value and impact is massive. And I'll give you an example. We invest in so many different things. For example, on YouTube, we hired a team, we brought in people to film, people to edit, we bought the equipment to film all of our videos for five years before we started making any money on YouTube. So we had all this content and we finally turned on advertising after five years of publishing content two or three times a week. And the returns finally came in five years later. So it doesn't always happen overnight. Again, just like the stock market in real estate, but investing back in yourself is always a good thing. So I challenge you to look at your own life and ask yourself, where you can adopt the mentality of ownership, of being an owner, and where can you gain equity in a company or become a partial owner of an asset versus always trading just time for money. Start there and also start thinking of investing and owning pieces in different ways, the stock market or shares in real estate and things like that. Lesson number six, ensure a future income. So we've already talked about making passive income and the importance of setting aside money for long-term investments to have recurring revenue flowing in. So I'll hold off on repeating myself there. But in addition to that, there are a couple other ways to ensure a future income that I want to talk about. The first is investing in yourself. This is massive. The best way to ensure you have a future income is to make yourself recession proof by continuing to learn new and building a strong personal brand. We talk about this in Greatness Academy, which I'll share with you more in just a moment. And there are a lot of ways to do this, and it doesn't mean you have to try to get a million followers on our Instagram or become famous on TikTok. It could be as simple as creating a website to showcase your designs if you're a graphic designer and networking with other designers in your local area at meetups or conferences and events. And if you're a business coach, it could mean posting videos on YouTube, showcasing your expertise. And I know a lot of you will hear that and you'll think, well, Lewis, I've done that, but I haven't gotten a lot of views or shares or comments. And I understand. I won't lie to you and say numbers don't matter at all, but they're not the most important part. Even if you don't get views or shares or likes, publishing content that's aligned with your personal brand shows you're passionate about it and it could set you up for future success. It shows you care about the work you do and it allows others to be able to see that as well. Nobody paid attention to the content I put out for a long time, but consistently showing up for over a decade has led to me living my dreams and being on the path to accomplishing all my goals and really setting me up for financial freedom. The days of old-fashioned resumes are over. Nowadays, everything we publish online is a resume. So that YouTube channel we started as a part of your resume, our LinkedIn profiles, our resume, our website, our Instagram, TikTok, all these things, they're part of our resume. So be productive and proactive and start building your personal brand based on it. Don't rob the world of your talents. That's what would be selfish. Be proud of the work you do and showcase the gifts you were given. And it might seem like doing that won't help you much in the short term and maybe it won't, but believe me, in the long run, it's one of the best things you can do for yourself to really ensure your future income is guaranteed and recession proof yourself by building your personal brand. And another way to ensure a future income is launching a side hustle. And as of right now, one in three people in the United States have a side business and another 25% are planning to start one in the next year. So you'd be in good company if you decided to launch one if you haven't already. Using your nights and weekends to build up another source of revenue for you can help provide a financial cushion if you lose your job or if the economy goes through another recession like the pandemic. And it can also provide you with more money to put into your savings, your stocks, your bonds, real estate, or wherever you're investing right now. Lesson number seven, increase your ability to earn. Now we've made it to the final lesson and it's an important one so make sure you pay attention. If you continue to increase your ability to earn as your career goes on, you'll be able to have more money in the bank and more money to put into your investments. So how do you start making more money doing the same things you're already doing now? Well, if you have a business or a side hustle that you're currently running, I always tell people that there are a handful of ways to do this. Number one, you can increase your rates or prices right now. If you're a consultant who has 10 clients, then increasing your price can allow you to earn more while potentially working less. And this gets easier as you gain more experience and recognition. in the industry you work in. A strong personal brand also helps a lot with this and makes it easier to charge more when people know who you are. And number two, you can increase the number of leads or prospects your business has. So the more leads you have, the more potential for sales you'll have as well. And there are a million ways to go about getting more leads, but it all starts with marketing and advertising. Begin thinking about which social media platforms you can start running ads on to target your specific audience. What sort of content can you create and package into a webinar, an ebook or an online course? Begin there. Number three, you can improve your business's processes and workflows. And this is done through automating and optimizing the more repetitive processes first and continuing on from there. Luckily, there are so many incredible tools on the market today to help streamline virtually any process you have. It just comes down to research and investing in the right ones for your specific situation. And remember that time is money that you can never get back if you spend it poorly. Number four, you can increase the number of products you sell. So more products, of course, leads to potential more sales for your business. As long as those new products solve a real pain point for your customers, this can be a great way to increase your income. And number five, lastly, you can improve the quality of people on your team. Now, having an experienced, dedicated team is one of the best investments you could ever make for your business. It'll buy you back your time and allow you to focus on what you're good at instead of stretching yourself too thin, trying to do everything at once, and help pave the way for exponential growth. Another huge opportunity to increase your ability to earn more money is to never stop learning. This is one I take to heart and it's a key to my success. Year after year, I invest in coaches to help me improve in the areas of my life that I find most important. And at any given point, I'll have a coach for working out. I've got a Spanish coach to learn Spanish. I've got a therapist, business mentors, financial advisors, and many other coaches. I'm always looking to invest in that support. And I take learning seriously because if I'm not always learning and improving my skill sets, then I feel like I'm regressing. And that's why you'll see me on every episode of the School of Greatness with a pen and a notebook ready to take notes as the people we have on share their advice, their strategies, and their life lessons. And you're looking to take your learning to the next level, we actually just launched and membership community of growth minded entrepreneurs called Greatness Academy. And members receive access to over 100 hours of trainings with me and some of the world's leading experts in their fields of online marketing and sales and growth. And every month we bring you a new training and a live Q&A session with team Greatness. You'll also gain access to a supportive community of other conscious achievers just like yourself looking to improve in other areas of their lives. And we're already seeing incredible things happen to those who have joined. And I love for you to experience the same life-changing results. So if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, then I highly encourage you to check it out. And you can go to lewishouse.com/academy to learn more. I'll also have it linked in the description below. And there you have it. We got through all seven secrets to building long-term wealth for you, your family and your loved ones. So I hope you enjoyed it. Again, these principles came from this book, the Richest Man in Babylon. So be sure to give it a read if you found this episode valuable. Again, we took some of these concepts and we kind of reshaped them, reframed them for the modern time. We also had this book that I talked about, Money Master the Game from Tony Robbins. So make sure you check this out. This is incredible. A lot of stuff I learned here about investing in index funds. Really cool strategies here about index funds that I started investing in about five years ago that I've seen incredible results year after year. So something there as well. I also highly recommend if you're just getting started, checking out the Millionaire Morning. This is a book we wrote a few years ago that so many people love. Keep getting this book every day. We get sales here and people love this. This is about the the mindset of millionaires in the morning, what they do with their morning routine to really help them set themselves up for success. The mindset, the habits, the rituals and routines in the morning. This is what the wealthy people do in their morning. Check this out. You can go to www.millionairemorning.com this is a quick read with some exercises and examples as well. And I'll leave you with this final thought. I want you to always remember that the world makes room for passionate people. and this is something I believe so deeply and I've seen happen time and time again. So whatever it is that you do, whatever it is you're most passionate about, whatever lights you up and excites you, bringing joy to that work will pay off for you big time in the long run.

A bad investment is still better than a smart spin. So wealthy people don't spend money, they invest money. Number two, they also know that money is not required I think a lot of us, if we grew up poor, we believe it takes money to make money. Our parents told us that. Maybe a grandparent or the neighbor or somebody said that to us because that was their how they justified not having their breakthrough and getting trapped. They're like, oh, the reason I didn't get out. And we know everybody's got an excuse in their lifetime. Everybody uses them. at some point in their lifetime to trap themselves. This idea that it takes money to make money is not true. It's a myth. It's the number one reason why I did the show, the Discovery Show, to debunk that on TV, that I didn't need any money at all. They offered me a hundred bucks. I'm like, Just keep it, dude. No, no, we got to give it to you. It's part of the show. And I'm like, I don't need the hundred. They're like, no, but you got to take the hundred as part of the show. The third thing I would say about wealthy people is they're, I mean, different people have different ways they invest, but they tend to be more focused on the long-term appreciation of an asset rather than give me money this second. And I think they're not stuck in this get rich quick thing.

It's a delayed gratification.

Yeah, they're more like, yeah, I'd rather have wealth tomorrow than rich today. And they do have a distinction between the rich and the wealthy. The super wealthy are looking to create wealth beyond their own means and needs. Like they're not thinking about their kids, their boat, their plane. I know people think that, but that's not actually true. They're actually thinking about how do I create wealth for a lot of people? Amazon's got a million employees.

Yeah.

Now most of them only earn minimum wage, but there's some people at the upper level of Amazon that are making for riches.

Yeah, and I'm curious, you wanted to debunk this myth of that it takes money to make money, which is something I heard a lot growing up and a lot of people think, well, unless I can't make it because I can't invest it until I have it. So, what were the lessons you learned starting from essentially zero, having no money, no context, no relationships, no opportunities in a town that you went to for this show? What did you realize were the keys to actually making money even if you didn't have any?

Well, as you see the show, you see that I actually never make any money, right? So, the two girls, they actually follow three of us, and the two girls went out and got a job in the first week. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong or my way is better or worse, but they are strategies, okay? They're different strategies. I was not there to get a job or to earn money. I was there looking for one thing, opportunity. I never spent time looking for money ever the entire 90 days. Okay? I'm not looking for money. I was actually looking for contracts through the contacts. I wasn't looking for money because I knew the evaluation of the company in the last segment. An evaluator will come in and determine what my company's worth, my new company, right, that I created. And at that point, I just need to validate to him. Dude, my company's worth this based on that. The entire 90 days, I never touched the first 100 they gave me. And this was to prove to people, dude, you do not need money. Like it's just, it's not true you need money. You do need contacts.

You need people. You need relationships.

You need people. You need the right people though. The right people that are already in play, okay? Just 'cause the guy's got money. I remember a billionaire friend of mine, you know, he could buy a jet. And I said, Hey, Bob, should I buy a jet? He said, you, should, I shouldn't. Meaning Grant should, because, and he's way wealthier than I am, he could have bought 40 of them. He's like, I don't have a place.

To go in mine.

You could use yours every day. So you gotta find somebody that's in place, somebody that not just has money, but somebody that wants to do more with their money. So you'll notice in the first 10 days, I don't spend any money. I don't spend money on shelter, not on food and not on water. Nothing. Then what I do is I end up accumulating assets. And it's unfortunate that the viewer doesn't see this. Within five days, I have two vehicles. One was given to me by Discovery and the other one was a $40,000 Jeep that I basically used from Ryan, this guy I met. and told him, I'm going to sell your Jeep. I'm going to drive it around town and put 10 miles a day on it and I'm going to sell it. Well, that's a $43,000 asset. My truck was worth four grand. I still had my $100. I lived in a $46,000 RV that I was trying to sell. So, yeah, and what's the other thing I did? And I picked up $10,000 to do in a 15% partnership in the equity of the upside of this guy's company. So literally in 10 days, I was accumulating contacts that could get me equity. And the important part of that story is, man, go get you some equity. You know, Jay-Z talks about this. You're getting, you know, so many of you young brothers are getting in advance while I'm picking up the equity.

Ooh, yeah, they're trying to get the get rich quick.

Let me give you the money now.

Give it to me now.

Where the publisher is getting the long-term residual income for Decades off of Kevin Hart.

Look at what Kevin Hart did with this show, right? He owns that show, he owns the ticket sales, he was willing to promote it, not just be a comedian where Richard Pryor showed up and got his check, told his jokes. Kevin Hart says, yeah, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna tell my jokes, but I'm gonna own the entire platform, the equity.

So how do you get someone to give you $10,000 when you have nothing? to give them a return? Or what is it that you're selling them a greater promise in return?

So what I did was I pitched this guy. I said, look, he's a business owner. He wants traffic in his company. Every business owner wants traffic. Every entrepreneur wants traffic to their website. And I said, look, I'm gonna drive traffic to your store. He owned a mattress store, big margins. And I said, I'm gonna make sure you have the biggest weekend that you've ever been here. And I said, if you give me $6,000, I'll take the six grand to the store. In fact, you don't give me the money, just call it in and approve it. I didn't want to touch his money. I never asked anybody for any money. And I said, I'm gonna go run a promotion for you. I'm gonna put together the banners, the logos, I'm gonna stand out in the street, I'm gonna drive the traffic to your place. What do you want, Louis, what do you want, Louis? I did that more than once, by the way. What do you want, Louis?

You did?

Because my name was Louis, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I said, Dude, I don't want anything. He tried to give me money to do this. I don't want your money. I just want the opportunity. I want to prove myself. Because what I really wanted from him was I wanted him to front the bill at the print shop so that he could put me in play. Well, I went and ran the whole promotion that weekend. I said, if you send them, if you just authorize the spend, I'll conduct the promo. I'll run it and do it. We did $91,000 worth of mattress sales. We did 15,000 that weekend and then another 65,000 over the next three weeks. And he's like, do you're a star. Now he's like, hey, what do you want for what you did for me this weekend? That was the best weekend we've ever had.