From Worthiness to Wealth: Expert Advice for Tough Financial Times EP 1479

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I think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money. It's designed so that we have a few people at the top and a lot of people at the bottom. I think that's part of the reason why it's like employers saying, don't tell your coworkers how much you're making because I'm paying you more than I'm paying this one and I don't want y'all to know.

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 masterclass. 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. Why is it such a taboo topic in general?

Yes.

I think for all classes, all individuals, I totally agree.

It's like you have, it's so funny because, and I wrote about this in my book, like for women, we have shame if we don't have enough money, but we also have shame if we have quote unquote too much.

Really?

Yes.

Why?

Because it's like, you know, oh, I have more than them and let me hide it because people are gonna think I'm showing off or they have imposter syndrome, right? Am I worrying of having this much money. I've experienced that myself at different times, right? Like, you've worked hard for it, but you think that you don't deserve it for some reason. And I think that we just have, I think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money.

Why?

Because I think it's designed so that we have a few people at the top and a lot of people at the bottom. And so now, you know, then of course the middle class emerged and we've gone through different things as a middle class, as a collective, right? But I think that's part of the reason why it's like, don't tell, you know, employers saying, don't tell your coworkers how much you're making, because I'm paying you more than I'm paying this one, and I don't want y'all to know.

Right?

So it's like, it comes from those places, but it's reinforced everywhere, you know? Right.

Everyone's reinforcing it.

Exactly.

And I think- Not just corporations or-.

Yes, and because there's so much mystery, it's like, I don't know how much you make, right? You don't know, maybe you know how much I make, 'cause I talk about it all the time. But I don't, you know what I mean? We don't know and we're scared to make assumptions and we're sort of guessing and we're like, well, if I put mine out there, I might be embarrassed because I discovered that I'm actually either making too much related to my peers or too little. And I think it goes back to belonging. We just wanna belong to a community, to a group. You know what I mean? And so because of that, it's like we don't wanna do anything that's gonna make us not belong. It's such an inherent human need to belong. So I think that we don't talk about money because we think it's going to affect our ability to belong, whether it means we're too broke or we have too much, or somewhere in the middle.

So what conversations should we be having around money? How consistently should we be having them? And with who?

Yes. Okay, so in terms of the conversations I'm having, I'm telling people like, if I get a speaking gig, here's how much they paid me, right? And I asked some more and they gave it to me. So make sure you do that too, right? Or I negotiated for higher pay, or I negotiated for profit sharing, or I ask for more vacation days, right? Like we need to share our money earning strategies with each other, especially with women and people of color, right? Like putting more money, like that's what allyship is in my opinion, is putting money in the pockets of the groups who need them, right? And who, we have this huge wealth chasm in this country, so like how can we start to change that? And so that's why I share how much I got paid for a book deal, like all these things that you're not supposed to share, I'm like, I'm gonna tell y'all. this is how much I got, this is how I got it, you know? And I think it's important. So I think sharing money making strategies is very important. I also think one of the things that has been so valuable to me with some of my, my peers, especially, I will say my white guy peers in particular have showed me, like, they have taught me things about, like, you know, investing strategies or, you know, like, oh, here's a strategy that I'm doing with my money, or I'm investing in real estate, or I'm doing these different things, like, what are people doing with money once you have some, right? Like once you have a little bit more than you need to live off of, what do you do with the excess and sharing those things, right? Sharing that information, 'cause it's usually hidden and it's like there's a small group of people that know and you don't know until you have peers who have done it and then you find out, right? In those quiet conversations that aren't on, you know, on Facebook, right? Sure, sure, sure.

Should people be talking with their friends, their family members, their, spouses about money.

Yes.

What if someone's really uncomfortable and says, you know what? I don't want to talk about the money I make and what we should be doing. What conversation can you have to break the wall down?

Well, I think you could say, here's why I want to talk about money and here's why, like we have to be, I think if we're willing to be transparent, people will be transparent with us. That's what I found in the conversations that I've had. And that's how I've learned a lot about money is by having conversations. you know, like the friend that I was spending time with last night, she's an investor and a financial advisor. And so I was asking her like, okay, well what are you investing in and how are you thinking about it and what is an investment thesis? Like I don't even know what that means, right? Like, you know, we were having conversations and she was teaching me all of this stuff because I was willing to tell her like, okay, here's how much money I want to invest, but I don't know where best to put it, you know, that kind of thing. So I think you just got to be willing to put yourself out there first. And I find that people want to talk about it. so when I bring it up and I start sharing, they immediately start sharing because it's like they were like waiting for an opportunity to talk about this.

Yes.

Is what I find. So I think we just gotta start doing it and create more transparency around it. And then yeah, it creates opportunity for all. And that's the other piece of it is like I recognize that, you know, even someone who would be considered a direct competitor, maybe they sell the same thing I sell. I don't believe in competition in that way. I think there's more than enough money to go around. I think there's more than enough opportunity to go around. And I choose to be friendly with and support my competitors, quote unquote, and vice versa. And that just means that we all get better at what we're doing. We all can serve our clients better, right? We all can make more money. But I don't want to be a person who's closed. So I'm just gonna, I just gotta be me. It is what it is, right? Like, there's gonna be some occupational hazards when you're being transparent.

Absolutely.

And you just gotta navigate that as best you can, but I just choose to be who I wanna be in the world instead of who I feel like I need to protect myself, you know?

What was harder for you, making your first $100,000 in a year or making your first million in a year?

$100,000 for sure.

Why is making $100,000 harder than making a million in a year?

Because it's like, I think we're just figuring it out. I also think we're charging too little for our work at that point.

Is this when you were working as a career or when you had your own business?

I never made a hundred grand prior to starting my business. I went from college to, I had a job in between college and law school, and then I went to law school, and then I started my own practice.

So you didn't work at a law firm after law school? So you started pretty much right away. Being an entrepreneur, right. Which is really hard to do.

Yes, my last salary before I became an entrepreneur was $41,000 a year and like really good health insurance. Yeah, yeah. And I was thrilled.

That was in between law school or in between school and law school, ever since.

Yes, no, in between, this was after law school because this was my clerkship.

Okay, got you.

Yeah, so you kind of sign on for a year, your paycheck is not that big, but like, and you're a lawyer, right?

You're learning the ropes, you're getting reps, you're getting experience.

And that's kind of why I decided to start my business at that time, because I'm like, I already don't have a lot, right? Like, I already know how to live off of this amount of money. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, if I can live off of this now, let me keep my expenses this way or lower them even more. Like, I sold my car and we owned a house and we rented it.

Out, moved into a smaller place.

How many kids do you have at this time? I had none, yeah. Okay. Oh, well, actually, that's not true. I had my, my stepdaughter, but she didn't live with us full time. Okay. And so that's what I did at that stage is like I cut down my expenses as much as I could so that I could build this business.

How old were you then?

I was 27, I'm gonna say 2009. Yeah, 2009 to 2010. Okay, cool. This was that year. And then I clerked for the judge and I started my practice and I was like, you know, I made like there were months where I made 500 bucks and months that I made $2,000. And that's why I like the linking together, you know, I was doing My friend bought a salon. She was a hairstylist. She wanted to buy her first salon. I did the transaction. She was purchasing an existing business. And I charged her 500 bucks for that. I don't think I've actually ever told anybody that. That's cheap. Because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I didn't know what to charge for that. And that I undervalued my services so much that I literally have never told anybody. I charged 500 bucks for that. And she's still a good friend of mine. That's not her fault. No, it's not her fault. She made bank with that salon. since now sold it.

But you also got experience doing that, you know, doing that transaction, that deal, which you've probably never done at that level.

Yes.

Seems like. So you gained confidence from that.

Yes.

So there was a win there for you as well.

There was a win.

And.

But when I saw how many hours.

Of labor involved, you put like weeks probably.

Yes. I'm negotiating with the other side, dealing with like a difficult lawyer.

500 is a steal.

I mean, for the whole thing.

Can I hire you for that?

I should. I should have charged $5,000 minimum, you know? But it was like, but I learned from that. Oh, I add value. Of course. I can figure it out and I have a skill in that I'm trained in knowing how to figure it out.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And that was kind of like working on the job experience. Like you weren't totally probably experienced for that yet. It sounds like when you learned, okay, I didn't need to do these 10 hours of calls that I did here. I could have done this in an email or whatever. I don't know how this works, but whatever it was, you learned your process.

To simplify it, to maximize it. Exactly. And back to that 100 grand question, I think that's why it's like, We're figuring it out. Usually we don't know exactly what we sell in those early stages of the business, so we're selling everything. Everything. Whatever people come to us with, we're.

Like, yeah, we could do that.

We just created a custom offer for that. Whatever money we can bring in, we'll do it. We will take it. And so you're very busy. I call this stage busy bee, because you're very busy at this stage, but nothing's refined, nothing's efficient. Everything is just sort of like your massive labor towards whatever you can make happen. That first hundred grand, I think you are hustling for that. But in order to get to a million, or at least to do it in a way that feels sustainable, you need systems, you need process, you need team, right? And so now you're starting to build a sustainable business. You're not just, you know, by brute force making money.

And you need to clarify your offering and your audience and your niche and what your specialty is.

Exactly.

I'm not just a lawyer that can do anything you want me to do, but here's what I really specialize in.

Exactly.

Here are my three packages at these different levels.

Yes.

And you go all in on marketing that.

Yes, and there's money that you're saying no to. Absolutely. You learn that lesson that not all.

Money is good money.

Isn't that crazy? Yes. I say this a lot to people. I go, it's weird that I'll turn down massive checks all the time. Yep. But I'm just like, that's not what I wanna do and it doesn't serve my mission.

Yes.

If it's not serving the mission and.

I don't need the money, then I.

Shouldn'T do something just to bring in more money. Exactly. For me. It's a distraction. At different stages of my life, a different season, now it's said yes to everything, you know? When I'm broke, you say yes to all these things.

Yes.

But then when you're like, okay, I'm here for a mission and to serve the highest level of my skills and abilities that brings me the most joy and brings others the most joy and benefits the most number of people, then you start saying no to money, which is crazy.

Yes. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's delightful. I love it. I feel, I feel like to me it lets me know that I'm not, it's like I've not made money my master. Yes.

Right?

Like it's very important, but it is a tool. That's good. You know what I mean? And I'm not beholden to it and I won't trade anything for it. There is plenty of things that I will not do and I don't care how much you pay me, you know? So I think that it's good to remember that and so when you're turning down opportunities, it's just an example of like, okay, I'm doing things right.

Well, I think you got to understand that just because you turned down money over here doesn't mean it's not going to keep coming to you. Just because you turned down something that's not right for you doesn't mean abundance of something that is right will keep coming to you.

There's so much opportunity. There's always more where that came from.

From. Absolutely, you know, absolutely. That's powerful. Okay, so the first 100,000, how long did it take you? How many years until you made 100,000 in one year?

Can you remember roughly? So my first year in business, and it was like, I started September 1st, 2010. And so from that year till like September 2011, I made like 60 grand that first year. That's right. But I think the first full 12-month calendar year was like year two. So it wasn't, it didn't take too long.

And then how long until you made seven figures in one year?

Yeah, that took me seven years after that.

Yeah.

From starting business.

From September 2010, I think it was maybe it was six. It was like 2016, 2017.

Yeah.

I think 2017 was my first seven figure year. And I had gotten close, but not, you know, like almost there, but not quite. And twice. And you know what? It was interesting. What happened is Like I had my business, my revenue was doubling in the beginning. It was like I made 100 grand, then I made two or 250. And then, you know, then I made 500. Then I was- then it's like- I plateaued.

It's like, okay, 560 and 620.

I know, it started making me mad, like from 500 to 700,000. I think I was there for like three years. And there was all kinds of stuff going on in my life. One, there was a lawsuit that one of my business partners, so like this is one of the things where too trusting too quickly caused some issues. So that was a huge distraction. for me at that time. I had two babies back to back. So, you know, I was busy with them. And then there were just a lot of lessons I needed to learn. Like, I had all these people working for me, but I didn't have good boundaries. And I didn't, I just kind of let them do whatever they wanted and didn't have, you know, like, I was learning how to become a boss. I was learning how to become a leader and a manager.

So much more challenging than just doing your skill. Like, let me just be good at the law thing, which is what people wanted me for.

Yes.

Now they want my business for that and me, but I've got to train the team and, and, to deliver.

Yeah. Right.

Exactly.

It's a different skill. It's totally different. And it's, it can be challenging. And I think that's why a lot of times we're like, well, I'm just gonna go back to doing it myself. And it's like, you can, but it's gonna keep you small.

Yeah.

You have to say yes to those challenges and learn that new skill. Right. Um, and I think leadership skills are so valuable and for everybody. So, I had to learn that and it took me a couple of years to like figure out how to have stronger boundaries, figure out how to stop letting people waste my time, figure out how to charge for what my services are worth, right? All of those things, those were lessons that I was learning in that time.

Who was wasting your time? Like clients or employees?

Everybody. Clients were wasting my time, team were wasting my time. Even family members, right? Like my desk was like right in the front door. So like it's like the door is here, my desk is right here. My husband would like be coming in and out. He's a stay at home dad at the time, taking care of the kids. And he just ran a tight ship with our household. It was amazing. Like I had so much support in that way. But he would like every time he came through the door, what did he talk to me about? I got to focus. Yes, exactly. It was like I didn't know how to create boundaries around my work time. And I did eventually learn it. I started getting up at 4:00 a.m. because I was like, I'd get up at six and these kids would, it's like they could tell, like they had a radar the moment I woke up. So then I would get up at six, like I would be like, okay, I'm going to beat them. I'm going to get up five 30, nope, still get up with me five, nope, 430, nope, 4 a.m. And they stayed in their beds. So I was like, fine, I'm getting up at 4 a.m. Every day then.

Is now the time to start investing or is it more just save up some reserves for six months to have some cash to live your life before you start investing or is it important to build the discipline and the habit of investing 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, in a diversified portfolio, no matter how much you're making.

I remember going through this 'cause I didn't have any money.

When was this, right?

Oh, this was 1982-83. I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to help to take care of my family bills. So I remember thinking, how many weeks could I live if I lost my income? And I started counting in weeks and I would try to go out because if I got hit, so I think that's the way to do it. You start to count how many weeks, can it be a month, a year, can I get up to a year? I didn't like that because of the fact that there's an obligation and it's like, oh, if I get, then I'm going to be drowning. I'm trying to keep my head against water. This is just my own bias. But anyway, count the, how many you can, and then assume that it's buying power over the next number of years can fall by three or 4% a year, or if, or if you put it in a risky investment, it, like stocks or something. It could buy more. So cut that number maybe in half and have twice as much. Because you have to understand that that's your freedom. That is your safety. So that first band you must take care of, that first band, take care of that. Once you get past that and you feel, okay, I could take care of my family and I could take care of mine in a worst case scenario, then you have the freedom to then take other kinds of risk. But when you're building that portfolio, it's the same thing as when you have a lot of portfolio past that, just you want to diversify well, because you could see what happens to the markets. Every market, stock market, bond market, most markets have had times where they've gone down over an extended period, 60 or 70% in buying power. So I think diversify, count that and build it and realize that's your saving. One thing I do for my.

Kids.

And grandkids and always did, as long as I could start to afford it, was for every holiday, like Christmas or their birthday, I would give them a gold coin. And I said, I never want you to sell that gold coin until there's an emergency, a real emergency, never because you want to buy things. And the reason I did that, and they'll build over a period of time, that'll build something. And I said, don't even sell it, you pass it to your kids unless there's an emergency. Okay? And so you're building that savings. Because I think we so easily spend so much money on junk. You know, so anything that I would give them, whatever it would be, I don't know, a piece of clothing, a thingamajig, a toy or something, will probably be gone. in a year.

Yeah.

Okay. And so the power of saving and, you know, and that resource, the relief it gives you and the power it gives you is so great. So, yes, save it, diversify it.

I'm gonna continue to stay on this topic, but also go off a little bit because you mentioned how, I guess it was 40 years ago, you lost your money and you had to borrow 4, 000 from your father. to just kind of survive and pay your bills. How much money had you built before then, before losing it?

I don't remember. It wasn't like it was a ton. You know, I was fairly early in my career. I had a small investment business. I don't remember what it was exactly, but it wasn't a ton.

I'm curious how you, from having some money to losing it, how you then went on a 40-year, four-decade run of getting to where you're at now. Was there something in your mindset that allowed you to believe in yourself still?

Yeah.

That didn't say, oh, I've lost it all out. You know, I don't believe in myself anymore because I just ruined my finances.

That extremely painful experience was probably the best experience of my life.

Really?

And it changed my way of thinking ways I'll describe. But let me say, before that, I didn't have much money. My dad was a jazz musician. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. And I felt, of course, rich. I had two parents who loved me. I went to a public school. And then when I was a kid, I did odd jobs and I caddied. And so when I put in the stock market when I was 12 and I got hooked on the game. So I never had much money, but then I built up some and then had that experience. And so that experience, which was also a very public experience, was very painful, but it changed my approach to decision making in really a profound way. First, it gave me the humility and fear of being wrong that balanced my audacity to double check myself and in fact, try to find the smartest people I could who disagreed with me to have them stress test my thinking. So I'm never sure if I'm right. my track record of being right is probably 70 or 75% ish somewhere in that 70%, let's say, something like that. And I'm used to being wrong sometimes. And it's painful. So the stress testing of my opinions gave me an open-mindedness to learn a lot. Also, diversification. I learned how to diversify without reducing my risks. If I could take a lot of uncorrelated bets, the return will equal the average of those bets, but the risk can be up to 80% less. And it changed my, it really caused me to reflect because I remember thinking to myself, it felt like I was sitting next to a jungle and I could sit on the safe side. There's always risk in return. And what would I do? Would I have a less great upside and be safe? Or would I go through crossing this jungle in which things could kill me or whatever, in an attempt to have a great upside, a great life, a great upside. And so that puzzle led me to do the things I described, but also I knew that I had to go have the great upside and not be constrained by the risk. And so I did the two things that I've described. But going into the puzzle, I found that it was great that to find people who could see things that I couldn't see, and vice versa, so that we were on the mission together, because people see things differently. I learned how people see things differently. Somebody will spot this or that, and then that back and forth helps you make better decisions. And if you're on the same mission with them. So one of the things I wanted was this meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And I found that that was so good that when I, you know, sort of got to the other side, like, you know, I had enough money and upside or whatever, I still wanted to stay in the jungle and I still wanted to do this because the act of, of, of doing that with people that I was doing this meaningful work and meaningful relationships with was rewarding in and of itself, as well as success. So one of the things that you can learn is that you can see through other people's eyes. That doesn't mean you accept what they say blindly. It's that you think about their reasoning. And if you do that, that's good. It also gave me a principle, which is one of my fundamental principles, which is pain plus reflection equals progress. We have this pain, whatever it is. and okay, the reaction is a negative reaction and can almost be, why did that thing happen to me? And so on. If instead, when one calms down from the pain, there is a lesson there about how reality works. Okay, it happened. Reality works that way. and then there's a thought, how do I deal with it better?

Right.

To produce better. What's my lesson? And if you acquire that, I used to acquire, I would acquire that. I still acquire that. And then I wrote them down as principles in my books. That's why the collection of principles. It's like a journal. I wrote pain plus reflection equals that.

And.

And then you write down the principle. like a, and that's what the collection of principles came from. That has, so that event, that painful event was the basis.

Most people believe they inherited it all, right? You see somebody with money, you think, oh, mom or dad handed it to 'em. The truth is 79% of the millionaires that I talked to, first generation wealth builders, they didn't come from anything. These are people that focused and built money over time. Next myth, well, if you're a millionaire, you make high paying job, right? You got big income.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nope.

A third of the millionaires that we talked to never made six figures in a single working year.

Really?

Think about that for a second. Dual income never made six figures. So that blows that myth out of the water. A third of the millionaires that we talked to. Wow. Right now, you think about six figures nowadays, it's more prevalent than it's ever been. But for people, a lot of people.

With six figure salaries have nothing in the Thank you.

Because they just spend it all. That's exactly right.

And they're using credit constantly to buy bigger things.

That's right. No, no, you're absolutely right. So what happens is people tend to think that income is so important. And I'll tell you, no, it's not. Because I was one of those people. I remember I was making about 30 grand. And I thought, all right, when I get serious, I'm one year out of grad school, making 30, 40 grand. I said, all right, when I make this amount, I'll start to get serious about my money. Well, you know that path, right? Well, when I make this amount, the next thing you know, Lifestyle grows and you never end up taking control. But these are regular everyday people that took control and were focused. It's amazing. So let me tell you this. Top three positions of the 10,000 millionaires we studied. Number one was engineer, which doesn't surprise you, right? They're good at planning.

Yeah.

Accountants. Organized. Yeah, accountants, same thing. They were number two.

They're good at counting stuff.

Number three was teachers. Teachers. They're not making that much. Exactly. And you think they're undervalued, underpaid. How are teachers doing this? Well, if you think about what it is, wealth building is a long-term view, right? Not a quick hit. And so these get rich quick schemes that we see on TV at late night, they get me riled up because they're preying on people. But these people were people that built wealth over time, investing in their 401K, their 403Bs. So anyway, the goal of this book is to let people know the American dream's not dead. It's alive and it's well. and it's available to people. We just have to take action.

Absolutely. What are some of the things that they do on a daily basis? These millionaires, what are some of the steps to take and how do they think differently than non-millionaires?

Great. 97% of the millionaires that we studied feel that they control their own destiny. Now think about that for a minute because we have a victim mentality issue in America today where we want to blame somebody for us not achieving something or getting in our way. So these millionaires think differently. 94% of them live on less than they make. So that means if they're making 100,000, they're living on 70 or 80, right? You can't build wealth if you live on more than you make.

That's exactly right.

And that's where the credit cards people start extending themselves and using credit cards. But 73% of these millionaires never carried a dime of credit card debt.

They never carried debt.

Debt. Yeah, right.

You might use a card, pay it off every month.

Pay it off. so the mindset, and I love to give people an economics and a PhD in economics. Interest that you pay is a penalty, right? If I use someone else's money, they charge me.

Yes.

Right, that's a penalty. Interest that I earn on my investments is a reward, right? So why choose to penalize yourself? Don't use debt. Get yourself out of debt and invest and grow your money to reward yourself.

Yeah.

Powerful.

Yeah.

Now, how have you managed to, through all the stuff you've gone through, I'm assuming the last, you know, 15-20 years, you've gone through some challenges. You told me before off camera that you have a child who has special needs and was told that they wouldn't live past a certain age. You're, you know, I'm assuming you've had challenges in relationships with business partnerships, intimate relationships, family.

Yeah.

The more wealth that I've accumulated and the attention that I've gained, There's more people with handouts.

Yes.

Expecting whatever it may be. How have you personally managed the emotional challenges that have come your way by not letting it affect your mindset around money so that you don't do things emotionally with your money?

Right.

Well, I mean, I've been there. I don't know about you, but I made some mistakes.

Yeah.

Okay. And, you know, a mistake that you make one or two times, you can call it a mistake. but when you keep doing it over and over, it's not a mistake anymore. It's called a choice. So for me, I'm very, I'm a man of faith. So obviously I'm rooted there, but I got good people around me. I got good friends, people that have known me since my childhood, people that know me for who I am. So I'm not an author and speaker with these people. I'm just Chris. And so those people keep me rooted, right? Mama Hogan is no joke either. Okay, so you'll keep me rooted. And so I think it's really important to understand what am I trying to accomplish? Like, I don't want notoriety. I don't want to be famous. I want to be known that I help people think bigger, right? And so staying rooted in that, it helps me to be very, very clear on what I'm doing. People will come up and tell me, oh, Chris, you changed my life financially. And I go, oh, whoa, pump the brakes. I didn't change anything. I gave you some information. You did the changing. And so I think it's really important as as we help people, that we stay aware of who's doing what and our role.

Yeah, I think there's a story about Marcus Aurelius where he would go around the town and he had someone just walk with him beside him and say, you,'re just a man. Every time someone would praise him, be like, you,'re just a man.

Can you imagine that? I mean, seriously.

Isn't that cool?

How rooted does that keep you? You know, so, you know, John Wooden's got a quote. He says, you know, be careful of fame because fame is man-made. and if man giveth, man can take it away.

Absolutely.

You know, and so being aware of that, I think, is really, really important. What's the heart behind what I'm trying to do?

Yeah.

And so, you know, if I travel and I go speak to 10, 000 people, if I get one person whose eyes light up and they start thinking differently, then I've done my mission.

Yeah. Yeah. If you got a thousand dollars, I would like, just keep, you know, keep investing yourself until you got another. a thousand.

Okay.

And then invest in yourself. Now you got 2,000 invested. You go, go, go. You should start making money faster. At some point you should start like every time you make an investment in yourself, if I put fuel in my car, it's supposed to take me further. Right. So if I invest in myself, then, and look, there's things I bought that I didn't get a return on right away. But I didn't quit investing in a course or a workshop or training or education because it didn't work.

Or your health?

I spent 17 years going to school. None of it was any good for me. But it did teach me how to go to school. How to study. How to study, how to go there, how to complete a course. Like I completed college. I'm not proud of that, by the way.

You're not proud you completed it?

No, no, because it was ridiculous. I should have dropped out. I knew it was a bad thing.

What'd you major in?

Majoring in accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some you know, business degree.

Right. But you should have dropped out of it.

100%. Because I mean, I would still, I would still, I would, well, I'd have a five-year jump on my career. But the problem is I was on drugs. So, so, you know, physical, actual drugs.

If I wouldn't have been on drugs.

I would have quit college. Because I would have had enough confidence in myself. When you're on drugs, you can't have confidence. Because you know, you know, you're drugs. Right. So everything is second-guess because my self-esteem was like, like through the basement. And so I'm like, I need to quit college, but everybody around me's, oh no, you gotta finish college, you gotta finish college.

I'm like, what do I know? I'm a drug addict.

And if I drop out, I don't have a degree, and then I gotta hire me. And I didn't even worry about any of that, because, you know, I didn't worry about that. I just didn't have the confidence to follow my intuition. You can't when you're on drugs. When you're not yourself. so what do you do with a thousand bucks, right? You know, I think you just got to keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. Okay, boom, reinvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table, right? We save it, we don't invest it.

So I think people just need to.

Get on that cycle of like, okay, I'm gonna keep repeating this activity. I'm gonna reinvest some money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever. Monday, I gotta be hustling again. until, okay, now I got $4,000. Okay, now I got $5,000. Now the income's starting to pick up. Income has to pick up. The income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping you. That's interesting. Until one day you're like, okay, I.

Have more money here than I can.

Actually invest in myself. I can't, like, there's nothing I can go to to get rid of this money.

You need to get rid of that money though. All my free time is going to my workshops. I don't have more free time to invest in me.

Yeah.

Developing skills. I'm working.

I'm earning more.

Now what's the next step?

Yeah. And now, now, now it would be, okay, I got to spend money on marketing. I wouldn't go make a, I wouldn't go look for an investment right now. I'm gonna spend money on marketing now. Now, now, now I'm gonna spend money on marketing to get me more leads. And I would, you know, big mistake I made in my career was not.

Spending more money on marketing.

Because you turned, what, 50 when you really started investing? I was 50, I was 51 when we started playing this social media game and I was probably 56, 55 or 56 when we started spending money on marketing. Wow. Yeah.

51 when you started doing social media.

Yeah, yeah. And then, and I should have been spending money, I should have been spending money when I was 25 years old, when I was selling cars. I should have spent money, been spending money on ads, but I was scared, man.

So, so what made you not scared 25 years later? 26 years later at 51.

I started studying, hey, what do all these successful people have in common? You know, whether it was the mattress dealer, the car dealer, the furniture dealer, or Elon Musk, they spend money, man. You know, they spend money. They spend a lot of money. And they don't worry about money the way I was worried about it. They used money, you know, they used it. They didn't save it. They didn't hoard money. and the greatest companies on this planet today, the ones that have just like, some of these companies have lost money for 25 years. Look at Amazon. Yeah. Reinvest 1.7 million employees. When I started, I remember I looked at Ernst Young. I said, I have a buddy that worked at Ernst Young. I said, how many employees you got? He's like, 240,000.

Wow.

And I'm worried about 10 people. What am I thinking? So when I quit studying individuals, and started studying people, everything shifted for me. When I quit trying to be the, you know, when I quit worrying about what Bob was doing or Pete or whoever and started saying, hey man, what is this big company doing? Because that also relieved me of being competitive with this guy, Pete, and started saying, okay, I'm gonna go do what Coca-Cola does. That's when I bought the plane.

Really?

Yeah.

How old were you when you bought the plane?

I was 50, maybe 55, the first one. I bought it because I studied what Coca-Cola was doing. They bought planes. I said, why are they buying planes? Oh, then I learned how they write them off. And then I learned how they trade them every three years. That's crazy. So notice every three years I'm trading a plane. I'm getting rid of it, replacing it with another one. But what are they using it for? They don't use it for pleasure. They're not using it for Instagram photos. They're using it to go and set.

Up headquarters in other Wow.

You know, so that's when I wrote, if you're not first, you're last. Because when I started studying these companies, I'm like, Coca-Cola is everywhere. You can't go any place and not see Coca-Cola. And I was like this big. I was always thinking about, what can I keep? And they were thinking about, how many shells can we get on? How many eyeballs can we see? So that's when it all clicked for me. you know, and that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, who am I studying? And, and that's, that's when we started, you know, open up the funds for, for, I was at, went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see.

What it was like.

These are 100, multi-100 billion dollar companies.

Crazy.

You know? And I walked in, I was oh, my God, man. I just. It just all hit me in a second. I've been doing everything wrong.

What were they doing different?

They owned the building.

They weren't renting the building.

They owned the building. Well, they don't care if they rent. They could rent it, but they owned it. The elevators were bigger than the studio. One elevator. And 60 people got on that elevator and went to the. Went to the 120th floor. And then there was six. Six of these. Elevators, people going up and down. Everybody told me, Don't take people's money. Do not let investors invest with you. Keep the whole deal for yourself. The second I walked into Goldman Sachs.

Because all they're doing is getting investor money.

That's all they do. Okay? And the difference is what I do is I could go to Goldman Sachs. I was there. They would give me money. And I'm like, I'm not going to get money from them. I'm going to do what they do.

From individuals.

Exactly from my friends, from people that follow me, from people that support me, okay? Goldman Sachs will give money to anybody, right? Okay, they don't know how to go to these people. They're not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok. So I'm going to create a fund where I can tell my audience, Hey, Louis, you can invest with me. I'm going to kick Goldman out of the deal or JP or whoever. There's a bunch of these, these guys, you know? It's not that they're doing a bad thing or anything. I'm not saying they're the devil, but they're close, okay? Because they're not gonna call you up and say, how you doing, man? Without saying, hey, you got any money to invest? It's just not, you know, that's not what they do. Their job is to make money, period. So anyway, when I saw that, I'm like, okay, these people are, these are the richest institutions on the planet. They fund everything that happens. the company BlackRock. BlackRock's going to be BlackRock and Vanguard. These are multi, you know, probably going to be worth 20 trillion dollars each in the next handful of years. They'll own, they say they'll own 99% of all the assets on planet Earth, not just in America.

How are they able to do that?

Because they scale, right? Because they think big. So they're funding everything. Everything that happens on this planet from media to pharmaceutical is going to be funded by those two companies. So it just, when you're, when you're studying your rich uncle or the neighbor down the street, the, the think is only so big. And then when I started studying these other companies, I was like, okay, this is who, if you want to create that kind of Legacy wealth and really help a lot of people, because they are in a position to help or hurt a lot of that's the scale you got to think at. Yeah.

But it took you really 25 years to get there, to start thinking that way. Is that right? Because you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years. You were just trying to earn more.

And more and more.

Yeah. Because I was just trying to. Because I was.

The grind.

The grind. The grind was so. It was such a low level grind.

Let's say you had the right information in 25. Let's just say you had a rich. uncle that. Yeah. Did what these people did. And you got to witness this.

Yeah.

Do you think that you wouldn't have been able to get there faster?

Yeah.

1000. Or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it? No. When you're ready to make it and when you're ready to take on the risk or the responsibility.

Sabrina will never make the mistakes I made. Okay. Because she won't. She won't get in the wrong car. I got in the wrong vehicle. I didn't know the vehicle I got in when I was 28 years old. I could actually make a hundred grand a year doing this. My daughters will never get in that vehicle.

What would they do?

They'll be like, I'm not getting in a hundred thousand dollar ride. If they can't bring me, they're gonna be like, hey, if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility, that they're gonna pick that this is the wealthy, they put their kids, their kids see things differently. If they're not ruined. If they're not completely ruined. and scathed by having whatever they want, then they'll see opportunities different.

Yeah.

You know, and but when you see the possibility, then you're like, I'm not gonna get in that car, that car, that car. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get in a spaceship. So if I was 28 again today, I mean, I would know what industries to pick.

Top three industries to pick.

Hedge funds have to be one of them. Advertising and marketing's got to be a space. to be in. And probably, you know, something to do with healthcare. If I could scale healthcare, if I could scale the organic alternative medicines, you know, so those are three massive spaces, maybe financial too, the financial world, you know, in the next 30 years, we're probably going to have a disruption of the dollar.

Right.

And the way money's, maybe we're a crypto currency, you know, environment in the future. Yeah. So any of that, any of that's going to happen, you know. But the reason I would go there is like Jeff Bezos. When I saw the first interview with Jeff when he was saying he was studying algorithms, I think he was at one of the big firms, selling stocks.

Before Amazon.

Yeah, before Amazon. And then he saw something came across his desk where there was a spike in internet activity. I bought it's going to the internet. That's when he said, I'm gonna go do Amazon. And he followed traffic. I didn't ever follow traffic. He followed scale. He followed scaling possibilities. And then what did he do? He followed this traffic, the possibility. Then he invested in the possibility, and then he went into debt. on the possibility, and then he was willing to not get paid any money. But what did I do? I need money today. I gotta have money this week. I need to have a little more money next week, and if I get a little more money after that, I'm gonna save it all. And then I'm gonna go do that again, and I'm gonna feed the bank, and I'm gonna keep feeding the bank. I don't even know how much money the bank's made off of me for 25 years. Really? We don't know anybody that works harder than Grant Cardone. And as soon as he gets a bag, he brings it to us. What do they do? Hey, y'all want to borrow this money? Now repeat that 300 million times.

Wow.

And that's the American people.

What about a family that's thinking, you know, I really feel comfortable having six months to a year of savings, 'cause I got kids, I got the rent, I got all the bills.

Yeah.

What do you say to someone who's like, you know what, I see you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet.

Well, then keep the money, if you think money's gonna save you, you know, you're just, again, they're stacking information on top of bad information. Okay? You know, the money that you have saved in the last six months has probably dropped 11%. So the money that you have, you got 100 grand, I gotta have six months of savings. I need, you know, 4,000, my bills are four or 5,000 bucks a month. I gotta have 30 grand in the bank. I gotta have 30, but they really have 180. So first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months. and they don't even know it because they're living out of terror. It's not logic. You say it's logic. I need six months, but you got three times more than you need. Sure. Number one. Number two, you've never had an emergency that cost you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever had that emergency. Everybody hears about, oh yeah, my guy got in a bud, this happened, blah, blah, blah. But if you had assets, if you'd been investing in assets, You can always go use those assets for collateral to loan out. You can do cancer surgery.

You can get a loan out from the bank.

100%. Or if you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you, but assets that pay you every month. If you keep investing in that asset class, one day your cash flow will be your emergency account. My emergency account last month paid me a million six. My cash flow.

That's crazy.

My free cash flow.

That's crazy.

That's no work involved. That is not one second of one day. Okay? That was, and that happens every single month in my place. But that's been because I made a bunch of investments for the last, you know, 25 years. Right. End of every year, I dump all my cash out every year. I'm like, you need to get as close to zero as you can. and replace it with assets that in January, if I dump out in December, January, I want a payment from that. It doesn't have to be a big payment. Just needs to be a drip off that asset. Something, yeah. So I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna buy a cup 'cause the cup won't pay me. So in December, I had a bunch of money. Boom. I'm like, make a deal. You were in it, yes, a couple days ago. Yeah, yeah. Take- you- bought that house. Take that cash, that garbage that you have. I already had a surplus of money. So if I can't buy two of these, I'm not gonna buy one of them. If I can't write off some portion of it, I'm not gonna buy it. If I can't do it out of passive income, I'm not gonna touch it. Interesting. So those are my criteria for making investments, right? And it needs the cash flow. So I took a bunch of this cash that was sitting here just deteriorating, not providing me with safety, and took it and put it into this asset. And people are like, you're ridiculous. You paid that much money for that thing. okay, we'll see, you know. So I buy this thing, this thing will provide rental income. I think this year I'll make three million bucks on this deal.

Wow.

In cash flow.

And how much do you have to put down or do you buy the whole thing?

Well, I pay cash for this house. Gotcha. So, but the reason I did it is not because this is a great.

Deal, but this is a terrible deal.

Keeping the cash. Keeping the cash is garbage. This Malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made. Okay. But I had a bunch of surplus cash. I had already bought in December, we bought almost 2,000 apartments. If I could have got another apartment deal, I would have bought another apartment.

Deal with the 40 million.

But I couldn't. You couldn't find one? I couldn't find another deal. I still have this money left over. End of the year, it's just the thing that I do. End of the year dump out, literally like flush the toilet on your savings. So every day I look at my savings accounts, okay? It's not because I'm worried about any more money anymore. I know for sure the money going down in value. Everybody knows that this year. Your money is depreciating, right? It's dropping down in value. What you were told that is 100 grand is not 100 grand. The bank's not even telling you the truth. It's 100 less 11,000.

It's 11% right now.

Could be 34% less. Some people think it's going down 34%.

That's crazy.

But you're gonna still see 100 because this is invisible taxing, right? It's inflation. so I know that. I know it's not a hundred. So when you guys look at your check, I got 180, 000. You're lying to yourself. Because you're not, you're not doing all the math on money. This is why Mike Saylor went and took all that money he had and invested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Yeah. Because he's done the research. So I would listen to him. And I'm not saying you guys should go buy Bitcoin, but I'm not buying Bitcoin at that, at those levels. Okay? I'm buying assets that can provide me more with more cash. with more income. Maybe I should be buying Bitcoin, I don't know. But anyway, so I dumped this out. I dumped this for now, I've been shopping this piece of real estate for 19 months. I've been working this deal for 19 months. So I'm not being like, okay, I just gotta go buy something. I'm not gonna do that. But I'm trying to get rid of this cash to go into an asset that has the potential to go up in value over time. I dump out in January, okay, I do three webinars That's why everybody wants to know, man, what's the rush to make more money?

Because I'm broke, man.

And I got a new house. Right.

You got bills to pay now. You got expenses.

So January 1st comes, I've done three webinars already to start filling this up again. Mm-. Right. Now, if I walked into January 1st with 40 million bucks sitting in a.

Bank account, dude, you're not hungry.

What's the rush, bro? You're not hungry.

Yeah, let's plan.

Let's do some planning this year. but what I do is I dump out. So every year for the last 15 years, every January, I end up with more assets.

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