RICH VS POOR MINDSET! The Most Eye Opening Speech | Wallstreet Trapper & Lewis Howes
In this extended conversation, the speakers discuss how a shift from a self‑centered to a service‑centered mindset is the foundation for effective online influence and sales. They argue that value must be delivered first, regardless of audience size, and that social media provides a low‑cost mechanism to push that value to anyone willing to engage. The dialogue introduces practical tactics for turning comments and direct messages (DMs) into customers, centering on a simple "four‑F" framework: (1) How did you find me?, (2) What was your favorite part?, (3) Tell me about your future?, and (4) The free next step (call, training, download). Throughout, they stress relationship‑first selling, long‑term reputation over short‑term revenue, and the power of referrals. They also touch on broader themes such as the "Content Diamond," the "Services Spectrum" (information → organization → application), incremental wealth building versus greedy shortcuts, and the importance of asking "How can I help?" rather than "How can I make money?". The conversation blends mindset coaching, social‑media marketing tactics, and sales philosophy into a cohesive guide for creators and entrepreneurs seeking to impact lives while building sustainable businesses.
Chapters
This is how the wealthy play the game of life. Not in survival mode, but in offense. The moment you can switch from survival mode to offense.
When it comes to investing then, how do they know what to invest in and to not, 'cause you can invest in something and lose all your money. So what approach do you give to people there?
So I always say the first thing is, and I say this and I want people to understand this, Invest in what you understand.
So if you wear Nikes, yeah, you.
Should be looking at apparel brands, right? Nike, Lululemon, because you understand that, right? If you a workout person, then you should be looking at like Planet Fitness, things like that. Like if you are a tech person, if you use an Apple phone, you should 100% be on looking at Apple, right? If you're a car person, like, but one of the things I like now is, FinTech, financial technology. So everybody uses PayPal or Square, right? That is the way money is changing. The way we use the money is completely different now. So I think everybody should be investing in FinTech right now, 100%. But I look at it as, so every investor has what's called an investor identity. Like, what you're willing to risk, your risk tolerance. what companies you're more familiar with. If you're a doctor, then you know more about medicine. So you should be in biotech or pharmaceuticals, healthcare. That should be your thing. If you are, again, a person who is in software, then cybersecurity, software, that's where you're gonna be strong at. And that's where your strong points are. I remember Warren Buffett said for a long time, he didn't understand technology. So he didn't buy technology. He didn't buy Apple stock until like 2017. I don't understand. I don't have a computer.
I don't use it.
I don't use it.
Right?
So I learned that from him. He says, I put things in a too hard box. It was too hard for me to understand. I don't, I don't do it. And what I love about investing is it's not an IQ sport. It's not about who has the biggest IQ at all, because it's most so about how do I stay in my circle of competence and what I understand? Because that's what gives me the advantage.
Mm-.
Whatever I under, like for me, it's banks. Like I love banks. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, love it. FinTech, love it. Still dealing with, like I love money. I'm a hustler. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I love that. So that's why I'm like heavy at.
Sure.
You know what I'm saying? But I'm not a bible pharmacist. I'm a person. So I stay away from that. How do I stay away from it? Right, so the easiest thing is like wherever you work at, like, look around, wherever you shop at, look around. Every time I buy a product, I'm looking at who made it. So I can go look that up, see if it's a public company. If it's a private company, right? If it's public, that means we can all invest into it. If I can invest into it, I want a piece of it. You know what I'm saying? Just to keep it simple, we don't even have to make it hard. You don't have to be Warren Buffett out the gate. You don't have to be that. Warren Buffett didn't become Warren Buffett until 20 years, 30 years in. You know what I'm saying? So you gotta figure out who you are as a person. who you are as an investor that take you to that next level.
Do you have a strategy where every month you're automatically putting money away into investments or when you get a chunk of money, then you're putting a certain percent into it? What's your mindset around investing in terms of how often you do it, how frequently you're putting money in?
Yeah.
So every time I get money, at least 50% of it goes to investment.
Really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm heavy with it. I could do a lot with less.
Yeah.
Like I don't live my life like that. I literally, and I'll say this on camera, I only have like $10,000 sitting in the bank. My life, if something happens to me, my life is not set up in a way where I need a lot of money on hand.
You can always sell stocks and nothing.
You know, so for me, it's, I do three things every time I get some money. I invest for my daughter first, and then I invest in myself, and then I see what else gotta be paid.
Right. Right?
So even when investing for myself and I'm putting money in the market, I'm sometimes just putting it in my account so it's available for me to use.
The right time.
When the time permits, right? So every week I'm putting money in, okay, let me put this money into my account. Then I have separate accounts because I got portfolios that are designed to do different things for me, right? So I have a dividend portfolio, whereas everything in that portfolio is about me having businesses that pay dividends. So I got Costco, T-Ro Price, Home Depot, O'Realty, companies like that, that is just designed for me to get dividends.
Yeah.
Even if it's only 20, 30 bucks a month, it's something.
That's it. And so I look at it as, okay, this will be passive income, 39. I won't need this until I'm 59, 60, right?
It keeps reinvesting in itself.
So now they buy me more shares of themselves. All right, cool. And then one portfolio I use for growth stocks. So all right, this was where my Apple was at, my fintech companies, my PayPals and Affirms and things like that. Because now I'm gonna get a lot of growth. That's why I'm taking more risk right here.
Right?
And then there's an option portfolio I have, where I trade at. So now I got three portfolios to have to do three different things when they have three different agendas. And I got a raw diary.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? that's tax, you know, for tax advantages. So that's financial literacy.
And life insurance. Life insurance. Yeah.
Yeah, I got whole life insurance, right? So understanding, just understanding how the wealthy play the game. I just bought 40 acres of land, right? I said, I'm gonna create agriculture.
Why?
Because agriculture gets more breaks than anybody. You know what I'm saying? But 40 acres of land, free and clear, it's mine. I'm gonna turn it into a farm. Right, grow organic food, organic vegetables. I got water well on it.
Wow.
Right. Cool. All right, cool. Let's do that. Tax advantages for this. Anything comes off that land, I can get breaks on that. So it's me sitting back saying, this is how the wealthy play the game of life. Not in survival mode, but in offense.
Mm-.
The moment you can switch from Survival mode to offense, the game changes. The more aggressive team in the game, the more aggressive boxing in the game, the more aggressive, like that's when the game is played. Again, class of people are used to life dictating them. I'm gonna take the punches, I didn't come. How you doing man? You know I'm making it? The responses be different. Man, what's up? How you feeling man? I'm making it man. Well, you ask somebody, what's up man? Just close out on a deal.
Yeah.
You know, got a couple business meetings. Like, I love attacking life. And it don't have to be, it don't always have to be going the way you want. As long as you attacking it. Every day I get up saying, yo, I got an opportunity to go attack.
Right?
I got an opportunity to change something to make sure, turn my last name into an asset.
Right?
Turn my last name into an asset.
That's cool.
Own my 24 hours. That's the goal. Like, the person who can own their 24 hours can create Freedom, right? That's the difference between Financial Freedom and then Financial Independence.
What's the difference?
So Financial Independence is saying, I now can make money for myself. I don't have to worry about my job. I don't have to worry about none of that. I can create the cash flow that comes into my house. Financial Freedom says, Money is no longer even an issue. Big difference. Because even someone who can create money for themselves still doesn't have freedom all the time. You can be an entrepreneur and be a slave to the business.
You build yourself a job.
You build yourself a job. But financial freedom says your money is not even an issue no more. And that don't even have to be a lot.
That's why I feel like some people, have this fantasy of entrepreneurship as like this ideal lifestyle that's going to come. Where I don't think people understand the weight of being an entrepreneur and how long it actually takes. You hear great stories of people that are like, oh, I built this thing and then sold it for a billion dollars. I usually took 10, 15, 20 years. And so many punches in the face and the gut and ups and downs. But most businesses fail after a few years. the ones that succeed, a lot of the entrepreneurs are just working really hard to pay themselves a salary and take more responsibility, weight and pressure, taxes, insurance, all these things they gotta pay until they learn to break through. And so it's not like the sexiest thing. It takes time and energy and a real-- persistence.
I remember, just before the show, I asked you, I said, outside of consistency, Yeah. What was one of the things? And you was like, man, now and I was like, this is nine years.
Yeah.
Like most people quit year one, year two, like, no, it's too much for me. I can't deal with it. It's pressure, right? But there's this thing about getting up and let me say that I don't think there's nothing wrong with anybody working a job because I don't think entrepreneurship is for everybody.
I don't think it is, man.
Right, but I do know that building wealth is for everybody.
Absolutely. And you can take your money you're making from your job and invest it so it's working for you.
It should be your biggest investment.
And that's what you were doing.
That's what I did. But I feel to that, like, I think that everybody should at least once in their life go all in on something. Something that you just believe in. That's living to me. Because for me, I always, I don't need motivation because when I look at my life, my motivation is saying I'll never go back to that again. My motivation is saying that I have a daughter that I never want her to experience that life.
Right?
So getting up every day knowing that I can change my family, knowing that we are now in a time But we've never had the opportunity like we have now. And if I don't take advantage of that opportunity, when it's time for me to go, I'm gonna feel real messed up all day.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
Because I don't, it's a difference between never getting the opportunity and getting the opportunity and never taking advantage of it.
Absolutely, man. Absolutely. How has mental health played into your life with the, The journey of learning how to heal so much trauma, pain, memories, experiences, not only as a kid, not only as in prison, but six, seven years ago when you were still doing a lot of things that were, you know, against the law and out of integrity, and how do you learn to emotionally heal so much?
I'm still healing.
Yeah.
I just told you, I gotta get your book.
I know, man.
I know.
When you told, oh, I gotta get that. I'm still healing. Man, I just, it's crazy because I just had a moment last night. I was talking to my mother and we got an old care relationship 'cause she still got a lot of trauma and pain that she deal with and it's hard for me to attempt to heal, run a business, and be aware that she has healing to do.
Right?
Like that'd be a lot. Just last night, I was like, I can't take this, man. I can't do this. I can't do all this. You know what I'm saying? It's because I was trying to deal with her situation emotionally and rationalize the logic, then deal with, okay, I gotta do this, this, this, this. I'm trying to do this. And it was just a lot. And I had to step back. Me and my daughter's mother have a great relationship. And I told her, Man, healing, this was my exact words last night. I said, Man, healing is a lifelong process. I said, Man, this stuff takes forever. She said, oh, she thought she was gonna heal overnight.
Your daughter said this?
No, my daughter's mother.
I was gonna say, your daughter lies.
Nah, my daughter's mother. I said, Man, healing is a lifelong process. She said, what you thought she was gonna heal overnight? And it's understanding emotionally. So there's three phases in my life. Well, more than three, but you gotta realize there was me before prison, just seeing, viewing, observing, seeing a violent, like, not only seeing my mama get shot, but also overdose, right? So, rationalizing that, me being homeless for a couple of years of my life at a young age, then me going to prison, adapting to a completely different lifestyle, then coming home as a grown man, Nobody's gonna give you hands out. So now I have to realize who I am as a free man, a free grown man. Then in that process of learning who I am, I'm fighting cases again. And then we go to, okay, well, this is not it. I'm just gonna get into robbery. Because the only leverage I feel like I have in life at these points is leveraging my life.
Right?
The only leverage, the only fighting thing out, the only, like, I don't know at the moment how to leverage information and knowledge. The only thing that I knew that I had was my life. So, okay, freedom of prison. I mean, prison or debt, it's the only thing I can. So it's now breaking away from that and now being a leader, being an influential person, influential person, in my communities around the people now accepting that because no one teaches you how to be a leader. No one teaches you how to do that. You got to learn that on the Fly. You got to learn. Okay, I can't say this. I can't say that. And then social media is something different. And so I'm learning that. Yeah, I'm still learning how to heal. I'm still. I'm still praying more. You know, I gotta just be talking about, like, we got to get back with the therapist, right? Just so I can brain dump.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? I got into journaling, like getting these thoughts out of my head, listening to stuff like Atomic Habits and, you know, just stuff like that. So I'm still healing. And I know it's gonna be a lifelong process because you gotta remember, I don't been shot before, I don't been shot at, I don't did some shooting. And honestly, if you shoot somebody, you deal with that all your life.
What does that feel like?
Man, I still have nightmares about that. You know what I'm saying? Like in the moment, you feel like I did the right thing.
Justified.
You justify it, right? You feel like, man, it had to be done. You know what I'm saying? And I think maybe the difference in a lion when he eats a gazelle is it's on to the next one. Right, but human nature comes in.
You gotta live with the consequences.
Yeah, I'm gonna kill that man. you know what I'm saying? Like, when you deal with that, and it never goes away. You know what I'm saying? Like, it never goes away. And part of you, you know, I'll have, like, right now, like, I don't even be wanting to be around guns, right? You know, like, man, I'm good, man. I don't want to go to the gun range, right?
Like, it's not worth it.
Nah, it bring me. It bring me to. It bring me back to a place of my life where I was. And I feel like the only way for me to move forward is sometimes you gotta, like, disattach yourself from certain environments, certain things. So I'd be like, nah, man, I honestly don't even like listening to music that has a lot of talk, a lot of gangster talk. Because, one, I lived it, and it brings in a different emotion in me. I'm like, nah, if I'm gonna be here, I don't want to get into that emotion. And I know with music, most people are telling their story. I don't want to relive that story, right? that's part of my healing.
Trying to create a new story.
Yeah, so that's part of my healing. I'm always healing, man.
What do you think would be the three big things you need to take on or let go of in order to get to a completely different level in your life one year from today? So when I see you in a year in Atlanta or in LA, and you're like, I did these three things, or I let go of these three things, and it took me to another level of financial abundance, another level of emotional freedom, and healing. What would those things be?
Three things that I would let go or take on. I'll take on. One is more mentoring.
Mentoring more people.
No, me getting.
You getting more mentorship? Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I think that life, I think everyone should has a mentor because we should always be learning.
Yeah.
Right.
And it doesn't always have to be with finances. It can just be with life experiences. So I think one of the things for me is like finding, like I had a mentor now I think I'm outgrooming a little bit so I'm ready to get another one. So one is mentoring that I would love to take on. Two is truly cleaning up the way I eat. because you are 100% a reflection of what you eat.
Absolutely. Right.
So I already don't drink, I don't smoke, but my eating habits, not the best.
Yeah.
And the third one would be actually just sitting still.
Mm-.
Like, I move around so much in the process of doing this and doing this, I think one of the things that's important for us is to sit still. I pray a lot already. And I think when you sit still, you can get clarity and you can get instructions.
Right?
I think we move around so much, we don't get to get the instruction. I think everybody has an assignment, right? Everybody here has an assignment. If you move around so much, you can never hear the assignment. People always say, follow your passion, follow your passion. I think it should be follow your purpose. Because the assignment is attached to your purpose. And it's not to get real spiritual or crazy on people, but I just feel like the only way you get that assignment is you sit down and talk to the person who gave it to you.
Right. Your creator.
I said, yeah, you sit down and talk to the person who gave it to you. And the only way you could do that, the only way they can talk to you, whoever it is, is when you sit and still. So for me, it would be getting, like, more mentors. I want to have a mentor at all the time, because what? Again, it reverse back to where I came from. It was ogs that taught you a lot of stuff, and they only could teach you what they knew. So you became a reflection of that. And then if you didn't have an OG to tell you something, you freestyled it. And the freestyling, you man, it cost you a lot. A lot of mistakes, a lot of hard times, a lot of money. And some people who freestyled it, it cost them their life. So for me, I take on those same principles and say, okay, like, not only am I a leader, not only am I influential, but my goal is to be a person who can change or be a vessel for change. And because it's all new to me, I need somebody who's already took on that journey.
Yep.
I'm always talking about investing in coaches and mentors. I love that, man. And I have a coach in pretty much every area of my life. And I think it's hard to think we can do something on our own. If we've never done it before.
You've never done it before.
It's hard to think that we can do it consistently when things get challenging and hard. without some type of, you know, emotional support from a friend, an accountability buddy, a coach, a mentor, whatever it is, whatever you want to call it. I'm a big fan of investing in it so you're accountable to that time with that mentor or finding some skin in the game with the coach or mentor. And if you don't have the money right away, then you can find mentors without investing that, but finding other ways to add value. And I think that's such a massive that's a part of my growth and my success is being around the right people.
Hell yeah.
Like, it changes. Like, I understood at first I, at first I, so I'm my only child. So a lot of me is always, man, I got this. I could do this. I don't need nobody to teach me that. I can do this. You know, like, you, you know, it be hard, but as you start to put that ego to the side and say, nah, like, I can learn something from that person. This person can teach me something. Let me humble myself to learn this lesson. Because if I learn this lesson from them, that's less heartache and pain I gotta go through. And learning from that person speeds up my process.
Absolutely. There's so many things I learned from my three older siblings that I didn't repeat, you know? And I mentioned before, my brother went to prison when I was eight. I went to the prison with my family almost every weekend to visit in the visiting hours, in the visiting room. And I was like, I don't want to be here. You know, I want to make sure that I don't go down this path. I started doing things when I was 12, 11 to like 12 and a half, 13, where I started doing petty stuff. I was stealing like candy bars and cigarettes, like whatever. I was just like as a high. And I did it almost every day for probably a year, year and a half, I had to steal something.
Mm-.
And it's crazy to think, but I remember getting caught once.
Mm.
And I got caught by my dad.
Mm.
I didn't even cut my store, right? I remember getting caught and feeling like, and I was kind of hanging out with the wrong group, just doing things that I wasn't really proud of myself. Little stupid stuff. I remember thinking like, if I keep doing this, here's where it could go.
Mm.
Maybe it doesn't happen in the next year or two, but Three, four, five years, if I keep doing these same actions, I'm gonna get more of these results. I'm gonna feel bad about myself, I'm gonna get caught, I'm gonna hurt other people along the way, and who knows what consequences could come from that. So I remember in that moment, I was like, I'm never stealing or doing anything like this ever again. I need to change my environment. I didn't change my mindset around this. And I begged my parents to send me away to a school around kids that I, a private school they sent me to, a private boarding school. Begged them to send me to this place. to get me out of the environment. Which you're talking about with your daughter, like sending her to a class of an environment that speaks differently, that has a different, you know, mindset.
Everything.
Behaviors, all that stuff.
It's important, even like that environment is so crucial. Like even just being around, so like for me, being around people that understand the importance of investing, not only just.
Not just.
Yeah, not just spending their money, but.
Investing the money, investing in their personal development, investing in their business, investing in teaching them how to run businesses. And that, like, being around them, made me be like, damn, I gotta invest in myself, too. Right, right. Like, and it's something we take for granted. And being around people who understand that a certain amount of money isn't what you may see, though, that's a lot of money. Somebody like, no, I may spend that on investing myself. I may spend it on buying assets. like understanding that people who build businesses are different. Those conversations change your life. It's environment. If I'm in. If I'm in the hood, if I'm my community and I'm telling people about investing and doing this and now, and all they want to do is party and drink, then no matter how positive I am, at some point, I'm gonna say, that ain't working, man. Let me go party and drink. All right, cool. If you're around people that they complaining about the bills and the bosses and the work and every day, then that's not an environment that's conducive to you being successful. That's not an environment that's conducive to change. It's only so long that you can flirt with the other side of what you want that you become that.
What would you say the three biggest myths about money that you've debunked? over your time of learning about money that maybe you grew up thinking it was one way, like you were talking about loans and banks and all these different things. What are three myths about money that you've found out were not true?
The first thing that I would say, I don't know if it's a myth, but I would say that the first thing everyone has to understand is what money is. And I don't mean in terms of like, in terms of wealth, but like money is just paper. It doesn't make you a good person. It doesn't make you a bad person. It just It's paper. And we talk about all these insecurities people have with money. I grew up being told, don't talk about money, don't worry about money, don't stress about money. Yeah, here I am seeing my parents work their butt off every single day.
Trying to make money.
Trying to make money. And it doesn't make sense. How am I supposed to not worry about money? And you want me to become a doctor because you read those, if you go to those career fairs, they show you the different careers, right? And doctor is always number one. the highest income. So why am I doing this if it's because of the income instead of because I love it or do something that I love?
Or because I want to help people.
Yeah.
You want to save lives.
Exactly.
And what's crazy is if you understand money, you become financially educated, you're willing to talk about it, well now you can be financially stable doing whatever you want and you can follow something you love and still be financially okay because we assume that you have to have this in order to make money. You have to have this job in order to make good money. You have to have this career if you want to be financially stable. But that's a complete lie.
Yeah.
But that goes down to not us being willing to talk about money. And, you know, I talked about this in our last interview, but, you know, money is one part of our lives. And the reason why people are scared to talk about it is because we're insecure about it. And that's because we don't understand how money plays a part in our lives. It's one aspect. I say that there's four. You have to be physically healthy, mentally healthy, spiritually healthy, and then financially healthy. If you're not financially healthy, well, it can make everything else much more miserable because you can't pay your bills. But if you're financially healthy, you're rich, but you have nothing else, more money just makes you more miserable. So you need to live a holistic life and understand how money plays a part in your life. That way the finances can have the biggest power, and then you understand that more money just amplifies who you are. It's like fire. It's like fuel. It fuels your fire. If you're a good person and you have more money, you have a tool to do more good. If you're a bad person, you have more money, you have a tool to do more bad. Just why we need more good people with money. Exactly. Why do we do that?
Well, yeah. Get educated. A lot of people just say that money exposes who you really are. It amplifies who you are so people can see whether you're that good person or bad person or whatever it may be in between. But first off, understanding what money is is what you had to learn. It's kind of like this thing. What else around understanding it would you say? Maybe you thought it was one thing but then you realized it was something else.
Exactly. Now that's money. The second thing is how do you use money and value money because I'm gonna say this in the nicest way possible, but traditionally Indian people can be very cheap. And I grew up seeing this and what does that mean? It means that the traditional Indian house is a save heavy culture. And I can say that because I've seen this and I grew up in that where you make a dollar to spend 20 cents. And the traditional American culture is you make a dollar to spend two dollars.
Two dollars.
And so it's a save heavy culture. So you're spending as little money as possible to save it. Now, obviously we talked about inflation, so I'm not going to mention what that means with savings, but what I'm talking about here is you can use your money as a tool. And this is what wealthy people do because now what do they do with their money? You use your money to buy your time back. Because what so many of us do is we're exchanging our hours for dollars. You go to work every single day and you get paid, but what are wealthy people doing? They're not working just to use their money as a way to buy hours. They're using the money to To buy their time back because now you can build things and build processes and invest your money because now you can use your money as a tool instead of as a fool It's what I like to say but this is where it's how do you now use your money to make your life better? Yeah, and and you don't want to be now just just buy a whole bunch of Gucci and Louis Vuitton It's now actually improving your life and not.
To make your life look better but to actually improve it from the inside out. Yeah.
So the simplest example would be you start a YouTube channel. We talked about buying a camera. Well, one thing that you could do is you can hire a video editor. You go on a freelance site, hire a freelance video editor, and now what are you doing? You can spend more time making more videos instead of spending all your time editing the content so you can focus on your time. You can hire someone to mow the lawn. You bought your time back. You hire somebody to help get you your groceries. You buy your time back. It costs money. You have to spend to spend money in order to do that. But you're getting something in an exchange and now you're buying your time back so you can use your money as a tool and you can use your money as a tool to buy your time back or you can use your money as a tool to make you and attract you more money. That's what wealthy people do and so you want to be able to use money in that way. The third thing would be now to really, I mean, I know I talk about this a lot, but you have to understand the difference between something that makes you money and something that loses you money.
That's a liability, yeah.
A liability.
What are the main liabilities that people spend on today?
The way you look, man. We have this Instagram flex culture, right? And it is very toxic if you do not know how to use it.
And unless you're investing your money wisely and you've got excess money and you're like, okay, I want to buy some stuff to flex, cool. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're not investing your money and you're just spending it on clothes and watches and shoes. Yeah.
If you got the name brand stuff, but you got no savings, you got no investments, you're doing something wrong. Your priorities are in the wrong place. What are you doing? You're making Gucci rich, you're making Louis Vuitton rich, you're making all these companies rich, but you're keeping yourself broke. I talked about my watch. I spent a grand on a watch. I had no investments. I didn't even know what an investment was at the time. I didn't realize I could have taken that grand and invested it into a watch company and get a share of the profits. But that's how wealthy people are doing and they understand that. And there's nothing wrong with spending money. There's nothing wrong with having luxuries. There's nothing wrong with having the nice things. Yes. But it's a matter of when can you actually afford it. You have to know when the right time is for you to have it because you want to first make yourself.
Rich and then, hey, blow. If you can afford it, do whatever you want. Grant Cardone is always talking about how he doesn't spend money on the cash he makes to buy watches or things. He only spends money on the watches and clothes and things on the passive income. That's great. From his investments.
You take the earned income, you're working every single day, you take this income and you use as much of that as possible to invest into assets. The assets pay you, live off the assets. Because now those assets don't need you to go to work every single day to get paid. So if you break your leg and you can't get paid, you're not getting the earned income, but that active, the passive income from your assets still coming in and now if that's the money you're living off of, you are free. Your earned income is just buying you more assets. And so how do you start that? And so this is where you have to kind of build some sort of system for yourself. And the rule that I would always say is follow something like Marula 5. If you can't buy five of them, you can't afford one of them. So it's you know you want to buy a thousand dollar phone, you want to buy a thousand dollar watch, okay fine. Can you buy five of them? and if you don't have the ability to buy five of them, if you can't afford to do that, then you can't afford one. If you can't buy five, you can't afford one. And then you want to create a system, like a system that automates your finances where now you have something going on with your money that is putting your money to work no matter what. And so one of the easiest things you can create your own is to follow something like a 75-1510 plan, which means that for every dollar you earn from now on, 75 cents is the maximum you can spend. 15 cents is the minimum you're investing and 10 cents is the minimum that you're saving. Now the savings is you want to build somewhere between three and 12 months worth of savings if you want to have that protection. Three months if you don't have a lot of liability, a lot of responsibilities, you don't have all that going on and you have a high risk tolerance. 12 months if you want to play it safe. you figure out what's right for you after you filled your savings, you fill up the savings, you don't want to put any more money into it because now you're just being eaten away by inflation. The savings is not there to make you wealthy, it's there just to protect you against an emergency. Then what you do is you take the money, put it into your investments. And now you just keep investing money. Now what happens is as you grow your income, you don't change this ratio. So if you go from $40,000 a year to $400,000 a year, you keep the same ratio. and you're still investing first, and then you keep saving your money, and then you know how much you can spend. Because now what you're doing, which is what wealthy people do, is you invest before you spend. The way that the finances will look for the majority of people is you make money, you pay taxes, you spend your money, and then you wonder where your money went. Well, wealthy people do, right? Wealthy people are, you make money-- Especially in California.
Yeah.
$7 gas and high taxes. But wealthy people are doing is you make money and then depending on how you make it, either you pay taxes first or after, ideally after, because there are ways to do that legally, but you make money and then you want to invest as much as possible and then you spend whatever's left. So wealthy people invest and spend what's left while the majority of people spend and invest whatever's left.
Here's one that I think a lot of people do and I think it hurts them in a big way. How does someone not make their net worth attached to their self-worth?
That's a good one.
Meaning how do they believe in themselves, have confidence, have love for themselves when they're not making that much. Maybe they're in a transition, maybe they lost their job, maybe they're just starting out. And how do they also, when they start making some cash, not tie their bank account number to their self-worth?
So when you fail at something, you don't become a failure as a person. You failed at a task. And in order to become successful at something, you have to fail at a lot of tasks. And so the first thing you have to understand that about yourself is that just because something didn't work, just because you failed at something does not mean that you are a failure. Maybe you failed at a task. I failed at a ton of things. I'm sure you have to. You have to screw up a lot. And that's how you find the good. So now when it comes to net worth, if you want to be completely honest, your net worth is pretty useless. It's a worthless number. It means nothing. It means less than nothing because what is net worth? It's a paper number. If I have a million dollars net worth in the stock market today, tomorrow it could be worth 400,000. If you are valuing your life, and even worse, if you are spending based off your net worth, you're living a very dangerous life. And some people do do this because they say, oh, I'm worth a million dollars. So I'm going to go out and live a million dollar lifestyle. you don't have a million dollars, you're just worth a million dollars. You don't have income coming in, you're just worth this amount of money and so you go and borrow a ton of money and you start living this million dollar lifestyle and then things go down and now you're the first one to lose your shirt. So the thing that I want you to remember is first regarding the failure, you're not a failure. Just because you failed at a task does not mean you're a failure. It's actually a good thing you failed because that means you're one step closer to finding that success. And then second, regarding the actual net worth number, Look, this is just temporary. Everything is temporary and you have the opportunity to build something a lot bigger. You have to have the right mindset. And if you are here in America, you're in a first world country, you have the opportunity to do that. But you have to be willing to learn and be willing to give it time. So you have to be patient, but also impatient at the same time. Patient in the sense that you have to understand that get rich quick is majority of the time a big scam. It doesn't work. It makes the people selling the get rich quick rich.
And you broke.
So the first thing you got to understand is that, but then second is you want to be impatient where you got to, it's going to fuel that drive, fuel that work ethic, fuel that discipline, and you have to be willing to keep going. If you would have told me 15 years ago or 10 years ago, hey man, you're going to be interviewing with Lewis on this show, I would never thought that's possible. I grew up being told, somebody like me can't do this. I remember talking to my own family members, that you can never be a CEO of a company. Somebody like you can't do that. You have no business background. You couldn't even get into business school.
And.
It'S funny, nowadays I'm like, well, there's a lot more value to being the owner of a company than the CEO of a company because the CEO is working for the owner. But anything is possible. And, you know, even if you just ignore the financial side, you can do anything you want. But you want to be a singer, you want to be an actor, you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to be a CEO, you want to be Whatever you want to do, it is possible, but you have to believe it and you have to be willing to put in that work. Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard. That is the truest saying that you can make. Because I have worked in the event planning space. I still know a lot of people in this space. I know a lot of people that manage singers, big time singers, especially in the Indian space. And some of these people are incredibly talented with no drive, no work ethic. And where are they going with their careers? They had this spike and then poof, going down. I know these other people that are average singers, but they're putting out songs day after day after day. I mean, if you heard them sing.
It'S like, you know, it's whatever, but...
You can produce it well, you can make the hooks, you can write cool lyrics. They're improving, and they keep putting out content, and they keep improving every week.
And it's like, dang, you got millions and millions and millions of views. It's funny, man. I've got a friend of mine I've had on the show, Andy Grammer, who was literally in Santa Monica busking for four years. five days a week, four years, playing songs for just tips on the streets. But he, I think he said he did like, he wrote like over a thousand songs or something crazy like this in this four-year period. He would sing the covers to try to get like people to come around and be like, oh, I like that song. Let me give you a dollar. And then he would throw in one of his own original songs to try to get people like, oh, he's got his own stuff. But he did this for four years before he actually got something that was on the radio and then touring and all these other things, four years on the streets, just working really hard. Now he's got momentum, but he's got all these skills now developing over those years to write his own songs. And I don't think people realize what.
Four years means, because you share four years, oh, you know, college is four years, high school is four years, but you gotta remember, during those four years, that's a long time. You go from January, February, March, April, May, do it again, and again, and again, and again. Steve Harvey, I love his story because he went through the same thing. He was homeless because he was like, I'm a janitor right now. I want to be a comedian. My friend who I grew up with is now on TV. We both had the same dreams. I didn't want to say it. He got laughed at for his dreams. And now he's the one on TV living my dream and I'm working as a janitor, quit his job, moved into his car, and spent three years. just trying to make it. Look at him. He's on shows after shows after shows.
He's crushing it.
It's that discipline, being willing to put in the work and just sticking with it is so hard and that can help you with any, you know, forget the financial side, doing something you love, living a purposeful life. Because what's important to you is not what's necessarily important to me. And what's important to someone listening to this is gonna be different than me. And we all have a different passion, a different purpose, and a different mission.
You were making $4,000 something a year. Your expenses were $6,000, I think, something like that. And then you started making 14-- My expenses were $6,000. You owed $6,000.
I owed everybody that I knew.
And you were making around $14,000 a year after that, shortly after that.
No, I went from earning $4,000 a year to $14,500 a month.
Exactly.
Now, if you annualize that, that was 175 a year. So I went from earning $4,000 a year to $175. I hadn't earned $175 that year. I got it up to $14,500 a month. So if you annualize it, that's a change. Phenomenal change.
Is it possible for anyone to go from poverty level to... Absolutely. Financially successful?
Absolutely. I think earning money is one of the simplest things I ever learned. And it's one of the most misunderstood things. Wealthy people historically have always had multiple sources of income. They don't have one. They have many. I was cleaning floors. I thought the answer was work harder. Because I really wanted to earn some money. And I thought it was all important. Today my attitude towards money has changed dramatically. But I thought the answer was get another office to clean. Well, I was working so hard I passed out on the street. I would have been maybe 27, 28. I literally passed out on the street. I was working so hard. I came to, and there's a great big cop looking at me. I was laying there. It was scary. There was a group of people around me. I saw lights flashing. Then I saw a couple of guys in uniform with a stretcher. And it was scary. I had passed out. I guess they thought I had dropped.
Dead.
I had heck of a time getting away from them, but I did get away. They didn't take me in the hospital. I talked them out of it. I got away and I got thinking, I'm not doing this right.
Working harder, working more hours is not the way.
No.
In fact, Napoleon Hill wrote that in Think and Grow Rich. He said, if you are one of those people who believe that hard work and honesty alone will bring riches, Perish the thought, it is not true. Riches, when they come in huge quantities, never come as a result of hard work. They come, if they come at all, in response to definite demands based upon the application of definite principles and not by chance or luck. So you've got to find a demand and fill it, but you've got to follow definite principles to do it. In other words, you've got to be in harmony with the law. You've got to give more than you get. if you're trying to get, forget it.
Well.
I got by myself and I thought, I'm doing something wrong. I was earning more money, but here I'm passionate. It's not. This is not normal. And it's like a little voice in my head said, if you can't clean all of them, don't clean any of them. So I got all dressed up. People now accuse me of sleeping in my suit. I got I wouldn't take a suit off. It didn't matter where I was. Because I knew the cleaners were tired and I would go around, I got other people cleaning offices. And I knew pretty well where they'd be. So I'd drop around, I'd bring coffee and donuts, and I would drop in and I would talk to them about goals. And then I'd go to the next person. But I always was stressed out because I knew how tired you get. And if I was in working clothes, they'd expect me to help them so they could finish and go home.
Interesting.
But when I had shiny shoes and a suit and shirt and tie, they didn't expect me to help them clean. So I'd go on to the next place and then the next place. And that's when I started to open offices. I went from Toronto to Montreal to.
Boston to Cleveland to Atlanta to London, England. And you hired cleaners?
Aha. Everywhere I went.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I had people cleaning. What should someone think about if they're struggling financially right now and they feel like they're They've been struggling for many years and it feels like they're just surviving week after week, month after month. They're not sure how to get to that kind of sense of freedom for at least a six-month runway or beyond. What should they start thinking about?
You know what you've just described, I believe the majority of people are living that way. The majority. Now that's rather sad, but I think it's true. And it's because we only have one problem in the whole world and that's ignorance. They're living in ignorance. They don't know that what they're doing is going to keep them where they are. And they keep doing it because they don't know how to change. They're overwhelmed with the debt. People are saying, I need the money. They haven't got it. They want to take their family on a vacation. They don't have the money to go. So they may borrow it and go anyway. Now they've got more debt. They have to understand that they don't have to live that way. I wrote a book called you're Born Rich. The truth is you are. Most people are just a little short of money, but you are born rich, rich in potential. Anybody can go to our site, go to bobproctor.com, you can download the book youk Were Born Rich free. It won't cost you a cent. And chapter two is how much is enough. It's described very well how to get out of debt. You've got to create a debt repayment program where it's all done automatically. And then you focus on prosperity. You've got to have a financial goal. You've got to work toward it. And you've got to understand that you can earn more than you're earning. And wealthy people don't have one source of income. They have more than one. I was earning money all last night while I was sleeping. You can actually earn more money when you're sleeping than you can spend when you're awake. It sounds like a cute line, but it's true. There's no end to what we can earn. If you are not getting information from someone who is already wealthy, then you're probably getting information from the wrong people. Most people ask their brother-in-law, the guy next door, the girl they know, how do I earn more? Hell, if they knew, they'd be earning it. They don't know. And most people talk to people that don't know. Carlyle put it very well. He said he did not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. And that's where most people are getting it from people that don't know any more than themselves. I think you have to go, that's why these seminars are so important today. People have the opportunity to go and learn. Most people won't pay to go. I tell people, listen, you invest in this, it'll probably be, and borrow the money to do it, it's probably the last time you'll ever have to borrow money. We, I know, our seminars are not rah rah, it's not, Nothing. Our seminars teach people about themselves. It's like when Bill Gothard said, if I want to be free, I gotta be me. I'm thinking, I better know who me is. I didn't know who me was. I was doing a lot of things. I was doing them right, and I was earning money, but I didn't know who I was. I started to study me. And the more I know me, the.
Better I know you.
You only have to study yourself. You don't know what everybody, because we're all the same. It's our behavior that's different, our results that are different.
I heard a friend of mine, Dean Graziosi, I don't know if he coined this or someone else said it, and he said it from someone else, but he said those that pay pay attention. And when you invest in yourself, you're paying attention. You know, I never heard that before.
But that is the truth.
Those that pay pay attention. But if you don't pay for it, you're not going to pay as much attention.
If you pay more, you'll pay more attention to learn. I had an aunt and uncle who were is poorest church mice. I mean, they just didn't have anything. And they had a whole house full of kids. And I used to drop by their house periodically. I was doing very well, and I was teaching seminar. And I remember it was around Christmas time, and he was rushing around trying to get credit cards from some big stores so they could buy presents for the kids.
Yeah.
And I said, you know something? He said, never mind. Next year will be different. I said, you know something? Next year is going to be exactly the same as it is. this year, because you never change you.
Wow.
I said, you should get into the seminars and learn something. I know something you don't know. Well, they came to the seminar. He got paid every two weeks. So that meant three times a year. I think he'd get paid three times, maybe four times a year. He'd get paid three times in a month. That one pay was extra because they were budgeted for two pays. I made them pay to come to it. Something said I made them pay. And I think they thought I should have clumped them into it. But you know, Mark thanked me, my aunt, I don't know how many times that I charged them. She said, We wouldn't have kept coming. I didn't even know what you were talking about. I was running seminars, it was seven evenings from seven to ten, running over a series of nights, years ago. And she said, I wouldn't have kept coming. But she said, because we paid, I came.
Of course.
He's right. If they pay, they pay attention. That is so true.
And if they don't, you're not gonna care. When you hear something you don't like, this is not for me. Let me get out of here. I got something better to do. Especially in LA. I want to go to the beach. This is too hard work. It's confronting my ego. Ah, I don't need this.
I'm firmly convinced if a person doesn't understand a paradigm, a paradigm isn't. is nothing but a multitude of habits. They're programmed into your subconscious mind to control your behavior. It's got nothing to do with how smart you are. It's got nothing to do with what your formal education is. It's got nothing to do from which side of the tracks you come from. It has to do with your paradigm. The paradigm is a program in your subconscious mind. It's both genetic and environmental. That's controlling your behavior. Everyone that can hear my voice knows how to do better than they're doing. And they may wonder, why don't they do it? It's because you're programmed to do what you're doing. And until you change the program, nothing's gonna change. Paradigm has to be changed.
I love that. What would you say are the, if you could share three key habits for people that if they want to continue to grow every day, be more prosperous, be more abundant, happier, joyful, healthier in their life. What are three key things? Habits. Every day, not talking about morning routine, but just overall habits every single day. What should people be focusing on consistently?
They should study every day.
Study.
They should have a mentor. Someone that has already accomplished what they dream about. They might not even know the person. They could get introduced to them and ask them, what are half a dozen things I should do every day? Ask them, they know. Most people are getting information from people who don't know any more than themselves. And the third one, you've definitely got to have a goal, and when you write it, you've already got it intellectually. So you operate intellectually, emotionally and physically. Well, your intellectual mind, the second you decide on it, you've got it. It tells you in the Bible, before you speak, I'll hear you. It's because the thought always precedes the word. The second you get emotionally involved, you've got it emotionally. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. It's only a period of time till you've got it physically.
We do have, yeah.
That's right. But the have comes in a period of time.
It's not overnight.
Every seed has a gestation or an incubation period. When a woman gets pregnant with a child, it takes 280 days. The husband doesn't come home a month later and say, Come on, where is it? He waits, as James Allen said, as one who understands. He understands there's a gestation period. Where I come from, if you plant a seed for a carrot, It takes approximately 70 days for it to manifest. All physical seeds have a gestation or an incubation period. We know that now, but we didn't always know that. We weren't always aware. No one knows what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and an idea is a spiritual seed. But we do know that it operates by the same laws, and the laws of the universe are precise. They can be studied. They can be understood. We operate by law. Our life is governed by laws. Like we know it's going to get dark tonight. We don't wonder if it is. You know when the tide goes out, it's coming back. Winter never follows winter. We know these things. That's all expression of law. Well, when we bring our life into harmony with the laws, we're going to enjoy more of life.
A bad investment is still better than a smart spin. 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. No, no, we gotta 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 gotta take the hundred. It's 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. You know, 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 fortunes.
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 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 gonna sell your Jeep, I'm gonna drive it around town, put 10 miles a day on it and I'm gonna 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, 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 publishers are getting the long-term residual income for decades off of your music.
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, Grant? Or Lewis? What do you want, Lewis? I did that more than once, by the way. What do you want, Lewis? You did? Because my name was Lewis, 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. 'Cause 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, dude, 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. And I'm like, I don't want anything except to be your partner.
So you wanted equity?
I want to be your partner, dude. And I said, I want 15% of the upside of your company. I said, what's fair? He's like, 15%. Everything above what I'm doing now, I'll give you 15%. He's the one that made the offer. I said, that's awesome. And then that's when I said, Hey, can you give me an advance of 10,000 on the 15%? People think that I asked for 10 grand. I actually didn't get 10,000.
I got an advance on a partnership, which is even better. Wow, that's fascinating. So you never really, you never asked for money.
You said, Give me equity with everything. Give me equity. and then once I got the equity agreement on the upside, most people are willing to give you this because it's.
More than they've already made. They're already making a certain amount. They never crossed past that probably in years. So they're like, okay, if you can.
Help me 10 exit, I'll give you a 15%. I don't want a piece of what you're already doing. That's not fair. That's an unfair deal. I mean, you know, people are like, I need to ask for more. Yeah, but you don't want to ask and be look stupid. Like, you can't ask somebody to give you something of a company they already have. Also, it's interesting because they did again, they didn't show this and I look forward to kind of breaking this thing down. We're going to actually I'm going to create a whole platform where I go in and break the show up and show people what they didn't see. When I left Vegas to fly to Pueblo, the production company said, Hey, what's your first move? First move, I'm going to the bank to drop off the 100. Second thing, I'm going to the gym to meet people. Third thing is I'm going to find a business for sale. And I'm gonna see if the guy that owns the company can give me a place to sleep. Those three things happened exactly the way I predicted before I got to Pueblo, before I even knew I was going to Pueblo. I mean, it happened just every one of them. And then Discovery came to me at four days and said, bro, you gotta slow down. I said, what do you mean? We don't have a TV show if you keep winning.
Right.
If you, if you make it happen in two weeks, what are we gonna do?
I'm like, okay, come out here and watch me throw up. Okay, come out here and watch. I'm sick. I was sick from altitude sickness. I'm like, you guys gotta cover how hard this is for me. I'm terrified, I'm cold, my back hurts, I don't have a good place to sleep, I'm pissing in a bottle, and then they cut all that out of the show. So the point of that story is quit going for some dead Benjamins and start getting you some equity. Okay, $100 bills are dead. They're from the past. Equity is the future. You're better off with a future if you believe in yourself than you are with the dead Benjamin.
What are some things people should be looking for in terms of the right people or the right products or companies to say, okay, and how to position and package themselves to make a partnership equity deal? What should they be looking for and how can they position and package the way you did?
Yeah, so like in Pueblo, there's 112,000 people that live there. The average household income there is $24,000 a year. Household income, like it's one of the most beat up, economically beat up cities in America. They were at 8% unemployment when the country was at 3. When COVID hit, it went to 22.
Wow.
Like just ridiculous, right? So now when I'm in a problem environment like that, you have to do the math. So I'm like, okay, there's 112,000 people there. I can't meet them all and I don't want to meet them all. I only have 90 days. So then I said, okay, who's got the money in this town? The businesses have the money in the town. This is the unfair advantage I have in this show, is that I did not go there to start a new business. I went there to find a business that was already banking. A lot of people think I did.
You have that intention before?
100%. I said, There's no way I'm going to start a new business. There's 34 million businesses in America. America does not need a new business. And it's so hard to launch and.
Create momentum, especially if you don't, even with your audience, it's hard to launch a new business.
It is so ridiculous. It is so stupid what people are doing today. I'm going to start a new beauty salon. I'm going to start a new masseuse place. I'm going to start a new cosmetologist house. I'm going to start a new, you.
Got a new idea.
Nobody needs it. like if you were an alien looking down at the United States of America and saying, okay, what is there too much of? Restaurants, bars, and businesses. There's too many of them. And then some kid pops up, Paul pops up and says, I'm gonna start a new business. And the guy from outside the planet is looking down there saying, well, that's stupid. Why don't you just go, two-thirds of all the businesses in America break even or lose money.
So what I'm hearing you say, Grant, is, A lot of people have the dream of wanting to start and launch a business, but what I'm hearing you say is it's probably a lot smarter to go find a failing business or a business that's breaking even, jump in, add value and see if you can 10x that.
Dude, that's how you get on planes. That's how you go to the hospital. You need emergency care. You don't build a hospital, you just go to the hospital. You want food, you go to Whole Foods. You want gas, you go to the gas station. It's no different in business. It's called a going concern for a reason. Find a going concern that's got a brand, go in, that's what I did, I just went in and added value. Once I added value, actually we just go to the hospital. You want food, you go to Whole Foods. You want gas, you go to the gas station. It's no different in business. It's called a going concern for a reason. Find a going concern that's got a brand, go in, that's what I did, I just went in and added value. Once I added value, actually we end up splitting off another business out of that. So out of that relationship, your first question was, hey, who are you looking for? I'm looking for contacts that can actually become contracts. I'm looking for specific relationships. They have to have money, they have to have credibility, they have to have credit lines. end up splitting off another business out of that. So out of that relationship, your first question was, hey, who are you looking for? I'm looking for contacts that can actually become contracts. I'm looking for specific relationships. They have to have money, they have to have credibility, they have to have credit lines. That's the only people I was looking for in Pueblo. Out of 112,000 people, are there 50 of them? I need to meet 50 people that have money, credit and credibility.
How did you feel, because I saw in, you know, the first episode that you got rejected a few times. How did you feel from someone who.
Is, that's the only people I was looking for in Pueblo. Out of 112,000 people, are there 50 of them? I need to meet 50 people that have money, credit and credibility.
How did you feel, because I saw in, you know, the first episode that you got rejected a few times. How did you feel from someone who is, getting yeses a lot and building their business so fast to go into a place where people just say, Nah, I don't believe in you, or, Eh, you don't seem credible, or, How did you take it security-wise internally?
Well, what, again, pieces you don't hear is I was in this meeting and this guy starts flexing on me. And he literally, like, I had to sit there and listen to his, well, I did 30, I raised $30 million, I bought all this and I put this together and I'm the king and la la la. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, dude, I'd like to just drop, you want to see a flex right now? You know, the same day I had written a check for like $45 million and I'm having a bite my tongue. Like he doesn't know I could be his investor. By the way, there was a great lesson in that. Like I was nobody, shaved head, old truck, no name, no social media following. And this guy, treated me just like that, like I'm a nobody.
And you never know who you're talking to or who they're friends with or who their family is that could support you potentially.
Totally. Like the same day this guy's flexing on me about how he raised 30 million and he's the king of Pueblo and blah, blah, blah. I mean, like what I had in my checking account that day is Grant Cardone. I just wanted to pop it out on him.
Be like, shut up, dog.
Treat everybody like you never know who you're dealing with. And just because they're having a bad day, one, you don't know who you're dealing with.
Getting yeses a lot and building their business so fast to go into a place where people just say, Nah, I don't believe in you, or, Eh, you don't seem credible, or how did you take it security-wise internally?
Well, again, pieces you don't hear is I was in this meeting and this guy starts, flexing on me. And number two, more importantly, you don't know who they're going to become.
Yeah, they may not have money yet, but in.
10 years, they might have.
A brand or audience or something that could support you.
Every accredited investor was a non-accredited investor at one time. Every whale was a minnow.
I mean, you've been doing sales for what, four decades now?
Yeah.
You've been selling from cars to real estate to everything in between, you know, 11 best-selling books. You've been, you've been a selling machine. How did it feel to go in without being able to use any of that and go back to kind of the basics of, like, okay, I'm a brand new car salesman just trying to figure out how to do this thing. How did you have the confidence or.
The courage to, I raised 30 million dollars and. I bought all this and I put this together and I'm the king and la la la. And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, dude, I'd like to just drop, you want to see a flex right now? You know, the same day I had written a check for like $45 million and I'm having to bite my tongue. Like he doesn't know I could be his investor. By the way, there was a great lesson in that.
Go in blind and try to build.
These relationships because I had the commitment. you know, I was committed to the, I was committed to the, the outcome. I always say, man, commitment comes with, with time and money.
The thing that you do extremely well is you're a master enroller, Grant. And I believe that we're either enrolling people in our vision or we're unenrolling them in our vision every moment, every day with our content, our posts, our interactions. And we could be unenrolling people in our brand from one conversation or one thing that we we do to piss someone off. Where did you learn the skill of enrollment of getting people to buy into you and your vision?
I think what I do is, and I talk about this in seller be sold. I've been a sales guy for a long time and I just learned early on and I was terrible at sales. 17 years old, 18. Like I was nobody shaved head, old truck, no name, no social media following. And then 19, part-time sales guy, I was awful. When I finally realized that sales was the only job I could get at 25 years old, this guy treated me just like that. Like I'm a nobody.
And you never know who you're talking to or who the- I'm just like.
Dude, I just gotta tell people the truth, 'cause I can't do all these tricks. The NLP, and look, if it works.
For you, good, whatever, but- They're friends with or who their family is that could support you potentially.
Totally, like the same day this guy's flexing on me about how he raised 30 million and he's the king. the Singa Pueblo, the mirroring, the matching. They ask a question, you ask a question, the hot potato. I've heard all these strategies. And I'm like, dude, I just can't do it. I'm just gonna be me. Hey, guys, I'm moving from LA. I'm out of work. I'm looking for opportunity. I'm trying to move my family here. My name's Louis Curtis, 2008 B.S. and blah, blah, blah. I mean, eat me up. I got to get my family out of LA. Real estate's impossible. I can't buy it there. Like what I had in my checking account that day is Grant Cardone. I just wanted to pop it out on him. It's priced out of the market. And I'm here in Pueblo because I think there's opportunity here.
Be like, shut up, dog.
Treat everybody like you never know who you're dealing with. And that's all I'm looking for. No handouts, no help. I got an old truck with me. I got no money. I left my kids with, you got to have your story. So people enroll, but you also have to be talking to the right audience. You know, and just because they're having a bad day, one, you don't know who you're dealing with. I only spent time with people that were able, capable, qualified. I spent no time. I was in a meeting once in Pueblo. I walked into the meeting, assessed the situation and bounced. I said, Guys, I'm done. I'm out of here.
Boom.
And I walked out. And my partner at that time, you'll see it later in the later shows. He's like, what just happened? I'm like, There's nothing here, bro. There's no money here. There's no, and number two, more importantly, you don't know who they're gonna become.
Yeah, they may not have money yet, but in, in, there's no opportunity here.
And I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell him I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell, I couldn't tell anybody. So I had these little secrets so you know, how do you enroll people? It's like you got to get enrolled.
You know, in years, they might have a brand or audience or something that could support you.
Every accredited investor was a non-accredited investor at one time. Every whale was a minnow. My personal integrity and ethics is why I can sell so hard. And because I believe in my product, I believe in my investment vehicle, I believe in my company, I don't trick people, screw people, like 35 years I've been in business. There's not one person in 35 years that says, I owe them money. There's people that try to get stuff from me using lawyers and. But there's nobody that can say, I ever financially damaged them in any way, not a penny.
What are you telling the 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. 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- I mean, you've been doing sales for what, four decades now?
Yeah.
And you've been selling from cars to real estate to everything in between, you know, 11 best-selling books. You've been a selling machine. how did it feel to go in without being able to use any of that and go back to kind of the basics of like, okay, I'm a.
Brand new car, stop calling our finances. And some people, the phones 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 it's. 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'm deeply in debt. This isn't working.
Salesman just trying to figure out how to do this thing. How did you have the confidence or the courage to go in blind and try to build these relationships?
Because I had the commitment.
And so 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, you.
Know, I was committed to the, I.
Was committed to the, that means, baby, 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 back, the outcome.
I always say, man, commitment comes with time and money.
The thing that you do extremely well is you're a master enroller, Grant. And I believe that we're either enrolling people in our vision or we're unenrolling them in our vision every moment, every day with our content, our posts, our interactions, and we could be unenrolling people in our brand from one conversation or one thing that we do to piss someone off. Where did you learn the skill of enrollment? of getting people to buy into you and your vision.
I think what I do is, and I talk about this in Seller B.
So, 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 the 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, you're going to be sitting on the back porch with your grandkid, and you're going to remember back in alt 20, there was the coronavirus, and it changed my life. you know, and that you're gonna be that guy. You're gonna be giving dad jokes, you know, and grandpa jokes, right? Like I am now. And you're gonna get that opportunity. I was 28 years old when I lost everything.
I've been a sales guy for a long time, and I. I just learned early on, and I was terrible at sales. 17 years old, 18.
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. 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. That may be the only thing you get out of this crisis.
19, part-time sales guy, I was awful. When I finally realized that sales was the only job I could get at 25 years old, I'm just like, dude, I just got to tell people the truth because I can't do all these tricks. The NLP, and look, if it works for you, good, whatever, but the mirroring, the matching, they ask a question, you ask a question, the hot potato, I've heard all these strategies. And I'm like, dude, I just can't do it. I'm just gonna be me. Hey, guys, I'm moving from LA. I'm out of work. I'm looking for opportunity. I'm trying to move my family here. My name's Louis Curtis. 2008 beat me up. I got to get my family out of LA. Real estate's impossible. I can't buy it there. It's priced out of the market. And I'm here in Pueblo because I think there's opportunity here.
And if it is, you got enough.
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 the succession plan of, and so, It's not a wake-up call is 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, that's awesome. And so it's just a, 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? We'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.
Where you're like, oh, you know what? I really didn't do as good as I should have done here.
I 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?
So, I mean, sometimes I do a better job than other times as a leader, and I I own it. I'm. 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 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.
And that's all I'm looking for. No handouts, no help. I don't. I got an old truck with me. I got no money. I left my kids with, you got to have your story. So people enroll, but you also have to be talking to the right audience. I only spent time with people that were able, capable, qualified. I spent no time a lot about.
A lot of people. I'm curious, 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.
I was in a meeting once in Pueblo. I walked into the meeting, assessed the situation and bounced.
Dad jokes. What is the most common thing that you're hearing with the people that are calling in for you?
I said, Guys, I'm done. I'm out of here. Boom. And I walked out. And my partner at that time, you'll see it later in the later shows.
He's like, what do you want 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. What just happened?
I'm like, there's nothing here, bro.
There's no money here.
There's no opportunity here. And I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell him I'm on a clock. I couldn't tell, I couldn't tell anybody. So I had these little secrets going on. so you know, how do you enroll people? It's like you got to get enrolled.
You know, my- When they're based in fear and when they're based in anger and they tell you lies 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.
My personal integrity and ethics is why I can sell so hard. and because I believe in.
Just get you another one. Well, yeah, there's a lot of people hiring right now.
There are a lot of people hiring.
Amazon. Amazon's hiring 100, 000 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 the, so the thing that, the sense that That the, I believe.
In my product, I believe in my investment vehicle, I believe in my company, I don't trick people, screw people. Like 35 years I've been in business, there's not one person in 30.
The thing you're afraid of is going to last longer than it is. Yeah. Whether it's the actual virus, whether it's the shutdowns, whether it's- Five years, it.
Says, I owe them money. There's people that try to get stuff from me.
Economic repercussions of the shutdowns, whether it's the employment situation, whether it's the quarantine, it feels like it's gonna last forever. But I mean, the chances of you being in the exact situation using lawyers.
And bull, but there's nobody that can say I ever financially damaged them in any way, not a penny.
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 gonna continue to unfold.
Yeah.
And so that, 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, 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 have done. I still love off of credit cards. I overbought, paid for my house and I've got this expensive, 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. By June, are you even gonna remember this? It's the great toilet paper shortage of the supply. You know, I don't know. I mean, what is it? You know, it's, 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.
Lifestyle and credit cards that I I know I'm wrong. I made a mistake.
And so, you know, you.
And you're gonna get out of it. You're gonna get out.
I'll be okay. Most. I mean, you're. You're gonna be okay.
I like. I like Preacher Dave, man.
This is a.
This is just 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. The other one is when I get-.
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, when, you know, when you get scared and you go rushing towards something out of fear, that sense of desperation, this, oh, 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. Well, I certainly don't say I told you so. that's not, 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, 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. 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 going to 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, you're critical 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. 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- yeah, a buddy of mine, a buddy of mine, I was in my 20s and a buddy of mine was buying gold. and they've gotten a wake up call on, you know, I don't have any savings and I'm deeply in debt. This isn't working. And so the cool thing is when you get the call, then you have to make the choice. 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, it was a margin deal. And so I would have made 50 grand. And I thought, I'm putting money 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. I answer the phone. If you pick the phone up. that means baby it's time to change. And you can look back and you might be 27 years old. Sometimes the time I got in the 15th time right now watching this and you're screwed. You lost your job. You got no money. You got no savings. 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.
Was 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?
You feel like it's all over. And I remember in 1970, I was 10 years old and I was in my grandpa's 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. In the 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 them. 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 those used nails in a coffee can. Now my grandpa Ramsey was one of my 20,000 bucks a month and in my 20s, so I mean, but you thought I had it all. Favorite people on the planet. This is 1970 and he 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 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 20 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 comes down.
Yeah.
You know, 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 start it 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 for seven year old. You're gonna be sitting on the back porch with your grandkid. and you're gonna remember back in August, 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. 20, there was the coronavirus and it changed my life, you know, and that you're going to be that guy. You're going to be giving dad jokes, you know, and grandpa jokes, right? Like I am now. And you're going to 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 built.
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? How do I make the money? How do I get the lead? But, this is how you get the lead, is you serve first.
So.
In a digital world, you provide value for them.
Value, value, value, value, value, value.
Give out, it's the 3 E's, right? You're putting out content that is either educational, encouraging, or entertaining. And typically some mix of all three. Educational, encouraging, or entertaining. and the digital marketing strategy that we employ at Brand Builders Group for Rory Vaden Personal Brand and for all of the clients that we work with, that we teach these personal brands, is teach everything you know for free, one bite at a time, but in all random order.
So it's not packaged in the right order as you would have in a book. or a course or a workshop or an event.
Built a house of cards. I was stupid. And the phone rang. It was my wake up call. Are you gonna answer the phone? Are you gonna change your life to where you say, never again, I'm gonna control the controllables to where I'm the little pig in the brick house.
And we've said this before, people don't pay for information. They pay for organization and application.
Yes.
And we have a thing called the services spectrum, which basically says, you know, information is down here, it's free. Organization is here in the middle. You can charge a little bit, like in a course or a book or a membership site. But applications up here at the top, which is like a coaching program or consulting, you know, done for your services application. Information is social media, podcasting, blogs.
YouTube, video, YouTube.
People don't pay for information. But you're just giving them bite-sized chunks of information. You're teaching everything.
Never again. That may be the only thing you get out of this crisis.
You know, but not all at once in the right sequential order. People pay for the right order. That's, that's.
And if it is, you got enough.
Preach to me, Dave. Come on now, I love this.
Organization. I mean, yeah, we tell, one of the reasons people hire us at Brand Builders Group is because, 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 we have a very set curriculum, the Brand Builder Journey, and we say, Look, one of the biggest problems with personal brands is that people do the right thing but in the wrong order. They're like launching Facebook ads the first month and it's like, that's step 76.
You're like skipping all of that. They don't funnel yet.
So they're launching it to nothing. Yeah, you're driving it back to to nothing. You're spending all this time on social media driving back to nothing. So the first thing is find your uniqueness, figure out what you're good at.
Because you guys are thriving, is there something, you know, relationship, family, good at.
Then extrapolate that into a product, you know, create your service, your product offer, you may already have that. And then after that, it's like, okay, how do I drive traffic? And there's two worlds here. When I think of marketing and sales, I think of the online world and the offline world. And we've done both, which is rare. Most of the people have done one or the other. you know, and it's like we, i've done the door-to-door thing. I worked for a startup it company, doing inside corporate b2b phone sales.
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 the succession plan of. And so It's true.
Then when we started our former company, we did phone sales like B2B for like small businesses and we did free presentations and we sold. But the fastest mechanism to generating a lead is to do a free presentation demonstrating your value, your expertise. It's giving people a sample. and then offering them the next step. Here's what it is. It is the food court. When you go to the food court, want some orange chicken.
And the orange chicken on a stick.
Man, tastes good.
I want the whole thing now.
It's 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.
And if you want more, I'm right here.
He sees candy, gets me every time. Get you a free piece of candy just going in store. You're like, oh, I want the whole box. Yeah. I mean, it's, and it's a free presentation. You could do this through many different mechanisms.
It used to be moment here without me coaching them.
Free workshops in person.
And by the way, like, when I say, this is, this is what everybody does. Like, this is what Jim Roane did.
They already knew what to do.
They're leading.
They're out there doing it. They're doing it.
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.
Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins and like everybody in the personal development industry, they used to go do.
Which is how we built our former company. This is what people in real estate industries do.
They do it.
They teach at a free seminar.
Free seminar. A 90-minute live free training. Financial advisors do this. Come to my free dinner presentation on 10 keys to retirement. Why? Because it works. Like you're giving value and you're- Yes.
And then I found out about it, you know, and that's awesome.
And so it's- Leveraging the law of reciprocity, right?
As I give- Just a sense of, ah, this is starting to work, you know? I mean, when Rachel Crooks- To you.
Before instead of ask. You don't, the way you make sales is by giving so much that at some point they like ask you to buy versus showing up and asking all the time. In fact, we use a rule called the rule of 10 and this is a pricing, this is more of like a pricing thing. But you know, people get really weird around price and asking for the money and you know, when it comes to collecting a credit card or if you're on like a webinar or a Facebook Live or if you're, it doesn't matter if it's Facebook Live, it's a webinar, it's a video funnel, or it's standing on stage or it's talking to one person, you got to be convicted in the value you're bringing and the way you do that is by over delivering. The number one way to drive your own conviction is over delivering and everyone teaches sales as like, you know, the voodoo mind tricks on the person you're talking to. The real game is the mind is winning the battle in your own mind and being convinced that what you as valuable and the rule of 10 helps you do that. So basically, when people are putting together their first offer, they tend to like swing for the fences and go, I'm going to charge for a $2,000 video course or something. And they say, well, I saw a video and you know, my coach told me, charge what you're worth. That's terrible advice.
Don't charge what you're worth.
What should we charge?
When you're starting out, don't... 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.
Charge what you worth, charge what you can get, charge what you're convicted on, charge what you can, Massively over deliver upon. If I'm charging what I'm worth, there's gonna be a bit of reluctance when I deliver the price. They're gonna feel it and it's going to massively reduce the percentage conversion.
Yeah, someone once told me charge what 10x the value.
Yeah, that's the rule of 10.
Right, it's like 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, if.
It'S a charge one 10th of what it's worth.
Exactly.
If it's a thousand, if it's $10,000 worth of value, then charge a thousand, right? And if it's a thousand dollars worth of value, charge 100. It's 100. Charge 10.
So you always, you always have, you know, if it were a bank account, you always have this, this balance with people. And you go, and it starts for free. It starts on social media, which is amazing. The power that social media gives us, it's not that you have to reach millions of people. It gives us a mechanism to push a button and deliver value. Because it's like people go, it's like a chicken and the egg. How do I build an audience? I want to provide value, but I don't have an audience. No, you provide value first. if nobody is watching 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.
You record and you teach value, you deliver it and people will engage with that. Now we have a process, which I'm happy to talk about, of converting comments into customers. So, you know, I don't know if you want to take this more like online or if you want to do like more offline.
I think online is cool. Okay, yeah, yeah.
So let's talk about that. So, you know, it starts with the mind. Okay, self-centeredness is the problem. Service-centeredness is the solution.
Yes.
You never feel fear when the mission to serve is clear. you get your mind right. Then you go, okay, I'm going to go out and provide value. So you start pumping out value. We have a thing called the Content Diamond, which I know I've talked about on other episodes. We can touch on that. But anyways, you're putting out value.
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?
So, I mean, sometimes I do a better job than other times as a leader.
And.
I own it.
And now what happens is people like and comment. And what most of us do is we go, six views. And it's just like, I mean, and we get self-centered again. And we go, I only have six views. Jay Shetty gets like six billion views. And it just makes me feel awful because I'm thinking about myself. And there's like a comment. And then you're like, I don't have a time. And then what we do, we're like, I don't have time to deal with these comments. Or someone sends you a DM and you're like, I don't have time to deal with these DMs. And you're missing it. Comments and DMs are where the sale happen on social media. Like, the dollars are in the DMs. Ooh. The dollars are in the DMs because.
When somebody leaves a comment, they're saying, Hey, I'm interested.
I'm interested.
I want to know more.
I like you.
Whether they're not saying, I want to know more or not, they want to connect.
They want to connect.
They're coming to your door. They're knocking on your door. You gotta open it.
Bingo. Yeah, that's a great way of thinking it.
You're not going to their door.
I get it, but you'd think as old as I am, I'd be doing better. But I know what I'm supposed to do, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to do it. I don't care. And I should just come to you.
They have come to yours. And it's like, if you're too busy to interact with those people, don't be on social, period. I mean, unless you're just doing the thing where you're gonna do it for years and years and years, and one day you'll have more audience. But even, it's like, if you want to really impact lives, impact lives. Like, that's what pisses me off is people are like, I want to impact lives. And it's like, great, okay, let's put, you know, put a video out there.
Well, I don't have any followers. Well, I don't care.
I care more. I really shouldn't be such a grouch. Oh, no, you care a lot about a lot of people. I'm curious, what's the best dad joke you share?
Like, I'm not getting paid to do it. Focus on one at a time. One person. You said you wanted to impact lives. Impact lives. There's no barrier to impacting lives. There's no barrier. It's easier than it is ever been in history to impact lives. You can do it with text, you can record and make it a podcast, you can do video, but you are a button from impacting, I want to change the world. Great. You're one button away. Get busy. The truth is, we want to have millions of followers, we want to feel important, we want other people to respect us, and you go, let all that crap go. Just focus on what you originally said. Impact lives. So we use a little formula here when someone comments. Usually we will try to move the conversation from comments into DMs. If it's a sales conversation, if it's just chatter, we'll do it in comments. But when you go, I want to convert comments into customers, you do that in the DMs. So you move them over to your DMs.
Send me a DM or you message them.
You message them and then you come and you say, Hey, I just, you know, thanks for this. I just sent you a DM. Now, you might comment back on their comment related to what their comment was, and then you say, by the way, I sent you, you know, check your DM, I sent you a message. Okay? And then here's, we call this the four Fs. Super, super simple. Yep. Okay? So here's the four Fs. The first F is, how did you find me? And that's it. I just say, oh, Louis, yeah, man, thanks for leaving a comment.
How'd you find me?
Mm-.
Oh, Lord. I have no idea. You've 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 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?
And they're gonna say something, right? They're gonna say, whatever, I saw your, I don't know, I stumbled across organically or a hashtag I was following, or whatever, right? And it's like, cool. Then the second F. The School of Greatness. Yeah, School. I mean, yeah, a lot of people find you if you get on the School of Greatness, that's for sure. And I'll say, what was your favorite part?
Right?
So, like, what was your favorite part of that video? I think there's a sense, I think when hope...
So wherever they found you, I read your book, I saw this video, I read your blog, I saw you in an interview, I saw you speak somewhere. I saw your ad, I mean, if it's an ad, that's probably not the favorite part thing doesn't work. But usually, well, we said you're not running ads yet because you're just starting out. So you said, what was your favorite part? Or what's your favorite thing you've seen me teach? Or what's your favorite thing to talk about? Or even if you don't have that, you could say, what's your favorite thing to learn about? Which leads to the third F, which is tell me about your future.
Tell me about your future. gets gut punched the way it has for folks right now.
So in other words, what are your goals? What are you working on? Like before you try to sell somebody something, figure out what they...
The answers fall, a lot of them fall in the category of, this is not gonna... We care about.
Yes. Spend time learning about them. Ask them, and this is what's so cool, and if there's one defining point about our sales philosophy, and I would say specifically AJ, so my wife, she's our CEO at Brand Builders Group, her and I were business partners in our former venture, and she is the greatest sales person that I've ever seen. And I mean, she outperformed three to one record-breaking sales people in 100-year companies. And her and I have a departing philosophy, a defining philosophy about sales that has caused us to separate from other people and constructs because we believe that you should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale.
Mmm, that's good.
You should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale.
And if you- Al: 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.
Focus on making sales, you're going to feel pressure. If you focus on building relationships, man, it's gonna be great. Here's the other thing. If you focus on making sales, there's wins and losses. If you focus on building relationships, there's only wins.
Yeah, the interesting point to that, the longer you've been adding value, whether it be online or offline or whatever, just in the world, without needing to win the sale, the longer you'll have the ability to have someone buy something from you later. in your life. I've had multiple people on webinars when I'll say, you know, how long have you known me for? I'll just ask people, how long have you known me for? And when did you first find out about me? And people will say, I've watched your webinars back in 2009, 10, 11, 12, whatever it is. And you'll always get a comment, the same as saying, I've never bought anything until now. Like, I've always just been a fan. I've always gotten great value. I've always learned and applied it. But I've never bought anything until now, until it was the right time for me, it was the right season, until I was ready for this, or until something you said clicked with me. And I finally was like, okay, yeah, now I'll buy. But if I was just like, Leave my life if you're not going to...
When they're based in fear. And when they're based in anger. And they tell you lies.
Buy something now, as opposed to saying, I'm here to add value. I want you to succeed whether you buy or not.
But we can support you. 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 you another one.
Well.
There'S a lot of people hiring right now.
There are a lot of you in this process from our application, from our service, whatever it might be, from our program. We can support you if you're ready for it. And if not, then, hey, we've got other great free content here for you as well. I think when you have that mindset, you win long term.
You win. I mean, you're such a great example of that, and you have to be that. And people don't. It's just a win-lose. It's a combative, you know, most people do combative selling, and it should be collaborative. It should be, you're discovering them. And this question, tell me about your future. What, like your future goals, your future plans, your future dreams? What's so cool about that question? is almost nobody ever asks you that question. Very few. Even when you meet a stranger, we always ask them, where are you from? What do you do? What do you do?
We ask them about the people hiring.
Amazon's hiring 100,000 people right now.
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's jobs. It may not be the one you want, but you can get some food. 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- Their past and their present, Almost nobody ever asks us. What's your hope for your future? What are you working on? What's your dream? That's so inspiring, exciting, uplifting. And by the way, it's a great way to create a context for a sale to happen.
Absolutely.
Because if they say something...
Some stuff to do out there. But the... So, the thing that the sense that.
The Gosh, I really want to blank. If their answer to that question is something that you have done...
The thing you're afraid of is going to last longer than it is.
Yeah.
Whether it's the actual virus, or whether it's the shutdowns, whether it's the economic repercussions of the shutdowns, whether it's the employment situation, whether it's the quarantine... Or.
You have a service for, or you know something about, Right? Like when somebody tells me I want to be a speaker, I want to be an author, I want, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh, can I change your life? I mean, I spent my life learning exactly a roadmap that you can follow like a step by step for that dream to come true.
And one of the things to add to that is if you can't sell them something, if they can't buy something from you or become a customer of yours through your products and services, You want to, I always try to ask people this question, like, what's your goal? What's your dream for this next 12 months or the next year or whatever?
And if I, It feels like it's gonna last forever. 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 gonna continue to unfold.
Yeah.
And so, I can't help them in any way through my business. I always want to become the champion of an introduction to them who could help them.
Amen.
Whether and that could be an affiliate partner or not. It could be, well, I don't do this, but Rory's team does this extremely well. Let me connect you and he can accelerate this goal for you. But I've had that champion introduction mind.
So that when hope takes a gut punch though, we get down in that.
Fear or instead of like, let me just introduce to the person who I know can help you. and that always pays dividends in the future as well. You may not get the sale, you may not sell them something, but you help them accomplish their goal and they'll always be grateful.
And they trust you and more and more this is interesting, even if you don't have a product to sell, you can earn referral fees.
Absolutely. We're mad or however it is we manifest that stuff, that those negative things.
I mean, any of us can go to Amazon and sign up for a.
Link to like have affiliate links feed the emotions that we all have in these situations. That's where a lot of my questions are coming.
They're all for everything and lots of people have, I mean, our whole business runs on referrals. We actually pay our clients to, if they introduce us to somebody and they sign up, we pay them.
Right.
And that's becoming really, really common. That's actually a great tool. Referral partner marketing, if it's not slimy, like you don't want it to be slimy. Again, another thing that's kind of similar in this vein is, Never compromise long-term reputation.
Built in that. 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.
Repayment for short-term revenue. Don't compromise long-term reputation for short-term revenue.
Yes. By June, are you even gonna remember this? It's the great toilet paper shortage of the supply chain. You know, I don't know. I mean, what is it? You know, it's, You know, some people are going to have devastating.
Just because I can increase my conversion rates by adding a widget that makes it look like there's a million people commenting even though there's not actually anybody there, you know, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm saying you should think about that. You should make a decision consciously to go play the long game.
Yes.
Just play the long game like you're saying. Even if you don't, I mean, we refer people to stuff that we don't have referral partners all the time. How can I help? And this is the problem is people.
Go, How horrible things that are going to be life changing. But that's a very small percentage compared to the number of that are worried about it.
Can I make money? Don't ask how can I make money. Ask how can I help.
I'm telling you, if you and so.
You know, you- and you're gonna get out of it. You're gonna get out of it.
You're gonna be okay. I mean, you're gonna be okay.
I like Preacher Dave, man. This is a, this is just a 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, if you ask, How can I help? you'll make a lot more money. If you ask how can I make money, you may end up doing some things that are compromise. It's not that money is bad. I mean, we love money. Like money is good. We're fans of money. We want lots of money. We're good at making money. We're good at making other people lots of money. We enjoy money. But money is not the goal. The mission is the goal. Service is the goal. Helping the person is the goal and you make money as a byproducts of that. It's solving a problem in the world.
Yes, and that's the third F, and then about your future goals.
Okay, great, yeah. So then the fourth F is where the close happens, the conversion, the sale, is a free call to action. So free call to action, which is like, what's your next free step? The next free step is request a call.
Yeah.
The next free step is check out this full-length training I did. The next free step is subscribe to my blog. What is the next free step? We always want to give them a free step, a free download, a free training, a free call, and then eventually after that, you make an offer. But whatever that free step is, typically it's going to be a free call. Or it's going to be a free training. So, you know.
A webinar, a training.
A webinar, yeah. Or just an online demo. Yeah, a demo.
Right after that's when I become stupid. And explain. The other one is when I get scared. And you go rushing towards something out of fear. that sense of desperation, this, Ah!
We do a lot of evergreen type stuff where it's just like, there's just this video out here, check it out. It's a hidden video. Right, right. Here's a link to it. And they watch an hour-ish. It could be more, it could be less, but let's call it an hour. And what do we do on that hour? We drop massive value bombs on 'em.
We're delivering value. Uh-huh, thing. When you do that, you're getting ready to screw up. I mean, just count on it.
You were teaching, teach as much as you can for free in the time you have and then they're gonna want to take the next step if you do a good job. If you want to master to the.
Original question of like how do wealthy.
People come wealthy is because they master their time.
And so time horizon is just like the perspective from which we see what.
We want to achieve.
And so if I am doing, if.
I'm building a company from the place.
Of like I believe this company should exist.
I believe this problem is worth solving.
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 going to 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, you're, when you're on high emotion, your brain is, it's your critical thinking skills shut down. And, 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. Could you share a story of one.
Of those greedy times where you tried to jump in and, yeah, a buddy of mine, 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 bucks in here. I'm going to make 50 grand. But it's a margin play, which means you're either going to make 50 grand or you're going to 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. Was 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- It all 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 build it 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 own. 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? How do I make the money? How do I get the lead? this is how you get the lead, is you serve first.
So.
In a digital world, you provide value for them.
Value, value, value, value, value, value.
Give out, it's the three E's, right? You're putting out content that is either educational, encouraging, or entertaining. And typically some mix of all three. Educational, encouraging, or entertaining. and the digital marketing strategy that we employ at Brand Builders Group for Rory Vaden Personal Brand and for all of the clients that we work with, that we teach these personal brands, is teach everything you know for free, one bite at a time, but in all random order.
So it's not packaged in the right order as you would have in a book. or a course, or a workshop, or an event.
Right, you know, we've said this before, people don't pay for information, they pay for organization and application.
Yes.
And we have a thing called the Services Spectrum, which basically says, you know, information is down here, it's free, organization is here in the middle, you can charge a little bit like in a course or a book or, you know, like a membership site, but applications up here at the top, like a coaching program or consulting, you know, done for your services application. Information is social media, podcasting, blogs. YouTube videos.
YouTube.
People don't pay for information. But you're just giving them bite-sized chunks of information. You're teaching everything you know, but not all at once in the right sequential order. People pay for the right order. That's organization. I mean, you know, we tell, one of the reasons people hire us at Brand Builders Group is because we have a very set curriculum the brand builder journey, and we say, Look, one of the biggest problems with personal brands is that people do the right thing, but in the wrong order. They're launching Facebook ads the first month, and it's like, that's step 76.
You're skipping all of that. They don't have a funnel yet.
They're launching it to nothing. Yeah, you're driving it back to nothing. You're spending all this time on social media driving back to nothing. So the first thing is find your uniqueness, figure out what you're good at, then extrapolate that into a product, create your service, your product offer, you may already have that. And then after that, it's like, okay, how do I drive traffic? And there's two worlds here. When I think of marketing and sales, I think of the online world and the offline world. And we've done both, which is rare. Most of the people have done one or the other. And it's like, I've done the door-to-door thing. I worked for a startup IT company, doing inside corporate B2B phone sales. Then when we started our former company, we did phone sales like B2B for like small businesses and we did free presentations and we sold. But the fastest mechanism to generating a lead is to do a free presentation demonstrating your value, your expertise. It's giving people a sample. and then offering them the next step. Here's what it is. It is the food court. When you go to the food court, you want some orange chicken.
And the orange chicken on a stick. Man, tastes good. I want the whole thing now.
It's a sample, and if you want more, I'm right here.
See's candy gets me every time. If you're a free piece of candy just going to the store, you're like.
Ooh, I want the whole box.
Yeah, I mean, it's a free presentation. You could do this through many different mechanisms. It used to be free workshops in person. And by the way, like when I.
Said-- this is what everybody does. Like this is what Jim Rohn did and Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins and like everybody in the personal development industry, they used to go do which this is how we built our former company.
This is what people in real estate industries do.
They do it.
They teach at a free seminar. Free seminar. A 90-minute live free training.
Financial advisors do this. Come to my free dinner presentation on 10 Keys to Retirement. Why? Because it works. Like you're giving value and you're leveraging the law of reciprocity. As I give to you before instead of ask, the way you make sales is by giving so much that at some point they ask you to buy versus showing up and asking all the time. In fact, we use a rule called the rule of 10 and this is a pricing, this is more of like a pricing thing. But you know, people get really weird around price and asking for the money and you know, when it comes to collecting a credit card or if you're on like a webinar or a Facebook Live or if you're, it doesn't matter if it's Facebook Live, it's a webinar, it's a video funnel or it's standing on stage or it's talking to one person, you got to be convicted in the value you're bringing And the way you do that is by over delivering. The number one way to drive your own conviction is over delivering. And everyone teaches sales as like, you know, the voodoo mind tricks on the person you're talking to. The real game is the mind is winning the battle in your own mind and being convinced that what you have is valuable and the rule of 10 helps you do that. So basically, when people are putting together their first offer, they tend to like, swing for the fences and go, I'm gonna charge for 2,000 a $2,000 video course or something. And they say, well, I saw a video and you know, my coach told me, Charge what you're worth. That's terrible advice. Don't charge what you're worth. What should we charge? When you're starting out, don't charge what you worth. Charge what you can get. Charge what you're convicted on. Charge what you can massively over deliver upon. Yeah, yeah. If I'm charging what I'm worth, there's gonna be a bit of reluctance when I deliver the price, they're gonna feel it and it's going to massively reduce the percentage conversion.
Yeah, someone once told me charge what 10x the value.
Yeah, that's the rule of 10.
Right, it's like if it's a one-tenth.
Of what it's worth.
Exactly. If it's a thousand, if it's ten thousand dollars worth of value, then charge a thousand, right?
That's right.
And if it's a thousand dollars worth of value, charge a hundred. It's 100, charge 10.
So you always have, you know, if it were a bank account, you always have this like credit, this balance with people. And you go, and it starts for free. It starts on social media, which is amazing. Like the power that social media gives us, it's not that you have to reach millions of people. It gives us a mechanism to push a button and deliver value. Because it's like people go, It's like a chicken and the egg. How do I build an audience? I want to provide value, but I don't have an audience. No, you provide value first. If nobody is watching, you record and you teach value, you deliver it, and people will engage with that. Now we have a process, which I'm happy to talk about, of converting comments into customers. So I don't know if you want to take this more online or if you want to do more offline.
Online's cool.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's talk about that. So, you know, it starts with the mind, okay? Self-centeredness is the problem. Service-centeredness is the solution.
Yes.
You never feel fear when the mission to serve is clear. You get your mind right. Then you go, okay, I'm gonna go out and provide value. So you start pumping out value. We have a thing called the Content Diamond, which I know I've talked about on other episodes. We can touch on that, but anyways, putting out value. And now what happens is people like and comment. And what most of us do is we go, 6 views.
-Right.
-And it's just like... I mean... And we get self-centered again. And we go, I only have 6 views. Jay Shetty gets like 6 billion views. And I'm like... And it just makes me I feel awful because I'm thinking about myself. And there's like a comment. And then you're like, I don't have a time. And then what we do is like, I don't have time to deal with these comments. Or someone sends you a DM and you're like, I don't have time to deal with these DMs. And you're missing it. Comments and DMs are where the sale happen on social media. Like the dollars are in the DMs. The dollars are in the DMs because when somebody leaves a comment... They're saying, Hey, I'm interested.
I'm interested.
I want to know more.
I like you. Whether they're not saying, I want to know more or not, they want to connect.
They want to connect.
They're coming to your door. They're knocking on your door. You gotta open it.
Bingo. Yeah, that's a great way of thinking it.
You're not going to their door.
They've come to you. They have come to yours. And it's like, if you're too busy to to interact with those people, don't be on social period.
Right.
I mean, unless you're just doing the thing where you're gonna do it for years and years and years and one day you'll have more audience, but even it's like, if you wanna really impact lives, impact lives. Like that's what pisses me off is people are like, I wanna impact lives and it's like, great, okay, let's put a video out there. Well, I don't have any followers. Well, I don't care. Like, I'm not getting paid to do it. Focus on one at a time. One person. You said you wanted to impact lives.
Lives.
There's no barrier to impacting lives. There's no barrier. It's easier than it has ever been in history to impact lives. You can do it with text, you can record and make it a podcast, you can do video, but you are a button from impacting. I want to change the world. Great. You're one button away. Get busy.
Right?
The truth is we want to have millions of followers. We want to feel important. We want other people to respect us. and you go, let all that crap go. Just focus on what you originally said. Impact lives. And then, so anyways, so we use a little formula here when someone comments. Usually we will try to move the conversation from comments into DMs. If it's a sales conversation, if it's just chatter, we'll do it in comments. But when you go, I want to convert comments into customers, you do that in the DMs. So you move them. over to your DMs.
Send me a DM or you message them.
You message them and then you come and you say, Hey, I just, you know, thanks for this. I just sent you a DM. Now you might comment back on their comment related to what their comment was and then you say, By the way, I sent you, you know, check your DM, I sent you a message. Okay? And then here's, we call this the four F's. Super, super simple.
Yep.
Okay, so here's the four F's. The first F is, how did you find me?
And that's it.
I just say, oh, Louis, man, thanks for leaving a comment. How'd you find me? And they're gonna say something, right? They're gonna say, whatever, I saw your, I don't know, I stumbled across organically or a hashtag I was following or whatever, right? And it's like, cool. Then the second F. The School of Greatness.
Yeah, School of Greatness.
Yeah, a lot of people find you if you get on the School of Greatness, that's for sure. They'll say, what was your favorite part?
Right?
So like what was your favorite part of that video?
So wherever they found you, I read.
Your book, I saw this video, I read your blog, I saw you in an interview, I saw you speak somewhere, I saw your ad, I mean if it's an ad, that's probably not the favorite part thing doesn't work. But usually, well we said you're not running ads yet because you're just starting out. So you said what was your favorite part? Or what's your favorite thing you've seen me teach? Or what's your favorite thing to talk about? Even if you don't have that, you could say, what's your favorite thing to learn about? Which leads to the third F, which is tell me about your future. Tell me about your future. So, in other words, what are your goals? What are you working on? Like, before you try to sell somebody something, figure out what they care about. Spend time learning about them. Ask them about And this is what's so cool. And if there's one defying point about our sales philosophy, and I would say specifically AJ. So my wife, she's our CEO at Brand Builders Group. Her and I were business partners in our former venture, and she is the greatest sales person that I've ever seen. And I mean, she outperformed three to one record-breaking sales people in 100-year companies. And her and I have a departing philosophy, a defining philosophy about sales that has caused us to separate from other people and constructs because we believe that you should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale.
That's good.
You should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale. And if you focus on making sales, you're gonna feel pressure. If you focus on building relationships, man, it's gonna be great. Here's the other thing. If you focus on making sales, there's wins and losses. If you focus on building relationships, there's only wins.
Yeah, the interesting point to that, the longer you've been adding value, whether it be online or offline or whatever, just in the world, without needing to win the sale, the longer you'll have the ability to have someone buy something from you later. in your life. Yeah, you're in your 20s. I've had multiple people on webinars when I'll say, you know, how long have you known me for? I'll just ask people, how long have you known me for? And when did you first find out about me? And people will say, I've watched your webinars back in 2009, 10, 11, 12, whatever it is. And you'll always get a comment, the same as saying, I've never bought anything until now. Like, I've always just been a fan. I've always gotten great value. I've always learned and applied it. but I've never bought anything until now until it was the right time for me, it was the right season, until I was ready for this or until something you said clicked with me and I finally was like, okay, yeah, now I'll buy. But if I was just like, leave my life if you're not going to buy something now, as opposed to saying, I'm here, I'm here to add value. I want you to succeed whether you buy or not. But we can support you in this process from our application, from our service, whatever it might be from our program. We can support you if you're ready for it. And if not, then hey, we've got other great free content here for you as well. I think when you have that mindset, you win long term.
You win. I mean, you're such a great example of that, and you have to be that. And people don't. It's just a win-lose. It's a combative, you know, most people do combative selling, and it should be collaborative. It should be, you're discovering them, and this question tell me about your future? Like your future goals, your future plans, your future dreams. What's so cool about that question is almost nobody ever asks you that question.
-Very few.
-Even when you meet a stranger, we always ask them, Where are you from?
What do you do?
What do you do? We ask them about their past and their present. Almost nobody ever asks us. What's your hope for your future? What are you working on? What's your dream?
Yeah.
That's so inspiring, exciting, uplifting. And by the way, it's a great way to create a context for a sale to happen.
Absolutely.
Because if they say something, gosh, I really want to blank. If their answer to that question is something that you have done or you have a service for or you know something about, right? Like when somebody tells me, I want to be a speaker, I want to be an author, I want, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh, can I change your life? I mean, I spent my life learning exactly a roadmap that you can follow, like a step-by-step for that dream to come true.
And one of the things to add to that is if you can't sell them something, if they can't buy something from you or become a customer of yours through your products and services, you want to, I always try to ask people this question, like, what's your goal? What's your dream for this next 12 months? the next year or whatever. And if I can't help them in any way through my business, I always want to become the champion of an introduction to them who could help them.
Amen.
Whether, and that could be an affiliate partner or not. It could be, well, I don't do this, but Rory's team does this extremely well. Let me connect you and he can accelerate this goal for you. But I've had that champion introduction mindset of like, let me just introduce to the person who I can help you and that always pays dividends in the future as well. You may not get the sale, you may not sell them something but you help them accomplish their goal and they'll always be grateful.
And they trust you and more and more this is interesting even if you don't have a product to sell, you can earn referral fees. I mean any of us can go to Amazon and sign up for a link to like have affiliate links for everything and lots of people have, I mean our whole business runs on referrals. We actually pay our clients to, if they introduce us to somebody and they sign up, we pay them.
Right.
And that's becoming really, really common. That's actually a great tool. Referral partner marketing, if it's not slimy, like you don't want it to be slimy. Again, another thing that's kind of similar in this vein is never compromise long-term reputation for short-term revenue. Don't compromise long-term reputation for short-term revenue. Just because I can increase my conversion rates by adding a widget that makes it look like there's a million people commenting even though there's not actually anybody there. I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm saying you should think about that. You should make a decision consciously to go play the long game. Just play the long game like you're saying. Even if you don't, I mean we refer people to stuff that we don't have referral partners. all the time. How can I help? And this is the problem is people go, How can I make money? Don't ask how can I make money. Ask, How can I help? I'm telling you, if you ask, How can I help? you'll make a lot more money. If you ask, How can I make money? you may end up doing some things that are compromise. It's not that money's bad. We love money. Money is good. We're fans of money. We want lots of money. We're good at making money. We're good at making other people lots of money. We enjoy money. But money is not the goal. The mission is the goal. Service is the goal. Helping the person is the goal. And you make money as a byproduct of that. It's solving a problem in the world.
Yes.
And that's the third F. oh yeah. About your future goals.
Okay, great. Yeah, so then fourth F is where the the close happens, the conversion, the sale, is a free call to action. So, free call to action, which is like what's your next free step? The next free step is request a call. The next free step is check out this full-length training I did. The next free step is subscribe to my blog. What is the next free step?
Step.
We always want to give them a free step, a free download, a free training, a free call, and then eventually you'll move, after that, you make an offer. But whatever that free step is, typically it's going to be a free call or it's going to be a free training. So, you know.
A webinar, a training, a webinar, yeah.
Or just an online demo. Yeah, demo. Like we a lot of evergreen type stuff where it's just like, there's just this video out here. Check it out. It's a hidden video. Here's a link to it. And they watch an hour-ish. It could be more, could be less, but let's call it an hour. And what do we do on that hour? We drop massive value bombs on them. We're delivering value. We're teaching as much as you can for free in the time you have. And then they're going to want to take the next step. if you do a good job. If you want to master to the.
Original question of like, how do wealthy people come off these because they master their time. And so Time Horizon is just like the perspective from which we see what.
We want to achieve.
And so if I am doing, if.
I'm building a company from the place.
Of like, I believe that this company.
Should exist, I believe this problem is worth solving.
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