The SIMPLE SECRET To Making More MONEY... | Lewis Howes

One of the things that I really learned from many different mentors is having recurring revenue streams. So I have over the last few years set up my business to have multiple recurring revenue streams. I think you got to have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. For those that don't know my story, about 12 years ago, I didn't have any money. I had no clue how to make money. I had some odd jobs here and there. I was a truck driver for a few months. I was a bouncer at a nightclub on the weekends. and I really wasn't making much money, maybe $1,000 a month in between one career playing arena football and then transitioning into the rest of my life. And I didn't know how to make money. I was afraid of money. I wasn't an entrepreneur. I didn't think people would give me money. I was scared to talk about it. And I'm letting you know that if that feels like any of that feels like you, that there is room for growth and improvement. And I'm going to talk about some of these habits that can support you in your life. And I want you to get a piece of paper and a pen, take some notes, or at least take some mental notes, and let me know your thoughts on the things you're learning as well over on social media. And one of the first questions that I want to talk about is what shifted in your life that helped you go from broke to actually having money? And the biggest thing for me was overcoming the fear of money. And I didn't understand how money worked. I just was like, okay, my parents paid for things, you know, there was food on the table, the house was paid for, the rent every month. I just showed up into the world and I had no understanding of how to make money, the language around money, accounting, saving, investing. I just didn't know. And so I was afraid of it. I was afraid of it. And the things we fear, we usually want to run away from. so if you don't understand it, if you don't have a sense of peace when you hear about money, when we talk about money, when money is in your hands, if you feel afraid, then why would more money come to you? So some of the things that I did and I recommend doing is number one is to surround yourself with people that have more money than you. Usually when you're around people that have it, you can start to learn, okay, what are they doing differently that allows them to get money? You can ask those questions. And number two would be to talk about it consistently. and I just remember I didn't talk about it much because I was afraid about it. So if you start having conversations, it doesn't become as scary anymore. You can have more peace of mind, more ease the more you talk about it. When you resist something, when you don't want to talk about something, you're saying I don't want this in my life. I'm afraid of this so I'm not going to talk about it. Or we don't talk about these things because it's private conversations. It's private to me personally. If you're hoarding something that's private to you as opposed to being open and flowing and talking about it consistently, then it's going to be harder for money to come and go into your life. So you want to be willing to have conversations consistently and talk about it. Number three would be to read about it, learn about it. Money is a language. The terminology, the way people communicate about it is a language, just like the English language, just like playing a sport, just like working at a company, there's languages and terminologies that people use in different areas of their life. And money is no different. So you want to learn about as much as you can, read books about it. At the end of this, I'll talk about some of my favorite books that I have right here that I'll go into about money and how to earn more and how to attract more money in your life. But I started to consume a lot of books. I started to listen to podcasts, watch videos. and just try to learn from people who were already making money and hear the language. And even today, there are still terms that I don't fully understand around money. There's still part of the language that I don't get, that I don't fully understand. So I'm constantly learning at different levels and different seasons of my life. Number four, a mentor of mine early on said, his name is Chris Hawker. I said, I was doing like an internship for him for a number of months. And after a while, I was sick and tired of being broke and I wasn't making any money. And I said, Man, I could really use some money right now. And he said, Money comes to you when you're ready for it. And I always remembered this line because we were going on a walk and I remember the feeling of overwhelm and stress and not having enough to pay for things and feeling like, you know, am I ever going to make any money? Is it ever going to come to me? and he said, Money comes to you when you're ready for it. And I remember saying vividly, I was like, I feel pretty ready to make some money right now. Like I could use this money, like it could help me like pay for rent and food and have more opportunities. I can't buy clothes, gas, money, all this stuff. And looking back a couple years later after that, I realized that I wasn't ready for it then. I needed it, but I wasn't ready for the abundance of money to start coming in because I wasn't educated enough. I didn't know how to manage money. I was afraid of it. I wasn't talking about it. I wasn't doing these things I just talked about. And so therefore, if money came to me, I would probably do the wrong things with it. I wouldn't know how to invest it. I would spend it poorly. Or maybe I would hoard it because I'd be so afraid. But I wouldn't know how to let it flow in and out of my life. And so money comes to you when you're ready for it. And it means you've got to be prepared for it. You've got to learn about it before it comes to you. you got to study it, you got to talk about it, you got to do those things. And the fifth thing would be to learn how to earn it, spend it and invest it to work for you. And when you're just starting out, it's going to be hard to do that. You're not going to know how do I invest this when I'm only making a little bit every month. But at least learning about investing, learning about what's the best way to spend my money, you know, people earn it and then they spend it on dumb things. They spend it on things they think are smart, but they're not the best so you just want to learn as much as you can in the process and that'll support you in really setting yourself up for the next step. And the next question is what mindsets around money did you have to overcome? And one of the big things for me was am I worthy of money? Do I deserve money in my life? Am I a good enough human for money to come to me? And I think am I enough is something that so many of us ask ourselves or we've asked ourselves at different moments in life, Am I enough for this relationship? Am I enough for this opportunity? Am I enough for this job, for this accomplishment? Am I enough? Do I belong? Do I fit in? And so realizing that you are worthy is one of the biggest things that I had to overcome in terms of I've never made money and now how am I going to start making money? It's realizing that I'm worthy of receiving it. And I also had to overcome the challenge of would anyone ever pay me for skills that I don't have? When I was transitioning from a 23, 24 year old from football into kind of the business and career workforce, I didn't know what skills I had. So the limiting belief of would anyone give me money for a skill that I don't have? I don't know what they are, so I have to figure out what they are or I have to develop new skills. I also had a mindset that was, I'm too young, why would anyone pay me if I'm too young, I'm too inexperienced, I'm not qualified, etc. These were all limiting beliefs that held me back early on. But when you can flip these things into, I'm too young, but I have energy, I have youth, I have passion, something that maybe older people don't have. and when you use it to your advantage and not your disadvantage, that's when you can really start to accelerate things. So I'm not experienced, but I'm more passionate than anyone else. I'm willing to try new things. I'll say yes to anything to gain the experience. Or someone else with a lot of experience will probably say no to a lot of things because they've already worked their way to get there. I'm not qualified. Well, I'm not qualified, but I'm willing to take on multiple different projects to get qualified. I'm willing to do what it takes to gain the skills. So having that energy, that willingness, that passion, that hunger, people are inspired by that. People want to have people on their team. They want to hire people in that position. So make sure that you figure out what your limiting beliefs are and use them towards your advantage, not your disadvantage. But those were some for me. Next question is, what do you do differently now than when you were poorer? That makes you more money. and one of the things that I really learned from many different mentors is having recurring revenue streams. So I have over the last few years set up my business to have multiple reoccurring revenue streams, and I didn't have this for the first six or seven years. It all relied on me showing up every day, selling something to earn money, and then paying the team, paying the expenses, but it all relied on me showing up every day, every week, every month to sell something to then bring in money to help pay for things. And it's hard if it's all relying on you every single day to help pay for everything. So instead, I started transitioning our business to make money to be able to take care of our team and the expenses so I don't have to be the only one that is relied on to earn revenue and bring it in. And we did that through setting up reoccurring revenue streams. our business. Things like the podcast, things like YouTube, things like a membership sites, things like a coaching program that has reoccurring payments. And these reoccurring revenue streams, they rely on me to create, but more from an evergreen place, not from a place of I need to do this now, today, in order to generate sales, in order to generate revenue. So how can I spend my time today so that we generate revenue consistently based on those efforts. And that's just something that took time. It took time for me to develop skills, to get experience, to build confidence, to make mistakes in order to figure out how to do that. And that's, I think, something that people would want to learn about in the future. So what are the best investments that I've made? The best investment is always the ones in myself and back into my business. I've made multiple different investments in lots of different ways that never worked out. And if you want to hear another episode about all the investments I made that were bad investments, then let me know in the comments below if you want me to do a solo episode on what not to invest in. And we'll do that. But the ones that have always paid off are the ones I've invested in building team, building tools for my team, building investing in software and things to automate things within our team. Anything investing back in our team at Greatest Media, that has always been a great investment because it allows us to reach more people, allows us to help and impact more lives, and allows us to generate more revenue for the business so I can continue to pay the team, pay myself, and build the mission. that's number one, putting into business. The second thing is like really back into myself. And I think this is the greatest investment you can always do is back into yourself. So health being number one, without health, it's hard to build wealth because there's some type of saying out there that a wealthy man has a million problems. A sick man has one problem. And when you're sick, you does nothing else matters except for how do I get healthy? how do I get back on my feet? How do I get rid of this disease, this sickness, this thing that's holding me back? The other problems in the world don't matter until you get your health right. If your health is not right, that's gonna be the only thing. So for me, I'm investing in nutritionists, I'm investing in coaching and trainers for my health and wellness, my physical body. I'm investing in quality foods, organic foods. I'm at a stage where I can invest in those things now, but when I was younger, I was investing in ramen noodles and ice cream. That was all I could afford. Now it's optimizing health and thinking about that. I'm investing in skills. For me, I'm all about how can I maximize more skills? Because the more skills I have, the more potential I can connect with other people. I can relate to other people. I can build my business in that way as well. It's just more fun and enjoyable for me. I think a rich life comes down to more than financial riches. It comes down to having a rich fulfilling life, doing the things that you enjoy, doing the things that bring you more love, that bring you more fulfillment, that inspire you, that make you feel more alive. For me, that's a rich life. And just having money and not having that is a poor life. so I'm thinking about how can I enrich myself with activities, hobbies, adventures, magical moments that bring me more joy, that bring me more freedom, fulfillment, because that is where the riches lie personally for me. So skills that I'm investing in going back into salsa dancing classes, Spanish lessons, because I really want to learn Spanish, learning about businesses, learning new ideas about investing, like skills that excite me, that light me up. Investing in friends and loved ones, whether it be just taking a friend out for lunch or a coffee and investing financially with that there by paying for the tab and also investing my time and energy into them and loved ones, taking care of the people when I can, when it works for me as well. And then also, I like to invest in experiences and adventures. I was thinking about this last night with a friend of mine. I was reflecting on travels of my past and I was like, wow, I've really been to a lot of countries. I've really experienced so many different cool moments in my life because I invested in travel, I invested in experiences, I invested in trips and adventures with good people. And it's cool to be able to have these memories and be able to experience these moments on a consistent basis. So that's what I like to invest in personally for me. Next question is, what are the three most important things to do to start building wealth? Something I want to always go back to is surround yourself with a mentor who's done it and learn from them. It's really hard to do something that you've never done before without having a model or a mentor who can guide you, or at least someone you can watch from afar and learn from. You can watch their content or YouTube or books or something. It's hard to do it on your own if you don't have that. So, I really try to surround myself with the people who are the masters of the skills that I'm trying to learn who are masters in business if I'm trying to build my business and learn more from them because they're at a place that I'm not at yet. So, I want to surround myself with them and then learn and apply it. The second thing would be to create a game plan with structure and processes around how to build your wealth from these mentors, from this information you're learning from. So really get clear on, okay, what is it that I want and why do I want this? Whether it's a financial goal or any type of goal in your life, you want to get clear on what you want, why you want it, and then put a date around a goal of when you want to accomplish that goal. For me, that will allow you to have structure, it allow you to have time and space to create and reflect on It allow you to have moments where you can create processes in place. It allow you to break down goals. It allow you to see what's working, what's not, all these different things. But if you just say, I want to make more money and you don't have a date, you don't have a game plan behind it, it's going to be hard to accomplish that. So really create a structure around learning this and give yourself some time and space to grow. And the third thing would be, I just think it's so important for me. It's so important to be joyful. and service focused. Joyful and service focused. When you're trying to build wealth or trying to generate more revenue for your business, people want to be around those who are joyful. No one wants to be around someone who's negative, someone with low energy, someone who's distracted, someone who's complaining. No one wants to be around that person. they want to be around positive energy, joy, someone who's happy, grateful. Now, you're not going to be this all the time, but I'm telling you, the more you can be in that space, the more you will find financial opportunities coming your way. So it's kind of like the pre-step, the pre-habit to all the habits of building wealth and the millionaire mind is coming from a place of joy. even when you have nothing. Because there are people that I want to be around. There's people that I've met in the past who have nothing, but they bring joy to the moment. And I'm like, I want to be around that girl. I want to be around that guy. Because they just bring more energy to maybe a challenging day. If you have joy, it's one of the greatest currencies you can have. Even if you don't have other skills, you don't have opportunities to bring someone Joy can be your ticket, the key to unlocking the door to riches. And so thinking about, I think it was Zig Ziglar who said, if you want to accomplish your goals, find a way to help everyone else accomplish their goals. I'm paraphrasing this here. But find a way to help everyone else accomplish their goals. And by doing so, it will come back to you. You'll be surrounded by the right people to help you accomplish your goals. Another question is how can someone 10x their income if they run their own business? And you want to think about these key things, increasing your prices, increasing your prospects, increasing products, increasing process and increasing your personal brand. So if you've got a business right now and you've got a product or a service, The first thing you can think about is of these five things, how can I increase my rates? How can I increase my price on this product or this service? That's a way you can start earning more right there. Is your product amazing? Can you make it better? If so, then you can increase your prices. Is it getting incredible results for people? Awesome, increase your prices. Is your coaching or consulting helping people? Are you over-delivering? Awesome, think about increasing your prices. Number two, prospects. This is how are you getting more leads to come in to sell your products or services? So you got to think about how can I increase my prospects? If you want more results, you need more people to be aware about you. Number three, increasing products. Maybe you've only got one offering right now. Can you offer something else to reach a different demographic? Maybe people can't afford a certain price you're at, but they could afford something a little bit lower. Or maybe there's a tier up that you could charge for people. And right now you're only offering a lower number, but you should be charging something else for a different service or product. So increasing the amount of products in your product suite can support you in 10x your business. Number three, the process. If you haven't optimized the process for your business, meaning how can I streamline things, how can I save time, how can I get software and tools to support me in automating things so that I can invest my time back in prospects, back in products, etc. and start thinking about how can I optimize the process for myself and for my team. Number five, I've got one more for six. Number five is increasing your personal brand because the evidence is showing more and more that People with CEOs with personal brands or individual personal brands in general are more trustworthy and more likely to get opportunities. So finding ways to build your personal brand, whether that's creating free content online, showcasing your skills and talents, whether that's doing collabs with people, whatever it might be, but putting your personal brand out there with your wisdom, with your information, with your knowledge, with your skills, with your talent, with your teaching. building your personal brand. And I'd say the sixth thing, if I was going to add one more thing there, is increasing the quality of the people you're surrounded by, the people on your team. So we've got prices, prospects, product, process, and personal brand. And then the sixth thing would be building a quality team of people around you and making sure that the people are supporting this as well. As we have increased our team, our opportunities for growth has come financially as well. And that takes time, that takes energy, that takes training, it takes onboarding, teaching, all these things, but that process alone by bringing in great people will support you in your growth. Next question, if someone is an employee, how can they start to make more money? Well, I really like to think about the first thing is here, what's the value you're bringing to the current company that you're with. If you're creating a current value right now, can you approach the leadership team or the CEO or your boss and say, Hey, listen, I've been here for a certain amount of time and here's the value I've created. I would like to create a game plan for creating more value and creating bigger results. Results that can save the company money, results that can make the company money or save the company time. And here's my game plan. So you taking the time because Usually when you go to a job, you're going to get a set rate and you're expected to get the results that you're paid for that rate. So you got to go above and beyond to really be considered for a raise or a significant raise for most companies. And what I would do is say, listen, I really value my time here. I love what I'm creating here. I love where I'm at, but I want to grow and I want to help this company grow with me showing you how I can create more value in this process. and then give a game plan to your boss or your leadership team or whoever and say, here's what I'd like to create. Here's what I propose. I propose I step into this role. I step into this new role where I could get a raise and here are the results that I could create for the business. Here's how it's going to make the business more money. Here's how it's going to save time and here's how it's going to save money. If you can show that you can do all three of those things with a clear game plan and you can actually execute it without it taking more resources necessarily or time of the leadership team or your boss or whoever it might be. That will set you up for a greater chance of earning more if you're working for a company right there. Showing that you care, showing that you want to do just more than the bare minimum will set you up for success in that way. But you've got to be the one to take charge to make that proposal, you've got to be the one to step up and say, here, I've got the game plan mapped out. Here's what I'm thinking. I want to go do it. Let me test it for three months. And if we get these specific results, then I'd love to be rewarded or considered for a raise or considered a bonus, whatever it might be. So that's something I would think about right there. It's really approaching that. And I don't know if most employees are thinking about it that way, but if you can think about how can I earn help the company earn more, save more time or save more money, then you should definitely be considered for that.

And I want you to think about.

Consulting at nights on the weekends. Listen, you've got your full-time thing and that's bringing your full-time check. That's great. So you've got extra time at nights on the weekends. So if you want to earn more, you've got to be putting in extra time of thinking about, okay, how can I use my skills? How can I use my knowledge? How can I use my collaboration skills, whatever it might be, to either consult, to coach, to launch a product or a side hustle, and to start earning more on the side. All things take time. And you've got to build your personal brand, you got to build your contacts, you got to build your content, whatever it might be that your skill is in, and start doing that at nights and on the weekends if you want to earn more. How can I use the law of attraction to build wealth? Well, another one of my mentors said that the world makes room for passionate people. The world makes room for passionate people. So how do you want to use the law of attraction to build wealth? Is to be passionate, is to be joyful like we talked about before. I'm really clear on setting my intention in a daily basis. When I wake up, I say thank you. I say thank you for another day, because we don't know if we're gonna wake up tomorrow. We don't know. We hope, we've woken up for so many years for now, so we assume it's gonna happen, but we just don't know. And there are people that will go to bed tonight that won't wake up tomorrow. In the world, this will happen. We don't know. It could be me, it could be you, and we don't know. And every breath we take, right now is closer to our last breath we will ever take. So I really think about my intention in the morning. Thank you. I'm here another day. I get to help someone else today. I get to make an impact today. I get to use my skills and talents with where I'm at in my life right now to make a difference. Whether that's smiling at someone, whether that's giving someone a hug or using your skills to support someone in their life. So set your intention and think about it daily and act on it daily and let people know what your dream is in the process of helping them. So when you're clear on your intention and every morning you think about it, you're thinking about it. I like to write down my goals, I hang them up so I'm looking at my goals. They're in my eyesight so I'm not distracted thinking about everything else. And then daily acting on it. Set your intention, think about it, look at it, daily action, and while you're supporting other people accomplish their goals, you let them know what your dreams are in that process. For me, that's the recipe. That's the recipe for the law of attraction and attracting things by you thinking it, looking at it, acting on it daily. And then while you're helping other people through your skills and talents, you're talking about what your goals are, what your dreams are that you've been acting on daily, not just this is something I want to do in the future and I'm thinking about it and I haven't done anything for years about it, but you're actually putting in the work on a daily basis to build reps, to build material, to build skills, and to build confidence. That's something to think about on the Law of Attraction. We also have a number of videos and interviews about wealth and the Law of Attraction. So if you're over on YouTube right now, make sure to check out. We should have some stuff linked up where you can see more videos. on the law of attraction and generating wealth for your life. Next question is, what are the best books to learn about making money? There are a number of books that I like and I actually had a few books on my bookshelf. These aren't all the books that I would recommend. There's definitely more, but I just want to share a few of them that I have here on my shelf that I really like. The first one is Think and Grow Rich. If you haven't checked out this book yet, make sure you check it out. I do this thing, it's got timeless wisdom and some great stuff. This is a book I read when I had no money and I went through this and there was some incredible ideas that just helped me overcoming the fear of money, helped me understand money a little bit more from a philosophical understanding. So this helped me take action, it helped me get clear, it helped me think differently, it helped me overcome fears, so Think and Grow Rich is definitely one that I recommend. The Richest Man in Babylon, this one has sold millions of copies. I think it's a great story, again, to help you be more inspired. So the Richest Man in Babylon. I really like this. This is a big book, but I read this thing cover to cover. And for me, it's hard for me to finish a book cover to cover. But I was really inspired because, like I said, there's a language about money. that can be daunting, that can be confusing, that can be scary because you don't know what these words are in the terminology in one languages. This book by Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game, the 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom. I've done an interview with Tony on this book. We'll link it up somewhere so you can go check that out as well. But this was a powerful interview that I did where Tony dives in deeper about this. So I recommend getting the book, but it's like, I don't know, 600 something pages. So you can start with the video or the episode first on the audio or YouTube. But this is a game changer. It's really teaching you about how to invest your money in a powerful way so that you can be financially free for the rest of your life with the right investment strategies. Really good one. I like that a lot. Money, Master the Game. This is by my friend, David Bach. David Bach's got a number of New York Times best sellers. But this is a short book, his most recent book called the Latte Factor, why youy Don't have to Be Rich to Live Rich. And I think this kind of goes into what I was talking about at the beginning of this episode where for me, a rich life is not about having all the money in the world. Having all the money in the world can solve a lot of problems, but it doesn't solve every problem. It can pay for your rent, it can pay for trips, it can pay for nice things, food, It can help people. You can pay for your health insurance bills. It can do things to definitely help you in a big way. But it doesn't mean you have a rich life if you have a lot of money. It doesn't mean that. There is someone, I live in a building here in Los Angeles and there's someone who committed suicide last year who is reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars, who is so well connected in Hollywood, connected to presidents, and looked like he had it all. He had all the money, had the success, had the fame, but for whatever reason, he committed suicide. And it just made me reflect that like there might be some stuff inside of us that if we don't feel rich inside, it doesn't matter how rich we are on the outside. And this is all about why you don't have to be rich to live rich. And I think if you can understand this principle, first, about building the riches within you, not thinking about how can I create wealth outside. But when you build it on the inside first, then when you have it, you can understand it more. It doesn't consume you, it doesn't control you, it doesn't manipulate you, it doesn't own you. Because I've seen it for too many people that money becomes an obsession that then owns them and controls them. you hear the term more money, more problems. This is real if you don't know how to manage it. And this is also why some people sabotage themselves because they make a lot of money, then everyone has their hand out and says, give me, give me, give me, give me. I want money. Can you help me here? You've got it. So why can't you just pay this $5,000 from me here? $10,000 here? Can you pay off my debt? Can you pay for this? Can you pay for this? And it becomes overwhelming because people feel like they're getting taken advantage of. It feels like they're, being used and abused. They feel like people are only in their life because they have money. And so this is why some people become, you know, jerks or distant or whatever they might be going through because they don't feel like your relationship or your connection with them is coming from appreciation or from true friendship. And that's a challenging thing. So you've got to understand if you don't have money and someone who does have it and you're acting and you're saying, well, why aren't they doing this and why aren't they doing that and why are they acting weird? because they probably have everyone asking them for something as opposed to asking them, you know what? How are you doing today? How are you feeling? What can I do for you? Everyone's always asking what can they do for them, right? They always want something from them. So you got to be aware of that. Make sure you build a rich life from within, I like David Bach's book. Again, he's got many other great books around money, but this one is a recent one that I really like that was on my shelf. These last two, that I have on my shelf that I like that I pulled off. Both of these guys I've interviewed. We've got Ryan Serhant, Big Money Energy, How to Rule at Work, Dominate at Life and Make Millions. If you guys don't know Ryan Serhant, make sure to check him out. Just did a full interview about him in this book. Again, it kind of goes back into Big Money Energy, the energy you bring to deal making, to getting a job, to building a business, like the energy you bring to attracting. Talk about the law of attraction, it really is an energy thing. It stems from your attention, your joy, your level of passion, your level of enthusiasm, your positivity. That's where the rich life starts. If you have nothing, but you have big energy, that's a rich life. And that's where you can start to attract financial riches as well. So check out Big Money Energy. And then I saw Chris Hogan, Everyday Millionaires. how ordinary people built extraordinary wealth and how you can as well. He surveyed a bunch of millionaires and learned about the strategies they used to generate their millions. And he talks about this in this book. We did a full interview with him as well. Everyday Millionaires. If you want to check that out. These books are for people at different stages. You know, maybe you don't want to start with Tony Robbins. If you have no money to even invest, this might be okay, I've got some money. I need to learn how to invest. What should I do with it? So check out the books based on the stage that you're at. If you're kind of just getting started, then I would go back to this one, Think and Grow Rich. So make sure you check this one out as well. This has sold a lot of copies over the years. And that is my strategies, my books, my insights. And I'll leave you with this. Also, if you want more episodes like this, more solos like this. then please let us know in the comments over on YouTube below this video and let us know what topics you'd like me to cover and go into. But here's what I will say. Money is definitely an energy and a journey. Money comes and goes. The more you hold on to it, the less more is going to come to you. The more you're willing to invest it in things and spend it and let it flow, the more will flow to you. So you got to learn the balance. you don't want to spend it all the time, so you have none. You want to make sure you're willing to invest it in certain things that make sense. And the more free you feel about it inside, the less scarce you feel about it, the more will come to you. And you also just feel more at peace. This takes time. For me, I didn't have a good relationship with money growing up. I didn't understand it. I didn't get it. I was afraid of it. I was afraid to talk about it because I was ignorant to how it worked. When you learn about how money works, which could be a lifelong journey. This isn't just like, okay, I read a book and I get it now. This is a lifelong journey based on the season of life you're at with your money. And at different seasons, you're going to need to learn new lessons. You're going to need new mentors and friends to support you in learning about this. You're going to need new books, new tools to learn about investing, saving, taxes, all these different things are to come to you, accounting, just dealing with it all, it can seem overwhelming. And this is why when things are overwhelming, sometimes people don't even want to look at it. And if you don't understand it, I'm telling you, it's going to be hard for it to keep coming your way, or you're always going to feel like you're behind. I'm behind on payments, I'm behind on debt that I got to pay off, and you're never going to feel caught up. So this is a, this is a skill you want to master. Money is going to be a part of your life for the rest of your life for probably 99.9% of the population. It's going to be something you're going to need to learn how to continue to evolve into understanding. And the more you do that, the more you talk about it in a positive way, the more positive it will be with you. So think about these things. Leave a comment below of what you thought was the most powerful part about this. And what I want to do right now is actually add a couple of clips more about wealth, the law of attraction around money, millionaire habits and how you can really start earning more wealth for yourself and the habits of what some of the richest people in the world do right here on the School of Greatness. So thank you guys for watching. We'll dive right into these clips right now.

Everything is about the whole intuition part, right? You're sitting there who you choose to befriend, who you choose to have relationships with. and how you water those relationships. Because if you want to have a relationship together and it's just take, take, take, nothing's going to happen. I remember I'm a 24-year-old kid. I don't know nothing about business. I've done some stuff in sales, but I really don't know nothing about business. I'm a 22-year-old kid. I go and I take this guy. I go to a job interview at the advertising group. Shout out to Jamie Hepp. And I watched this guy. He interviews me. I'm at that time working at Morgan Sandy Dean-Woodruff, but I'm trying to see what else I want to do. Okay, so I got started day before 9/11, but I'm still interviewing. I sit with them in the interview, and the way he interviewed me, I sat there and I said, I will never work for this company because it's just not what I want to do, because they were selling Xerox machines and business to business. I said, but I want to have a relationship with you. I said, do you mind if I get your business card? He said, yeah, sure. I said, okay, great. So he gives me his business card. Year and a half later, I get a job, I'm doing good at this point. I'm making some income, 23 years old. I call him up and I say, Jamie, you don't remember me, but I want to take you out to lunch and I want to pick your brain if you don't mind. I told you a year and a half ago that I wanted to do this with you. He said, Yes. He says, Great, let's do it. So we go to Macaroni Grill, somewhere in Culver City, right around here, like Victory Overland, somewhere around that area. So we go there. He brings this drop-dead gorgeous girl that works for him. I think her name is Natalia or Natasha or something with Anne, right? And she's beautiful, short skirt, perfect legs, flawless, beautiful face. She's sitting right there and I know what he's trying to do. He's trying to woo me to go be one of his sales guys. And I said, Look, with all due respect, you're beautiful, but I have no interest in you. My interest is in you. Is it fair if we just talk business for an hour? He says, Yes. So I went. Now at this point, he's making a million. I'm making 50 grand a year. I'm a nobody. Okay? We have lunch again. I'm taking notes, taking notes, taking notes. I offer to pay. He doesn't let me pay. He pays. He says, I got it. No problem. When I leave, I send him a book. We had this meeting that we did every three to six months together at this restaurant, Argentinian restaurant called Bamboo, which they had this beautiful soup. Every time we would have dinner with him or we'd go to lunch, I would always send him a book. 10 years later, he says, every time I meet with Patrick, a book is on its way, okay? So I valued the relationship. I asked him, what do you need from me? How can I bring things to you? Years later, he gives me one referral. That one referral he gave me helped me open up Florida. If he doesn't give me that referral, that Florida office wouldn't have been opened up, right? One contact opens up a whole state, okay? So another relationship I can tell you about is I was going to churches and I said, let me see what's going to happen with these churches. And I'm going to churches and I'm going to these different places. I'm studying Scientology, I'm studying LDS, I'm studying Jehovah Judaism, I'm studying everything. At this point of the game, I was obsessed with religion. So all I want to do is study, study, study everything about religion, right? And I'm 24-25. I eventually find this church called Shepherd of the Hills, which is ran by a guy named Dudley Rutherford. And I go to this place. And I'm an atheist, so it's not like I'm going into, I'm just trying to see what's going on over here. I'm just trying to learn. I'm not trying to do it. I go to this place and I'm like, okay, I like this guy's style. Typically you go to church. If you don't do this, you go, hell, man. I'm like, dude, I don't need to know I'm going to hell. I know I'm going to hell. I just want to know I was shot in heaven, you know what I'm saying? So this guy's energy-wise, you have a shot at heaven, right? I'm okay, cool. All right. I'm going to try out. I'll be a little better, right? I know to screw up for the rest of my life. Maybe I got a shot over here. So I go there and I'm sitting in the back. I watch him once, twice, three times, four times. I'm like, wow, I like this guy. So then I sent him an email. A little bit of an arrogant email, but I'll tell you what the email was. I sent him an email and I said, listen, my name is Patrick Bet-David. You don't know who I am, but I'm going to be somebody in the world. And I know you are somebody in the world, but I promise you, if you give me your time, I will always bring value to you. It will not be a waste of your time, okay? I'm not doing anything at that time at 25. I got a small little office operation, nothing crazy. We go have lunch together at Black Angus, Black Angus off Canoga or Topanga. We go to Black Angus, we sit down, we talk. After the meeting is over with, I say, what can I do for you? Nothing there. We go out again, what can I do for you? Nothing there, what can I do for you? Nothing there. Eventually he says something happened when my son had Moore Park basketball, and I made a phone call to the coach, and I spoke to the guy. and anonymously because I don't like the way this whole situation was handled. He probably doesn't even know the story. I know the people may know, but he may not even know the story. So I make the phone call. We get closer. He marries my wife. We change our wedding to Friday. It was set up on Saturday to Friday so he can wed us. Anyways, in 2008, 2009, 2008 he introduces me to Tom Ellsworth. You know how I talked about Tom earlier? He introduced me to Tom. Okay? And Tom Cummings, okay? In 2009, he introduced me to Matt Sapala. Matt Sapala and Sheena, I got introduced to 09. They just got promoted this last week at West Palm Beach to the Chief Distribution Officer, PHP, right? He is now the CDO, okay? We've paid him in the first six months of the year over a million dollars. They're doing very good at what they do in the business here. But if I don't have that contact and I water him, what his needs are, not what I can take. If I give the needs you, I don't have those contacts. So I think too many times when you build a relationship with somebody, it's immediately, what can I do?

What can I give from me?

Yeah, and I remember how you were the first time we met. When we were done, you and I went to Earth Cafe with Jen, and I think we even went and looked at some furniture, and there was a Google shop that we went to. I don't know if you remember that. Right across from Earth Cafe. And you said, Pat, how can I help you? What do you need from me? You know, what can I do for you?

It was on the corner. Exactly. Exactly.

So I'm like, so we walked in. Babe, she said, I really like this Lewis guy. I don't like this approach, how he is. That's the dynamic that you don't see behind closed doors. People may see School of Greatness, people may see the books, but behind closed doors, the context is about what can I do for you? So you ask three things. I'd say the biggest one is figure out ways to strengthen relationships and take them deeper because you never know. Just like everybody thinks you're one sale away or one opportunity away, you're one contact away from your life changing. If you start valuing your contact like a book of business, everything changes.

That's true. What I heard you say there was intuition, study and relationships.

Sure, yeah.

Does that cover those kind of three things? And I think when you think about people that aren't making the money that they want and don't have a rich life, whether that be quality of life, they probably aren't discerning their decisions and being intuitive about who they should spend time with. They aren't researching more ideas and expanding their mind and they aren't giving in those relationships. I would agree with that. Yeah, I would agree with that.

And I think sometimes it's also not knowing what something could lead into. You know, a guy one time came into Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Harley-Davidson bike and he had tattoos and he looked rough, very rough. No advisor would take him. He says, I'm looking for an advisor. No advisor would take this guy. Yeah, I need an advisor. And I go, there's a bank downstairs.

Financial advisor.

Financial advisor. Well, Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Glendale, no one wants to take this guy. This guy's got no money. Yeah, so the guy comes out, he sees, he says, I'll just give him to somebody else. I'm good. The guy in the corner office that has a couple hundred million dollars under management, he leaves. Then the new guy takes him.

Then the guy comes, I have $50 million to invest.

He got an inheritance. That one account was $50 million.

Change his life.

Change his life.

And he put the 50 under the rookie broker got a $50 million money under management. You're getting one or two points on that. Life changing.

For life.

Every year.

Generational wealth. We're not talking about like a small thing here. So you can't just sit there and look at relationships that you never know the potential of a contact. You have to know every contact could take you to some place that you don't know, it's like a movie. You don't know the next scene. You know, so you can't just assume what that contact's gonna lead into. Sometimes the smallest contact can lead into something big.

One of the things I love about you, Patrick, is you remind me of my dad so much and my childhood. My dad, I think I told you, my dad was a life insurance salesman for 32 years until he got into a brain accident and he got in a car crash and he's still alive today, but he had to stop working. And he also became an entrepreneur, launched the Health Insurance Vertical in conjunction with Northwestern Mutual. And he does everything you do. And my whole business model and just the way that I live is based on what I witnessed him doing. And this was pre-social media, pre-internet. Wow. He would just remember names like nobody's business. He was so giving, so thoughtful, and he was always thinking in the long term. He wasn't like, How can I sell you now? But how can I give you now? He would do this every day. He would read the newspaper and he would cut out the newspaper every day. and write long letters and put in envelopes and send it out to people that were clients and people that are not clients. If it was someone's kid in sports that, you know, was, hey, they had their best game ever. Hey, I just wanted to send you this clipping.

Wow. Of a newspaper to just people in the community.

That's on a whole different level, though, man. That's incredible. Handwritten letters and just send it to them and say, hey, you know, if I can ever help it with anything, let me know. Yeah. And it was that kind of old school mentality, but he would always just show up for people, just take meetings. take them and wasn't always trying to sell, but just trying to serve. And that's really kind of how I built my business early on was when I had nothing at all, I was just like, what can I learn from someone and how can I ask them what they need and then deliver on that need as fast as possible and not ask for anything in return? And I think that's one of the reasons why I've been able to grow is because of the relationship building. You know, Ben, our producer, I met him nine years ago when he was a student at Columbia journalism school, getting your master's, right? And he was working on a documentary about handball. I was in handball at that time in New York City and really liked the way he made the documentary and followed his journey over the last nine years, stayed in touch every year. We needed a head producer to really build our content and I reached out to him and the timing, right, the sequencing was right and we had the relationship where it made sense, at least for now, maybe he leaves at some point, but It's been great so far in the last four months. And I think you never know where the relationship will go. Even if it didn't work out, it's still worth building relationships.

No question.

Even if we never work together, because you just never know who that person might introduce you to, who might say your name behind closed doors, where it unlocks some opportunity you'd never know. So you remind me a lot of my dad.

Well, that's a big compliment, man. I appreciate that. Thank you.

And I think if more people came from that place of how can I just care about people and help them solve their problems, you're going to gain a lot back in return long term, whether it's with that person or not. And you talk about money a lot on your show. You have an amazing video about your top, I think it's your top 20 rules on money. I'm curious, since we're going in the rich-poor conversation, what would you say are the top three to five rules on money if you could boil it down to three to five? It's a game.

The number one rule is it's a game. You're playing a game. It's that simple. if you look at it as a game, just like anything, you can get better at it. Whatever game you play, if you play Uno, if you play Monopoly, if you play Clue, if you play Fortnite, if you play anything you play, you know, you're gonna get good. I remember in my time, I was playing Fester's Quest. I played Zelda. I used to play Final Fantasy 1, and I would play, obviously, Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but it was also, what was the, Mario Kart, is it Super Mario Kart? And you know how you would do the three jumps and then bam, it's going fast. And I would beat this time 32 seconds, I was so proud of it, but I played it 50,000 times, right? So the game with money, it's exactly what it is. Once you learn how to play the game with money, then it has to do with timing, then it has to do with different kind of things. Like, you know, a year ago I get a call from a guy who needs cash.

I said, okay.

He needs an investment. He has something he has to sell immediately. to get cash in return, okay? Because he needs the money right away. So it's okay. So what are you selling? He says it's the two greatest Wayne Gretzky cards. I said, okay.

Signed or unsigned?

No, this is a PSA 10 1979 OPG time.

Signature?

No sign. But it's the Holy Grail. So the OPG one sold in 2016 for $453,000. Okay. And just five years prior to that, it sold for $92,000. So from $92,000 to $451,000 and $26,000. 2016, and he calls me. And the top sold in 2016 for $205,000. So, two cars combined sold in 2016 for 600,000. He has them both. He has them both, and he wants.

To sell it to me.

And I said, okay, what do you want to sell it for?

He's like, 600,000.

Yes, of course he wants to. I said, I'm not going to pay you that. I mean, he wants 650,000. I said, I'm not going to pay you that, but we talked about it. And eventually he gave me a number, right? And it was still a number. I had to still come up with a half a million dollar check to the guy. But we met at the PSA headquarters, classy guy, total gentleman. We sat down, transaction happened. The CEO of PSA came, showed us the poster on the PSA headquarters. I think it's a new port of the card is on the wall. It's the most expensive hockey card in the world, right? Okay, no problem. So, you're a hockey fan? I'm not a hockey fan. I'm an investment guy with hockey. But I've interviewed Wayne Gretzky six years ago. So, I like greatness. I like anybody that just goes and crushes it with, their game, right? So I buy this card. So I buy the card. I don't think much of it. One card, not two. Two cards, it's both of them. I bought both of them, yeah.

Wow.

So the other guy who owns the card wouldn't sell his card for a million dollars if you paid it to him. So here's what I do know. The two guys own the card. Me and the other guy, there's only two of us.

Okay.

You paid a million, he won't sell it to you. So that means there's only one in the market, 'cause it's me, 'cause I'm willing to sell it, right? So it's on eBay, right? If you go on eBay right now, you type in Wayne Gretzky OPG, it's on market right now for a million dollars, right?

Right?

One of them is on the market for a million, the other one's on the market for 400,000. So you asked me for rule of money, I had cash. If I don't have cash like that, I can't double my money that quickly. So we just talked about three of them. Money's a game. You need cash, 'cause opportunity is going to come up and it's a doubles game. So if I put- It's a doubles game. Everything about money is a doubles game. What's that mean? The doubles game to me is I pay you $1,000, can we double it in six months?

No.

How long in 12 months? Okay, no problem. I'll do a double in a year. Here's $1,000, I get a double back, right? So, if you take $1,000 and you double it every year, what happens? $1,000 goes into 2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256-512 million. $1,000 is nine doubles away from a million. Now, you take a million and see what happens if we double it nine times. 1 million goes into 2 million, 4 million, 8 million, 16 million, 32 million, 64-128-256-512 billion. A million is 10 doubles away from a billion.

How do you find the doubles?

Well, that's the game. That's the part of the game. That's what I'm trying to tell you. So the doubles now becomes investment opportunities. What you buy into, do you start a company that has a high value, you can really scale it and finding something that can scale, do you invest into things that are going to give you 6%, 8%, 10% or are you going to go play ball and take the risk? That's the game that you're going to start learning. Part of my money is going to be hedge and I'm going to buy some gold because I'm not going to become a billionaire off gold, but I'm buying it because gold is money and something happens to the economy, I'm protected with the gold. But you know what? I'm going to put some of this money in mutual funds because I know long term, I'm going to make 8 to 12% on this. I'm fine with that. I might do a real estate deal because long term, I may do some money, although right now, commercial real estate may be an interesting dynamic because I think Zoom crushed commercial real estate.

The commercial real estate model has been crushed.

And by the way, It may never come back the same way ever again. Commercial real estate-- 20 years from now or something.

Who knows?

I don't even think, I think it's gone.

Really?

Here's what I mean. Look, we have this space, right? Okay, you got this space. Did you get in the last four months?

How long have you got it?

Before COVID Okay, so-- Six months before, yeah. But if you get this today, if you get this today, right now, office space in Dallas, office space nationwide, companies are looking at their business models and they're just saying, Why do I need 100,000 square feet of office space? Why do I need it? But if you go out there and you look at the numbers, you're like, okay, I don't know if I'm going to do commercial real estate. But if I find some small, if I team up with an investment bank or if I team up with a guy that's managing money and I go with a VC team and this is a guy that's flipping opportunities fairly quickly and I dump a million dollars with him and within five years he turns a million dollars into five million, That's 5x in 5 years. That may not be a bad idea. So you got to find those. And they're out there, by the way. They're out there. So Ray Dalio plays a game of doubles.

Warren Buffett's a doubles game.

All these guys are doubles game. And- no one is investing in businesses. Yes. I'm a business guy. I'm not a real estate guy. There are people that are, by the way, that doesn't mean real estate doesn't work. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense for me to say there's real estate billionaires everywhere. Our president is a real estate billionaire. So for me to knock real estate would have no value to it. But for me, I'm more about I have an idea. What are you guys doing? Me and Tiffany are thinking about starting a marketing company. Okay, how can this thing scale? Well, let me tell you what we got. We got three packages, boom, boom, boom. We're going to be target audience. We're going to be targeting people in this world. Okay, interesting. How much are they going to pay? We foresee us doing $6 million in revenue within 24 months. What have you done to be able to earn this? I'm a Columbia guy. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. How much money do you need? I need $2 million. I can't give you $2 million. Can I come in for $100,000? I put $100,000. The next thing this thing sells for $200 million, that $100,000 all of a sudden became $2.2 million, that's a victory. So those opportunities are out there. You just gotta focus. And then the last one I would tell you with the money, so we talked about what? We talked about games.

Money is a game, you need cash. It's a doubles game.

Doubles game?

Yeah.

And I'll tell you one more would be, you have to be maniacally maniacal about being patient. I mean, you have to be patiently aggressive, you know, patiently aggressive. It's so tough to do because you.

Want your money to double now. Exactly. It might take 10 years.

Yeah, but if you are willing to do the 10 years, it may double 40 times. It may double 30 times. You know, like when Bezos said, Just hang tight. I'm not going to give you dividends. Just trust me on this. trust me on this, right? And at the beginning, if you've heard the story where he goes and raises $2 million, he gets $50,000 from 40 people. That's what, $2 million? And he gives them 20%.

Wow. 20% of that $2 million.

He gives them 20% just for $2 million. You know what that 20% is worth today? $200 billion. That's the point. So can you imagine 1994, Amazon gets Forget about you put $2 million. Just say you put $50 million. You put $50,000. What is a half a percent of a trillion dollar company right now? A half a percent. You're still a half a billionaire. Your $50,000 is worth $500 million. Give or take whatever the numbers were doing, right? The point is that is a massive victory. The guy who put $10,000 and he gave it to Berkshire Hathaway in 1974, I don't know if you've heard this story, you know, Warren Buffett is starting, he says, I'll give you $10,000, never touches the money, goes back to his regular job, makes 100 grand a year. You know how much I tend to have you read this article? No, tell me.

The $10,000, if you go on Business.

Insider, you pull it up, is worth $780 today.

$780 million.

Million. Never did anything to it. So that's the part about patiently aggressive. It's very hard to do. But the doubles get bigger later on, not early on.

The doubles are bigger, you're 15 2020. That's what Bapu talks about. Just like his successes, he's lived longer. He's stayed around longer to let the money continue to compound. And that compounded interest is where it's at. How do we negotiate with our mind to achieve something we've never achieved?

Yeah, so the first thing to achieve is why do you want to achieve it? What is your outcome? Many of us walk into the room, even into the room, we're talking to ourselves, and they're not honest about the outcome. What is the outcome? Why are you going through the motion? Is it because society has told you that that's what it should be? Or is it that your parents always wanted that from you? Or is it that you have been neglected in some way and you're trying to please a bunch of people that you can't stand? Or is it that you want to change the world? Is it that you know that you being healthier is going to be able to be around in your family's life much longer, are you gonna be able to stop some social injustices? Like, what is your why, first of all?

That's a first step.

Figure out why you want that thing.

That's the first step. I always use this example is, but people always say, well, I want to be a millionaire. What are you gonna do when you get a million dollars? What are you gonna do with the money? Some people go, well, I'm just gonna keep making money. Well, how are, okay, you're gonna be a millionaire. So if over 65 of the Lotto winners are broke three years after winning Lotto, Same thing with athletes and football players.

Yeah.

And football players, three years odd league. They didn't know their why. The football player knew his why or, you know, he knew his why, oh, I want to get that ball or run that play. I want to become part of a championship team.

Because I love it or because it.

Makes me fulfilled or it's fun or... I love going to the gym. I love, I love that, I love, I'm there for competition. You know better than I do because obviously you are an athlete. But if you don't know your why for a million dollars, well, When you get the money, you're gonna buy a Bugatti?

Mm-.

You're gonna buy 10 cars?

And then what?

Yeah, but then you just have the Bugatti, right? So now what else you need, right? Are you gonna buy 10 cars? Are you going to move to Bali and live off $30,000 a year for 10 years, carve canoes, save the turtles, and invest in some stocks because stocks are gonna average out 12% every year and you're gonna turn the $600,000 into to whatever the case. And then when you come back, what are you gonna do? Yeah, right. Are you gonna buy investment properties and keep doubling down? Many people go through life without their why. And so when they're working at nine to five that they're sick of, they're going home and complaining. And I forgot what I was watching a show where a girl was, she was now living in nature. But she said, I lived in Ireland and I was fighting every weekend. and clubs and bars and I realized I was working and I was so miserable so that was my release. So I was working to fight because I was so damn miserable with my life. And then she started to find causes that she liked. She stayed the job but she would go home at night and put some time into causes that she liked. And she got able to get out of that circumstance and move to someplace else and now she's doing what she loves. But people don't know their why.

Yeah. What's your why right now? You've been doing Shark Tank for what, 11 years now? 11 years.

11 years.

You've been investing in a billion businesses, helping entrepreneurs grow. You've got amazing kids. Yeah.

So my why is, as I said before, first of all, is to take care of my family and my wife and my youngest daughter, because my oldest daughter, daughters, when they were born, I was poor. And all I knew was I got to go out and make as much money as I can to give these to get these girls in an area where they're more protected, where they can have a good education and have medical and things in case something happens to them. And to break the cycle in my family of people who were just average people. My mother helped break that cycle by being one of the first to go to college. And me, I'm gonna break that cycle. Next, but then I said to myself, with the little girl, now that I have the resources, available, it's more how much love can I give her. Because I never had experienced the wanting to come home purely for love. I was just so focused on trying to make money because if I wasn't successful, then like most parents, I'll sleep in a refrigerator box on the street if I have to, to make sure those girls had just one place to live. So that's one of my whys. Also, you know, I've been on a show for 11 years that has changed the way that people have understood or they get to educate themselves on being entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. I'm invested in various companies on these people's, you know, they allowed me to invest in their dreams, so who am I to give up? And also, I'm on the Petco board and Petco Foundation, you know, saving animals. I want to stop human trafficking. I have much more to do. And if I have a public platform that I can come and sit with you or go on GMA and stuff like that, and I can help change people's perception of whatever the case is, sex, gender, religion, whatever the case is, to make them realize that if I can do it, they can do it, then I'm doing my job, you know?

Where do you think you'd be had you not had your two oldest daughters? Do you think you'd have been as hungry to go earn, make a build a business, earn money, grow? Or do you think like, okay, well, I've got enough money for me.

I don't know. You know what? I was worth many millions of dollars by the age of 30 years old. and broke and poor and sleeping on the ground at 27, in the ground of my house.

And how were you when you had your daughter, your first daughter?

27.

26.

Got you. Right?

Wow. And because of my daughters and my ex-wife, I think that they leveled me to some extent because you don't give a 30-year-old guy from the hood millions of dollars in the bank at 30 years old because I think I would have, I never tried cocaine or any of that stuff, but if I didn't have my girls, I probably would have been a huge supporter of cocaine, 'cause it looked like it was fun with the people having it. So I think that they governed me in a certain way.

In a positive way.

In a very positive way.

And.

It made me also want to leave my daughters a legacy. I wanted them to be proud of their father. I refrain from doing and having a lot of the temptations that I've seen a lot of people fall short and get caught up in nothing wrong with that. We're all human.

So, I've interviewed a lot of people and there's one side of the spectrum where the successful entrepreneurs say, you know what, Louis? The key to growing your business is going all in on one focus. That's the key, right? That's what some say. But there's others like yourself who've invested in every business in the world, it seems like, and seen lots of them grow and been successful in that way. Do you feel like, is that just like your creative nature where it's like you want to invest, this is your part of your path right now where you want to invest in lots of brands because you did so much in one thing for so long?

No, I think I'm more towards the person here. So when I invest in brands and companies, I invest in them because they're, I'm allowing them to, they're allowing me to be part of their dream, but I'm also learning from them, which is in return allowing me to go back to my special skill set and improve it. So I'll give you an example.

So you're learning from the people you invest in.

I'm constantly learning every single day. So in Power Shift, I highlighted my investment on Bombas socks. Now these guys, are the number one sock, the number one investment in Shark Tank history. The only, the only, the ring who did not get an investment went into really well.

Get a billion dollar.

Billion two sale.

Crazy, right? Yeah.

And, and, and good for Jamie.

You were there when.

Yeah, I said no. And, you know, Jamie ended up becoming a guest shark one time, and he said, he said when he came in the tank, he was asking too much money and, but, but I believe that because we tenderized him like that and he went out and raised money, I think we deserve five percent, but that's just, I'll leave it up to him. Yeah, exactly. But I think that, that I sent him an email every other day saying, hey, just five percent. All right, I'm willing to go four and a quarter.

But, but the socks.

But the socks is the best investment you made. And it's the number one, it's a.

Number one product in Shark Tank history. Really?

In terms of how much it's grown, how much is grown and how much is gross. Now, I want to make sure that you want to, because I know you interview a lot of people. So if you ever interview the underachievers that sit next to me in the tank, I want to make sure that.

You remind them that you're the number one investor.

I am King Kamehameha on the tank. All right, just make sure it was clear. But let's give you that example.

What was that deal? What was that deal and how big has it grown?

They've done over $200 million. I think it's $280 million. More importantly, they're very, so their deal is a sock and every time you buy a pair of socks, they give a pair away to the homeless because they have a big challenge. And we don't normally talk about the number. It's more important that we've given away 30 million pairs of socks, right? That's pretty cool. Thank you. Thank you. And it's really, it's really, you know, Dave and Randy's company, and they've done it all. They've gotten very little to almost no advice from me because they're so great.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna give you an example on the negotiation. They come into the tank, the only shark that doesn't want clothes is somebody who has 10 clothing companies and eight are dead. I, my reason for being on a tank beside investing in other people is to diversify my portfolio. So when I talk to a retailer, I go, well, I'm already taking a real estate in the clothing area. I want real estate in electronics area. I want real estate in lotion, da-da-da. The last thing I want is socks. Also, I have, I don't know, 20,000 units of socks that I can't sell. You know, when I can't sell socks, I just send people over to people's houses. They steal one. And then you have to buy a pair because you just just think you lost it, right? So I still can't sell it. Plus, if I do the deal, I'm the logo whore. You can't. If anybody in this room or in this building were wearing bomber socks, you couldn't tell. So how do I get the advertising out of it? But they managed to make me understand that today's generation wants to give every time they purchase instead of at the end of the year. They want impact. They want impact. They. And they don't want to buy from people who are just making money. They want to know what did you do for somebody else? So that's one thing I learned that I applied to all my businesses because You couldn't do that before social media, you could, but you couldn't get the.

Word out that much.

And then plus you would have to advertise off of people's hardships, right? You wouldn't have self-generated content of people saying thank you, right? So I learned that. I also learned that because the consumer purchased and it was part of a movement, they talk about it at the dinner table, at the water cooler, and that's your advertisers. You don't need the traditional form of advertising because people want to brag when they're doing something well. And then last but not least, they were showing me how to sell directly to my consumer and not being at the mercy of a retailer who still doesn't know what they're doing. So they shifted the power in the room to get me to do a deal.

So you weren't interested.

I wasn't interested.

Everyone else was.

Everyone, no, not everyone else was interested, but I was the last shot to be interested because I'm too jaded by the fashion industry. Lo and behold, I do the deal. And that's what a power shift is, being able to know your target, know what's beneficial for that person, know where you're willing to draw the line, and know, you know, really know how to.

Relate to that person and communicate with them.

What is it that they said that shifted the power inside of your mind.

And say, okay, I gotta get into this? Well, they showed me that the technology on the socks were really good because they didn't have the toe, the seam in the toe. When me being a manufacturer, I didn't know how they did that at first. It was a simple change, but I used to get irritated in toes when they're doing that. They then, but more importantly, you have.

To put it on a certain way.

Yeah, of course. More importantly, they've shown me that the data they received from their consumer was able to give them the ability to keep selling their consumer and keep talking directly to them, and that they no longer were at the mercy of if a retailer makes the best decision or puts your socks out over here or advertises your socks or discounts them or anything else, right? So they were showing me how to control the business. It's very much like content sending it out and getting to know a dashboard of your consumer. And I learned so much from them. But it was them understanding that, Damon, I'm going to take you out of the old way of you doing business and move you into the new way of doing business. And guess what? If it doesn't work out, we're going to do another business together and we're going to make some money or change the world and more than likely have some fun.

That's cool. Who has taught you the most in the last 11 years of the show?

Them.

Them. They have.

I learned, I joke about my fellow sharks, but I definitely learned from them.

Is that just 'cause they pay you.

The most every month?

You're gonna check every Monday morning?

I see the business operating. I see them being laser focused. I see a lot of things that they do. Bayer probably taught me the most.

Yeah. Who was someone that you didn't invest in and taught you the most? Whether it be like a good lesson or a lesson, you're like, okay, that's not what, that's what not to do.

Somebody that I didn't, or maybe someone.

Inspired you, but you didn't see a right fit for you and they taught you something.

Listen, I learned, I learned, I'm not saying to be warm and fuzzy. I learned from every single one of these entrepreneurs how they operate the business or how they fail. A lot of time when they fail, it re, it, it, it confirms theories that I have because, you know, whenever I fail, I look a checklist of all the things and I go, why didn't, why did I do this? This isn't, this isn't this is not what I do. Why did I not take my own damn advice? So I can't name just one of them, tell you the truth. But I look at entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and learn and go, as big as you are, you are affecting the world and you will still be scrappy enough to say, Hey Amazon workers, you want to make a couple extra dollars? When you're going home, you can take a package home and you let, why is that beneficial? Well, first of all, the worker gets to drive home and takes home a package and makes more money. You're a worker of Amazon, so Amazon trusts you with the box, and Amazon saves on shipping.

Like, takes a package home that you bought for something?

No, no, meaning.

Just take anything you want.

No, take it and drop it off.

Oh, drop it off somewhere on your neighborhood.

Yeah, wherever. Hey, hey, I gotta drive two miles, I gotta drive 10 miles, but I looked in the system and seven houses.

On the way, the 10 miles.

Wow.

Let me, let me make extra money doing that. Yeah, that's pretty smart. I'd be picking up whole truckloads.

And it wins for everybody, right? But when I look at an entrepreneur like Jeff Bezos who does stuff like that, I go, he's still scrappy. He's still thinking, you know what I mean?

All this money in the bank, but he's still trying to maximize.

Yeah, he's still scrappy.

Do you think the greatest entrepreneurs are more focused on money or on the mission?

Look, I think without question, it's the mission. Okay, without question. And there's nothing wrong with pursuit of money. I mean, it's perfectly fine. And it's the engine of capitalism and a free market.

But.

At a certain point, what I've found with the people I've interviewed is that money is really, at a certain point, there really isn't much more that it's really not going to improve your life much more. Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack, has a great explanation for what it means to be wealthy. You can go to a restaurant, order anything you want. You can basically go on vacation or wherever you want, and you're not worried about debt. And those three factors, basically his argument is once those are taken care of, you are essentially wealthy. I mean, you are a There really isn't much else that's going to improve your life or your anxiety or your feeling of security. And I think that most entrepreneurs, certainly the vast majority that I've interviewed, are 100,000% motivated by mission. I mean, here's actually the best piece of evidence for that. A lot of founders will eventually exit and sell their companies, right? And I think a lot of people imagine that, okay, you have a company and then you sell it and then you've got $100 million and then you're gonna go lie on a beach in the Caribbean and sip pina coladas all day, right? The reality is if you did that, you would eventually become very depressed. You would actually just begin to die, right, and wither. And most of the people I've interviewed, they wanna work until the very end. Even when they have enough money for three generations behind them. Because it isn't about the money. It's about a sense of purpose. It's about camaraderie. It's about community and a mission. You know, I mean, this might be weird for some of your viewers and listeners to hear, but I used to be a foreign correspondent. I covered the Iraq war. I covered the Afghan wars. I covered Israel-Palestine. That's what I did before this is 15, 20 years ago. And I spent a lot of time in Iraq, 2003, 2004, 2005. And every time I would ask, you know, soldiers, what is it that, like, why are you here? Why'd you sign up for this? You know? And they'd say, oh, you know, to serve our country and blah, blah, blah. I said, no, but why are you here? What is, what's keeping you here? Because you know this war is problematic and it can't just be about the flag. It can't just be about, because you know, part of you knows that what you do here isn't necessarily gonna be reckoning, you know, people in the US are, they don't even know what's going on here. What is it? And you get the same answer time and again. It's to protect the guy on the left and on the guy on the right. I'm here to make sure nobody shoots him and nobody shoots him. That's, it's about connection, camaraderie, mission, purpose. and it's the same thing with business.

So you think what motivates people most is the connection of the idea or the product or the service to the people you're working with or your customers or media?

All of it.

I think it's like a Maslow's hierarchy, you know? All of it. And it's the people you work around. I mean, how many times have you encountered somebody who is very successful and then they left their job or they retired and then they don't have that daily interaction. They don't have... What happens in sports.

A lot where you're, you know, as a former athlete, you see a lot of guys get depressed after they retire and they might have been an all-star, an all-pro bowler or whatever it may be, a Super Bowl champion made $10 million contract, but then within a couple of years, they're very depressed. They talk about missing the brotherhood or the the locker room because of the camaraderie and the connection. And when you don't, when you have connection for so long and then you go in isolation, it becomes very lonely. Yeah, I'm sure that's that.

I'm, there's no doubt in my mind. I mean, just, I just watched that Michael Jordan documentary a couple months ago on ESPN. It's so, so beautiful. And, you know, seeing some of those old Chicago Bulls players, you know, the, sort of the Lesser Knowns, not the Pippens and the Jordans, but the lesser knowns. And yeah, I mean, you know, they're not, no one's hounding them for autographs. They're not getting on planes. They're not, I mean, some of that I'm sure they don't miss, but some of it is, it's being part of a team, you know, being part of something bigger than yourself.

Yeah.

I'm curious, what do you think entrepreneurs are afraid of more, fear of failure or fear of success?

I think that most of the people that I've interviewed, and I would, sort of going on a limb and saying most of us, I think, are more afraid of failure, which is actually not a good thing. Because failure is, especially manageable failure, is something we all have to experience and embrace. I think that we all in our minds have this idea of what it means to be successful. And the reality is that success is not It's not an endpoint. It's not like you do something and then you wake up and you say, you blow the trumpet and say, I'm successful and that's it. It's like exercise. I exercise every day. I don't love exercising every day. It's not that fun. But I can't just, like my kids will say, Daddy, you're healthy. Why? You can't just get to a point and say, all right, I'm healthy, I'm done. 'cause then you start to decline the next day. And I think it's a sort of a similar concept, which is, you know, success is a constant process and a constant journey. You know, I think by nature most of us are more oriented toward succeeding and most of us fear failure. But of course, that creates a whole other series of issues. You know, one of the things that I love about how I built this is, the people I talk to is, and I've said this on the show, I think failure is just infinitely more interesting than success. You know, we get a lot of, you know, you get a lot of pictures, I'm sure you get these too from people who are like, Hey, Mike, client, they were the Forbes 20 under 20, they were this, they're this, they were this, they were the Nobel Prize, you know, whatever, like all these accolades. And that's great, you know, like I'm totally down with that, but, I want to learn from somebody who's like, here's where I screwed up. I'm gonna tell you what a dumb idiot I was.

Right.

Because that's when we learn. And I think that, and that's really where people are at their most generous when they're really kind of talking about their failures. And it allows us to kind of get a window into their soul that we need to have to help us when we are struggling with with failure.

What would you say is your greatest failure then?

Well, I'll start by saying almost every day being in this profession, there's some failure, right? Whether it's people not wanting to be on the show or whatever. I mean, obviously now it's gotten much easier as I've grown, but you know, my dream, my real dream in life when I was a younger reporter was to be the main anchor, news anchor on NPR. I wanted to be the guy telling the news on all things considered or morning edition, you know, because I thought that was important. Like when I came to NPR, you know, as a younger man when I was 22, my parents didn't know what it was, you know, but I wanted, I think part of us, some of us are motivated by wanting to make our parents proud or whatever it might be.

And.

So that was really what I thought I wanted to do. And I ticked all the boxes, you know, I was a foreign correspondent. I covered wars. I, I I went to CNN and I was on television for two years covering Israel, Palestine. I covered the Pentagon.

I got- you- risked your life for this job. Right.

I got the weekend job. I did a fellowship at Harvard. I ticked all the boxes. I was the weekend anchor for the news program, the weekend host.

But I worked- you-'re so close, the weekend anchor.

So close, so close. But I wasn't chosen, you know, and that was a real blow for me. That happened in 2008. 11. And I thought, you know, maybe it was time for me to find a new career. I mean, maybe I wasn't cut out for this, you know?

Really?

Yeah, I mean, look, it was very, very hard because I really wanted that. And the reality is that in the news business, there are managers and programmers and executives, and they have their own vision. And it's a perfectly reasonable vision. And I wasn't part of that vision. And it was a time in my life where I really, was trying to figure out what to do with it. And just very luckily, TED, as in the TED conference people, had approached NPR and wanted to collaborate on the show. And I heard about it and I raised my hand and I said, I'll do that. And so I kind of left the news world in 2012, entirely left it. And that was a failure. And, you know, that was like, I mean, I still have emails from, you know, really prestigious colleagues. in Washington, D.C. when I used to live there, who were like, you,'re going to do a what? A podcast? What is that? Who listens to that?

Wow.

Why would you give up hosting the weekend news program?

You're so close to the main show, yeah.

Oh, they would say, you have a massive audience and we did. We had 3 million people listening on the weekends on the radio. Now that's changed a lot. Obviously, the radio audience has been in decline. But so I kind of, I was kind of in the wilderness in 2012. You know, I kind of went into exile. And I didn't really know if Ted Radio Hour was gonna be successful. I didn't know.

And this was launching as a podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah, 'cause I started in January 2013, so you started in 2012.

The show launched in March of 2013, Ted Radio. Well, it was a relaunch of the show, really.

So it, so we launched about the same time in a space when, and this was before there was a million podcasts like there is now, I think we hit a million podcasts on Apple, recently and I think there was not even 100,000 shows or something and it was something that you couldn't even find. It was like you had to go to an app on iTunes and plug in your phone. Yeah, it was. We were getting on when no one was listening essentially. There was a couple of that big people before us, Joe Rogan's and some other tech podcasts but it wasn't a big thing yet. Yeah. So you said, I'm going to leave NPR, the biggest show that there is in this space, and go launch this little podcast thing with Ted.

Well, I mean, I launched it, I was launching within NPR. So it was an collaboration. But I left the news side of NPR, which was the most important part of NPR.

Right. It's the thing that everyone knows about.

And that's whatever. And like, if you're a journalist, that was what you wanted to do. It's like the highest level of respect and ability. Highest level of respect and it was Washington DC and it's all these things and here I am doing this podcast and it's like the backwater of NPR at that time. Of course now the tables have turned a little bit but that was really an enormous failure. But here's the thing, as with almost every failure I've had, It's happened for a reason. It's like a hidden blessing. It's like if that didn't happen and I pursued that path, I don't know how happy I would be doing the news, especially today. I think the news is just, it's really hard. It's a hard time in our country. News is really important. I have a lot of respect and admiration for my colleagues who do that, but that failure really kind of saved me.

One thing I realized is that at certain times in a man's life, he's either a fool, he's a victim, or he's a king. And when you're a fool, you're like, you goof it all up. You know, ah, well, you know, but you think there are no consequences for your actions, but there are always consequences for every act you do, everything, good or bad. But then when you mess your whole life up, being a fool, He become a victim. Now, oh my God, look, you know why I did that? Because I was black. You know why? Because I grew up in all that religion. My father was an alcoholic. He beat my mom, you know that, right? Or look at the situation. I'm from Flint, Michigan, man. It's hard for a black man in this society and this way we did it. I had, let me tell you, the table is always full of excuses. Because they're valid. There's a lot of people against you. And you can say, oh my god, this table is full. It's like, man, this is the reason why I'm like this. And this is, this, this, this, and man, you never run out.

And you always stay down.

Always, you always, but the king stage is when you realize, wait a minute, this is your table. Wait a minute, this is your room. You have to accept Whatever you are letting in to your life, good or bad. As a king, you can tell people, get out of your court. As a king, you don't have to accept any of those excuses. As a king, you have to know that you are responsible for your life, good and bad. You did that. So as a king, if something's not right, It's your responsibility to change it. Dude, it was like, I had to go to rehab. I went to rehab. It was this place called Psychological Counseling Services. It was in Arizona. I mean, in Arizona, in Phoenix. And man- How long did you go for?

Oh man.

Well, you go for a full week. It's like an intensive.

Yeah.

Where you don't do anything. You're there for like 60 days. 16 hours a day. And this is 2010?

This was, yeah, it was 2010.

So, and my wife told me she thought I would never, ever do anything like that. Because again, I was not, listen, we had been going to, like, therapy, but when you're not honest, it doesn't work. You know what I mean? Like, you're just telling the game and, you know, whatever. Dude, I went in there and I was like, this ain't me. This ain't me in, like, the first couple hours. I'm like, come on, this is crazy. Then All of a sudden, I was like, oh my God, this is me.

Wow.

This is me. This is the problem. This is what I, this is the issues. I knew I was in tears. I was broke. I was like, I was toxic. Like, when you finally can turn the thing around and see yourself as ugly as you were, I was just so, so guilty. Let me tell you, it wasn't shame. It was guilt. There's a big difference.

What's the difference?

Shame says you are bad. Guilt says you did something wrong. The problem is, I was feeling shame since I was a kid.

Yeah.

As you, as you, as you, and this is the thing, when you are a shamed person, and when you try to motivate people through shame, what you're doing is constantly telling them, you are a bad person, you are like this, you are wrong, you are messed up. So you know what happens is no matter where you go, you go back to, I am messed up. But when you realize, wait a minute, wait a minute, it's not that I messed up, it's that I made a messed up choice. That changed the framework for me. And I was like, it didn't excuse anything. Now, mind you, It did not. It was, you are, I had to say it. And the thing is, it's like courtroom, like a court. For you to actually be guilty, you have to say it. Think about it. There's nobody, if you never admit guilt, it will never be presented. You have to say, I am guilty.

Wow.

I did the crime. And it allows everyone to see you as you truly are. And I went through the process of guilt, of making sure I was guilty. I knew what I said, I put my wife through this, I put my family through this, I did this, I did this. Now let me correct it. But see, shame, you can't correct. Shame is incorrigible. You can't, there's nothing, what happens is shame, you just cover it. Shame is something you just put, you know, let's put some leaves over here. Put leaves over the body.

You know what I mean?

It's like, there's no way you can really, you know, shame is one of those things where you just have to like color it. Image covers shame. But when you are dealing with guilt, now, you've been proven guilty, now there's punishments. You have to make amends. you have to do, right? You have to be accountable. There's all kinds of things, man. You have to come back. You have to forgive people who did things to you. You have to ask forgiveness for what you did to other people. Let me tell you, and I have to say this, the forgiveness that my wife showed me was a, was what I say, a car carrying lesson for any person ever. Because, and I understand why people get divorced. I do. First of all, I should be. But this woman, this is the thing, this is the intimacy that I always, always wanted. Because she saw me for who I was, for real. And she said, Terry, I love you anyway.

Wow.

Man, I thought, that's all you want?

Yeah.

That's all I ever wanted. All I ever wanted was to be seen for who I was. And I was like, you love me? Like, I thought it was real. I was like, I thought she wouldn't come back. But she did. She said, Terri, I love you. Man, that blew me away.

Yeah.

Because I was living this man life and here I am, you see me as nothing. I'm like, I feel about myself like I feel like I'm worth dirt. And she was like, I love you. And man, that changed everything. It was like the thing that I needed I was running from the whole time. Louis. I was running from it the whole time. And I vowed, I said, after that, I said, my God, my God, I can correct this. This is fixable. This is fixable. This is not something, this is what I learned through counseling, and I continue to this day. I mean, it's been 10 years of constant, constant work, constant just Hey, man.

I can fix this. Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day.

I don't think I'm the type of person that is brave enough to admit I've made a mistake honestly, because I think things have not worked out along the way where things just didn't work out as I hoped or dreamed them to be. But I don't see them as a mistake because as quick as you're thinking, oh poor me, you start to see the light of the door that is opening that couldn't have opened without it. So I don't have a regret of this was a big mistake or that was a big mistake. But I have to also say I have my whole life been very cognizant of doing anything and exposing myself to anything even when I didn't want to do it. because I'm deathly afraid of feeling like I would regret. Like, what if I don't do it? That's more of a motivation for me than doing it.

Me too.

Just like, well, I look back, you know, like, for example, with Dancing with the Stars, I did not want to do it. I'm an old babe. The last thing I want to do is practice four hours a day.

You were great.

You think I was so great, not the judges. They didn't think so. I was the number one person on Dancing stars last season, number one, rejected. Now there's a record, okay? But so you might say that was a mistake with all the work that that led up to, and it was a social embarrassment. I thought I'd be rejected maybe number three or five or six, but number one, I never saw it coming. And so I was kind of a little mortified on that one. But you know what? I'm so thankful I did it. And the minute I recovered by the next morning, I'm like, thank God I did it. And thank God it's over. It's a lot of work.

A lot of work.

Because I didn't want to, I said yes because I didn't want to wonder what it would have been like.

What did you learn from the experience about yourself?

I learned I'm not a good dancer. I swear, I've looked at the tapes now one year later when I thought, same tapes I looked at a year ago, I thought, you know, I really got this. But I look at them one year later, I'm stiff as a board. What was I thinking? Missing steps. So what I learned from that is that I can't dance well, but inside my body I feel like I'm a good dancer. And I'll get out on any dance floor and do my own makeup steps and people really smile as I'm dancing because I don't really give a crap and I look like it, you know? Yeah, but what did I learn? I learned that I learned the same lesson I learned again and again, which is thank God I did it. Thank God. the injury of oh, God, you did so poorly, dissipates quickly, but there's an echo to not trying something that's gonna sting you, I think. Not that I know that, because I really don't do that, but I'm afraid of it. It's like fear of a nightmare that might happen. I don't know why, because I don't really have that in my life, but I'm fearful of it.

Yeah, I think that'll sting you for a long time, too. That fear of regret of like, oh, I had the opportunity to do this, Dancing with the Stars and I didn't do it. How many years would you think about not, you know, what's the best year?

Maybe a bad year, but still a bad year. You know, you know what regret does, I think, and why I've been able to build up my personality and whatever I can get out of and give to life as best I could. What regret does is it quietly takes down your confidence a notch. Because in short, you're a coward. you shied away, even if it's the right decision is to shy away. Once you shy away, you quietly, without even consciously thinking, think a little less of yourself. Now, I say that from experience because I've watched many people get stronger or people where life makes them weaker. And there's a lot that goes into that. But I really believe that that regret piece is not given enough due. You really have to try everything and try your because even, and listen, two out of three things I try don't work out. But people just remember the success. That's what I want. But I know what the failures are. But still, I got confidence out of failing each time. A little notch up, a little notch up. So then you conduct yourself with more power in life because you feel better about yourself. And ironically, you have more to give. You're a better package to give more because you've put a lot into that basket by Just try, try, try, try, try.

You know? Do you feel like you're more confident even though you're the first one out of Dancing with the Stars that you.

Did it and you had success? Absolutely. Absolutely, I'm more confident. I got a lot of confidence out of that because every female friend and male friend I had that was even close to my age, they were like.

I can't believe you even went for it, right?

They said you're at, they discourage you, you're out of your mind, da, da, da, da, da, but I want all their respect. And they constantly say, that was amazing. That was amazing. So even my friends that kind of took me for granted think better of me. I went up a notch in their head.

It takes a lot of courage to do that.

It takes a lot of courage to publicly fail. But I happen to be very good at public failure.

Really?

Because I've done it my whole life. That doesn't bother me. I think what I didn't want to happen was that I would look foolish or old dancing with a 24 year old ripped stud on the floor until I realized it feels really good to lean in on that guy and let him spin you around that floor. And how many of my girlfriends are having a dance with anybody like that lately?

There you go.

That's a good way of looking at it.

Yeah. What would you say? Why did you not, why are you not afraid to fail publicly?

Because you know what I've learned? Nobody's really watching. Nobody gives a. Yeah. Everybody's so.

About it the next or whatever.

Or maybe even in the moment. Because the truth is that people, most of all, are thinking about themselves. So just when you think the limelight's on you and everybody's gonna say, God, she's stupid. God, why would she say that or do that? The minute they've given you that one moment of attention, they back on to their own problems, their own selves. So it's like overstatement of your ego to think you're really that important. You know, you could just move right on. We could distract people. You try the next thing that rises on that if you're lucky. So, no, it doesn't really amount to anything. It doesn't really amount to anything. Yeah, it's self-ego. That is not really true.

That's interesting because you say that most people are focused on themselves. So, when you mess up publicly or you fail publicly, they'll think about it for a moment, but then they're on to their own thing.

If you're lucky and they notice.

If you're lucky and they notice. most people won't notice. It just feels like everyone notices.

Yeah, definitely.

For shame.

Right, exactly. What about when you want people to have the attention on you for the things you're doing good? How do you keep the attention on you, the relevancy of yourself as an entrepreneur or an individual when people are focused on themselves so much? How do you keep them thinking about you, your brand, your business, your work, your mission?

You have to think of a way to grandstand, you know? --What do you mean by that? --Good old-fashioned grandstanding. Like I built my Corcoran Group brand on the backs of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, without a doubt. I would think of all kinds of crap to get media attention, okay, as long as my brand name was in there. --Really? --The best single best thing I thought of, which was really just an attempt to get publicity when I I couldn't afford advertising because it was a bad market, was my Corcoran report. And all that was, was a one-page report giving the average sale price of apartments in Manhattan is how I labeled it. I was too stupid to know that that was a wrong label. It was just my 11 sales. But it was on the front page of the real estate section and I was quoted on the first line. And boy, that was an eye-opener. That's how I learned that publicity can build a brand. brand. Today's version of publicity that I look for in all the entrepreneurs I invest in is how good are you at social media? I don't care if you're in the sock business, if you're in hardware, what's going on, how good are your social media, what's your following? Those are the key questions now. How good are you at building attention through social media? Because that's the new free ride, not really free, but to a large degree free, just like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were my right. Okay. So you have to be creative, I think, in thinking of how you can grandstand. And so what's like, I don't know. I'm thinking what's a business right today? Like, well, I don't want to use cousins. We already talked about cousins. Like Grayson Lakes, which is a start out as a baby sock company. Phenomenal entrepreneurs. I have. Is this the long, like the long lady stocking?

Yeah.

With a little lace on.

I bought some of those for a girl before, yeah.

And they make girls look sexy. They make them look great. And they're well priced and they're beautifully made. They're nice, they're elegant, they're sexy. Well now it's a full fashion line and it's, I think, $17 million in sales this year. But what are they particularly good at? There's a husband and a wife team, Melissa, the wife of the team, has gorgeous long legs. You may remember her from Shark Tank. Her husband's more of a nuts and bolts guy. but great at business. What she does is she constantly models and talks directly to the camera. She has so many people that love her. She has limited edition dishes, she sells out constantly, constantly. She's great at social media. She knows how to primp herself, look sexy, talk to the ladies, and get sales.

Okay.

So she uses her assets, her skills.

But she does it on social media, and that's built their entire business, social media.

Yeah.

And did I answer your question because I feel like I somehow got lost.

In my... How do you stay relevant when things are going good? Because when things are going bad, they'll look at you for a moment, maybe, where it seems like everyone's looking at you, but then they forget. How do you stay relevant while you're growing or while things are kind of going the same?

I'll give you another example. I have a company I just bought in this past season. I was out of my mind to buy into them. It was two guys was a product called Comfy. It was a sweatshirt blanket. You slip into it, it's like a sweatshirt, but it's actually a blanket. Why I say it was crazy to buy into it, none of the sharks, they were smart enough not to, is because they're two loudmouth guys having a good time pitching their product, and they had no inventory. They had handmade their own product. Two prototypes had no idea what it would cost to make, what they'd sell for, who they'd sell to. They had none of the answers, but they're great salesmen. And I, I said, ah, I'll take 15 or 40% whenever I got it.

Boom.

Just because they're great sales people. All right. And what they have done is they've done in their first year, $11 million in sales. They found a way to produce it and sell it. But a couple of weeks ago, it was very quiet. They have had social media coverage to the moon and back, but it was was very quiet and they hand-delivered and I wish I could remember the famous actress name. Sexy, cool, long-legged actress. I'm so bad with names. Whoever she was, I think she was the same actress who closed the Oscars the other night.

I might be telling you.

I didn't watch it. Ah, shame on you, my man.

Oh, my God.

Oh, come on.

All right.

Well, anyway, I saw your little party.

Watch party on Instagram.

That's so lonely. But anyway, they sent hand-delivered to her front door how they found it in Hollywood, the package, and she put on video her jumping on her bed in it. They quicker than a second started a social media campaign, people competing with the jumps. They're Johnny on the spot. That's smart business, okay? They're causing attention. They made it happen, and then they're gonna ride it again, and it's gonna be all over social media all over. They're annoyed with me that I'm here because I don't have their product because they want me jumping on the beds. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put the hood on. I have one girlfriend that has gorgeous long legs. I'm gonna Photoshop my head in to her long legs and I'm gonna win the contest.

Perfect, I like that. So grandstanding now is like more influencer marketing. If you can find creative ways to put it. That's a fancy way to put it.

With an audience, maybe it's a micro audience or a large audience. or create an audience of your own one by one, but you really have to be able to grandstand.

I know you talk about the keys to entrepreneur success a lot, but for those who haven't heard you talk about it, what are you think some of the smart ideas in business right now? The smart industries to go into if someone's maybe talented, maybe they sold a company or they're trying to start as an entrepreneur, what's an industry you really like? A product section you really like? You know, software, is it coaching, is it consulting, is it an agency, is it physical goods, food, what's the type of category you really think?

You know, really none of the above, okay? It's not my cup of tea to think of an industry that you can, there's certainly leading industries. I don't believe that's what your head should be. If you're thinking of going into business, I think your head should be is what are you enjoy. What are you naturally inclined to be good at? What were you always good at? Things these disabilities don't change much. If you're gregarious as a young kid, you generally don't wind up as a bookworm. When you get older and get a head on your shoulders, you're still gregarious. So I think what you have to do is think what would suit me? What could I visualize myself doing where I could picture a happy picture of yourself, you know? And I think most people are capable of dreaming that up. I don't think it's an analytical kind of left brain kind of thing where you apply yourself to your best shot, like going and playing back Blackjack and putting your chips on the right thing. No, I think you have to figure out you're the table. Where should you put your chips?

What.

What's on you? What's true to you? Okay. And so. for me, it took me 22 jobs to find real estate. But the minute I was out opening keys, you know, opening the doors and chatting people up, and it didn't feel like work, and I was the boss, I knew I was going to be the queen of New York real estate. I knew it as sure as I knew my middle name was Anne. I just could see it in my mind's eye. I never had that vision when I worked my other 22 jobs. And the other thing, it's sort of related what you asked. I think it's such a, it's such wrong thinking that you have to choose your spot. I think it's like finding out what clothing you look good in. You got to go try a lot of on the rack and see what works with you. And then you kind of, little by little, kind of get your look on what looks well with on your body type, your personality, the colors that are good. I think you find yourself little by little. It's very hard to Sharpshoot. It's not that kind.

Thing.

And you know often the people, I know so many entrepreneurs well beyond or well before Shark Tank, peers of mine in many industries that have succeeded, no one ever went out for that industry. And so that's what I want to do. But you know what made the biggest difference in a myriad of those, if that's a word, a selection of those people that made the biggest difference was they came along someone they worked for who believed in them. Getting one good boss that gives you an opportunity is worth a million intellectual thoughts and Harvard MBAs grouped up in a pile. Because you kind of can sometimes need somebody else to see that light or you get into something you never thought you'd be interested in and you really love your job. And then that winds up being what you do for a lifetime. And so I don't believe that you've named the big industries. That's more of a Cuban story. He's like high level investment strategy stuff. But I'll put my businesses against his any day, one to one. Because I think I'm so good at seeing who's got that talent that matches where they are.

If someone's approaching you for investment or to partner with you, and you could choose only three qualities that you would dream that they would have, you know, never giving up a grid, a positive energy, whatever the quality might be. And you could say if they had these three qualities, it doesn't matter what business they're in, maybe timing and the economy might play a little bit of part here and there, but like if they had these three qualities, they're more so like I would bet on them any day.

Yeah, well that's what I do every day on Shark Tank.

Yeah.

And I've gotten better at it because I've learned to hone in on those. I could think of two. Maybe I'll come up with a third if I keep talking. All right. Number one is salesmanship. I have never succeeded with any business where the principal didn't know how to sell. I mean, sales is the guts of every business. If you don't have sales, you're not in business. Any business applies to everything. Okay. So, okay, if you're a technology nerd and really are in a technology space, but you better have a partner who could sell the out of it or. going to go anywhere. Okay, so selling is number one. The other thing I look for, and maybe it sounds weird to you, but I've learned it to be a great almost insurance policy. I look for injury. I look for anger in the individual. If I could find someone, and this is true of all my successful business, interestingly enough, if I could find someone who had injury at an early age, and has something to prove, I got myself a winner. It's like insurance, okay? So when I say injury, meaning they were dunces in school, like three out of four, three out of five sharks were dunces at school. They're out to prove, you know. I don't want to out them, so I won't use them to use the names, but I won't. I have entrepreneurs, usually successful, never had a father, and then when they went on Shark shark tank. Their father, after 35 years was back in town. How insulting, enraged them. Okay. I have entrepreneurs who were sports figures, almost going to be professional sports people, had an injury, but were fiercely competitive with someone who wound up in their space. They hate that person because they played against them in ice hockey. Crazy. All I have to do is name the other person. Their sales go up.

Wow.

So I think anger and proving is very much part of a lot of successful stories out there. It's an over compensation, over proving, over driving, like I'll show you, give me the I show you, something that went wrong earlier, and you've got a motivated person, and it gets you through hard times really well. And then I'm coming up with a third, there's a million other ones, but none of them as serious as that. It's those two, you have to be able to sell and if you have injury to prove something, it's a wonderful insurance policy.

-How important is a positive attitude with those two things?

-Oh, you know, let me tell you. -You're not even going to get out of the gate. Well, there's negative people. All right, you know what's- -You might.

Be trying to prove people wrong and.

Always nasty about it. -Forget it. Let me tell you what's true about a negative person. You will meet the them in the entrepreneurial space. You know why? Because they are far more comfortable criticizing the next guy than doing. Negative people are bloodsuckers. They just suck your energy away. You know, the nicest thing I did for all the people that worked with me over the years was get rid of negative people. The minute I spotted them, I didn't care if I had cause, they were out. You know why? Because it's like letting the enemy quietly into your camp and giving them free reign. Negative energy is the enemy of all business. Especially, I've always been in sales related businesses. You let a negative person into a sales force, they have a pity party, all of a sudden they need one more person to feel sorry for them or point out what's wrong. It's terrible. I would spot them a mile away. I feel their vibe. Do you have a few minutes on Friday? I'd love to have a chat with you. Wow. Because I felt like I was saving my good people. You know, they were good positive people.

People.

I don't mean criticism. It's invaluable in business. You need to have your critics to let you know when you're off and what you could do better. But I'm just talking about regular bloodsuckers, you know? You know, everybody's met a few.

I hear you. I hear you. Now, sales is number one for you. If they were a great salesman, you would bet on them. If they're a great salesman with something to prove, that's like the golden ticket. It sounds like. So how does someone train to be a great salesman if they don't know how to. Is it something they can learn or is it something you just have to be a part of your energy?

Well, you had question about positive. That's the blood that goes through a great salesman. Seeing the positive side of anything. A lot of people see that as baloney. I don't. It's just like you show me a negative and I'll say, you know, you're right, it's a negative. But I can tell you what the upside of that negative is. so you have a bend toward being positive. So you must have that, okay, to be a salesman. If you don't, you'll never become a salesman. I don't care how hard you try. I think it's an intrinsic quality of personality trait. I know you're not supposed to say that. Everybody's supposed to believe you could become a salesman. I think if you're inclined to be outgoing and positive, you can become a better salesperson. but the real phenomenal sales people that I have worked with and I've made my living my whole life in different venues with phenomenal sales people, I am telling you they come out of the gate, maybe not out of the womb, but they come out of the adolescent gate as sales people. It's very hard to teach that. It's a, it's an artistic gift to be able to sell really well because think of how complicated it is. you have to read the situation accurately. You have to read the person and think of how you could use them in the way that they want to use themselves and thank you in a thank you note 12 hours later thinking it was their idea. That's a complicated little thing, right? And you need to think of how that person could be used for your long-term goal of the picture you want to create. So that's very very complicated math in the head. And that's what great sales people do.

Why do so many people make money the enemy?

You know, first of all, like, I, I think, I, I think about that all the time. I think as we grow up, a lot of the movies we watched as a kid, it's like the guy with the money on the hill was the villain.

Right? Yeah.

And I was on a, I was on a boat with Richard Branson. On the only reason it's not because I'm really cool, it's because I helped raise a million dollars for his charity. And for that, Virgin United invited me down to his island. And he saw that I got up at five, he got up at five. So he said, Hey, tomorrow when you get up, let's sail. He's like, you know how to sail? I'm like, oh yeah, I had no idea. He's like, Grab the aff line. I'm sorry, dude. I don't know. Just tell me what to do. But one thing he said, and it helped me a lot with money. I said, I feel like I should be giving back more. and I said, he said, you said that or you said that to him? I said, should I donate more of my time? He said, well, the way I look at it is different. You were given a gift to know how to generate revenue. He said, and this is something that I'm paraphrasing, but this I'll remember it forever and it really shifted my mindset on money. He said, you could go to a charity, you go to a soup kitchen and you could work there for three days and that'd be wonderful. I know they need help. Or you could swing by there one day and drop off a check for 50 grand. The second one, that's what you were given that gift. Go make the 50. Because I was given a gift to know how to start and run companies. Now at this phase of my life, I'm giving most of it all away, but that's my gift. And it kind of made me realize is like, I took the brakes off. I took the brakes off. It's like, make as much as I want. I can give it all away. I can, you know, we just got done feeding five million. We just passed five million meals provided through feeding America. We got all kinds of chairs. Like, Now I have this like no limits like because money has allowed me to retire my parents my money's allowed me to make it so my kids don't have to worry about their future not raise entitled brats but I have to worry about their future I get to be in better shape if my fiance needs something my mom needs something my dad needs something I can cut a check for those problems and I can help with charity so for me it's like there's no limit. I want to just keep impacting lives.

And making money How can people shift the perspective of money is this bad thing? What's the quickest way for them to I if they've been conditioned with a belief for decades that money is the evil or the money doesn't solve your problems or how do they, how do we, has someone, what's a perspective shift for people to understand like this really?

Yeah, that's a really good question. One of the things I think, because I've asked this question on stage to tens of thousands of people through the years, then I asked them to raise their hand if it's this. And one that I never thought of was people feel in this like intuitively somehow that if they're making money, they're actually taking it away from someone else. Wow. And that's like, I don't know if any, like, and as I say that, somebody right, you know, so many people right now are going, wow, I feel that way. Like, if I'm getting wealthy, I'm hurting someone else. Or if I'm getting wealthy, oh my God, there's so many people starving in different third world countries. And it's the fact that matters. There's always the same amount of money in the world. Money is either flowing away from you or money's flowing towards you. and I just want to position myself in a place where money is flowing towards me and then I have the ability to give it away. Because if you really think about this, when you make money, I would bet the majority of the world, not someone selfish which is a rare thing and I doubt someone really selfish would be listening to you Louis, is when you make money, what do you do? You end up hiring someone to do your lawn because you're making money and you can do that. You send out your dry cleaning, you go out to dinner more, you buy buy a bigger house, you buy more furniture. When you make money, you actually flourish the economy in your home, and then you flourish the economy around you. So, like, I just have this philosophy of, like, I, if I want to help the economy, if I want to help the environment, if I want to help the people I love, I make money, and I get to help the economy, help the environment, help the people that need it.

Yeah.

And I just change that belief because, again, if you make money to, you know, sell drugs, if you make money to promote gambling, like that's evil, that's bad. It's really just the byproduct. And in most cases, more money, the byproduct of more money is positive impact.

Yeah, right.

I mean, why is America, you know, such a lead in finding cures, in finding technology, because a lot of the companies and money flow here to solve those problems. But America's also the biggest contributor to charities around the world. I mean, look what Bill Gates did. So I just found a way, and I'd encourage everybody listening, find a way to just change that. Whatever story you're telling yourself, it's most likely a lie. It's a story that someone else gave you. We know all this. I'm not sure on anything you don't know, but just prove that it's wrong. Go find wealthy people who've made a massive impact. Because the last thing I'll say about money, I know we didn't plan on getting this, but I feel like we have a dysfunctional relationship. with money. Like if you're the therapist, you know, the therapist is sitting a third party over here, like where your candle is, and your money, and I'm the patient. It's like, I think we're saying, like if they're looking at us like a relationship, you're saying, Money, I don't like you. I think you're evil. I think you're wrong. But simultaneously, I'm always stressed about money, and I want more of it, and I want to be able to help people. I want, like, and I feel like I never have enough. And I never have enough, right? So it's like, it's the push and pull. It's like a, it's like a dysphoria. functional relationship. And I think if you have any hesitation around money, it's time to fix that relationship. And then, you know, I've had people write down five things they would do when they made more money and five problems that more money would solve. And most of the time, people write, I'd make sure my mom was okay. I would take care of my health. And none of them on the list is buy the Lambo, the new watch and be, you know, selfish or, or buy, you know, have more carbon emission. Like nobody writes a they write all impactful stuff for other people. And the last thing I'll say is this, and I've been using this analogy for myself for years, Louis, is I look at when you first get on a plane, you know how they say if the oxygen mask drop, put yours on first and then help if you have a child with you, right? I look at that with money is when I put my oxygen mask on, when I'm still secure, when if you're listening right now, if you get confidence, if you have control of your life, if you have financial security, as soon as you feel stable, what happens every single time is you start putting oxygen masks on. When I was 26, I retired my mom. When I was 33, I retired my dad. Both of them worked their butts off to make nothing. I put oxygen masks on my mom and my dad. I helped my nephews go to college. I paid off debt for people that I cared about that it was crippling them with stress. I was able to Help my stepdad when he needed a surgery and they needed 40,000 bucks immediately. I was like, so I just realized if I get secure and I obsess on making it, I don't have to hold it and hoard it and be this bad human. I could be a human that solves problems, puts oxygen masks on other people.

That's powerful. We were talking about, briefly we were talking about this, that it seems like there's a common denominator for every millionaire or successful person. that we know. They always had something dark happen or multiple dark things happen. And something that drives them, whether it's the greatest athletes in the world, the biggest, you know, billionaires in the world, there was something that defined them early on or some things that defined them. I'm curious, what were the three moments when you were a kid that really defined you to be this driven, hungry person to originally, like, Just be make sure that money wasn't an issue.

Yeah, really good.

And want to continue to grow and, you know, reach a billion dollars in sales and all your businesses and impact the world because that doesn't happen just if you have a happy normal life. Yeah. In my opinion.

And you know, a really great question, Louis, and here's what happens over time. Some of that goes away as you craft a new story.

Of course.

I did it because I wanted to change the world. I'd lie if I said that was true.

But there's usually some defining moments that usually happen when five, ten, seven, whatever.

I know some of them. One is my mom did work, this sounds like an infomercial story, my mom worked three jobs. She was a hairstylist, she cleaned houses, and then cleaned up after a painter, right? And she did those three jobs and I asked her to this day, she made about $90 a week because she barely got out of high school, she had dyslexia that wasn't diagnosed. My mom's a beautiful woman inside and out, unbelievably gorgeous, heart, soul, all of it. But she always felt dumb. Like she failed every grade. She quit school in 11th grade because she was so embarrassed to go. And so she kept that stigma inside. And I remember being really young and watching her come home from work tired as hell at seven o'clock. My parents split when I was three. So we were living in a trailer park. My fiance's here. I took her to the trailer park that I was living in and we'd come home Latchkey kids when we were like six and eight because you know my grandma would come a lot. My grandmother was amazing.

So she was there a lot too. So we weren't.

So you were just with your mom?

Yeah. Was your dad in the picture?

Every other weekend. Okay. You saw him.

Yeah.

And just watching her, I can remember, Lucy, I don't want to exaggerate, but I moved in with my dad when I was 12. I think I look back at that, I was like seven or eight. And I remember saying, I am, there's no way I'm letting this happen to my mom. I am doing this. My mom was my original, like, I'm taking care of her. There's no way I'm letting her work this hard. And it broke my heart. Like, if I look back, my heart was broken all the time watching her come home and she wouldn't complain, but she was just tired, you know? So one, I remember thinking, I'm getting wealthy to solve that problem. I mean, young, young.

78.

Yeah, 78 years old. I mean, I had an uncle Larry who was very, he went to college, his kids went to college. And I just didn't, I mean, from nine years old, ten years old, that's just the path I knew I wasn't going to college. I didn't think I was that smart. My family didn't have money. I'm like, I'm just, I'm going, I just wanted money out of the way. Like, it wasn't like today's world has changed a little bit with social media, right? There was no such thing as the internet when I was that age, right? This is 40 something years ago, right? And I think money has gotten a bad rep a little bit more because I didn't look at. I didn't have, like, guys, you know, photos.

Yeah.

Like driving the Lambo or in the. In the private jet or, you know, the. Look at me and the rolexes, the champagne popping, the nightclubs. I didn't know that. I didn't even know that world existed. Louis, I. We didn't have money. I lived in a blue collar town.

Nobody I knew had money.

So it wasn't like I was saying, I'm getting rich because I want to roll. You just wanted to help your mom. I wanted my mom to not suffer.

And, man, that.

That's him. And the one thing I love. telling people. And again, you may have heard this, but maybe today is the first time you actually hear it. It's okay to be in pain over something. Just don't ignore it. The biggest plight we all do to ourselves, I think the biggest like negativity we do to ourselves is we avoid the things that bother us. When I say, what I believe is let that pain sink in. If you get moving to start your own business, to scale the company to finally quit the job that's dry, you know, draining you. If it's because of pain, use it. Like so many times when people listen to you and all the amazing people you've brought to the world, Louis, I love what you do, man. I mean it. I'm really proud to be your friend.

Thank you.

I love watching what you do. I love watching you grow. So many times we'll get into personal growth and we start thinking compelling future. I got to look ahead. I got to stay positive. I got to be the man. I got to be this woman. keeps it in control and everything is good. I'm blessed, I'm blessed, I'm happy, I'm alive. Like sometimes that's just bullshit. Sometimes life sucks. And what I realized what moved me as a kid had nothing to do with a compelling future. It had nothing to do with aspirational quotes. It had nothing to do with meditation. Had to do with I hated where the freak my life was. I hated watching my mom and I was fixing that shit and it bugged me every day. Like it bugged me.

Until you were like 16, 18.

Yeah, and like I was hustling. I, 13, 14 years old, I used to go around the neighborhood and clean out people's garages. And then I'd take all that and I do a massive garage sale. Wow, that's cool. So 13 and my gram was the bomb. My gram would drive around, have her trunk up, I'd clean out the garages. It mostly was her friends. So I'd clean up like, oh, that's garbage, that's garbage, that's garbage. I'm like, you, want to sell that? I can't give that away. I'll give you half. Like, okay, this is before eBay. It didn't exist. I was eBay at my grandma's house. $4.50 grams front yard, right? So she lived a little bit off the highway. I'd put a sign yard sale, man, I'd be out there on Saturdays learning how to sell. Because people had no mercy. I was a young kid doing it. They'd still come five bucks, I'll give you two. It's like, ah, make it four, you know? So I was negotiating that. And then at 16, I started a firewood company.

I cut trees down, split it, stacked.

It in the back of a truck.

And delivered it for $90 a quarter.

Are you chopping it with chainsaw and log splitter? Wow.

Not manual, like.

No, no, no. It wasn't, what do they call it? Like, yeah, the axe. Yeah, it wasn't the axe. I wasn't big enough.

Yeah, exactly.

So one motivator was my mom. Okay, for sure.

So that was the first thing. What was the second thing? Moment or defining experience?

I didn't have money in school. It was like when I moved in with my dad, I was 12 years old. My dad, the, my dad's, my dad was the youngest of 12. uhuh. And was physically and sexually abused his whole childhood. Yeah. And back in those days, there was no therapy, talk therapy, nobody not going to a counselor. Have the ability to talk like you and I talked when we were jogging. Yeah. Men back then didn't talk. My dad's 83 now. He didn't, he wouldn't go to his best bud. Oh, my God. You know, when I was five years old or seven, I was molested by my cousin. No one knew. In the old days, they'd like, get away from, you know. Yeah. So he didn't talk about. So what he had, he had built up anger his whole life, and no one was able to take advantage of him. Like, if, if, you know, the waiter was rude to him, he'd be fist fighting on the floor with the waiter.

Right.

If, if we were in, we were driving in traffic one day and, and the, the flag guy during construction, he didn't wave to my dad. He was, like, looking at somebody else. My dad drove by and goes, hey, didn't you see me? And my dad literally jumped out and just beat him. Oh, my gosh. That's, that's. that was my dad road, like he was just, he was infuriated with everybody because he was this young kid who got abused and no one was there to protect him and nobody was doing that now. So he lived with that and he's an amazing place right now and I love him dearly. But when I was 12 or 11, it was so bad that I was afraid. I was just afraid, like I was nervous for him and I wanted to help him. So at 11, I left my mom and moved in with him. And when I moved in with him, I legit, this is again, sounds like some infomercial story. I moved in the back. I literally had a house with no heat because he was remodeling and he ran out of money and he was working on it. So we had to literally drag a bed into a bathroom at night and plug in a little electric heater. And that wasn't forever, but it was for months. And when I moved in with him, I wasn't poor me. I didn't know anything different. It was fine. I learned a lot by living with my dad. The good, the bad, I learned how to negotiate and all those things. But some days I'd go to school without lunch money. And there was a point, and this is okay too. I'm not anywhere near that now, but there was a point where when I saw people with money or like when everybody turns 16, a lot of kids in school, their parents got them a new car. And I remember, they had the new girl, the car, and then they'd get the cheerleader. And I'm the guy going home every day working with my dad. I worked every single day. I I worked on cars, I worked on construction. And like, I remember being like, you know what? You can't hear me now, but you'll hear me someday.

Wow.

In my high school yearbook, literally my quote is like, I might be silent now, but someday, like, it'll be impossible not to hear me. Like, I gotta get the quote. I just found my yearbook. Damn, it's old. 1986. Like, oh my God. But anyway, I want to read the quote, but it was something like, you don't hear me now, but someday you'll hear me Roar. And that's. I had this, like, internal chip. Like, I was really shy, polite to everybody. I called every one of my parents friend, Mr. Or Mrs. I still do when I see him. Like, I just. That's like, I wasn't like, yo, I got this. It was more like, oh, yes. And I. I probably looked really, like, not weak. I don't even know the word. Like, just really, like, an introvert and shy and, like, ah, he's. But I was. hungry with a chip on my shoulder on the inside. Like, you don't hear me now. You got the car, you got the girl. I got you. Like, and so that was probably another one, too, is envy.

And.

And I say, like, envy is toxic. It's completely toxic. But it's a driver.

It's a good driver, right?

Like, just. Just think, like, you can't putt with a driver, but it's okay to smash a ball off the tee, right? Yeah. So if you need envy to. smash the ball off the tee, then use it.

Again, use it to get you going.

Yeah, again, personal growth is my life. I'll tell that story in a little bit, but personal growth is my life and self-education. Tony Robbins, who's now one of my best friends in the world, he changed my life when I was in my mid-20s when I audited his course. I was already financially successful. I already had a car business. a collision shop, an auto sales. I had 21 apartments.

26.

24.

24.

Yeah, 24. I had 21 apartments. I had a two tow trucks, had a tow truck company. I was doing, I had Enterprise and Hertz rent a car account.

And how'd you have the money to fund all these?

Yeah, I'll tell you that in a minute. So I got to that. But up until that point, I was suffering to get there, like, working night and day, stressing all night. Now you you know exactly what I'm talking about, man. When you're starting, when you were on your sister's couch and you're thinking of going, all of a sudden you get going, you don't stop. You don't stop. And then you're up at two o'clock.

In the morning solving problems and you.

Think that's the way you do it. I got a competitive edge because I can stay up all night. I can stress more than anybody. I can worry more than anybody. Yeah, yeah. I worried more than anybody else. So up until that point, I was on my way to already at a millionaire from where I was a kid, but I was doing it through suffering. and, you know, I gave Tony Robbins money off an infomercial. That's the reason I went in the infomercial business. I gave him a check. He gave me information. Everybody told me I was nuts. Like, you bought something off of some huckster on TV, which people probably have said about me in the past. I bought it. I went through it. I get. I thought I was gonna listen to it over, like, a month, and I just obsessed over, like, seven days. I digested every piece, and it was just so profound. No one I had ever talked to. And this is a true story. No one I had ever talked. in my entire life, talked this way, talked about people this way, about obstacles this way, about challenges this way, about your past, belief systems, and belief system and limiting beliefs and your past is designed for you to make you strong. And you know what? I just believed him. Like I didn't question anything because I saw my dad worked hard, but he wasn't rich and he suffered every day. And if I take on my dad's thoughts, I get to work hard and suffer. If I listen to this guy, it just seemed like a different path. And then he introduced me to Wayne Dyer. and Eckhart Tolle and John Wooden and all these other people and all of a sudden, self-education exploded. But let me go back to your original question. One was my mom, two was envy. I would say the third thing was.

Probably.

And completely wanting control of my life. I know I said that and there's probably another one I'm trying, I'm hoping something else comes to me, but I know for a fact what drove me more than anything was I hated not being in control. I love my parents, but I just felt like they made bad decision after bad decision. I didn't want to listen to them on where I lived. I got my own apartment when I was in 12th grade. Like, I didn't like their decisions and I figured if I got money, no one can tell me how to live, no one can tell me what to do, how to talk. And the truth is, I still feel that way.

Yeah.

Like, I don't want anybody to tell me when I can go pick up my kids from school or take them on vacation. I coached Little League. I coached softball today. I scheduled this with you at 1:00. I'm gonna jump on a plane because at 6:30 is my daughter's, my son's game and at 7:45 is my daughter's softball game. I'm not missing either one of them and there's nothing or no one that could tell me, no, I'm not gonna be there, right? That's just an exaggeration of what my life is. But there was a point where money will allow me to make, you know, be in control of my decisions. And I still believe that. I still believe that.

What feels better for you, craving or curiosity? If you're curious about something.

What feels better?

In your body. If you're even curious about this question.

Curiosity feels better because craving feels like you're a slave to something. It's like you're a prisoner to this craving. I need it now. I'll do whatever I take to fulfill this emptiness that I need to fulfill. Give me the M&Ms, give me the ice cream. I want the pizza now. Postmates, let's go. Uber Eats, DoorDash, I'm in.

Right, right.

And we can have food instantaneously almost to open our door. Right, and so we can reinforce those habits.

Curiosity feels better because you're exploring a different part of your brain, you're interested in something different, you're wondering what could something else be like.

But even that momentary experience, you used a, with your hand, you clenched your hand.

Yes.

So there's this contracted, closed down quality to a craving. Does curiosity feel contracted or expansive?

Yes. What's the possibility?

Yes.

If you just took closed versus open or contracted versus expanded, which one feels better?

Expanded. Yes.

Right there, we can give our brain a very clear, bigger, better offer. Expanded. For example, when we're caught up in ego and we're waiting for that next compliment, does it feel closed or open?

Closed. Yes.

How about when you're in flow? When you're just totally killing it in sport or playing music? or having a great conversation. Feel closed or open? Open.

Yes.

Bigger, better offer.

Boom. Okay. So you reflect on the bigger, better offer of feeling expansive, feeling healthier, happier, more fulfilled.

Well, it's not even on what could be. It's right in that moment we can tap into that superpower of curiosity.

What would the curiosity be? As opposed to the craving, what are you curious about?

We can get curious about the craving. Oh, what does this craving feel like in my body? And we flip the valence from this closed down feeling of craving being caught up in a craving to oh, wow, this feels like tightness or tension or, you know, I'm feeling my hand move to my phone to click on, you know, click on the food eating app or whatever.

Oh, wow, wow, wow.

And we can just explore our experience in that moment. So, we can actually hack craving with curiosity. just by bringing it in.

Okay. And what if the craving is still there?

Then we can get curious about that. Hmm, how long is this gonna last? Is it changing? Is it moving in my body? We actually have had people on our program saying, you know, I actually had a guy walk into my office. I was working at the VA hospital and he walked into my office and he said, Doc, I feel like my head's gonna explode if I don't smoke. And, you know, I was young, addiction psychiatrist, and I was like, oh, what do I do?

So I was like, well, if your.

Head explodes, just put the pieces back together and call me. He politely laughed, you know, it's like, bad joke. But we actually got up and mapped out what head exploding felt like for him.

What does it feel like?

So he described it as like tightness or heat or clenching and things like this. And we mapped it out on my, I remember mapping this out with it on my whiteboard where we watched that wave go up and. and then over. So typically what somebody does is they'll smoke to make it go away, but he realized it goes up and it actually goes away on its own. And that was a big aha for him.

And I feel like, I feel like everything comes back to mindfulness and meditation. It's like the, to solve anything in life is mindfulness and meditation. It's what it all seems like it comes back down to over the last years. I've done so much research on meditation myself. I've been to India, retreats, Headspace, Calm, had all the meditation teachers on. And it feels like it's the solution to so many things. Is that true?

Well, I would say, especially for habits, we can see how mindfulness helps teach us that awareness piece that can help our brains get that updated and accurate information. So there's actually a pretty good scientific basis around mindfulness helping us with habits.

Okay.

So, and those habits can extend beyond eating and anxiety and smoking. They can extend to getting caught up in, you know, in ego as we talked about a little bit.

Yeah, thank you.

They can also extend to being attached to certain views, right? So if there are political parties where one side says, I'm right, and the other side says, They're right, and they just spend all their time fighting, how are we going to do anything? So what does fighting feel like? Closed or open?

Closed.

How does it feel when people actually collaborate and cross the aisle and say, Hey, I want to understand your point of view. I really want to understand it so we can work together.

Open.

Feels pretty darn good.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we can even see how mindfulness can help with these things where, you know, people are not having a good relationship or or societies are fighting with each other, we can stop, notice how unrewarding the fighting is, and how rewarding it is just to remember each other's humanity.

-Yeah. What is the likeliness then of changing a negative habit without the use of mindfulness meditation?

-Well, the Rescorla-Wagner curve suggests that you really have to get that updated information to we value the old things. So there isn't anything else scientifically suggesting that we can change things. It's not about willpower, it's not about magical thinking.

It's not positive thinking and hoping and wishing.

Hoping and wishing doesn't fit into the math.

The only research says meditation, mindfulness, awareness, however it looks for you, that type of awareness is the only solution.

That's what the math is suggesting. so mindfulness helps teach us to be aware and awareness is what helps our brain get that updated and accurate.

When we have a bigger better offer.

Yeah, well that, so the bigger better offer can come in the form of curiosity or connection or kindness, which are often taught, yeah, those are often taught as part of mindfulness practices, but even feeling physically healthy, mentally healthy, feels good. And so that's going to reinforce those positive habits. So eating healthfully feels better than eating a bunch of junk food. I certainly know this myself. So when we can really clearly see that cause and effect relationship, it's just much easier to stay on a healthy habit.

What is the root of addiction in your mind?

You know, I like this really simple definition of addiction: continued use despite adverse consequences. So I would say the root of addiction, because continued just despite adverse consequences can be anything from being addicted to social media to a point of view. So I think the root actually comes in this survival mechanism that's just trying to help us remember where food is. But in modern day, when food is plentiful, most of us have a refrigerator. and restaurants are open 24/7. You can find a restaurant open any time of day. That mechanism, that survival mechanism, is still in place. So I think that the root of addiction is actually paradoxically there is a survival mechanism. Yet in modern day we refine coca leaves into cocaine. We make synthetic opioids so that we can pop pills. We go on Instagram to look at cute pictures of puppies when we're bored. All these different things and food is literally engineered to be addictive now. So that process, that natural survival process has gotten hijacked.

What is the amount of time it takes to break an addiction that's 10, 20, 30 years old? Is it possible to break it in a moment, a day? take 30 days to break the habit or start a habit? What is the scientific research saying? Is it the longer you've been doing something, the longer it takes to break or you can still break it in 10 days once you hit that rhythm?

Yeah, it really depends. I'm remembering a guy that came into one of our early studies who was smoking 30 cigarettes a day. We started with the pay attention when you smoke, see what you get from it. Two days later, he came he came back and he'd cut 20 cigarettes. And he realized, you know, I get up and I drink coffee and I don't like the bitter taste of coffee, so I smoke a cigarette to cover the taste. Oh, I could just brush my teeth instead. So, you know, so for some people, you know, really clearly mapping it out and seeing how unrewarding the old behavior is helps them change a lot of the habits pretty quickly. Okay. So, and as I mentioned in some of our now preliminary research, We're seeing with using these mindfulness apps like the Eat Right Now app or the Craving to Quit app that I mentioned, we're seeing after people are using these craving tools about 10 to 15 times, that significantly changes the value of that reward.

10 to 15 times or is that 10-15 days?

It really depends on what the behavior is. So somebody could have their ice cream craving. And so they can't just eat ice cream 15 times in one day and do the thing and have it. I mean, they probably feel pretty sick. It really has to come as part of their natural experience.

So when the craving comes up and you're about to do the addiction, you open up the app. There's a guided meditation. There's a steps.

-The apps actually start with helping people map out their habit loops. And so, this is some of my, you know, well, I learned the most when I fall on my face. -Yeah, we all do.

-So, when I was first starting this.

Research, I had this hypothesis that it would be, you know, these formal meditation practices that would help people change their behavior. You know, I've been meditating for a while. I'd gone on long retreats. I'd, you know, would sit and meditate for a long time. I was like, this is it.

It.

It was great for me. But it turns out when we looked at our data that these informal practices, in the moment practices where people were paying attention as they were smoking or paying attention as they were eating, that's what was really helping to change the behavior itself.

In the moment, not before the moment, when you wake up in the morning at night, in the moment. Right.

So the formal meditation practices can certainly be helpful but we actually start by helping people map these things out because I didn't know, you know, when I first started learning to meditate, it was like, pay attention to your breath and when your mind wanders, bring it back. It was like, okay, this makes sense. But when I went on, you know, I went on my first meditation, seven day silent meditation retreat by like day three, I was crying uncontrollably on the shoulder of the retreat manager because I couldn't pay. I was like, I made it through college, I made it in a medical school and now I can't pay attention. So I thought I was a failure. and it turns out it's not about forcing ourselves to pay attention, right? The grid, the willpower, certainly didn't work for me. It's really about understanding our mind.

I want you to imagine the greatest version of yourself standing right in front of you. And in that moment, I'd actually never heard the way he told it before, and then I was like, wow, I could see myself, like, with 100% confidence. confidence, calm, poised, like the best looking version of myself, whatever. Just like standing perfectly, not slouch, just every part of me, the best version. And I was like, wow, I can push myself to be a greater person by seeing it first and then taking the action steps to becoming that. Yeah. So I was like, that was a nice little.

As long as you build in this kind of sub clause, the. because, like, people can set these kind of goals that last forever. Joseph Campbell, I'm sure, you know, big writer on myths said, you know, you can spend your life climbing a ladder and then realize you had the ladder.

Against the wrong wall. You know, there's like. So there's, it's, I mean, it's why.

Are we climbing the ladder, right?

Yeah.

Why are we climbing this or. Yeah, we, well, we, yeah, we spent a lot of time focusing on stuff like this. We have this image of this version of ourselves that we're moving towards, and it's always out there somewhere, and it's Kind of like all those things that like, well that look, it's helpful, like if you can have a self-image, of course, why not have a great self-image? Because we tend to make terrible ones, but it's just an image, it's just a picture in the head, it might as well be a good one. But in the meantime, there's also like the here and now, and there's like making... yeah, your relationship to the parts of you that aren't right, or don't feel right, and making peace with that and understanding that in a different way. like, you know, if you're in a relationship and I heard this, but as a philosopher in England called Alanda Botto, I really love this. He said, if you go to sleep, if you go to bed twice a week with your partner and you're thinking, what am I doing with this person? This is terrible. That's normal.

Right.

That is like a normal thing to start with. And that's, to me, is much healthier. That kind of thinking is healthier than, I'm gonna have the perfect relationship and I can visualize that perfectly, and I'm going to make it happen. Because sometimes that's great, but sometimes it just sets you up for a kind of why have, you know, an impossible standard? So there's a balance, right? There's a, I think there's a sub clause that goes, if everything turns out brilliantly then yes, but if it doesn't then that has to be okay. There has to be a situation that's comfortable and also, you know, exciting. Why not, you know, why there's, there's, there's. Why not also be happy with things where you are? Yeah, exactly. It's, it's an important bit that gets missed.

Yeah. Appreciating and being gratitude and all those things. What is. Do you have any regrets of all the work you've done or just anything in your life where you regret maybe something you did or something you didn't do or something you wish you've done? And I have no clue what you're gonna say here, but I'm just curious if do you have regrets from whether your personal life, your career life?

I am, it's difficult. I always think of like a friend said this, which I thought was great. You know, Richard Wiseman, if you come across his work, he's a kind of popular psychologist. He's great. He said like, you know, it's like trying to pull out a, like a big jar with loads of different colored threads, you know, you just, sometimes you try and pull one out, but of course it just all comes out together. how you go back and like remove one thread from your life. So I'm gay, but I didn't come out till I was like 30. So that's like, that's kind of late.

17 years ago, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

So that's like, I do kind of think that's normally where my mind goes.

Really?

Do you regret anything? Because that's like a really long time. But I don't think I'd put half the energy into sort of, doing the stuff that I do if I wasn't a, desperately trying to avoid any conversations about sex and just like basic, you know, human conversation. So that like you tend to get very good at like deflecting attention with, you know, dazzling amazing things, right? That's like a good strategy if you're trying to avoid that kind of subject. So, you know, weirdly that kind of helped. And so I don't know.

You can justify these things as well. You're like, well, I wish I would have came out earlier, but at the same time.

Yeah, and you know what it really did? I think it would gay or straight, whatever. We often have things about ourselves that would be good to come out about, right? Stuff that we just carry a lot of shame around about. I could never tell people. And what's fascinating and why the coming out thing, regardless of what it's about, not necessarily about sex, just anything, It's something to come out about. And this is what I found. It's liberating not because you get to go, oh, I'm gay or I'm whatever. It's that you realize, like, no one gives a fuck. No one cares.

Maybe two or three people or something.

Yeah, but they don't, yeah, but that's it. We would, what really settled into my head was this idea that we'd worry a lot less about what other people think of us if we realize how seldom they do.

Right?

They really don't really get it. So once you've done that with your big thing that you've carried all this shame around for, then you realize, oh, everything's fine.

Wow.

So because of that, other than I was probably a bit of a dick for a long time while I was like struggling with all that stuff, but that's I kind of, you know, you've got to forgive yourself that. Can't be at peace with it, yeah. Yeah, so I don't know, I don't have any regrets. It's fine. I'd like to be, you know, I kind of, I'd like to be a better partner and a better person. Those are things that I think are good to engage with in the present.

Is there anything you're struggling with right now? Or what is the biggest challenge for you? Because you don't have anxiety.

Oh, no, I have anxiety. I just mean I get so good at naturally.

Avoiding it.

Yeah, I don't have anxiety like some people have anxiety. that I, there are different patterns aren't there? So you've got classically anxiety pattern and avoidance pattern. So like if there's a stressor, if there's a challenge, if there's something in your life that comes up that's stressy, do you run towards it like a magnet and try and fix it? Like some people do. It's what my partner does, is like, absolutely like, that makes it worse I think. But are you drawn to, are you drawn to stress or do you just naturally avoid it. I'm very good at avoiding it, but that isn't both sides have their ups and downs, right? But then it kind of, you know, it's kind of nice we work well with each other because he makes me a little more engaged in things and I help him calm down a bit about other stuff. But I, you know, I'm kind of, what I find interesting at the moment is the tension between the urge It was kind of like what you were saying about the Nietzsche, you know, Nietzsche, he kind of had this line of become who you are. That was his drive, right? So there's that one idea of that there is a version of you that's out there somewhere that you want to clear everyone out of the way so you can just, you know, focus on that. And I think if you get married or you've kids and stuff, that kind of tension, that sense of like, can be very strong. And then there's the other completely conflicting impulse, which is, well, maybe the best version of myself, rather than being out there somewhere, which I'm never going to reach, right? Is actually...

Right here.

Yeah, maybe the self is something that extends and is sort of active and fluid and extends out into the relationships that you're in now. But both are important. What's hard is... I think this is just generally in life is hard.

Is.

That like, you know, conflicts, ambivalence is important and again real, it's part of life that things conflict and things are ambiguous and things are messy and that that's okay and actually it's okay to let completely conflicting opposing ideas settle. I mean, politically, you know, we're so like this now that we each think the other side is is just like mad and evil and we've kind of forgotten that, which is kind of what sacrifice is about. We've forgotten that actually the dialogue between the sides, forgetting the personalities involved, but the dialogue between the sides is actually where you find humanity and where truth is ultimately going to be found, right? You've got two very different narratives about, you know, the conservative urge is essentially about protecting the group, right? It's about holding things together, hierarchies holding that together, but it can happen at the expense of the weaker individuals. And then the left-wing narrative is about protecting the weaker individuals.

And it does... Tearing down... Yeah, and.

Letting it doesn't, if that can happen at the expense of the overall structure, that's fine. So, you know, sometimes we think as, sometimes we do have to think as a group, and sometimes we have to think as individuals. and we've evolved along both lines, and both sides ultimately are going to be important. So dialogue is important, and likewise in life things are messy and they're complex and they're ambiguous, and there is a, you know, growing up is tolerating ambiguity, I think.

That's true. What is your greatest fear?

Or fears. You're gonna forget about my hand and give me a really hearty handshake at.

The end of this?

I don't like spiders. I don't. Greatest fear, I don't know. I think getting it all wrong, maybe letting, I hate the idea of letting my partner down. like, you know, just sort of letting things and people down, letting myself down. I kind of really, I really think about these things and try and get them right and I try and communicate them through the work that I do.

And.

You can only ever be good enough, right? Again, it's not about ever being, you.

Can give your best, yeah. Yeah, you can't control how people respond or react.

Exactly.

Exactly.

To the way you show up, right? Yeah. So it's not a kind of anxiety fear, but in terms of the things that I think about that, you know, I, part of me, as I said, wants, like, everyone clear out the way and I just want to pursue these things. But then what am I going to be? I think I, I think I'd become in this great, fascinating version of myself. I'd probably just become some weird old man. You know, we, we cross state, don't we? We develop like a sort of a hard shell when we're on our own for too long. And what relationships do is they make you more conscious of all the things that are just mad about you, because otherwise you're unconscious of them and it's the things you're unconscious of that will own you and will come back and bite you. So relationships are so important because I'm naturally kind of a bit of a loner. It's like, like I'm really aware at the moment of that tension. That for me, in the kind of middle bit of life, that's kind of, that. that's what I find really interesting at the moment.

Since you are, you do like to be alone, it sounds like, and be kind of in your art and your crafts and your photography, like isolated in some sense of the word. But I'm hearing you say that you, when you are around people or your partner, you don't want to let those people down.

Is that what I'm hearing you say? It's, yeah, because that's a potential for sort of not only letting other people down, but just becoming this intolerable, horrible, miserable person. Gotcha. It's just, gotcha. Trying to get that stuff, you know, trying to get that stuff right. Are you like, how old are you?

35.

35, okay. So you've probably got a while before those sort of things start to become pressing.

Well, I think, you know, I've been talking a lot about this in just in my work that, and through all the people that I've interviewed over the years of different backgrounds and stuff, there's really three main fears that I've found that most of us have. Yeah. the fear of failure. We don't go after something or pursue something or speak or do music or whatever it may be because we don't want to fail. That fear of like, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, right? The fear of success where then we're leaving our pack, our community, because if we're succeeding and they're not coming with us, then I'm alone and they're not going to accept me or the pressure that I have perform again. That's a repeat the success, right? You might have felt that when you had this hit show and it's like, it's got to be better. It's got to be better, right? And then the third one.

Spiders.

Spiders, yes. Spiders and snakes and heights. The fear of judgment. Oh yeah. Of either way, you know, making sure that people like us, you know, fear of like, well, either one, if I succeed or fail, are people gonna like me and for me, the judgment was always the fear until I addressed it about five years ago. Because as an athlete, I was taught that you had to fail to succeed. And I was the youngest of four. I was this tall when I was like 11 and just like goofy and gangly. I wasn't like this stud athlete or whatever. I was the one that everyone made fun of. I was in special needs classes. It was hard for me to read and write all through college, almost flunked English in high school, all those things. So I had a lot of insecurities about the perception people had about me. Like my image, my ego. What do they think about me? What do they say about me? Am I saying the right things? I always thought I was off. So that judgment was what drove me to be a great athlete, to succeed, to achieve, to perform well, and to win at everything. So it was like accomplishment driven. And I realized that failure wasn't a fear for me because coaches taught me, you,'ve got to practice. You're going to miss shots. That's how you learn. So I was like, I'm going to fail every day. And that's okay. That's the foundation for achievement. And that's all I wanted was the success. But it was like, did I slip? Did I look silly? Did I... You know, the fear of.

What people think about me.

Yeah.

So you're still leaving it out there. That's what's interesting. What's that? You're still living that out. same fear of judgment. You're still living it out, but you've turned it into something.

I'm aware of it. Very aware of it. Well, I started to accept it, and five years ago, I opened up about being sexually abused as a kid, and I've talked about it many times on this show and wrote a book about all that stuff. And it wasn't until I fully opened up about all my fears and insecurities about that and many other things. It wasn't until I opened up about it And my fear was like, everyone's gonna judge me. Everyone's gonna, no one's gonna love me, no one's gonna accept me. They're just gonna make fun of me even more. Yeah. And I had everything to lose, right? I had a successful business and career and everything, but I was like, no one can know about this stuff. No one can know that you're gay, whatever. Maybe that was a feeling, I don't know.

Yeah, totally.

And for me, it was like the most shameful thing that I held onto for 25 years or until I was 30. And when it happened, I was like, man, this weight, like no one cares.

No one cares.

And in fact, they cared more about me at that moment. They were like, I respect you more. I trust you more. 'Cause I felt like something was, your ego was in the way.

And when people are like that, when people have that thing that like people when they're closeted, for example, whatever it is, there's always a bubble around them. Like I knew I had it around me and I have friends that have come out since. and there's just a bubble and you just can't quite get to them because.

They'Re, because they're connecting. Something missing, right?

Yeah, something. And that was, that was amazing. And you were probably doing the same as was I. And then, so people only, people only.

Go, ah, and they step in closer. It's a, it's a good experience. And all of a sudden, everyone was telling me vulnerable things about them that I never knew.

And I was like, wow, we can connect on a deeper level.

Yeah.

It's a whole, it's amazing thing to.

Kind of discover, isn't it? It's such a simple thing for everybody else. It's amazing thing to discover. But once I kind of let go, listen, I still have an ego and like, you know, I want to, you know, perform well in all these things. I want to do a good job and do all that stuff. But it's like, I care so much less about the way I look and the way people are judging me. Because I'm like, they're gonna judge me whether I'm doing nothing or doing something. Either way, the people are gonna judge me for a moment and then they're gonna let go and judge someone else. Like, whatever. And so I think I've, come to the point where I've accepted myself. And because I used to not think I was enough, and that's why I was constantly living in one of these fears. Yeah. So, and I think once we can start to just accept who we are as opposed to saying, well, I'm not the perfect version of myself like you were talking about. Let me be where I'm at right now and appreciate the moment.

And, you know, I think the most we can hope for often is just being conscious of these things. There is a, we can't always, it's not easy just to go, oh, great. And then change anything. but being conscious means that it owns you less. So from the word go, we come into this world and we are given powerful messages from our parents, our caregivers, our authority figures kind of going.

Here.

Is the relationship between you and the world. You are small, the world is big. You have no power, the world has power. We learn very quickly what that is. What are its a skewed vision. We have, you know, Jung talks about the greatest burden the child has to bear is the unlived life of its parents. How great is that? So that's like right on this from the word go.

Putting a pressure on it.

Yeah, yeah. But we are adapting creatures, right? The thing that makes us so great at evolution, because we adapt, really starts to kind of focus up a bit with this sort of life thing, because we adapt to that, we internalize it, we go, okay, so I'll think of myself like this, and I'll think of the world like this. And we start to kind of live that out. We develop a template of what love means from our parents, which is entirely realistic, unrealistic, because you see all the nice stuff, like they presumably, hopefully, please, give us the best side of themselves. We don't see the arguments they have when they're, you know, we know what it's like now as adults, what the experience of parenting is like. We don't see them screaming and arguing and losing sleep. Maybe you did. But very often at least, so there's a idea of like this template of what love is that isn't really like realistic and we start to bring that into our, that becomes our template for our adult stories. That's all we know, right? And then we're projecting all of that.

Stuff onto our, and expecting certain things, yeah.

And we live out these same patterns. Everything comes back again and again because we just the stuff we're not conscious of is the stuff that rules us. And if we bury, you know, we bury one part of us like if you're, you know, the homophobic, I don't know, homophobic televangelist who, you know, preaches against all that and then gets, you know, caught in bed with some guy and there's like a big scandal. It'll come back and bite you if you bury this. things, you know? So the most we can do, I think, is become conscious of how we adapt in these ways to skewed messages, skewed, you know, our compasses are all over the place. We internalize it, we think that's the truth, and then we go through life kind of looking for things that in a familiar way repeat that pattern. So people can have the same problems with relationships again and again.

Because that's what they know. Because that's what they know. That's what it's supposed to be is true. How do you think, no matter where we're at in our lives, how do we rewire and master our mind? How can we say that you're asking.

Me like I know. Bear in mind that the only reason why I have any language for this stuff is that it doesn't come naturally. If it came naturally, if it was all second, I wouldn't have the language for it.

That's why you're an expert, because you've studied this and with all the experiments you've done and all the people you've worked with just by observing people, how do you think. I feel like you've had thousands of interactions with people where you've been able to set things up for them, tell a story or not tell a story to have them go in a certain direction. So how do we rewire our minds to at least be aware of what we want, what we don't want, and how do we become more of a master over our minds as opposed to it being a master of us?

I think we set our goals realistically. We allow for failure to be comfortable. We align ourselves with that x equals y line and not try and crank everything up here. Because if we're trying to do that, we're just buying into someone's system somewhere and we're just making, we're going to make life miserable for us eventually and we're going to blame ourselves when that happens.

What do you mean failure comfortable?

Meaning be okay with failure? Yeah, to let, I mean, even, is it even failure? I mean, I don't know. It's just the different experiences. It's learning.

Yeah.

How you make that, make your peace with the fact that life isn't gonna always produce what you'd like it to, and make that okay. That's huge. And as I said, the best we can do is become more conscious of these things. So that can happen through psychotherapy, right? A psychotherapist is gonna hopefully, like, death cycle, psychoanalysis, that kind of thing, increases your sort of dialogue with yourself. It increases your consciousness about those things, but it's very expensive and it's long form. A lot of people aren't interested, but that's one way of doing it. Another way, I guess, is to look honestly at your life and see where these recurring patterns are. What keeps cropping up? What am I a bit obsessed by? What am I constantly trying to avoid? What am I What just keeps coming back and biting me? What does life keep throwing at me that's bad and causing problems? And then we just trace that back, see where it goes back to. Are there any other possibilities of any other ways of behaving? And it's not like it just goes great and then you change, but you become more conscious of it and then it's like a little drip by drip feeding into the soul that can make a difference. I think, you know, these are sort of modest goals.

I'm curious, who is more influential in your youth, mom or your dad? To you, more influential?

Well, both. My dad may be kind of, in a sort of negative sense, I mean, there was not like any bad blood, but this is quite common, I think, with like boys that are gay growing up. is that you tend to have the stronger bond with the mother and the father's sort of, it's just kind of a bit of a disconnect there. So, but of course both end up being hugely influential because both of those impulses inform who you are as an adult.

And people ask, well, what are the easiest and most important habits to start building? Going back to the basics, making your bed, drinking water. This first thing I do is I drink a tall glass glass of water. Most people drink coffee right away or tea. Tall glass of water. The brain needs to get activated.