UNTOLD TRUTH About Money: 7 Steps To BUILD WEALTH From Nothing! | Lewis Howes

Everyone teaches you how to save money, but almost no one teaches you how to spend it.

If you are not in the market, it's the most dangerous thing. This is so counterintuitive, so I hope your audience is listening.

You have to be patiently aggressive, 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.

Everyone teaches you how to save money, but almost no one teaches you how to spend it. And I wanna challenge people, I have this principle I call the D to C principle. And instead of being derisive and saying, oh, so stupid, that's ridiculous, I would never do that. I actually wanna encourage everyone to be C, curious. Why would a guy like Lewis intentionally spend money on a business class ticket? Man, he earns good money. He has a lot of options. He must know something that I don't, and I want to understand why. So from D to C, and if you start to take that perspective, especially on high earners and how they spend their money, all of a sudden you stop saying, that's ridiculous, or if I had a million dollars, I would never do that. Instead, you say, why did that person spend on that? And I want to know, maybe I don't agree. Maybe you become a multimillionaire and you don't want to spend on business class. You just don't care. But it's interesting that you do it and I'd like to know more. A lot of folks think that once you make 250K or 2.5 million, whatever the number is, that suddenly you're just throwing money around left and right. And that's not quite correct. It might seem like that because to spend, say, $7,000 for a business class international flight just seems like, oh my God, that's so crazy. But I want you to get more nuanced. You're telling your assistant, I don't mind spending, but save. Yes. What I do with my financial system is I set a target each year. This is how much money I'm going to save and invest. And those numbers are aggressive. That's a lot of money.

You're going hard. Yeah, like every year. 10%, 30%.

Yeah, so anywhere between those ranges. And we have folks who-- Of which you earn. Correct. And then remember, whenever I make any unexpected income, let's say I did a speaking gig or something. Yeah, I might get myself some-- I might go out to dinner. But the rest I'm just putting straight in investments. Wow. Okay, so that money grows aggressively. And I also wanna remind everybody, especially the entrepreneurs watching, I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs. You wouldn't believe how many entrepreneur friends.

I know who have a good business.

And they don't invest at all. And that's a huge mistake. What should we be investing in if you have a good business? Simple low cost target date funds is a great way to go. Entrepreneurs. Index funds. Yeah, index funds. They get a little too smart for their own good. They say, I could just put that.

Money in my business.

And I always say, look, I'm glad you have a business that's throwing off tons of cash. That's awesome. Most businesses don't last 80 years. So be smart. Give yourself a small plan B. Put 5K a month, 10K a month, whatever is appropriate for your level of success. And hey, maybe your business does really well. That's awesome. But maybe one day something goes wrong. Always want to be prepared. You never want to have your back against the wall. So I just want to encourage everybody, whether you're making 250K or 2.5 million for the high earners here, Don't get too smart for your own good. Keep investing and saving.

What are the three or four main things you invest in with that 10 to 30% a year? And does it change year to year?

Yeah, I'll kind of walk you through for the high earners and then we can talk about people 100K and less. So once you have a certain amount of capital, you do have a few opportunities that you probably didn't have before. Everybody has this idea that, you know, the rich have all these crazy tax breaks and captive insurance and this and that. And I've looked into all that stuff, right? I know.

Insurance companies and all these other things, right? Yeah.

Here's the truth. The truth is- Some of it's a.

Little sketchy, but yeah.

Definitely. And I'll say my core values are that when it comes to things like.

Taxes- I love your principle on this.

I'm very conservative. I'm like, dude, only in this country could I have been this successful.

I love this mindset.

I'm happy to pay my taxes. It means that I had the opportunity to create something great. if I pay an extra 5,000 or 30,000, it doesn't change my life at all. And I want to be able to give back to the society that enabled me to do what I do.

That's a powerful mindset. And it gets you away from, you still want to optimize tax breaks that are out there, but it gets you away from trying to constantly look for some of the shortcuts or like schemes or something.

It's like, Yes, I've always found that the people especially entrepreneurs who talk about tax breaks all the time are typically the most unsuccessful ones. Two reasons. One, why are you talking about tax breaks instead of growing your business? And two, it's a very scarcity driven mindset. Ooh, I only have this much that I have to protect when really you can just grow the pie and your taxes are simply a proportion.

Just make more.

Just make more. Now, yes, you do want to optimize and take advantage of all Legal tax breaks. So as you earn more, you do have more opportunities. You have not only your 401k, you have all kinds of advanced IRA options, you have HSAs, you have a variety of things. But at a certain point, if you're making enough, you're going to max all of those out. Yep. Okay.

So what do you do when you.

Max it all out? So then the next step is to simply create a taxable account. It's just a typical non-retirement account, just that Vanguard or where I use Vanguard, whatever you want, and you just continue to invest. So that's one. And that's going to keep making you money over the long term. It's just you're not going get those tax breaks from a 401k and IRA, etc. The other thing is, as you accumulate more and more assets, you're going to start to notice a lot of different people are going to come with opportunities. Dude, I get text messages from these crazy start like, hey, I'm opening up a bar in Brooklyn. I'm like, I don't want your stupid bar. I'm not investing in that. I could burn my cash easier. But you're going to want, as you start to accumulate a lot, you're going to want to do, have a little fun with your money when it comes to investing. So some people want to do crypto. I think a lot of these people are complete nut jobs. Look, you crypto.

I put a little bit in there just to have fun, but I was like, thank goodness I didn't put more.

In there because everyone's losing their money. Exactly, and they're all, okay, I don't even want to get into crypto because I'm going to get a lot of angry emails. Hey, if you want to email me about your angry crypto opinions, just send it to trash@iwillteachyoutoberich.com, don't send it to me. But you know what? I like what you said. You took a little bit, you had some fun. Yeah, had some fun. 5 to 10% once you've got all your other stuff automated, you've got your index funds, locked down, HSA, your different accounts. I don't have any problem. I think you should take 5 to 10% and you should have some fun with it. For me, I did angel investing and I basically learned that I suck. My angel investing is not good.

I haven't made any money.

Yeah, my deal flow sucks, my choices were okay, some hit, most didn't. I basically just wrote that money off. But it was fun and it allowed.

Me to have an outlet. And you learned. I learned to meet people and you, yeah.

Yeah, so if you want to do crypto, if you want to invest in somebody's bar, you want to do angel investing, if you're qualified, et cetera, Be my guest, but don't jump to that first. Get all your stuff automated. And at a certain point, the compounding is so insane, you will start to actually earn more from your investments than you will from your income. Even if you're making 500k a year.

From the index funds you're talking about, if you're investing in that. What if the market's going down or up? Should you even worry about that? Let's say you put a half a million in. It went up 100,000 over a couple of years, but then it went back to the original investment. Should you be like, Oh my gosh, I need to take this out.

Do not do that. I'll give you a real example.

I just put two years of my money into this and it's still the same amount.

I should have just left it in the bank. No, you shouldn't have left it in the bank. All right, so this happened to me just about two weeks ago. So the market went down and I hardly ever log. I log in about once a month to my investments. You see like, oh, yeah. And really you should not be checking your investments. Check every 10 years. Once a month is good and like, don't, you're not a day trader. Okay, so I happened to log in and I saw that in the 11 days of that month, in one of my accounts, I had lost $75,000. Okay, so for everybody listening, yeah, how would you react if you lost $75,000 in 11 days?

Most people would be freaked out.

They'd be freaked out. They would pull the money out. Yeah, which is exactly the opposite of what you should do. So everyone says this common thing and they just roll their eyes, oh, buy low, sell high. But in reality, they actually buy high and sell low. Do you know what I did? I did nothing. I logged in, I felt no emotion. It wasn't like my life is over. It was like watching someone offer me concrete to eat. Like I felt nothing. I'm like, nah, that's fine, whatever. I just closed the window. The key there is every month my system is automatically investing. It's called dollar cost averaging. It's just automatically investing. And you should set the same thing up too. You shouldn't be paying attention manually. You shouldn't be sending a check. It just works automatically. And so I knew this month the market is down. And if you think about any other thing you buy, if the price of toothpaste goes down, you're happy. If the price of milk goes down, you're happy. The only time we get weird is when the price of the market goes down and then we're like, oh, let me pull all my money out. Bad move. The price went down. If you're young and you have a long time before you need the money, you're getting the market at a discount.

You get excited.

You should get excited. So I just said, Great, it went down fine. Doesn't bother me. And I just closed the window. And a few days later, my system will just purchase it again. So it's up, it's down, it doesn't matter in the short term. But over the long term, we know that the market tends to return about 7 to 8% over time. But it can go up, it can go down. And so you do not want to be paying attention in the short term.

Let's say you've got a half a million to a million dollars extra cash laying around. you've maxed out all your IRAs, you've got five to 10 grand a month going to your index funds, you've dabbled in the smaller investments and startups and you've done it all.

Yeah.

Got a little bit in crypto, you've tried everything. What should you do with that extra million dollars a year?

Okay, great question. First off, this is like somebody saying to a fitness instructor, I've done everything, what should I do next? And you know what that fitness instructor is gonna say? They're gonna say, When you say everything, what do you really mean? Like show me, are you doing foam rolling? Are you doing this? Are you all balanced? For the person who's doing this, I'm gonna give you your answer, but I'm gonna first say, are you sure? Have you planned out, so you know that 10 years from now you're gonna buy a house. Do you have a 20% down payment set aside? I do, and I have no plans to buy a house anytime soon, but I have 20% set aside for a house. That moment.

Yeah.

Yeah, for when, so I already planned, for what I know is coming, even though I have no interest in it today. What about the first year of your kid's life? Do you have that set aside? What about XYZ? Are you taking care of your parents when they get older? One thing that I really love to do is talk about relationships. So I love to invite my family once a year for a big, big vacation where we can all stay in a house and there's a chef and all this stuff and we can all be there and the kids can be playing. Is that something that's important to you?

Cool.

So plan for that. Now if you've done all that stuff, you got your six month emergency fund, you've got your investments automated on autopilot, and you still have money left over, you're in an awesome position, and now you can do a couple of things. One, if you wanna keep growing that money, you can simply invest it in a non-retirement taxable account, and that money will grow like crazy. If you're putting in 10, 20K a month, that money will turn into massive amounts. And if you guys don't believe me, just go search for compound interest calculator, Bankrate has a really good one and plug in 20K a month for 10 years and that's it. Just stop and watch what happens at the end of that. What does that go?

7, 8%.

Yeah, at 7% returns and watch what happens. It becomes like a tsunami. You cannot stop it. So that's one. The other thing is if you wanna invest in a little bit of fun stuff. If you're like, hey, I wanna take 10% of this and invest in like this crazy investment my buddy's starting a thing. Go ahead. Just be prepared to write it off. Maybe it works, maybe not. And then from there, you should also remember a third thing, and nobody really talks about this. Maybe it's time to increase your quality of life. Maybe instead of staying in the middle back seat, it's time to upgrade to the exit row.

Right.

Or business class. Business class. Or maybe it's time to eat at a different restaurant. Maybe it's time to really think about your money dial and say, hey, I always claim that wellness is important, and yet I'm still eating like the same old thing I used to eat 10 years ago. Maybe it's time to upgrade what I eat and where I work out and all that kind to my gear, you can do that. You've made it. You already won the basic game. So now you get to benefit from it. What about real estate?

There's a lot of people, you're either, I hear people that are all in on real estate investment or they're kind of like all in on the market.

Yeah, I think that real estate, so a lot of people are gonna hate me after I say this. I know you guys have all been told since you were like two years old, real estate is the best investment ever. And it turns out that's not really true. A couple of things that might surprise you. If you're buying one home.

If you're buying a house and living in it. if you're buying multiple units or buying multiple homes and that's your business, it might be a better move.

Correct, let me make the distinction. So most people in America are told that the American life, the American dream is graduate from college, get married, buy a house, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and you made it. And I think we all just have to look at people who are a little bit older than us to realize that might not be our American dream. We might wanna travel more. We might wanna work remotely. I mean, here we are in the middle of a weekday, chit-chatting and sharing it with millions of people. This is our dream. So I wanna challenge people to really question what you've been taught. That's number one. Number two, most people who buy a house and live in it think that it is the best investment. But most people have never really- It's.

Like my piggy bank.

Yeah, they think that. They don't understand that when you spend money on a house, You've incurred tons of phantom costs. You have taxes, you have maintenance, you have all kinds of things that you don't count. And if you actually factor all those numbers in, real estate often, in fact, many times, is not a great investment at all. It's a place to live and you have these phrases like you're throwing money away on rent. It's not true. Your landlord's making a profit, otherwise they wouldn't do it. That's not true. Your landlord can't charge you whatever they want. They can only charge you what the market bear. So if you search my name in real estate, you'll see all the numbers played out. Now, on the other hand, if you are a real estate investor and you're disciplined, that's a different story and that can be effective. But mom and pop who are thinking that they bought their house in 1970 for $200,000 and now it's worth 600,000, they think they made 400,000. Actually not. If they had taken that money and put it in the market, they would probably have much, much more.

Really?

Yeah. So how do we invest without fear of, oh, it's going down, I need to take it out, or like trying to time it?

How do we do that? Great question. It's one of the main reasons I wrote the book. I always tell people, if you just read the second chapter of the book and nothing else, it'll change your life. You can do that with multiple chapters, but that chapter is really about teaching people that winter is coming. We all know winter's coming, right? It's quite a phrase. But that winter is the best time on earth. And I know that's counterintuitive. I don't mean like being a positive thinker. I mean pure facts. So in the book, I take you through 10 facts. I'll give you a couple of them right now. The first fact I give people is why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. You're a millennial, right? So you grew up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now?

33.

Okay, so you were, what, 27?

2008? Yeah, 27, I guess.

Yeah, 27, 28 years old. So you're a young man and you're watching the world melting down in front of you. For most millennials, they are the first generation since the generation that went through the depression that is not investing at the ratio they need to even close.

And they have more debt than everyone probably, right?

With all the, they have more college debt than everyone. Absolutely true.

I have a friend that has $400,000 of debt, dental school.

President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago while he was still president.

What? No.

I swear to God. Oh my gosh. It's mind boggling. And he had a bunch of scholarships, but the last bit, it took him that long. So what I tell them is listen, paying off your debt's not enough. You've got to become an owner or you're always going to be in that place. So yes, pay off your debt, but here's what you need to know. You got to become an owner. You got to get in the game, but you got to understand the rules of the game. You don't know the rules of the game. The old phrase is, you know, when a person with experience meets a person with money, we know the the phrase, the person with the money ends up with the experience. The person with the experience ends up with your money, right? So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed. But the most important thing is this. Winter's coming, but people react. So let's take last year. Last January 2016, we had the worst stock market opening in the history of the stock market. Worst, first, I think it was 10 days. There was a drop of $2.3 trillion with the T. Crazy. Everybody's freaking thinking the bear market's here, the market's over, the crash is here. I think the market dropped 800 points one day. And on that day, all the richest people in the world were in Davos, Switzerland, you know, for the big conference that they do every year. And they went there, MSNBC went there, and everybody's freaking, what's happening? What are we going to do? And they said, let's go ask Ray Dalio. Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio as, if you're not in the financial business, probably never heard of him. You've probably heard of Warren Buffett, but Ray Dalio has been more. you have a $5 billion net worth and $100 million to give him or he wouldn't talk to you 10 years ago. Now he doesn't care how much money you have, he won't talk to you because he's got a close fund. But they go and they put value on television, CNBC, he's the king. What do we do? And he says, well, you don't need to panic. Corrections happen all the time. But you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down. And he said, I spent 15 years of my life to perfect such a strategy. All of my money's in that. and he said, it's called All Seasons, and I've never revealed it before, but I gave it to Tony Robbins. He extracted from me and it's his book. So you ought to go read his book. This is what he says on national television, the data markets are crashing. And that day, to give you an idea, which is the beginning of February, I think it was nine days into February, the market was down 9% in the first five weeks of the year. His strategy, which he gave me, which has made money 85% of the time for the last 75 years. It's averaged a 10% return just under. and the average loss when it 15% loss was 1.6. So if you go to Vegas and you could spend 85% of time make money and when you made money it was 10% your loss is 1.6, you can go forever. His plan made 2% while the market was down 9. So it was up 11% difference. Now I'm not suggesting that's the only strategy to do, there's many. His is the smoothest ride with the least risk. But what it did was combination of that and then right after that I interviewed Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. He was the head of our economy, the most powerful man in finance for 19 years, four presidents, he was there running. I was just with President Clinton this last week. He was the Fed chair for him. And I interviewed him for like two hours, or three hours off stage, two hours in front. And then I asked him, in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could put the Fed today, what would you do? And he looks at me and as I said, he leans forward and he says, resign. So I look at that and go, Oh my God, I need to write a book that'll free people. So here's what will free you. Everyone's afraid of the crash. So here's what we need to know. Two terms you should understand. Correction versus crash. Anytime the market drops from its high by 10% or more up to 20%, it's called a correction. If it drops 20% or more up to 80%, like in the Great Depression, then it's called a crash or called a bear market. So how often does a correction happen? How often do we have to be prepared for it? Since 1900, we've had a correction on average every year for 116 years. So when is winter coming? This year on average. It's like how often does winter come? You wouldn't be surprised if it stormed and rained. Now some winters are long, some are short, some are harsh, some are light, but winter always comes. So I wasn't panicked when this happened last year. I'm not panicked whenever it happens because I know it's supposed to be. How long does it last? Average, 56 days. Okay, so just under two months. What's the average drop during that time? 14% over the last 30 years, 13.5 of the last 100 years. So I use the more recent one. 14% gets your attention, right? 14% you get a little gut check. But here's what you need to know. 80% of all corrections never become a bear market. 80%. So all this fear and what people do is what you said you did is they see it, it's freaking out, I'm losing money, I'm the hell out of here. And they get out. The stock market never took a dime from anybody. Only you can take it from you. You sold, that's why you lost.

Right.

Right?

So if you look back and say, what was it like in 2008? I can remember vividly being with my platinum partners and saying, you, see these $80 stocks? This is six months before the crash. I told them in April, I brought them to Dubai and I said, these stocks are going to go to eight and some are going to go to a buck. And by October, and I told them what to do. So they were able to get out. October, I go on the Today Show in October of 2008 and they go, Tony, there's been $3 trillion meltdown. Pump the country up, you got four minutes. Ready, go. That's not what I do, first of all, and I said, that'd be a lie. I'm not gonna bomb at that point, the $80 stocks were eight. I said, some of those, I said, I'm not a market forecaster, but I work with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest investors in the history of the world, in the biggest market crash in history, 1987. he made 200% when everybody else was losing their entire life. I've been coaching him continuously now for 24 years, every single day. So I said, I work with the best in the world, and they're telling me based on history in the 30s and history in the 70s, this $8 stock some are going to be a buck. And I remember the day in March of 2009, Citibank, which had been, I think, $70, sold for 97 cents You could go and take your money out of the ATM, it cost you more to take your money out than to own the bank, right? And then I told people, it'll jump from 99 cents to 6, 10, 12 dollars in a month or two, and it's exactly what it did, right? So what you gotta know is corrections happen every year. You got another couple months, gotta know it's 14% and you won't lose because 80% of the time it doesn't go to a bear. Now, what about the bear? The bear market, it happens to give you an idea, in the last 100 years, every three to five years, you've gone eight without one. We're way overdue. In modern years, last 30 years, it's about every five years. The average length of a bear is one year. The average drop is 33%. A third of those drops go 40% or above. I don't care how well prepared you are, that's a scary thing. But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime to go from wherever you are financially to where you want to be. I hope your audience is listening right now. Hear me. If you want to leapfrog and you're a millennial and you think there's no future or you're, you know, a baby boomer and you think you're too old and it's too late, the greatest gift you have is coming. I know it doesn't sound like it. This is not positive thinking bullshit. This is the truth. Wall Street, the stock market is the only place that when things go on sale, people freak out. if I said, you like Ferraris?

Sure.

If I said to you, Ferraris go on sale for 50% off.

Awesome.

But when I tell you, Apple's on sale for 50% off, you go, oh, what am I gonna do here? What's wrong? The whole world's coming to an end. If you think about it, how old are you?

33.

33. So let's assume if you were 35 and you lived to 85, you got 50, 52 years ahead of you. That means you have 52 more Corrections to live through.

Right.

That means you're probably in those 50 years gonna have 10 more bear markets to live through. If you're gonna have a gut checks every time or you're gonna leave out of it. If you didn't participate because you thought, oh, the market's too volatile, I can't trust it, all that stuff, you missed 250% return in the last eight years. I mean, you missed out on everything while you're waiting for things to be better. And if you won't do it when it's like this, when it crashes, you're not gonna get in. So here's the good news about the bear. Good news about the bear, average ones a year. Could be longer, but that's the average. Could be shorter. But here's what's cool. Every single bear market in the history of the United States has led to a bull market. Meaning right afterwards. So 2008, this plummeting, what happened in 2009? Up 67% in a year. I can show you every single bear market and the next year when it comes out, it's this explosion. Now, that's not true in every market in the world. It's true for two centuries in the United States. So that's why Warren Buffett says, I want to be greedy when people are afraid. And I want to be afraid when people agree. If you remember 2008, he was telling everybody, buy, he was having the time of his life. Buy, buy, buy, everything's on sale. So what you have to do to become unshakable is turn, the metaphor I use is turn the snake into the rope. Meaning, we all know the story, it's the middle of the night, you're walking through the yard or someplace and you see a snake and you freak out, you pull back, you come in the morning and it's a rope. Once you know it's a rope, you're never afraid again. I want to take for people investing and show them how to turn that snake into the rope it really is. And I'll tell you one final stat on all this. People always say, and you started to bring it up, timing.

How do I time it?

Right now, things are too expensive. I want to wait. People have been saying that for eight years. Is there going to be a correction? Yes. But when it corrects, you want to invest again. You'll get dollar cost averaging. If you paid a little too much here, you'll pay being less here. It'll bring the average price to reasonable place. It's going to allow you to succeed. But here's what people need to know about timing.

If you are not in the market.

It'S the most dangerous thing. This is so counterintuitive. So I hope your audience is listening. Let me tell you, research, there's two different research projects. One was done by JP Morgan. I just spoke for them the other day at their alternative investments conference. And to be in the room, there are 400 people. You have to have a billion dollar network to get in the room. Crazy. It was mind boggling. Right? So JP Morgan did a study and also Schwab did a separate study. 20 year studies. In the last 20 years, to give you an idea, the average S&P 500, that index has produced 8.2%. Over 30 years, it was 10.28. But in the last 20 years, a little bit less. Still great. You double your money, you know, roughly you're in a position where you double the money a little more than every, you know, what is it now, 7.2, so it'd be like a little more than 10 years. Here's what they found out. If you missed the 10 best trading days in 20 years, because you're trying to time the market and you're not in it during one of those days, you went from 8.2% return over that period per annum per year, it dropped down almost half, 4.5. What are the chances of you knowing the past 10 days to trade in 20 years? None. Warren Buffett said, Market timers and market forecasters are only there to make fortune tellers look good. 'Cause no one can do it successfully. Even if they do it for a while, it doesn't last. It's luck. Jack Bogle told me, he started Vanguard, you know, $3 trillion company. He said, We took gorillas a thousand in a room and had them flip coins. And we said, How many times got heads, how many got tails? Just gorillas flipping them randomly. And he said, One gorilla in that set of those turns flipped heads 21 times in a row. Now, when you look at that and see all these gorillas doing it, you look on and say, what a lucky gorilla. He said, But in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 in a row, you go, what a brilliant investor.

Right.

What a genius. And it's just averages in luck at that time. Yeah. In fact, he showed me that 96% of all mutual funds fail to match the market over a 10-year period of time. Only 4% make it and they're constantly changing. So the statistic I want people to know is, if you missed the 20 best trading days in the last 20 years, just 20 days in 20 years, one day a year in 20 years, and you're wrong, you're wrong on timing, Your 8.2 doesn't drop to 4.5, it drops to 2%. You might as well been unrolling a bond at no risk. If you miss the top 40 trading days to give you an idea, you are minus 2%. So you've got to get in the market. And if you're saying, what about my timing though? Study was done by Schwab. If you've got the perfect timing for the year, the right day, the best possible day to buy, some people, the worst day, someone else dollar cost averages, keeps spending the same amount every month regardless of prices, and somebody stays in cash. Who has the worst return?

The guy trying to time him or no?

Cash.

The cash.

You get nothing for cash.

Gotcha.

The guy who was the best had the best timing.

Got it.

The guy that was the worst, the guy that dollar cost average and the one that was on the worst day were almost identical. But after seven years, there was only a $20,000 difference in accumulated assets between the worst day and the best day. The worst was not being in the market. See, you've got to be there. And I'm not saying put everything in stocks. We teach in the book all these different assets. But stocks in the last two centuries have provided the highest returns. So you have to have significant exposure to that if you want to get the highest return.

Got it. And what I love in the book, you say that 80% of financial success is psychological, 20% is mechanical. So it's not about timing and trying to figure all these things out. when's the best thing or the best fund or best investment?

This is not about trading, it's about investing. Trading is trying to do that and most people lose money trading. Even the guys that tell you make money, see how they're making money two or three years from now, they usually eat the dust, right? Exactly. So, yes, you've got to have the psychology and my best way of psychology is not to pump you up. If you want to be unshakable, you want to be educated and you want to know the facts. You want to know, look, every five years I'm going to get a bear, maybe three years, I'm going to get a correction every year, but I'm going to be in the market and make money. Do you know that six of the 10 best trading days in the 20 years happened within two weeks of the worst trading day? So people need to understand you gotta be in the market because the worst days will bring you your best days.

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. simple. You know, if you look at it as a game, just like anything, you can get better at it, right? Like, I don't, 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 when 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. it's okay.

So he needs an investment.

He. 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. No sign. But it's the Holy Grail. So the. The OPG. $451,000. Okay.

Wow.

And just five years prior to that, it sold for $92,000. So, from $92,000 to $451,000 in 2016, and he calls me. And a 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.

Of course he wants to. So I'm not going to pay you that. I mean, you know, he wants 650,000. 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 cuff up, you know, 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 Newport 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. 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. 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 because it's me because I'm willing to sell it. Right?

Yeah.

So it's on eBay, right? If you go on eBay right now, you tap in Wayne Gretzky OPG, it's on market right now for a million dollars.

Right?

Wow.

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 because opportunity is going to come up and it's a doubles game. So if I put a doubles game... 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? OK, 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 $2,000. 42816, 3264, 2565, 2 of a million. A thousand dollars is nine doubles away from a million.

Wow.

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, 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, so the the doubles now becomes investment opportunities. You know, what you buy into. Do you start a company where has a high value, you know, 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. That, you know, 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, it's 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 it 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, 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, you look at the numbers, you're like, okay, I don't know if I'm going to do commercial real estate, you know, but if I find some small if I team up with the 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, you know, flipping opportunities fairly quickly and I dump a million dollars with them and within five years he turns a million dollars into five million. That's 5x in five 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've got. We've 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 a year in revenue within 24 months. What have you done to be able to earn this? I'm a Columbia guy. I'm in this, I'm in this. How much money do you need? I need $2 million. Can I come in for $100,000? I put $100,000. 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 game.

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

Doubles game. 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. 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 from... He gets $50,000 from 40 people. That's what? $2 million. And he gives them 20%.

Wow.

20%. Gives them 20% just for $2 million. You know what that 20% is worth today? $200 billion. Oh my God. That's the point. So can you imagine 1994 Amazon gets started? Forget about you put 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. Warren Buffett is starting. He says, I'll give you $10,000. Never touches the money. Goes back to his regular job, makes $100,000 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. Wow.

Never did anything to it.

So that's the part about patiently aggressive. It's very hard to do. So the doubles get bigger later on, not early on.

The doubles are bigger your $15, $20, 2020. That's what Papa talks about. Just like his successes, he's lived longer. He's stayed around longer to let the money compound. And that compounded interest is where it's at. What's the three greatest investments you've made in yourself? And would you recommend those same investments in other people? Or what should they be doing in their life right now?

So, you know, I will tell you, I went to a Harvard OPM program one time, and I spent OPM. OPM is owner president management program. So if you run a business that that's 10 million or more, you get to go to it and it's three years of three weeks living on campus, right? I went there, but I didn't go afterwards for different reasons. But I went there when I spent that $50,000 and I was on campus for three weeks. You spent three weeks with 144 people from 64 different countries. So watch what happens. I'm sitting there and at this point of the game, I have no idea what it is to be a CEO. I've gone from being an employee to a salesperson to a sales leader to a good manager, but I don't know what it is to be a CEO. I have no idea what it is to be a CEO. So I sit next to this guy. He becomes my teammate, my partner. He owns the Victoria Secret of New Zealand and Australia. The reason why I'm laughing is because the last day, eight of us were chosen to go present a business opportunity. So he keeps telling me, Patrick, I'm gonna kill it. Just watch what I'm gonna do. I'm going to scare the hell out of Lynette. I think the lady's name is Linda because she's the main person that does it. Watch what I'm about to do. So he goes up on stage. Louis, it's a very simple guy. I mean, good-looking guy, but he's not a charismatic anything. He just goes up on stage. He says, Let me tell you why you ought to invest a million dollars into my new lingerie line. He says, Here's the PowerPoint. Here's the power.

You see all the sexy women here?

You know what? I think it's more important for you to see this face. face to face. Ladies?

No way. Bring them in.

Seven models come in half naked wearing the lingerie. The entire place, all the entrepreneurs are going crazy. But the teachers are furious with them.

The ladies are running up, takes her.

Jacket off, is trying to cover all these women. It was phenomenal, right, to see this here. But the point is, on Harvard stuff. On Harvard's campus, right?

Think about it.

Here's the part. Five years goes by, I'm talking to you about it. That's called marketing, right? You remember it. I remember it. But when I was sitting next to him, I said, Listen, man, I'm trying to learn how to be a good CEO. What do you suggest about being a good CEO? He says, Man, I've got 7,000 employees and have seven CEOs that report directly to me. I spent three weeks with this guy telling me stuff that he does with his CEO. He's not a motivational speaker. I don't even think he's got a thousand people following on Instagram. He's worth a couple billion. He's not an influencer. But those three weeks of talking to I was like a kid in a candy store trying to pull information out of this guy and it was all technical stuff. It wasn't motivational stuff. What time do you wake up? What's your daily routine? None of that stuff. It's what do you do when you're trying to hire a person and you know you got to give him equity, but you're afraid if you give him too much equity and he leaves early and you protect yourself that if you fire him, does he still get the other two-thirds? Does he still how do you do this? Well, you set this way. What do you do to make sure your attorney that you have, that attorney that you have who is negotiating with the other attorney and he doesn't really want to go to court, so behind closed doors they're settling and he's not really working on your side. He's working on the other side to kind of speed it up. How do you get him to... Well, you got another attorney who holds him accountable. I'm like, these are the things that he said to me that you can't read about in places. So you said three investments, that's one of them. Vistage was a was 100% a great investment because we met once a month for three, four years with a man named John Morris. John Morris is a local guy, Santa Monica. A guy it'd be great for you to get connected with him. We're sitting in a meeting one time with John Morris and one of the entrepreneurs going out of business and he says, Guys, I got bad news. Because you would start the meeting and he would say, Here's my personal life, here's my health, here's my marriage, here's my business, here's my kids. And we would all talk amongst each other and everybody had to sign an NDA. so you don't tell your story. But one guy gets up and he says, Guys, I got bad news. I'm about to go out of business. Why? If I don't get a half a million by this Friday, we're shutting down. If I get it, I'll last another year and a half, and I think we'll make it, but I'm shutting down. This is what John does. Tell me, what do you need for half a million? What are you willing to give up for the half a million? What are you willing to do this? He says, Give me a second. In front of all of us. Why are the markets? Calls a guy. No, it calls a guy who is in his business, same industry, says, Take the call, go talk to him, terms, boom. Guy comes back ecstatic. By Friday, half a million was in his account. Wow. This is the kind of guy John Morris is, right? So, Vistage to me was watching people from different industries every month for nine hours for one day, nine hours, and everybody would share their problems. It was 1,500 bucks a month, some number like that, 100% well worth if you get qualified to go in because Vistage you have to do.

Is this like Tiger 32? Have you ever heard of this thing called Tiger 33, I think it's called. It's kind of like you've got to.

Have 50 million plus. Yeah, there's things like that everywhere.

This is one of them. We got to reveal kind of your financial network.

You want to have to know who you are. Yeah, there's a lot of that happening right now and I think it's great. I think it's great if it's by real business people, not social media influencers. And let me explain to you what I mean by this. What social, like for example, if somebody wants to learn how to create a podcast, I want to go learn from somebody that's running a sex like, I remember I think you taught a bunch of people how to monetize webinars and podcasts. Like you were a guy that taught people how to do the webinars. And then you made people millions, by the way. You made a lot of people a lot of money with what you were doing with webinars. A time that people didn't think webinars had money. Yeah, five, six, seven years ago. Yeah, I mean at a time that nobody was thinking about it, right? So I go on, you do webinars, why are you doing webinars? Oh, Lewis taught me how to do this. Lewis, Lewis, I lost house. Oh, no shit. Webinars, yeah. Okay. But this is not webinars. This is not, this is about these guys, how did you go from bigger.

Strategy on a company?

This is stuff that you sit there and you're like, Wow, you guys are doing how much per year? $820 million. How many employees you got? 922. How many people on your board? Seven of them. How do you handle conflicts? Like, this is the stuff that you talk with these guys, right? so I recommend the OPM program, I recommend the Vistage program, and then I'm an obsessive reader, man. I mean, I don't know how many articles and stuff I read. So I would recommend subscribing to when there's like Business Insider, they can pay $99 per year, pay for it. If there's a Wall Street Journal that you pay $600 per year, pay for it. If there are these handful of stuff that you can get that's not just a general news, if you spend a thousand $2,000 on these new sites that are sending the elite articles that's different than the main ones. Don't hesitate, pay for it. Because everybody's going to talk about the general stuff, but that additional stuff is written by-- Advanced stuff. Yeah, it's advanced. So imagine like-- Insider. It's the insider stuff written by the CFO of Snapchat that's telling you nine ways to protect yourself against cyber security that will be boring to other people. But you're looking and you're saying, damn, this was freaky. this was legit. So, yeah, those kinds of investments is what I would say to you.

And if you lost your job right now, what investment should you make in yourself?

If I lost my job right now and I don't have a job lined up within four weeks, that means I have a very weak contact list. So, the problem is a long-term problem. So, you are the long-term. If you cannot replace yourself with a job within four weeks, you have a terrible contact list.

Relationship?

Exactly. Because you should be able to replace your job within four weeks if you got a solid contact list. Why shouldn't you be? You should like, you know, a person gets—like we fired a guy named Mark, and he was with AIG for 22 years, and I love this guy, but he just wasn't a fit. So I talked to Mark. I said, Mark, this is not going to work out, but I'm telling you right now, I got a job for you lined up at Columbus. He says, Seriously? I said, Interview set up. CEO of Columbus calls me before a review. I said, no question. this guy's a phenomenal guy for you. He gets hired like this within two weeks. You should, if you have the contacts like this, you ought to be. So if you don't, it means the problem is you either don't have enough value in the marketplace or your contacts are weak.

When you think about someone you want to connect with, what goes through your mind of the sequencing of how do I reach out to this person?

I do a lot of research on the person. I do a lot of research on the person. You're really good at that.

Yeah. A lot of research on the person. People don't know how valuable understanding who someone is and what their history is and what makes them tick.

I agree.

How meaningful that is when you do that.

I agree.

You did this when you first interviewed me, you just knew a lot about me and you did research. And I'm like, man, it takes so much time and energy. And when you're running a business with a thousand employees or doing 10 sales calls a day, you're a husband, you're a dad, how do you manage building relationships? you have so much going on though. You have no free time.

Yeah, so this goes into at what level you want to go to in life. Meaning, there is levels in this game, right? Like listen, Gary Payton is alpha, but he's not alpha when Michael's in the room. When Michael's in the room, Michael's the alpha.

Yeah, he's a little.

Kobe's an alpha, but not when Michael's in the room. But anybody else in the room, Coby's the alpha, including Magic Johnson, including Shaq. But when Barkley's in the room with Shaq, who's the alpha? Shaq's the alpha. Okay, but when Barkley's in the room with a Carmelo Anthony, Barkley's the alpha. Everything's about levels, right? So what level do you want to go to? So if you want to go at the next levels, it's gonna require you to be a little bit more meticulous and detailed about your strategy of about the kind of help you're going to need, the kind of research you're going to need, the kind of relationships you're going to need. And then figuring out your schedule. And sometimes people want to have the four-hour work week. I'm not a four-hour work week guy, but some people want that lifestyle. And you have to give credit to Tim Ferriss because Tim Ferriss started a movement with a bunch of laptop entrepreneurs all over the world. And guess what? They love it. When I talk to these people that read four-hour work week, I'm in Malaysia.

And look at my life. RB: and I'm making a few hundred grand a year or a few million.

A year or whatever it may be. So you could never- I'm a terrible vacation guy after three days. I'm a three-day guy. RB: yeah. RB: But I know myself. If I go to Bora Bora, if I go to Greece and we have to go after three days, my wife will say, Babe, you good? Like, Babe, it's three days, babe. She says, I get it, babe. Just kind of- and we're typically go because we're entertaining people. We're not going. It's like we're taking 500 people, 400 people. So we're entertaining. staining people. It's not like you know you're going because it's when we go, we go, we get our stuff done and we come back and we have a great time together because now we have a system. When you have kids it's different because you can go longer with kids because you're vicariously living through them. I like going to Universal Studios. I can go with my kids Universal Studios because I see how he looks at Harry Potter and you know these spiders and this stuff. It's beautiful when you see their imagination, right? But going back to the question you're asking. So how do you find time to research? How do you find time to do all this other stuff? If you want to compete in the top 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%, the price is a bigger price. And Lewis, there's no way to describe how to do it. There isn't a formula for it. You just have to figure out a way how to do it. If it means I come home and I have to watch a person's interview from 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock in the morning, and I come to the office at 8:00 a.m. to do my interview and I have to come and go read through 20 pages of notes, I have to do that. And if I don't do that, you can tell in the interview. If I do do it, you're like, how does he know that guy's date? How does he know when this happened at this time?

How do you know when this happened? It's a lot of research to do. The level of detail and attention, people will remember for decades. They'll remember and always think back to, you know, that person really cared or that person was really thoughtful, that person was genuinely interested in me and they'll just continue to remember that and good things will come to you when you come from that place, when you constantly do that extra work to care about someone. So I agree there. What's the question you wish everyone asked you more that they don't ask you?

I think the understanding of knowing that if I really want to do something big, what do I do when I'm having big guilt that I get from my wife, my kids, my family. How do you manage guilt?

For example, something big. What do you mean by that?

Okay, so for example, you really aspire to have your own talk show, which you should. You look like a guy that you ought to have one day. You're that kind of a guy. You need to be on the big screen. You belong on the big screen. You need to have something like that happen with Lewis Howes. I've said this to you from the first time we sat down. You look like the guy guy that has something like that going for himself. Montel Williams meets Oprah Winfrey, meets, you know, Michael Strahan meets, you know, like Ellen DeGeneres, combined, those combined. Okay, Louis Houze show on TV, right? Okay. So now if we're together and, you know, it's like, oh, babe, you're working too hard. All this, this is research, all this other stuff. And, you know, you're not doing this with your kids and you're not spending time with us. You're not spending, like, the guilt, the guilt, man. so how do you handle the guilt? The guilt works in a few different ways. Ted Turner understood who he was and Ted Turner, his personal life, he'll be the first to say it was in shambles. You know he married Jane Fonda, didn't work out because Jane Fonda wanted to go and Jesus changed her life and she became all spiritual and Ted's like, I don't want to talk about God. I'm just playing ball, man. Let's go buy the horses. Let's go to the Montana place and Ted had so much pressure on his life when time Warner bought him out and all this other stuff. But then the guilt comes out, right? Well, you didn't do this and you didn't do that and you didn't do this and you didn't do that. Yeah, but I wanted to do this with my life. So, you know, that stuff is, can you live without finding out your full potential and not going there? Are you okay? Like, there's a story one time I read in a book written by John Maxwell. This, I read this a like 16 years ago, one of his small books with his affirmations that he had. He said, One day a guy goes to heaven, he dies, and he goes to heaven. He was meeting with St. Peter's, and he was always a military guy, right? And he always wanted to be a general, and he wanted to be a great general. He wanted to be a general, go in the military, be a leader, but he never did it. But he followed everybody's history. So he goes to St. Peter and says, Hey, question for you, St. Peter. I've got one question for you. He says, what's that? Who's the greatest general of all time? He says, I'm sorry. He said, who's the greatest general of all time? You really gonna ask me that?

Yeah.

Was it General Patton? No. Was it Grant?

No.

Who was it?

You.

Is that me? Yes. When the recruiter came to you for you to join the army, and if you had the courage to go in, you would have been the greatest general. I have it right now. You would have been the greatest general the world had ever seen, but you were afraid.

Wow.

I mean, listen, either that story makes you so nervous where you're kind of like, I can't do that to myself. Or that story gets you to be like, wow, it's okay if I don't go there. Fine. But you're gonna have to deal with that. And whatever you decide to do that's big, there's gonna be sacrifices. Yeah. And there's gonna come with guilt.

So it's like you either have guilt or regret.

Yeah, it's well, what do you manage both? Exactly.

If you could only share one principle around money with your daughter and you can never share another principle for the rest of her life, what would that one principle be?

Scared money don't make money.

What does that mean?

Uh.

I mean, it's from a rap song, but what it means is you can't put money on a pedestal. You can't be afraid of it, right? Money is a resource. It is there. The minute you're afraid of money, the minute you're afraid of anything, that thing wins. And it's always you versus the thing. It's you versus food, it's you versus money, it's you versus religion, it's you versus that guy, that girl, it's you versus Traffic. The minute you get afraid of it, then it wins. And you can talk about how, well, it's not all about winning and losing. It's about enjoying the game. And I get part of that, but I also don't. And I want her to know that money is a resource and it is there to provide her with options. So, I don't ever want her to be afraid of it. I don't ever want her to be too excited about it either, right? To be so afraid of it, she gets so obsessed with it because that is also not the right way. And you've got to be able to spend money to make money. We were just talking about that before we started, right? I have always put myself in uncomfortable financial situations because I know myself and I know that I will fight my way out of it so that future Ryan, looking back in time, will say, remember when I was afraid of rent? Now look what I'm afraid of. And I think it's tough for people to learn that if you're scared of money, you will not be able to make money. And you will let money rule your life and control your life. And you will forever be a slave to rent. You'll forever be a slave to the dollar. You'll check your bank account 10 times a day out of anxiety, or you'll never check it because you're so nervous about what's not in there. And then you'll just become another cog in the wheel of society, and you'll just become a worker bee. And that's. And I don't want her to do that. You know, I want her to know that, especially now, in. in the 2020s, man, in the 2020s, the 2030s, the 2040s. She can do whatever she wants. She can be whoever she wants. She can be the president. She could go with Elon Musk's little kid, whose name I don't know, and go start a new business on Mars. Let's go, whatever you want to do.

Do you feel like there's a Every time you hit a new level of financial opportunity, financial gain, success, do you feel like the old fears come up? You've got to spend 20 times more rent than you ever have before. Is there the same fear or do you feel like you can ever master the fear no matter how much more money you're dealing with?

I don't know if you ever master anything. I think you make things relative and I think you keep pushing, but it also depends on what makes you happy. I am the type of person, and I know this about myself, I am not gonna be happy in a nice three-bedroom house with a fence and a car and the ability to go on vacations and just live an awesome life. That's an awesome life for so many people. And I envy those people who can be okay with that. I am not okay with being okay.

And.

I have always wanted more, not out of greed, but kind of like a mountain climber, right? You read the interviews and the books and the podcasts of the guys that have climbed Kilimanjaro and Everest. It's like, dude, why the would you do that? You don't have to climb the mountain. You can go around. I climb it 'cause it's there. like they can't not, you know? And I feel the same way about my own life and my own career. You know, there's so many paths that could have gone down that just definitely wouldn't have worked out. But if you can find that one where things start to work a little bit, like you take it as far as you can because who knows when you'll get that opportunity again and life is really, really, really quick. And then the next thing you know, COVID and you have the blood type, that is not going to be okay. And I wish I had just taken advantage of that opportunity last year. And I never want to be the type of person who says, if only.

I wish I would have.

Yeah, if only are probably the two scariest words that I can think about. Because before I know it, I'm going to be at a point in my life and older where I I hope not, but I could look back and say, well, if only I had done that when I was 30, 36, 15. And I understand that regret is a part of life and there's always going to be mistakes, there's always going to be things we missed. If only I bought Bitcoin at 100 bucks, stuff like that. I'd rather regret the things I did than the things I never tried.

What's some of the greatest lessons or lesson you've learned from some of your clients? Maybe they weren't actually even trying to teach you something, but just by their energy, their way of being, of you showing the homes or the conversations you had with negotiations or just their approach to life. Was there any few lessons that have really stuck out from maybe the uber successful, you know, billionaires or or in the first couple of years when you were just working with people that were maybe buying less fancy homes?

Oh man, I feel like I learned something from every single one of my clients because they come from a different walk of the earth that I've never been on, right? We all have our own journeys, we all learn our own lessons. I'll say, if I dig down one of my first rental clients, because I got into the business at the end of 2008, so that I could stay in New York City so that I could pay rent. Real estate was way better than waiting tables or bartending or getting a temp job and being a receptionist or going back to school or moving home. I would post ads for rental listings on Craigslist. I'd meet people on the corner of Christopher and Greenwich, and I would get lost with them in the West Village. trying to find like that walk up building to go up six flights of stairs to hope to God the door would be left open for me because if it's not, then I'm the worst. And trying to rent apartments for $1,000 to $3,000 a month. That was nearly two years of my life.

Man, I wish rent was that cheap right now in New York.

Yeah, right.

Credit to Christopher for $1,000 a month. Give me that rent.

No, that was more like avenue D. And that was like run real fast.

To get up there.

Yeah, yeah. But I had like, I had one client, a girl, her name was Jessica, and she, you know, was renting an apartment, her and her two roommates. And so we were looking kind of like ideally a three bedroom, but they couldn't afford it. So we were just going to look for a one bedroom that could be cut up into three bedrooms. And she had her parents on the phone the whole time because they were guaranteeing it and they couldn't be there. And I got lost. And I wasn't, West Village, I wasn't familiar with the West Village. I didn't know the streets. I knew the grid because I lived in Koreatown, I lived on 31st Street in Broadway. I knew the grid, right? It goes from east to west, north to south, like you can figure it out. You go to the West Village and you're like, oh, so these roads were created by horses and no one ever changed it. So I guess I gotta figure that out. And I got lost. And I got lost like twice. The first time I come sold my way through it. The second time, I didn't know where I was going, and I couldn't figure it out. And I didn't have an iPhone back then, right? This early 2009. And she told me on the street that I was the worst. She regretted calling me and that I should never be allowed to do real estate with anyone ever. Wow. And left. And I quickly ran the other way. I think I had like tears in my eyes. But that lesson was know your sh*t. No matter what, doesn't matter how long you've been in any business, doesn't matter, everything goes out the door. But the one thing I could control was I could have researched better, I could have prepared better. The tour that I was gonna take her on, I could have woken up an hour earlier and done that tour because I knew I didn't really know where I was going. I just was lazy, right? I didn't have the time. I was like, I found other things to be busy with. I just figured I'd figure it out. And she probably, she'll never call me ever again. I still think about her. Jessica, if you're listening, I'm sorry that we got lost in the West Village. I should have done my homework and done that, but no, you're. I'd say a little while after that, I met a client, an international client who really was the light bulb game changer for me. Because I had zero confidence in myself. No one knew me in New York City. I had made the determination at that point, okay, if I'm gonna stay here and do this, I wanna be the best. I wanna be the best real estate broker ever. I know I'm not from here. I don't look like the best real estate broker. I definitely don't blend in, but I can figure it out. And no one would buy it. No one would believe me. I was super young. I was in my early 20s and I had premature gray hair at the same time, so it was just sort of weird. And I didn't go to the schools here. My family's not from here. So the best agents in New York City, the ones who make millions and millions and millions of dollars, have all that. And then this international client reaches out. I super get lucky and she flies into New York and I just had this light bulb moment of saying to myself, you know what? I am going to be the greatest salesperson in the world for her. I'm not going to mess up like I did for Jessica or like I did for a bunch of other people. I'm going to know my, I'm going to memorize everything. I'm going to fall back on the information that I have in my brain, and I'm going to present myself like the real estate agent I want to be in five years. And she's going to see that person. I'm going to put on a show, right? Like, I came to New York City to do theater. I'm going to put on the best performance of my life. And let's see what happens. And it worked. And she bought an apartment for $2.1 million. And it's not the biggest deal I've ever done in my life, but that commission, I think, was like $24,000, something like that. That was two years of rent. It gave me some breathing room. She proved to me that I can be whoever I want to be. I just gotta believe in it and I gotta tell people. Those are probably the two biggest lessons that I learned early on in my career. I've learned lots of lessons since then, but those were two important ones that really shaped how I carried myself and started working on my career and building my brand going forward. That was 11 years ago.

How did you learn to believe in yourself when you didn't have the credibility or the skills yet? I.

Realized that the most confident people in the markets that I was dealing with, so the most successful people, the most successful agents, brokers, developers, bankers, whatever, they carried themselves with confidence because they played the game like they already had the money in their pocket.

They weren't desperate.

There's no desperation. It was, they walked into the room like they already won. And this was their second time coming here, right? Like they already had the master's jacket. They already had the green jacket at home. This is the second time. And they could keep calm, they could keep their nerves, and they always relaxed on the fact that, ah, I played this hole before.

Right?

I've been here before. Even if they hadn't, they'd practice it so well and studied it and rehearsed it and learned it and knew the gradients and knew everything that even if this is the first time they're hitting the ball on this pole, it's as if in their core, they've done it a hundred times. And so they could believe in themselves as being the greatest golfer. And so for me, it was, okay, all I have to do is memorize information, study the information, know what I'm talking about, and then I can always fall back on facts. Right? And then I just have to then believe that the facts will help me tell the stories and do the deals, and then I just have to be a person and that's it. And I think I can be great, right? I looked at all these people that were doing what I was trying to do and they were doing much better than me and making way more money. It's like, wait a minute, why not me?

Right?

They said, if only are the two scariest words in the English language for me. Why Not Me are the three most motivating words in the English language for me because they always push me.

To.

Do a little bit more. And so I would say that's how I was able to build that confidence, which is learn the information, learn everything about a certain area, and that's how I'm going to beat the internet. Because these people can buy on the internet now, then and now especially. They can sell on the internet. They don't need a real estate salesperson, real estate agents are going out of business, they're going out of style. Who needs a human anymore? Turns out humans need humans to help them make decisions. And until a house figures out how to sell itself to another house, we'll still be there as long as we know more and can discuss the information. And that gave me the confidence to then move forward. And then I would do one deal. and I would just scream it from a mountaintop so that the success of today would beget the success of tomorrow. And then just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And then here I am 13 years later.

And what's the greatest strategies you've learned about negotiating down and negotiating up? You just negotiated down, I think you said, a big amount off of rent for your new office space, but you also negotiate up to try to get the maximum out of selling as well. So when you're buying and you want to, what's the most you've taken off of a listing price that you've helped someone buy and purchase? And what was the strategy for getting it to that much off and also in the reverse above Can I tell.

You something that's so interesting about that question? I've done a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of talking about real estate for 13 years. No one has ever asked me how to negotiate. And I don't know why. You were the first guy to ask me how to negotiate. And it's what I do all day long. It's so people are like, well, how do you close and talk to me about this, that? you're so interesting. And I wouldn't have known to tell you to ask me that question. Like if you had said, Ryan, what's the one? I wouldn't have jumped to that. And I also don't know why. But to answer your great question, well, the reason I ask is because I.

Feel like anyone listening and myself, I've never purchased a home. Sure. I've done Investments and stuff like that, but I've never purchased a home. And I'm always thinking, okay. And you triggered it by saying, well, I got this lease for way more than the asking price off. I'm like, well, how do we negotiate down a car, a house, a whatever, and how do we negotiate up to get a premium on what the market is offering? What is the psychological strategies? What is any strategy done in an ethical manner in order to do that? Is it an energy thing? Is it psychology? Is it the approach? What are all these things that you do? And what is the biggest Down negotiation you've had and the biggest up and then what are the strategies?

Sure. So there is an amazing movie starring Matthew McConaughey called the Ghost of Girlfriend's Past. Okay, it's classic. Everyone should see it. At the end of that movie, Michael Douglas is like his dead uncle who taught him everything he knows about dating. and he's got a scene where he says the one in the relationship who has all the power is the one who cares the least. And that is true for any business negotiation, house negotiation, promotion negotiation, anything.

What if you really want it? You really want it, but you can't show it.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get to that. So how to negotiate down. By far the easiest because all you have to do is not want it. You have to be willing to walk away. You have to be willing to be okay with loss and know there are other options. The biggest discount I've ever gotten was.

Probably.

I would say, this summer, the past summer that just happened. COVID hit and destroyed New York City. A million people left New York City. The real estate market was soft here to begin with because of oversupply and it got real bad. Transaction volume dropped by over 80% when COVID hit. Disaster. The lowest market, I think, in real estate history was this past summer. I had a buyer, which means it was a great opportunity to buy. For to buy and for opportunists who who know that you don't bet against New York City. And so there was a seller at a building called 157 West 57th Street. They bought this apartment for $34 million years ago.

Oh my god.

They outfitted it with about $2 million worth of upgrades, audio, furniture, everything.

So $36 million in.

$36 million in. It's been on the market for a while. They cut the price down. They're losing money.

What were they trying to sell it for?

I think they started really high and then they, like everybody, Like 50 million or something. Yeah, I don't remember if it was that high, but then they went down. I think they eventually got down to like 25. So they were willing to take a $12 million loss because they own it in cash. And so it's like, what else can I do with the money? And listen, People are like, oh, I lose so much money in real estate. You don't lose money if you don't sell. So the asset is worth something when you buy and it'll always be worth more at some point unless you need the money today. If you need the money today, yeah, sure. Could you lose money?

Yes.

Which is why cash flow will kill you. But anyway, so I had a client who just wanted a great deal. He's like, listen, I don't need to buy anything in New York City. I don't even know if I would.

Ever even use it. But if you find me a deal of a lifetime.

Yeah, but if you find me a good deal, I'll buy. And so that to me is a challenge where I say to myself, all right, all right, dude, let me see what I can find you. So I see this apartment. It's been on the market for a while and say, let's go see it. Sees it. Okay.

All right.

What do you want to offer?

Right now it's around, it's around 24 at this moment.

20 at 25.

Yeah.

So we offered 15 million. Okay. This guy is in it for 36. We offered 15. which is 10 million off the current ask, which is already reduced by 20 million.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And long story short, fast forward, we held firm for four months and he just said, Listen, I'll buy it, but I don't need it. And we went out and we saw other things, but at the same time, I kept pushing him a little bit, because I want to get a deal done. So let's go 15 to 50, right? All right, fine. Give them another 250. It's not going to, it won't do anything. But I slowly, slowly, slowly got them to come down 22, 20. So you could tell they wanted to do a deal, but the one in the relationship who has all the power is the one who cares the least. So we, I got them up to 16 and a half and we held firm. They came back finally at 16, 750. And that was the hardest negotiating I'd ever have to do, is get them up $250,000. Shut up. Because he's like, I don't want it.

I'm already up more than I want.

Yeah, exactly. He's like, I don't need this. Why are you buying? I'm not buying this. And I again went through the whole process. I explained to him the value. It's like the money doesn't mean anything to you, and you're buying this for 51% off. This is going to be the biggest luxury discount trade in the history of New York City. And we closed, and that's exactly what it was. CNBC, CNN, every single press, but you can look up the deal closed last summer. Sorry, was summer close towards the end of the year, actually, probably. You know what? I think it closed in December, and he bought it for 51% off.

Wow.

Since then, the market's totally rebounded. So that was holding firm and saying, basically saying, hey, Please sell to someone else. By all means, please sell to someone else.

If you can find a buyer, go ahead.

Yeah, sell to somebody else. Negotiating somebody up is a different story, right? It's the fear of loss, but on the total opposite side.

I got a good offer here, should I just take it and not go for more?

Sure, but if you're trying to get a to pay more money, then you're working on what we call the difference between a want and a need. So how do I make a want a need? So this guy might want something. Yeah, sure, they want it. But I'm only gonna get him to pay more if I convince him that he needs it. And so you have to then look for people's points of fear. If he doesn't get this, What triggers that fear? Like what's he gonna be afraid of? Is it finding something else that says nice? Is it doing the whole process all over again and going and trying to find something else? Is it his wife is gonna be pissed? Is it they won't be in the school district, whatever it is, that fear? And you do this on both sides. For any negotiation, a tip is, I write this down. If you're in between one side and another, you write down What makes the other side afraid? What makes that side afraid? And you play towards those fears to get the exact number you want. And oftentimes, I'll pick the number ahead of time before I even start to the negotiation. And more often than not, I always get my sides to the number I knew that they were going to come to anyway.

How do you ask what their fear is without asking them what their fear is?

You talk to them just the same way you talk to people. You ask questions. The greatest thing any adult likes to do is hear the sound of their own voice.

Talk about their life, yeah.

Talk about their life, talk to me. Let them yell. When clients yell and scream and get angry, it shows to me that I'm getting closer because they would not exhibit that emotion if they didn't care. And the one who cares the least Holds all the power. So if you're yelling and screaming at me, because fuck that guy and I'm not doing this and screw him and you're hanging up the phone, you're calling me back, or you're gonna text me tomorrow, or you're gonna email me in.

Three days, be like, where is... Can we get that? Can we get that?

Yeah.

What do you think are three things that poor people do that the rich people don't do that you notice?

I think first of all, poor people have a negative association with money. I'll give you a perfect example from just last week. This has happened to me literally like in real life. I was driving me, my wife driving the Bentley to downtown and passed through a not so good neighborhood. It's called Hastings in Vancouver. Kind of like the hood.

Okay?

Because we're going to Chinatown. We stopped at the red light. this one guy that came to my car, spit on my car, on the window, and then gave me the finger and then walk away.

So you didn't say anything, you didn't.

Do anything, you didn't, it was just that, it's just a car, just a car, right? So you would see a lot of people, they think, oh, they say, I want more money, hey Louis, I want to have more success, I want to, I want to more deep down, actually they have a negative association with money. Because I always do this exercise with my students. So imagine this. Imagine you're walking down the street, you hear this loud engine sound, right? And then you see a black Lamborghini, just zoom, zoom, zoom, right? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Now, most people would say, oh, he's an a**, like, what a pr*ck. Or if it's a woman, oh, she's a gold digger. Or if it's this young person, oh, this probably from, you know, the daddy's money, like all this stuff. Like they can go through this very very quickly all the negative stuff, right? And then a small percentage would be, oh, that might be an entrepreneur, right? That may be actually a father of three, right? That he's a hard-working entrepreneur. He's been working hard and this is a little treat that he gives for himself and he only drives it, you know, maybe on the weekends. That never comes to mind. It's all the negative. that comes to mind, right? So I would say that negative association with money, consciously or subconsciously, they don't even know it.

Yeah.

When you resent someone with money or you resent money, why would money come to you?

Or people with money.

Right. Why would you be surrounded by people who have money? Or why would you attract more wealth into your life if you're resenting it, right? Yeah.

No.

So they too, so it's like even the, so that's the first thing is poor people have negatives. If they've associated with money, the second one is they don't talk about money.

Gosh, I say this all the time, man. Tell me more.

Yeah. They avoid conversations. Like, it's like a taboo subject. Oh, why you talk about money all the time? Like, oh, we don't talk about. It's like we don't talk about that at dinner table. You don't have conversation with your kids about money. You don't have conversation with a spouse about money. It somehow is a bad thing.

Right?

It's like this. And I think of Think of money, the best way to describe this is think of money as a person in your life. Treat money as a person. So imagine if you think about... We.

Don'T talk about that person.

We don't talk about you. And in fact, I think you're the root of all evil. I think you are greedy. I think you're not that important to me. Do you think this person will stay around? I don't think so. They would be like, I don't want to be around. you know, money is not that important. Money doesn't grow on trees. Oh, there are other more important things than money, like all this stuff, right? Then money is not going to stick around. So if you think of it that way. But on the other hand, if you talk about money, you cherish money, not to be a slave of money. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, hey, you know, I value you. I value money. I save you. I this you like, you know, intelligently, right? Like, you think about that way, then money's like, okay, you treat me good, I'm gonna stay around.

Yeah, right.

You think of like that as almost like a lover, you know, I love you, right? Oh, yeah, that's good. I'm gonna love you back. Oh, I don't like you, you know, and I'm not gonna like your back. So that would be the second one.

Okay. And the third.

The third one is it has to do with value. So poor people want money without delivering more value versus you and I, we understand the marketplace cares about one thing, it cares about value. It doesn't care about our solving stories, it doesn't care about our victim mentality, it doesn't care about how hard we work, it doesn't even care how much experience we have or how many years we've been in business. The marketplace doesn't care. The marketplace has no emotion. The marketplace only cares about value and what determines our values, our skill sets. so think about this where if someone is very motivated, they think positively, they got no skill sets to offer to the marketplace, they're not going to make money. On the other hand, you've got someone with like, let's say someone comes to you, Louis, it's like okay attitude, but he's saying that, hey Louis, I can help you with the Facebook ad, you can spend a dollar, I can give you $5 back. If he has a skill set like that, you'll be like, okay, I'm gonna give you some money to help me with my ads.

Right.

So it's, it's the skill set. I think a lot of people are missing. They don't understand that it's the mindset, which is what you teach, combined with your, your skill set, then you've got something that works. So I would say those are the main key.

Those are powerful. I'm curious about. I want to follow up on this skill set. There's a lot of people who have all the degrees and credibility in the world. but don't have the self belief.

Yes.

So what is more important skill set, actually being skilled at something, the ability to believe in yourself with the skill set and coupling the two, or the ability to package your skills to transfer for money in exchange, because a lot of people can't position or package and then sell. They might have the skill set, they might have the belief and confidence, but they don't know how to package it. to transfer money. Which one of those threes are more important?

I would say I used to believe it's the mindset, but now I would say I'm leaning more towards a skill set and I'll explain why. Because let's say your digital market, I'm gonna use an example, your digital marketer, you don't really believe in yourself, but let's say you know how to close, you know how to communicate your value and you're good at what you do. Well, and someone comes to you and say, Hey, Louis, you're so good digital marketing, let me give you 5,000 a month retainer to do my social. Well, that changes your belief system very quickly.

Right?

So I almost like to use that as an environment. It's like I teach all my students, if you have not made a dollar closing or you're not a made a dollar copywriting, whatever that you do, you make the first dollar. You make the first dollar.

That's the best feeling, that first dollar, man.

That first dollar, man, it's like podcast. Oh, you've never made a dollar, Any money from podcasts, just make your first dollar. That's the difference. What's the difference between professional and amateur? Professional gets paid. Make your first dollar. Now it changes, okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe I'm pretty good. Maybe I could get better. Maybe I can do this whole time. Maybe I can make a career out of this. It's easier to use the environment to shift our beliefs than try to change it just within ourselves. That's what I believe in. Like our environment is infinitely more powerful than our willpower. Way more powerful.

Our environment in what way?

If you don't want to be, if you want to get fit, hang around with people who are fit. You eat better, you will want to exercise. If you don't smoke, you hang around with all your friends and smokers, guarantee you will smoke. You don't do drugs, you hang around with people who do drugs, you do drugs. We can't help but be influenced by the environment. So I say why not put ourselves in an environment that is supportive of our goals. I'm very, very careful with that.

Very careful.

Yeah, and I say the same thing.

This idea of entrepreneurship has been a sexy, you know, word and idea, especially the last five years with social media and everyone kind of flashing this lifestyle, Gary Vee, you know, talking about it a lot and everything. But as you know, it's hard for a lot of entrepreneurs to make a lot of money and sustain it. It's hard to get there, but then it's hard to sustain it.

For a while.

When a pandemic hits or something else, people aren't prepared for that. Do you think it's possible for people who have great skills, who are part of a great team, of a great company that never want to start their own thing and be an entrepreneur, but are valued, are part of a team, are growing with a company, making an impact in this company and the mission that they have, do you think it's possible for people that aren't entrepreneurs to become wealthy? And if so, what are the strategies they need to be applying right now in order to start having their money work for them as opposed to only working for money?

I love that question. I've never been asked that question and I have a very good answer. One thing I learned from my mentor, he said, Dan, you don't get rich on income, you get rich on equity. You don't get rich on income. So if for someone with the skill sets, think about a ship, right? There's only one captain. We're going from here to there. So you look at Jack Ma who started Alibaba. Yeah, Jack Ma is very successful. Well, but the initial founders, they didn't do too bad either.

Right?

So you have the people who maybe you are the founding members, the founding team, with a startup that is going places with the right visionary, with the right founder and CEO, which by the way, that's also, I think only certain people fits that profile. That's what I believe in. Okay, that's what I believe in. And I learned it from through Culture Index, which is like a survey that people take to see what personality that fits. So only certain people are fit for their CEO profiles, but everybody else, they can still contribute. And if they have equity, they participate. they could still do very well financially. In fact, it's like if naturally they know they're not the CEO personalities and materials, if they just try to be that, it doesn't work anyway. It just doesn't work. But it doesn't mean they are not valued. Yeah. I mean, to me, I play a role in my company because I have certain skill set, right? But I cannot do what I do better than what, like my team, they have certain skills that are way better than me. But just this morning, we had a technical challenge. I was like, my team could fix it. I don't know how to handle that.

We're trying to set up Zoom before this, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, I have no idea. No joke aside, I actually don't know how to turn on the camera.

There you go.

I literally do not know how to turn, I don't know where the button is.

You know how to do the iPhone though, so that's easy.

That's easy. I can handle that. But like, this is the XD stuff. I cannot handle. So what I'm saying is you look at that, that if they participate in a vehicle, in a good market that's growing, trending, and if they could be part of their founding members, they can get equity early on, they could do very well.

And what if they can't get equity or they're not early on, and they join a team after 100 employees, and.

It'S-- and not as good. So it's the timing of it, right? The timing of it. you want it to be too early, higher risk, too late, then you don't get as much upside. And also depends on your skill set, right? What's the skills that you bring to the table? But they could do very well. It's called entrepreneurship, right?

Entrepreneurship, yeah. And what are some things that people could do if they say, oh, that's not me, but I'm making a good salary and I'm going to be making more money. What could I be doing with my money so that it earns me more? What would you suggest?

Every one of us needs to be an investor. Doesn't matter how we make the money. I teach a concept called the wealth triangle, right? Which is kind of got three parts. The first part is what I call high income skills. And high incomes, I define high income skills as skills that could make you more than $10,000 a month. Okay? $10,000 a month. Because I noticed something about human beings. Whenever we get past that six figure mark annually, something shifts that I rarely see someone go past six figure and go back to 50,000 a year. It becomes a new comfort.

It's a very, you know, once you know how to get there, you can stay there.

It becomes a very, it's a fascinating thing to see. So I think that 10,000 a month, $120,000 a year, high income skills. And then the second part is what I call a scalable business, a scalable business, not just any business, but a business that is scalable. such as a software business, an influencer business, or e-com business, a scalable business. And then you have what I call high return investments. And I define high return investments as investments that would give you a 10% return year in and year out, 10% return or more. So you look at this wealth triangle. Now, here's the thing. If you have high income skills, you're already earning income. your scalable business gives you profits and your high return investment builds your net worth, right? Wealthy people talk about net worth. They don't talk about income, right? They talk about net worth. So you look at this. Now, let me ask you this question, Louis. If someone who is like, I'm making thirty thousand dollars a year, I want to get into some real estate stuff. You're like, do you have high. Yeah. Do you have Income skills, no. Do you have a scalable business?

No.

I want to buy some properties with no money down. Kind of risky. Kind of risky, right? Because if you follow this, the first thing you gotta focus on is increase your income, meaning develop skill sets that the marketplace would value. Do that first. Now, with a scalable business, you can start one or you can also invest in one. It doesn't always mean you have to start one. so you can invest in one that throws off profits, and then you've got your, your high return Investments. See, when we come to high return Investments, it's about the preservation of the capital. It's not about getting the maximum return. We, it's almost, we don't, we don't need it to, to get 50. I just want 10. Because I'm making money with these two things.

Right.

This.

I just want, you just don't want.

That sitting in a bank and not making anything.

That's right. that's right. So now the return off capital, off investment, not just on investment. Now you're making more income, you're becoming more valuable. Hopefully income increases every year. Your profit goes up, you take extra cash, you put in higher return Investments, gives you more peace of mind. Then you, this is this, this is same, same world triangle goes a million, 10 million, 100 million is exactly the same. Yeah, it's exactly the same.

If you're a if you're looking at a 21 year old, 25 year old who's about to get started in whatever a job, an entrepreneurship, endeavor and you're looking at them and you have a 20 minute conversation with them, what would you say is the number one sign that they would be successful? What would they have to embody, talk about, not talk about, you know, in order for you to be like, you know what, this person is in the next two or three years, I want to watch them because it's going to be a trajectory or at least they're going to be growing in some way. What would be that sign that someone would be successful?

Someone who has the obsession to learn. Because I remember many years ago, I was attending a two-day workshop on digital marketing. At the time, it's funny, don't laugh at me, but it was a workshop and the instructor was teaching how to do pop up on a website. We're talking many, many years ago when it was a big thing, adding a pop up, right? And I remember day one he taught us, okay, if you want to get more opt-in subscribers, add a pop up to your website and this is how you do it. Okay, great. So it's a few hundred of us in the hotel room. So then I went back to the hotel room and I talked to my coding guys, okay, let's add this piece of code, we'll capture more opt-in on the website, great. and then we were getting more opt-ins like just that evening. So day two, the instructor comes back and say, hey, so we, I taught you how to add opt-in and stuff. How many have you done it? No one. I put on my hand, I thought everybody did it, but no one did. And I was like, this is kind of fascinating, right? And then I share, I said, yeah, actually works is we added our, added the power yesterday. We get more subscribers is awesome. and that's when I learned something about myself that, that I'm very eager to learn. I'm very eager to execute, very eager to execute. And if I want to look at someone who's 21 years old, if they, whatever that they, wherever they want to be, if they have that Obsession to learn and execute, the action takers, action takers are money makers, right? That, that I would say you you can see it in his or her eyes that they are action takers, not like, oh, making excuses, I don't know, I'm not ready, timing is not right, I'm not good enough. And no, they just execute.

Yeah. I think it's not about being afraid, it's about just being willing to take action even when you don't know what you're doing. I think a lot of people, they don't know what they're doing and it cripples them. And they say, oh, I've got to figure out what to do first. And then when I feel comfortable, well, then I can go do it. But I feel like when you're talking about it, it's like, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just like, I just need to make some money. Let me go figure this out and embarrass myself and make mistakes and make a couple bucks.

I say that you want to act as if all your dreams have come true, and then you challenge your reality to catch up. It's much more powerful when you act as you're already there. Think about this. I'm gonna ask you this. think when you had the idea for the podcast, not, not, not this, not the Lewis house today. I'm talking about in the beginning, right? Not, not, not the followers that, like, in the beginning at the time, there's no credibility. There's no, you were just getting started. There's no name, right? It's like you try to get people on the show. Well, I don't know if I want to be right, all that stuff. But now people are honored to be like, they would be like, they'll knock on your Hey, Lou, can I be on your show, right? But think about all these years, in the very beginning, at least from my observation, and correct me, this is wrong, I saw that you were already acting as, hey, you know what, I'm a brand. My show is gonna have tens of millions, hundreds of millions of downloads.

Absolutely. So yeah, I started investing in my design and my brand.

Yes.

What is the example that I would wanna look at?

Yes.

I would book this person if I would go on their show, if Oprah would call me, if Ellen would call me, what would I need to look like?

And Ellen did call you.

Exactly, yeah. It's like, there you go. What would I need to look like to be a New York Times bestseller before I wrote a New York Times bestseller? Like, what would the branding need to be? What would the messaging need to be? What would the results need to be in order to get there? And I just started acting with that vision in mind.

There you go.

And it kind of goes into this, seguways into the law of attraction, which I'm curious your thoughts on the law of attraction when it comes to manifesting money, when it comes to manifesting your dreams, manifesting goals, the dream partner, whatever it may be for someone. In your opinion, how does the law of attraction work? And in what way does it work best for money, business, health, relationships? What do you feel?

I'm a very strong believer in law of attraction. I made a video on YouTube about this as well. But law of attraction, it's basically thoughts of things, right? Everything is energy and you become what you think about. Essentially, that's what it means. But that's just one of the laws. You have law of gravity, you have laws of cause and effect. I think whatever we do, we need to learn and understand these other laws exist. law of action. So it's not just law of attraction. It's like you're trying to do a math equation. You only know a plus, but there's minus, there's the equal sign, there's a lot of things that bracket. There are a lot of things you could use to make an equation work, but that, oh, I only know a plus sign. So when you've got, it's like, when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And people just utilize that and they don't they don't look at everything else. So I believe in it. I believe in having the vision board, but also believe in having other things like where you think about even the law of realism, right? Even the law of cause and effect, all these things. So, yes, I believe in it, but it's just one. It's like, think of it's like one or two percent of the equation.

A lot of people that add a lot of value in the world, but they don't know how to package it so that they can, you know, earn, to receive the money and have someone give it to them. And so it's learning kind of those skills, yeah.

Well, the earning of money is an exact science and it's governed by law. The amount of money you earn is in direct ratio to the need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty there is in replacing you. It's the need for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty there is in replacing you.

Now.

In this business I'm in, you can earn an awful lot of money because there's a tremendous need for a person that does what I do. I've traveled all over the world, from Shanghai to Buenos Aires to all over Europe, Asia, everywhere. Everywhere they need what I've got. There's a tremendous need. I can earn more money than a neurosurgeon. Now, everybody has a brain, but not everybody needs it operated on.

They need it operated in a different way. Yeah. The way you do it.

What you do, then your ability to do it. So if a person, if there's a great need for what a person's doing, then they've got to get really good at it. So you never stop getting better at it. You're good at what you do. And I don't mean to flatter you. You are just good at it. I watched you do it.

Thank you.

And you do it like I was mentioning, you're sort of the, well, you're. You're much the same as drawing a blank on his name.

Larry King.

Yeah.

Because Larry was a master. Larry never talked about. And Larry, he never. It was all about you. You never heard him say, I. It was always about, you know. interviewing the person. So there was a great need for what he did. He was entertaining a lot of people. His ability to do it, he was very good at it. So he was very difficult to replace. Now when you're difficult to replace, your stock goes up.

Yeah.

We've learned. We've got to learn how to earn money. and most people don't know how to earn money. Most people think you go to work to earn money. You know, I was in a seminar in Phoenix, probably a couple of years ago now, and this guy came over and talked to me. I knew him, not well, but I knew him. And he was a doctor, and he told me he was thinking of quitting. I said, why are you going to quit? Well, he said, the medical profession is all messed up now. He says, you, got to put in more time to earn less money. I said, well, that's true. But I said, why'd you become a doctor? He said, I love it. I said, what the hell? The fact that you're earning any money is a plus. You don't go to work for money. You go to work for satisfaction. There's two rewards in life. One is material and the other is psychic. We shouldn't work for money. We should work for satisfaction. You provide service to earn money. Take some recording stars. I got the millions on a recording. But look at the millions of people that are being entertained. Construction workers, air flight attendance, restaurants, there's the music's playing, entertaining all the people that can hear that music. So they're entertaining all the people. And that's where it's coming. You see, you do what you, you work at what you love to do, and you'll get tremendous satisfaction. Like, I love what I'm doing. I would do it for nothing if I had to, but I, I just love it. I really love it. And so the fact that I love.

It.

Why would I want to do anything else? That's what I said to him. You get satisfaction from what you're doing, what you love to do. So every day when I get up, go to work, I'm doing what I love doing. You provide service to earn money. I have all kinds of stuff that we have, stuff that we sell, programs that we're selling. Somebody buying them now, I don't know who they are or where they are, but I'm earning money right now while we're talking. And when I go to bed tonight, I'll be earning money and I'll learn it all night. And I like that idea, you know, because we're providing service. So I think we have to get the money straight in our mind. And I don't think most people have it straight. If you, and if, if people don't, you were mentioning if a person didn't like to talk about it, they have a problem with it.

So start talking about it more?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

If there's somebody that you're around a partner, an associate or something and they really don't want to talk about money.

You.

I think there's a problem there.

Yeah.

If someone came to you and has struggled with money their entire life, whether they're in their early 20s or they're in their 40s or 50s, and they asked you, Bob, what do I need to do to make my first million dollars? What would you say are the most important things they should think and act on next?

Well, first of all, they've got to believe that they can earn the million dollars. They've got to develop a belief system. Our belief system is based upon our evaluation of something. And frequently, if we reevaluate the situation, our belief about it will change. We've got to understand that money is easy to earn. I work with our sales staff all the time. Helping them learn how to earn more money. I work with members of our staff, different members of our staff, helping them develop the desire to earn more money, and then I show them how they can do it.

And.

How do we believe if we've never seen evidence before or gotten results before of earning it?

Yeah. It's through the repetition of it, through the repetition of writing it and believing it. I had an affirmation that I used for years, still use it. I'm so happy and grateful now that money comes to me in increasing quantities through multiple sources on a continuous basis. I am so happy and grateful now that money comes to me in increasing quantities through multiple sources on a continuous basis. And I just keep repeating that like a mantra. and you write out, you know, I'm so happy and grateful now that I have in my possession a million dollars. And that's where you started out intellectually, then you get emotionally involved. And if you keep doing that, ultimately you're going to attract the money. Now you've got to ask, how can money be earned? Money can be earned in all kinds of different ways. We have a company MSI Connect. It's a pet of mine, not my partner's. I don't think she's too loved with it, but I think it's a neat company. MSI is multiple sources of income. Connect. And there's a lot of people there, and they connect with each other, and they set up joint ventures with each other. They set up affiliate things with each other. You can buy different things there. People sell stuff there, you know? they, they study money there.

You know.

You'Ve got to get into, into an environment where money is talked about, where it's understood.

You know, it's interesting you say that because for, for years I have studied money at different levels, and those levels of studying have gotten me to those results. But I've never been able to really, you know, but there's always a cap and you've got to learn something new in order to break through that cap into a new level. And I've never really understood the stock market. I've always just invested in certain things and allowed them to just work on their own. But I've never actually taken full ownership of learning it myself. I've always had a financial advisor and things like that. And now I said, you know what? I just want to understand the stock market. I want to learn it because I don't know. I'm still uneducated. I don't even know how to bias. I bought my first stock like a few months ago myself. I've invested in stocks and index funds, but I've actually learned how to do it myself. And I was like, I need to find the best people that are doing this and learn from them and have conversations with them. And it's been amazing in a short amount of time by surrounding myself with people that are doing at an astronomical level just by having a couple conversations, taking the risk and doing it myself and trying it and learn and fumbling around having no clue what I'm doing. I'm already seeing growth in a couple of months. But if I didn't have the awareness to ask those questions and surround myself with that knowledge and then apply it and continue to learn from it, I'd still be stuck to where I was before. And so I think that's what we need to. I love the way you talk about the environment, about constantly being curious, asking these questions and having the conversations, because it doesn't matter how successful we are, we'll be stuck to a level of our past knowing until we break through and find a new knowing. I'm curious for those who want to learn the millionaire morning routine, they want to master this. They want to learn what do those millionaires and billionaires do with their morning routine? You've already shared a few things that you do. what would it look like if you had 90 minutes in the morning to set yourself up to reprogram your money mindset?

Well, I don't think it would take you 90 minutes. You could spend. Oh, God, nine minutes. If you just write down. Write it. Write this down right now. I am so happy and grateful. I am so happy and grateful now that I have multiple sources of income. I am so happy and grateful now that I have multiple sources of income. Do you know, if you write that out every day for the next 30, 60 days, you're going to become very, very aware of having multiple sources of income. Wealthy people all have multiple sources. They don't have one or two, they have a whole bunch of them. I don't know how many sources of income I've got. I'm not even interested in figuring it out. because somebody else looks after that. I don't look after it. But I do know that you can do that. That's what Keith did it down in New Orleans. God, he just. His life changed so dramatically. And I'll show you different things you can do because anyone can. You want to set up multiple sources of income. Do you know I was flying on a plane? to KL. I used to fly from Toronto to KL once a month and back. It's 25 hours near one way. So, wow. When I'm in the air, I either work with names, words or numbers. And I wrote down one with six zeros. And I thought, what is the big deal about a million? You know, you often hear people say, what would you do if you had a million? If you won a million.

And.

I got thinking about it and I played with that on the plane for quite a while and it dawned on me they do not have one source of income. They don't have a job. Now some people have a job, earn a million dollars, but that's the unusual one. And then I got playing with it further. and I broke it down, they'd have more than one, and then I got it in multiple sources, and then MSI. Well then I got thinking, we should run a seminar, teach people to earn a million dollars by setting up multiple sources of income. And when I got off the plane, I phoned Mark Victor Hansen down in Newport Beach. I was in KL. I woke him up in the middle of the night, and I got talking, he says, great idea. so we started the million dollar forum and he got involved in Bernie Dorman, who just passed away in Jack Canfield and Lee Pulos. In fact, that's where the chicken soup for the soul books came from, from that particular seminar. And we were teaching people to set up multiple sources of income. Well, they are in many billions from that, but that's where that started. And you are in a beautiful position to set up all kinds of sources of income. so when you think of wealth, you know, you might only earn 10 or 15, 000 from one source. You might earn two or three hundred thousand from another. But you have a lot of them.

Right.

And that's where you'll earn wealth. Like, I don't invest in the stock market. My wife's have bought stocks. Sandy buys stocks, I think. I just don't pay attention to it. It's not that it doesn't interest me. I'd rather earn it by thinking, putting an idea to work than let the stock market do for me. That's not, that doesn't excite me.

Sure.

I'd rather sit here and think of, if I sat here for another hour after we got off, I could think of a way of creating a source of income. And it would be a damn good one because they're all good.

Right.

Very creative. My mind is, you know, conditional on that level.

Yeah. What do you think are three skills everyone should learn in order to generate more wealth and generate more income for themselves or just to improve the quality of their life in general? What are those three skills you wish everyone could master?

We've got to be, you've got to be fairly creative. You've got to have a free flow of energy. Energy has to flow through. You can't be stubborn. You can't lock in on something and not want to let go of it. You've got to have a free flow. You've got to be interested in ideas, new ideas. You were talking about not wanting to watch television. I don't watch much. I love watching Shark Tank though.

Yeah, it's great. And I like Kevin O'Leary yesterday. Yeah, he's great.

Well, they were, you worked with him yesterday, did you say?

I just had Kevin O'Leary on yesterday.

Yeah.

Well, you see, now that guy's mind, it's amazing the way it works.

Yeah.

But you watch all of them, all those sharks, their mind, it works like a rocket, you know? And they break things down, somebody'll say something, they break all kinds of things down from what the one one thing the person will say, they are very, very sharp, every one of them. And Kevin is certainly one of the sharp ones on there, but they all are. You know, I don't know if there's one any sharper than the other, but they've got a very free flow of ideas.

Yeah.

So flow of energy, free flow, interested in new ideas. What's another?

I think you have to be service oriented. you really have to be thinking of how to do things for people, how to help people, because money is a reward received for service rendered.

Yeah, it's hard to. It's hard to help others when you're always consumed with the negativity in your own life.

Oh, well, I mean, that's why poor people remain poor. They're so locked into their problems. But if you, listen, if a person is like that, let's suppose they're really locked in on problems, but they hear what I've just said. They really got to think of serving others. How can I serve others? How can I be of greater service? You're going to figure it out. Discipline yourself for let's say 30, 60, 90 minutes a day sitting down and thinking of writing down 10 ideas that could be of service to other people. And you probably won't get very good ones for the first little while, but if you keep doing it, they'll keep coming. You know?

Absolutely. Or you'll try stuff in the beginning and you'll learn something from those efforts and you'll realize how to make them better and maybe don't say it stick with them. When I started, I was like doing stuff, just hustling around, trying to figure it out and you realize what doesn't work for you until you realize what does work. What's something else you recommend doing in the morning routine? I know you mentioned writing down this sentence every day. I'm so happy and grateful that now I have multiple sources of income. What other things would you recommend for people to develop that millionaire mindset in the morning?

Get books on. On money. You two can be prosperous as one.

You.

That was the one by Robert Russell. You two can be prosperous. Think and grow rich. Who else have I got there? The master key to riches. by Napoleon Hill. Get reading these books. Get a partner to read them with. The partner doesn't have to be somebody you're living with. Could be someone on the other side of the country.

Why is that important to have a partner reading with you?

Well, you usually will do it. And if you take, here is a great book, Power of Awareness. Now, when you look at this, it has got a red band across the bottom. The Power of Awareness, you will find it, without this red band, do not get that. This is the one. This has also included A Weakened Imagination, Power of Awareness by Neville. This is a phenomenal book. This is going to expand the mind. Then get into Master Key on Riches. You too can be prosperous and think and grow rich. On money. This one, Awareness. It's so good. This is one of the better books I've ever read.

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. What drives you right now to do what you're doing and to create so much and to grow what you've been growing? What's your driving force?

You know, I think it's part adventure. I have this thing that there's the four M's of motivation what motivate us. I actually have all these cool mentor guys that I now have built this advisory board. So I try to do one phone call a day with somebody really smart, whether it's an author or PhD or a... And there's a guy who is very famous psychologist and he wrote book. And I said, I got this theory of motivation. He's like a Wharton professor. And he listened to it and he was like, I think that's right. I think that's about right. He had a few changes since the four M's. So you have material things, mating, mating, mating, which would come like human relationships. The third one would be you have mastery, which is like status. and the last one is movement or momentum, freedom. And so I think every person you meet for the most part, if they're normal sane humans, is going to be motivated around that hierarchy. And some people though, some things are more important. Like Warren Buffett, he said from seven years old, he knew he wanted to be wealthy. So this is a materialistically driven guy, but he can help the world. I think my order, you got to know your order. I think I'm most driven by movement freedom. Like, I became an entrepreneur because I didn't like a nine-to-five job. You know, I did it. I tried it. It wasn't for me.

-How old were you when you became an entrepreneur?

-Around 19.

-19.

-And I... Around... -How many years ago was that? -What? I don't know. What was that? Last year? -When I was 20, I then was I was an entrepreneur and then I did a little bit of company work at the same time I was an entrepreneur. I didn't like it. Same with going to college. So I think that's my first one and then each person's different. And that's one thing where you get people that don't like each other. It's a huge mistake. I see people and you see this a lot. People go, well, I'm not going to list this person. I don't think they have my values. Well, all humans have, if they're not criminals, You probably share the same values just in different priority order. Hugh Hefner. This is a man driven by, let's say, mating. We could say Hugh Hefner. He liked women. A lot of people, if you bring up the name Hugh Hefner, a lot of people will write him off. Well, he's a freaking genius. I just, I try to do like once a week, I'll study one person that's well known. I mean, he has an IQ equal to Bill Gates. He's a genius guy. and if you look at his life, he's 28 years old, he was in a marriage that was failing, he was at a bridge and he said, is this it? Is this all my life? I hate my life. And about a month later he launched Playboy and it became, you know, it was instant hit and he went on to doing all kinds of stuff. I mean, he was the first real figure in America that was accepting black people in. I mean, he was interviewing Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. when these people were, I don't know if it was Martin Luther King Jr. but they were getting shot. I mean, they ended up getting shot. And he, so we, one of my, there's a genius guy, speaking of secretive. I know a few entrepreneurs, in fact, I know about three of them that make the most money and they are so secretive, guys. And I get to have dinner with them once in a while. And I was in New York. and I had dinner with this guy and he said, Just remember Ty, most people can only hold one thought in their head at the same time. So it used to be Kim Kardashian, Kardashians, idiots. Now, Kylie Jenner, this month on her birthday, said, I'm selling a lipstick kit. 150 bucks for the kit. Only 300,000. What'd she sell out in? One hour? 30. $100 million bucks. She's 18. She's not an idiot. So now all of a sudden the mind, so now people love the Kardashians. Just a Bieber. There was a time, Douchey Kid, hate. And so I think that when I think about my motivations and when I see people trying to figure out my motivations, most people want it to just be one motivator. Humans are complicated. I'm complicated. the smarter you are at some level as a species, you can be more complicated. You know, earthworms, they ain't that complicated. Dogs, a little more complicated. We have dogs. You can have a dog with a little more complicated personality.

Sure.

Well, dogs have about a 40 to 50 IQ. Humans have 100 to 200 IQ. And that's exponential curve, which means we're a hundred times more complicated. By the way, which speaks to why I think we have masks. that's a whole nother.

What would you say are your top priorities in life right now?

Priorities? I mean, I try to keep it simple in my mind. I call the four pillars of the good life: health, wealth, love and happiness. I try to, I want to have.

All four of those.

What's missing?

You know, I think the ebb and flow. Like, I think there's times when your physical health, you're working too hard and then so you're not as healthy.

That's probably the as I've seen you in the last few years.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

I've been able to, you know, I was doing a lot of work stuff and I balanced a little bit better. But I'm doing a lot of stuff. I think social life is super important. So, I think in each person's life, if you're a genius and you're watching this, you'll be able to do it way better than me, which is always hold all four constantly up. And that's what my thing is now. It's like, how can I structure my life so that all four of those are rocking and rolling. And that includes wealth sometimes. You know?

Here's a question from one of my listeners. Well, I'm first curious before I ask the full question is have you ever been married? No. Okay. One of the questions is has the money and the luxury that you live in and the lifestyle you have made relationships easier or harder for you? You don't make personal relationships.

Yeah, I think that if you're not careful, money is like a pit bull, and a pit bull can save your life or it can turn around and kill you. And so when it comes to dating, you know, if I'm dating girls, if you make more money, have more more different status level, you have to be more aware of that because there are, like I said, there are people that don't have your best interest at heart. But you know what? I remember when I was poor and there's nasty people too. I haven't found that to be as big of a deal as people think. One thing that I think you have to be careful of is when you have a major status change in your life. If you met a girl when you were poor, like Kevin Systrom and then he became a billionaire, that can be rocky. Whereas if you're Bill Gates and you've been a billionaire since you're 30, he probably doesn't remember what it's like to have to cope. So I think the transition is more.

What's your vision for a relationship in your life? What do you want to create? Do you see yourself being married? Do you see yourself?

I think maybe, you know, I don't know that there's this interesting book called Attached by Heller and Levine. And we know more now about how the brain works and there's different types of people. There's, it's called attachment theory. So there's secures, there's avoidance, and there's anxious. And the main takeaway I take from from it. I don't think everybody's gonna get married for 50 years. And my proof is the second you made the world free, meaning women didn't have to be married to men, they could survive economically and thrive without men, the divorce rate went straight to 50-50. And I will bet money it's gonna be 50-50 for the next couple centuries.

Why?

Because the attached steer theorY has found that about 50% of children, and you can trace it back to toddler age, are secures. So I think the world would be a lot better place if you don't force everybody to get married. I do. I will tell you this. Everybody should have love in their life, romantic love.

Do you have it?

I just broke up with. I was in a relationship for a couple years. So, yeah, I think you to have it. I think I'm somebody, well you can look at my life, I don't think I'll be somebody that necessarily got married at 19 and you know died at 80. You know what Dr. Marina Adshade, she told me, she says Ty, people forget throughout history, average marriage is 12 years because people used to die.

Wow.

So she goes, we're not our DNA, we're not all people thinking years you're supposed to be with one person for 60 years, 50 years. She goes, It ain't happening because we're not coded that way. But about, I think 50% of people. So, if I had brothers and sisters and or kids or whatever, I would just look at each person individually and be like, you, know what? You're a lover.

Right.

Get married, stay married. You look at another person, you know what? It's going to be a disaster. And you see that in the world and kids end up getting that stuff. I think it's a, it's a tricky question.

So what do you want to create moving forward?

In relationships. Yeah.

Like I said, ideal relationship for you.

I think you find love and you stay in it as long as it is meant to be. I know that sounds like such a cliche thing, but, man, imagine I grew up with a, my, a single mom. My dad was in prison when I was born. And then my mom got remarried. That marriage lasted for a while, was rocky, eventually divorced. You know, Dane Cook, you remember the comedian Dane Cook? I've seen him over at the Comedy Store. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a laugh factory, so. I heard him say the best, most poignant point ever from stage. He goes, why can't we just be adults and get to that point where you realize you're no longer in love and just go, Wow, this has been awesome. We've got kids. I'm gonna go live over here. You live over there. And let's always love each other. He goes, no. We just let it degrade to the point where people want to murder each other and the kids are in massive conflict. And so, I think the mature, I think the worldview is wrong. There's no science that 100% of people are meant to be married forever. Then what's your, what's your, what do.

You want to create then? What's the vision for your relationship in the future? if you could have the perfect ideal relationship, what would that look like or feel like or.

Well, I think. I think you'd be in love and you'd want to be in love. But I. What I'm saying is, what do you want? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. For me, definitely. I think all people, including me, you should be. You should have love. I'm just saying some people, it's going to be with one person forever.

I understand.

I understand. But I'm curious. Mine, not what everyone else wants.

It depends who I It depends on what you want.

If you could create the life of your dreams with the woman that you want to be with.

Just like you created this.

Just like you created this lifestyle.

Yes, but this is different because it doesn't have our DNA.

Okay, let's just say you could.

If I could change the DNA.

No, let's say that you could create the relationship you want.

You could create it.

What would that be like for you? What would what does that look like?

Some relationship will be long and some will be short. That's what I said.

-So multiple relationships.

-In my lifetime. Yes. -In a lifetime.

Over a course of- -you-'re not looking.

For one woman to have an incredible relationship with for the rest of your life. -Well, some could be long. -Gotcha. So let's say tomorrow I meet a girl and all that and you know that it's meant to be. But you know what?

All relationships are temporary because somebody dies before the other person. I get it. But let's say you could have exactly what you wanted though. What would that be? I think not like what it could.

Be, but someone long and some short.

Okay, so you want multiple relationships.

I think that's what I'm destined to have.

Okay, but what do you want?

I want my destiny. No, but look, this is it. Here, let me give you an example.

I understand.

I want to know exactly what you want. what you think.

No, but I'm serious. I've trained myself to want my, what I think I'm built for.

Let me give examples. So, you're not built for one person, is what you're saying? Even if it's- Probably not.

Okay. Perfect.

Awesome.

Cool.

This is a straight answer.

I'm curious.

Lewis is good at interviews. Here's another question. You're gonna get the answer from me.

Another question.

If I'm being honest with you, I feel like you're avoiding a lot of the questions.

No, I think- I just want to make sure we're getting to- -Yeah, that's good. -Your thoughts and your ideas on how you react to that. -The reason you feel of avoiding, I think, is because I think some answers are hard.

-Absolutely. I think here's why I want to do this interview. -Yes. -Because I think people want to hear what the real hard answers are to you. -Yes. -Because I feel like from the responses I've been getting when I ask people what I should ask you. -Yes. -Is they feel like you're not authentic. -Right. -They feel like you're not telling the truth. They feel like you're not, you're holding back, you're wearing something that's... Elusive.

And you're acknowledging it, saying that you're waiting.

You're not, you know, you're not revealing everything.

Let me speak to that for one millisecond. Now I get it, 'cause you wanna.

Be guarded in certain areas.

No, no, no, no, but I'm gonna tell you this. This is my advice to myself and other people. Okay, let's hear it. The thief will always be suspicious. So when I meet somebody suspicious of me, it's always a flag to get the hell away from them. not prove myself. If you are ever in a situation where you're dating someone and on the first date they look over to you go, now I just want to be clear, you ain't gonna cheat on me. If they bring that up, if that's in their consciousness, that suspicion level, they will cheat on you because only thieves are thinking about breaking up.

Sure, but if someone is curious to ask you questions about your life because they want to get to know you, that's not a thief.

No, but I found, I 'Cause I meet a lot of people. The people who meet, you meet, I meet, you meet, that are going, you know, there's something I don't feel authentic about you. I'm like, are you kidding? Who's more authentic than me?

It's usually a reflection of what they're missing in themselves.

-Who has a camera on me? I'm like, guys, when somebody goes, is that really you? I'm like, I do 150 Snapchats a day. You think this is a hotel? Some people are brain dead. I'm like, who is more authentic than somebody that turns the camera on them all the time in an unscripted format? I'm not the Kardashian. I'm not on a set with the producers editing thing. I mean, we can edit a little bit, but I'm on live Facebook. So that's why I say the reason, and I advise anybody, if you're getting a lot of a lot of people asking you, I'm suspicious of these people.

Be careful of those people.

Sure. The thief will steal from you eventually.

Okay, next question. We are in Beverly Hills. This is, I'm assuming this is one of the nicest properties in the neighborhood. What do you got?

20 bedrooms. This place has 16. Now, there's a place 16 bedrooms.

There's massive guest tools, guest homes.

They're pretty incredible.

This is nothing.

But it's nice. What's the place we went to, Lady.

Gaga, the place my?

Ron Burkle.

Woo!

This is Ron Burkle's bathroom.

But there's a nice, a pool, cabanas. I am very thankful. Volleyball court, basketball court, tennis court, MMA gym.

Yes.

What do you have? Giraffes running around in the backyard. You've got a nice lifestyle. Let's say they called it luxurious lifestyle. Maybe not compared to Leilagagas people, but you're in 90210. One of the most, the richest, wealthiest areas in the world. -Yes.

-Probably top 10, right? -Yeah.

-Maybe number one. -I mean, Beverly Hills is yes. -Now, what are the heart? What are the best and hardest parts? -Yeah. -About the lifestyle that you've created and also display to your audience. Because you put a lot of it on display. -Yes. -We were just walking around. You're right. your yard, your cars, obviously the books, everything. But what's the best part and the hardest part about the lifestyle you desire?

-I mean, the best part is... Specifically for this place is being able to live in a city but feel a little bit like I'm in the countryside. Because I actually like farms. I lived 10 years on a farm. And so, like this place is like grass. Like I've lived in LA, I've lived in New York, where I didn't have any money. When I first came to LA actually from San Diego, when I first moved, I was born here but left as a little kid. When I came back to LA, I could only afford, I decided I was gonna live in Santa Monica. I thought that'd be nice. I didn't have much money. So I rented this temporary place that was like 250 square feet. So what's nice about this place is literally just having some space makes me feel more peaceful. And I think if you live in cities, I was just in New York, unknowingly your cortisol levels jump up. So, and the hardest part of living here, here's the thing for anybody that's successful, I will tell you, tall poppy syndrome, status is a bitch. I just read a fascinating article by Dr. David Buss, who may be one of the smartest guys to walk this planet in this century. And he said, he wrote about this, anytime you display status, men especially, women somewhat in their own, women more against women, but men against men, it becomes threatening to some men and stuff like that. And so the biggest part is go, do I want to show that I have a Lamborghini? The first nice car that I got really, I got a Maserati in like, I don't remember 2008 or something. From 2008, 2014. and I had a Ferrari after that. I never posted a picture. I posted one picture on my Facebook for six years. So when people think that I got cars to show off, I'm like, in six years, you look on my Facebook, it goes all the way back and shows that you can see the picture.

So why start showing it?

So that's the good question.

So why? I'll tell you why. I'm gonna just tell you now, there's not a person in history or a government that has more kids in the ghetto reading books than me. You can hate me all you want around displaying stuff, but what are you doing for the world? That's tangible that you can put your finger on. I got more kids interested in reading, knowledge, mentors, probably than anybody in history. If I got to show a Lamborghini for that and you have a problem with that, go fucking change the world on your own, dude. I don't give a shit. That's my honest thing. That's no mask. That's like, great. If you could have do it in some other way, you're way smarter than me. But if you can't do it and you can only complain about how I did it, why don't you learn? Why don't you do your own version of it? If you want to inspire people to rock climb, go do the equivalent of rock climbing. I'm showing people how to do, how to aspire to more and you got to be practical. You know what motivates people? I had this, my brother had a birthday party in my house. When I was walking, when it was over, this guy walked up to me and said, Man, I'm a school teacher. I'm a friend of your brother and I just want to tell you the other day, this kid was walking around and he's like, He's been a juvenile delinquent in and out of jail whole four years in high high school and I saw him carrying some books on business. And I walked up, this is in the inner city of LA, like Compton. I'm from Long Beach, Ghetto Park. I said, I walked up to a kid, I said, to this guy, why are you reading this book? What is? I never seen you with a book. And the kid turned to me and said, Ty Lopez, I can get a Lamborghini if I read. Now, it's not actually what I say.

But you see the inspiration there?

See a Trojan horse?

Yeah. Yeah, it brings people in with the luxury.

But it's actually, this is the thing. Some people would say, oh, so what you're saying is it's a white lie. It's not a white lie. That's how I fucking caught a Lamborghini. I read books. My second mentor, Alan Nation, I was 20 on a farm. One morning in Joel Salatin's farm, where was this? This is in Virginia on a farm. I was mentoring on this guy named Joel Salatin and his mentor, Alan Nation, came. First time I met him and he was the most the most fascinating person I ever met. And I think at this point he might have been a millionaire, but I never met a millionaire dude growing up. I don't think I ever met somebody who made more than 50 grand. My family was not dirt poor. They would have been had it not been for my grandma. But I grew up around my mom, single mom, probably made 20 grand a year. So, I had $200 for Christmas growing up.

Mm-.

Well, When I met this guy, Alan Nation, coming down the stairs, realized this guy's successful, talked to him, and he started quoting from this book. I said, How do you know so much about this book? He goes, oh, I always read a book before breakfast. I said, How do you remember? He said, well, you got to train. And that's why I learned to read a book a day. And from those books, if you read the right books, you get to collect and collate the knowledge of people who have spent a lifetime. And so when I say what I like more than Lamborghini is these books, there is pure.

Where would you be without reading books?

Oh man, trying to hunt down mentors in person, which I do now. See now I don't, I do read now, but if I didn't choose to read, I could get away with it.

Why?

Because now I call the authors.

Get the knowledge from the people. Yeah.

Yeah, but when I I lived in a mobile home in North Clayton, North Carolina.

When was this?

Growing up as a teenager. Okay, it was double wide, so we weren't super poor, but it was a fucking trailer. You think if I called up Dr. David Buss and said, Will you talk to me an hour a week? No, but I could buy his book. And when I couldn't afford a book, I could go to the library. And so to be able to, I mean, what America needs Here's the problem. The White House tries to do learning initiatives. Public schools try to do learning initiatives where you go to kids in the ghetto and you say, Yo, Reed, no, it's not cool. It's not swagger. If you're in the ghetto, I grew up around all projects and stuff. I grew up in North Carolina, Long Beach, even San Diego where I was. So a lot of gang stuff. Kids are not going to lose their swag and maybe get beat up and shot to look cool. But you know what? Now, the way I do it, millions of people aren't afraid of it because I still have swagger and I do that. And so if I make learning knowledge cool and some uppity entrepreneurs have a problem with it, I'm like, you ain't bring no fucking value. Come sit down with me. You don't know jack shit. so I don't care about those people. There is of no consequence. And, you know, I often tell my employees, one of my companies we kind of call Knowledge Society, as I want you to know, name a company more important than ours. Name it. Apple? No. Facebook?

No.

We are making millions of Einstein's geniuses that in the past rotted in the ghetto, they're going to be found now. And what that will do for civilization is important. So what we're doing is important. So underneath all of that stuff, which has an edge to it, but it's real edge. There's not one car in that garage that's ever been rented. There's nothing, everything people see is literally, and my camera guys are right here, we might set up a scene Five seconds before, like move the camera over there. But there's nothing like, okay, tomorrow, let's go.

Does it matter if it's rented or owned? Does it really matter?

No, no. But I'm saying there's nothing. Now, if you rent a Lamborghini for a year, you'd be insane because it'd be about a million dollars a year to rent.

No, no.

What I'm saying is there's nothing fake.

This is my life.

Like you could make a bad investment.

That would still be better than a smart spend.

Really?

So what's a smart spend? What's a smart spend versus a bad?

I mean, I don't really know anything that's a smart spend, but you know, you spend money. When you spend money, you don't get an investment back. And when you invest money, at least you got a possibility.