Rob Moore - Entrepreneur, Investor, Mentor & Best-Selling Author | Know More, Make More, Give More — Success Story with Scott D. Clary

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So December 15th, 2005, I was working in my dad's pub, his bar, um, in my hometown. I was 25 years and 11 months old. And something happened in that bar that definitely changed the course of both my financial life but also my mindset around life. And to put you in the picture really quick, my dad had pretty much raised me to be an entrepreneur from age 6. He got me working in his pubs, bars, and clubs age 6. Taking money off the customers, emptying the pool tables, the slot machines, restocking up the beer kegs and the drinks cabinets at age 6. And he'd pay me a pound a week. And I'd go down to the local sort of everything store before Amazon and I'd buy a picture of a Ferrari, a picture of a Lamborghini, picture of a— I loved the Mustang or the Corvette. And every week, I'd buy a supercar picture for my pound. And I'd put them up all on my wall. And I just loved the fact that my dad seemed to have this freedom. He always had a big lump of cash in his pocket. And back then, the paper notes were so big. I know I was small, but the paper notes were so big. And I just loved work. I loved working more than I loved going to school. And— but I had to go to school, unfortunately. And I did my exams and did quite well. And then all of a sudden, I'm at university. And I'm on the last day of university. And I'm getting a degree in something I'm not interested in at all, which is architecture. And I've built up all this debt and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. So my mum phones me up literally the day I graduated and she said, can you come and work at the pub for a month or two? Because Dad's not very well. I'm a bit worried about him. And then you can figure out what you want to do with your life. And 3 years later, I'm still there. And it brings me to December 15th, 2005. And now I'm £50,000, which I guess is about $70,000 now. In debt, living in my mum and dad's pub with them, aged 26. I mean, that's quite sad. I'm uncoachable, I'm skeptical, I've got a chip on my shoulder, I hate life, I'm scared, but it comes across as arrogance. And then I'm pulling beers in the pub at 1 o'clock, really busy, December the 15th, freezing cold in the UK in December. And my dad just has this massive nervous breakdown in the pub in front of all the customers. He started, eyes rolling around the back of his head, convulsing and shouting and screaming and squealing. It was all gibberish. I managed to get him out of the front of the pub. I got him to the front, hopefully trying to hold him against the wall. But all the customers had come out to watch. The police had got called. And, um, two policemen got out of a small van. One looked about 19 years old, and they beat him up. They got batons out and they smashed him around the back, around the back of the legs, the knees. They tied him up, they put him in the van, they arrested him, they sectioned him, and they diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. And that was almost 16 years ago. Um, and in that moment, seeing my mum crying her eyes out, my sister crying her eyes out, all the customers watching I felt intense shame. But I was frozen scared to do anything. I actually had— I was about brown belt in martial arts at that point. It's probably smart that I didn't go and fight the police. But I just didn't have the courage to do anything. And you know, I wouldn't say that was the one moment. You know, everyone pins everything on the one moment. It wasn't like that for me. It was like for weeks, I hated myself. And I And I felt such shame. My dad had paid for school, paid for university, paid for my first house, given me a job. And I'm supposed to be an entrepreneur and I'm nothing. And I hated myself. But in those few weeks of self-loathing, I started to take opportunities that were always there but I didn't know, Scott. So, you know, I went to a property meeting for the first time even though I hated I hated yuppies and I hated entrepreneurs. You know, I hated anyone in a suit. I liked to rage against the machine. You know, I was like, I hate all this. Yuppies, ugh. But I didn't hate that. It was just my own fears projecting out. And so I forced myself to this networking event. And at the end of that networking event, I met someone and we're still business partners today, 16 years on. And I'll keep the story really short, Scott. Because this is the CV bit. But I got myself out of the £50 grand's worth of debt in my first year selling property deals for a company that this guy had helped me get a job in. I made nearly £100 grand clear in that year and bought myself— I got out of debt, paid all my debts off, even bought myself a Nissan 350Z, bought it for cash. The next year, and we bought 20 properties in that year on the side. The next year I bought 30 properties and we set up my company Progressive. Fast forward now, we have 1,540 tenants across hundreds of properties. We've just finished a 99-apartment, 159-tenant block which made £14,377,000 net profit in November '21.

Congratulations.

We've done hundreds of millions in education revenue. I broke the world record for the longest public speech not once but twice. I've written 18 books. I've got 1,000 podcast episodes, often you know, top in business and entrepreneurship, raised hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions for my foundations, the Rob Moore Foundation. And you know, there's other bits and bobs I've done along the way. I'm probably the most proud of retiring my dad and mum. Only 3 years after I bought my house, I bought my car, and I retired them. And that's probably for me a more proud moment than all the business accolades. But really, I feel like I've just started. We were just talking off air before about how we're all comparing ourselves to someone, and Joe Rogan's got a bigger podcast than me. So I feel like I've got a lot more work to do. But this all was because I got motivated, and I had this event that happened to me that shocked me back into chasing my dream and overcoming my fears, I suppose.

Do you feel that the best entrepreneurs have to hit that rock bottom before they are successful? Do you feel like everybody who is successful has had that kind of point in their life? Is that a prerequisite?

No. I think it helps. But there's two ways to have a low. The rock bottom you mentioned, essentially it's motivation, isn't it? It is pain. It's pain that causes motivation and accountability. So there's two ways to get that, Scott. Number one is you wait until your dad has a nervous breakdown and gets beaten up in front of everyone, or you create your own pain, accountability, and motivation. So you either artificially create it in yourselves or life created it for you. But I do think that's a driver. So, you know, a lot of people are misinformed about success because they say things like, oh, well, that person's successful because they had a rich family. That person's successful because they were born in the middle class. That person's successful because, you know, they're able to live in the American dream. But actually, you look at successful people, they're abused. Oprah Winfrey. You look at successful people, they're immigrants. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Vee. So actually, this pain is often the motivator. But I suppose the reason I tell the story, I don't want people to wait until they hit rock bottom to finally follow their dreams. I want people to create accountability, pain, and motivation within themselves now so they don't have to hit rock bottom. They're almost forcing their own hunger.

Now, when you jump into all these different business ventures, it's over the years you've built up all of, you've built up a property business, you've built up a podcast, you've written multiple books, you get some awards. But what motivated you to go in one path or the other day one? And also, how are you successful at so many things when so many entrepreneurs succumb to shiny object syndrome and fail at multiple?

Okay, I'll answer the second one and then ask me the first one again. Okay. Um, so I've battled with that, Scott, for much of my entrepreneurial life. Am I doing too many things? If I just focused on one thing, would I be more successful? After all, everyone tells you that FOCUS stands for Follow One Course Until Successful. Hmm. But I think you've got to honor who you are and really know who you are. And I love variety. It's a high value of mine and I need it being an entrepreneur. And by definition of an entrepreneur, what's the difference between an entrepreneur and a small business owner? Well, entrepreneurs probably take more risk and entrepreneurs probably really do more ventures. Like you probably wouldn't call one small business owner an entrepreneur, but you would call an entrepreneur an entrepreneur if they had multiple companies. You know, Steve Jobs had multiple companies even though he's famous for Apple. And, you know, many of the other entrepreneurs Honestly, multiple things. So you list them all. They all do multiple things. So variety is a high need of mine. It's a high human need, but it's a high need of mine. So I would say if variety is a high need for yours, be honest about it and try and balance 2 or 3 different models or streams. But know when you're spreading yourself too thin and be self-aware about that. Because I've got a few things that for me are a warning sign that I'm spreading myself too thin. Like maybe I'm overwhelmed, or maybe there's too much in my diary, or sometimes, Scott, I sit down and I go, I'm doing a lot of things, but I'm not doing any of them very well. And then I just have to say no and push a few things back and delay a few things. Not enough things, not enough variety. Too much things, dilution of skills and focus and results. And we've all got our own sweet spot. It is wrong to say you should do one thing. It is wrong to say you should do 10 things. It depends on you. But you probably shouldn't do 10 things straight away. And you probably shouldn't do one thing forever. One thing forever is a risk. 10 things straight away is too thin. You've got to find your ideal balance. And for me, it's probably running 3 different ventures at the same time. So at the moment, I'm running my training organizations. But on a strategic level. I'm doing my personal brand and content and then little side projects like my NFT launch and, you know, sort of part writing books and things like that. So, you know, I like to sort of divide my time up about 70% in my main thing, 20% in my secondary thing, and then 10% in all other things. And that works for me. But we've all got to find our own slight balance.

Now, what's your mental process for deciding where to invest your energy? What's the highest leverage opportunity and how do you identify that?

I don't think I've got a model. I think I've got more intuition on it, Scott.

Okay.

So just feeling that intuition. I've got to love it. Like surely that is— people are always saying to me, Rob, what's the best business opportunity right now? And I'm like, well, one you love. Because you know what? Crypto, but what if you don't like it? What if you're not into the technicalities of it? OnlyFans is a pretty good business model but not for me. You know? So what you love. Like 30 years ago, there wasn't such a thing as merging your passion, profession, vocation, vacation. But there is now. And I would say the best business model is what you love. So because I take risk in the hope of profit, And, you know, I make a lot of sacrifices to be an entrepreneur. I'm not going to spend half the day doing shit I hate. So criteria number 1 for me on how do I choose a business model is do I love it? Number 2, is it opportune? Like NFTs for me, I'm just about to launch my NFT series. It's opportune. Like it's early enough but not too early. In 5 years, it'd be too late. Last year, it would have been too early. So is the timing right? Now by the way, for me with timing, I'm not one of those guys that jumps in on a fad. So opportune for me is when. But I only really like to go into something if I think I can leverage it for 10 years plus. Otherwise, what's the point? Because you put a lot of time and energy and resource to push the boulder up the hill. So passion, opportune, are you good at it? Could you get good at it? Because there's plenty of things I love that I'm not very good at. And there's plenty of things I'm not bad at, but I don't actually really enjoy. And they're actually different. So are you good at it? And then do you want it to be a business? You know, do you want to go through all the rigmarole of setting up a company and hiring staff and taking a risk and all of that? And can you make a good fair margin out of it? You know, so many people, they have loves, but there's not enough margin in their passion. So you need to also, you know, so you could say purpose, profit, definitely those two, passion, and maybe a timing that begins with P.

I was going to say, you got to think of something.

See, I'm trying to make up a model for you on the spot because you said, have I got a model?

Well, listen, it's not bad on the spot. I'm not going to lie. That's a pretty good framework. That's it. There's always a framework somewhere, even if it's not at a surface level. If you dig deep enough into like what you do and what's made you successful, there's something under there that can be taught out, can be pulled out, can be repeatable to some extent.

100%. The only thing is as soon as you get a model, the world changes.

That's also true.

So, you know, with a platform, it's definitely— if I was teaching business and I was trying to make everything start with P, platform would be in it. And I just actually got a 90-day ban from YouTube. So I've had an emergency meeting with my team today to work out what other platforms should we be on. And some of them are more underground, you know, like Rumble and BitChute. And then my head of brand is like, we shouldn't be on BitChute.

Do you know what's happening? It's happening to a lot of people now.

Yeah. Oh, it happened to me because my guest said COVID has been hard for small business. And it was the bot shut us down for misinformation. That's not misinformation. That can happen to anyone. So you've got to be on multi-platform and you've got to have a business model that you can leverage on platform. You know, some people say to me at the moment, Rob, I want to start a gym. And I'm like, that's not great timing. It's not great timing. You're better off doing something online and leveraging online platforms right now because that's where the opportunity is right now.

You've interviewed a ton of incredible entrepreneurs. You've interviewed billionaires. You've interviewed like very, very notable names. So between them and also yourself, what are the best skill sets or entrepreneurial lessons that you would teach over if somebody wanted to start something? What is the number one thing that somebody would have to keep top of mind?

Well, I've actually distilled about 21 habits and traits of billionaires.

How much time do we have?

Yeah, how much time do we have? So I won't cover them all. And I've written a book called Money which has a lot of the traits in them. And I have a podcast called Money. So if anyone wants to do any further research, fine. So I'm just going to pick out a few random ones. Every billionaire I've met is intensely curious. And zeroes think they know it all and they have this ego chip on their shoulder and they're talking more than listening. A billionaire is curious to learn from everyone. Not, not every billionaire, because there's always exceptions to rules, of course, isn't there? But billionaires tend to be intensely curious, you know, voracious learners if you like. They have mass distribution. So that's not a personality trait but it's a, you know, it's a business trait. So, you know, Google probably have distribution of 2 billion people. Amazon have global distribution. Netflix have 205 million users. So the more distribution you have, the more scale you have, the more reach into revenue you have. So certainly distribution is one of them. Um, I like to talk about fair exchange. So there's a lot of people in this world that think the world isn't fair, and the world isn't fair, but the world is fair based on reward for merit. So the world will not give you anything for nothing. And, you know, communism and socialism, I think, has been proven not to work very well because it's disincentive and it's reverse merit. So, you know, Bill Gates said, if you're born poor, it's not your fault, but if you die poor, it's your fault. And he also said, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. So traits of billionaires are that they are fully and personally responsible for everything that they do. Even if it's not their fault, they make it their fault. They have full ownership, no blame, all accountability. That is a definite trait of all entrepreneurs I know. And they've learned the rules of entrepreneurship. You know, some people say it's not fair how billionaires get around all this tax. Well, they learned how to get around the tax with fair loopholes that were created by Donald Trump in his tax code. So what are you going to do? It's not fair that a billionaire learned the rules of the game. Of course it's fair. They learned the rules of the game. It's not the billionaire's fault. It's the government's fault. And who voted in the government? The people. So it's the people's fault, not the billionaire's fault. And they don't get this paradox. So people who've become millionaires, they've learned about value and service production and profit and loss and balance sheet. You know, how to make something for £10 and sell it for £20. They've learned the fundamentals of money and business and how it works in fair exchange. So a habit and trait of billionaires is understanding what money is and learning the rules of money and business. So there's 3.

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Those are great. Um, I want to ask a couple mindset questions because you have a couple points that you speak about often I thought are really interesting. So two, two takeaways from mindset, and you can choose which one you want to go into first, but I want to cover both. So relationship with money. And the mindset of a broke person versus a successful or rich person. I think that both of those are interesting and you have opinions on those. So I'd like to go into those and just to talk about your experience with relationship with money as a mindset, as an entrepreneur.

Marco Robinson: Wow. You know, I could speak for a week on this straight. So money is simply A tool created by man to create universal fair exchange, to increase the speed and reduce the friction of interpersonal transactions. That's what money is. But the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. So many people who have religious beliefs are indoctrinated with a negative mindset around money. And you know, in some religions, lending money and charging interest is, you know, a sin, if you like. It's even, I think, illegal. Is certainly immoral in some religions and cultures. So, um, the Bible— I can't say the Bible was wrong because I don't know the context in which it was written. But what I can say is the love of money being the root of all evil, that is wrong. That is wrong. What is evil is humanity, because money isn't conscious and money doesn't have emotion, so money can't be evil. Like, imagine someone committed murder with a hammer. You wouldn't try the hammer for murder and put the hammer on trial in front of a judge and jury. Because the hammer is a tool, and we all know that the hammer is a tool, and none of us debate it. We don't go, that hammer is evil. And when we put a hammer— get a hammer and it nails in a piece of wood, we don't go, this hammer is virtuous. It's a hammer. But money is no different to a hammer. A hammer is a great tool of leverage that humanity created. Money is a great tool of leverage that humanity created. Money is one of the greatest inventions that humanity has created because it universalized value and it removed friction for exchange. And then it allowed, it allowed us to trade from little villages to globally. It's a brilliant invention. But money never murdered anyone. Money was never greedy. Money was never powerful. Money was never evil. It was human beings. Now some people will say, oh, but money made them that way. No, it didn't. Money can't. Money doesn't change you. It makes you more of who you already are. So all money can do is exaggerate your traits. If you took a billion and gave it to a philanthropist, They're giving that money away. If you took a billion and gave it to a drug lord, or you gave it to, you know, finance a war, a gambler, an addict, then that's where it's going. So the love of money is not the root of all evil. Money is a tool that can be used for evil and good based on the values of the individual. So if you want to get really good at making money, you separate emotions and money. Just like you're not emotional about a hammer, you just know what it does and you use it well for what it does. Because you can turn a hammer around the other way and you can pull a nail out. So you can use a hammer in a few different ways. And money is the same. It's a brilliant tool. It's a brilliant tool. I can store value from something I bought or sold. That energy can be stored in money. And then I can buy or sell something to you across the world and transfer that energy from me to you. So when you know that money is amoral, a-emotional, and a-conscious, and it's a great tool for universal exchange, and you learn how to use the tool really well, just like nunchucks, You can use that to learn how to use nunchucks really well or not. Then you transcend all emotional and moral and judgment around money and you just use the tool well. And if you want to change the world, get really good at making money and then do good things with that money.

Jeff Lerner: Is that the—

now how does that dovetail?

Maybe it doesn't. So correct me if I'm wrong. But How does that relate to mindset? Is that the difference between a poor person's mindset and a successful person's mindset? It's the relationship, the healthy relationship with money as a tool versus something that is evil and people have too much of it and you shouldn't base your whole life on pursuing it. Is that the difference?

Yeah. So a few definitions to clarify. So if you are developing world poor or you have never had education because you have lack of resources, then you don't have the same equal opportunity as someone who's just broke whereby they're raised in America or England or Australia and they've got access to the internet and libraries and podcasts but they're still broke. So let's go on broke rather than poor because poor isn't your fault because you could have been born into it and know no different. But most people who we talk to are probably, if they haven't got any money, they're probably broke over poor. So the mindset of broke is quite complicated. But to simplify it, it is allowing your emotions to control your spending and not having a knowledge and wisdom of how you leverage money and value properly. So a broke person will always spend more than they earn. But a fundamental law of money, if you want to appreciate it, is to never spend more than you earn. A broke person will buy depreciating liabilities with money. A wealthy person will invest in appreciating assets with money. A broke person will use money to alleviate their volatile emotions. They feel really good, they celebrate. Oh, I've had a really good month. We're going to go on holiday. They feel really bad. They spend emotionally, spend a load of money to try and make themselves feel better. Whereas wealthy people can separate the emotions and they can go, right, this is the budget. This is the forecast. This is the investment. This is the saving. These are the projections. And they can remove emotions away from money. So in a way, I would say a more profound conversation to have around money is not the mindset of money, It's the emotions of money. And what emotions are, they're a level deeper than mindset because mindset is what you think. Emotions is what you feel. But I think most people feel before they think. I.e., they're triggered. I think when you're triggered, you feel before you think. And so I think impulsiveness is to be triggered, triggered by society, triggered by media, triggered by how our parents raised us, triggered by how we perceive corporations and billionaires, et cetera. We become triggered. We're hijacked with emotion. And then we make a decision. And we don't— it's not mindset. Mindset is a thought process to understand why we're triggered. Why did I hate rich people? Because I was broken. I hated myself. I wanted to be rich and I'd sold myself out. And that was embarrassing to admit. But it was easier to hate the very person that I wanted to be because it made me feel more comfortable in my own misery. But that's a very difficult thing to be self-aware about and to admit. The reason I'm triggered by this person is because it's a mirror and picks a scab of all the disowned parts of myself. That's a fucking hard thing to admit. But that's not just mindset mastery. That's emotional mastery. And that's mastery of your upbringing and your background and not blaming your parents and all these things. So, you know, if you want to make it simple, the difference between the broke and the rich is they're able to control their emotions around money and make more balanced financial decisions in an untriggered, neutral emotional state. Whereas broke people are always spending emotionally. That would be actually the binary thing. If you were to put a gun to my head, Rob, I need one that transcends them all. The difference between the broke and the rich. That's it. And I don't think anyone tells you that because everyone's using the word mindset. But if you upset me and trigger me, I'm not thinking straight. I'm just riddled with anger and emotion and shame and vengeance and all these other bubbly, and that's when you're the least clear.

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I thought it was interesting that you put out a podcast called Money. You wrote a book called Money because all the entrepreneurial things that you speak about, you hear those. You hear the curiosity, you hear the tenacity, the grit, the perseverance. The one thing that I think a lot of people don't speak about enough is the importance of having that healthy relationship, mindset, and emotion with money if you're going to build anything. Because if not, it's going to fuck you up down the line. Whether or not it's figuring out where to budget, figuring out what to do with investment, figuring out anything, it's going to fuck you up. But I've never really heard somebody speak about it until you, and you sort of straddle that. You live in the entrepreneurship world, but you made a point to build out assets that exclusively focus on that concept and on the topic. I thought it was just really interesting. I want to— Yeah, for real, rock on. Okay. I want to do a couple rapid fire because Honestly, man, like you're a smart dude. We could go for a long time, but I want to respect your time. Maybe we do an in-person sometime too, whatever it is. But I want to do some rapid fire. Most importantly though, before I pivot to close this out, where do people reach out to you? Where do they get all your content, your best socials, your website?

So RobMoore.com is my website. You can find me Rob Moore or Rob Moore Progressive on all media, social media except OnlyFans. Not yet. My podcast, I've actually got two podcasts. Let's just focus on the money one for now. You'll find my other one when you find that. And yeah, I'm all over Amazon. Got loads of books on money.

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Business and personal development and mindset and all that kind of stuff.

Awesome. Okay, let's do a couple rapid fire. Biggest challenge in your life. What was it? How did you overcome it?

I would say the biggest challenge in my life is government interference. How did you overcome that?

It's a whole can of worms.

A whole can of worms. I mean, we're talking capitalism since way back when. Um, I know I said I had a hard stop at half past, but I'll give us an extra sort of 5 to 10 here. So, okay, okay. Um, basically when COVID happened, the government intervened and locked us down. Now I'm not saying if that's right or wrong, because actually we won't know for many years if it's right or wrong. And if it was really wrong, it'll probably get covered up. And the rightness of it will probably be amplified until there's a new government in. So look, it might be right, it might be wrong. There's upsides and downsides. But the reality to my business that was running 850 training days live per year was that overnight, we could run zero. And Mark and I had built up a few million in liquid as well as all of our assets. So we had some cash that we could burn through. But going from, you know, we had overheads of $700,000, $800,000, $900,000 a month. One of our months, the overhead was $1.1 million. So, you know, we're like, holy shit, if we're a year or two in lockdown, you know, we might burn $5 to $10 million a year. Holy shit, that doesn't sound good. So that was intervention number one by government that really disrupted our business. The next one is taxation. So that is added on to my products, which make them 20% more expensive for people. Then corp tax comes off, which is going up from 18% to 25% in the UK. And then income tax of 45%. Then dividend tax is going up. And National Insurance went up. And then everything I buy has got increased tax on. And inflation is really huge. And they're printing money left, right, and centre. So basically, my pound is going down at 10% to 15% a year at the moment. And I'm taxed about 70% in that pound. And that's all through government intervention. So, you know, hopefully people listen. How do you deal with that? Sorry?

How do you deal with that? The second part of the question was, how do you overcome it? I don't see— that's not an easy thing to overcome.

No. Well, I mean, obviously, we're only not even 2 years away from it. So I've navigated lockdowns. We're now open again. We do live events as well as online events, actually. We had a really good January. In fact, we had a brilliant August, September, October, November, December, January. How did I deal with that? Because I hustled like I've probably never hustled before in the mind and in the graft. I've been more about craft and leverage over the last few years, but I put the graft in as well as the craft and figured out how to adapt and evolve. So that's how I dealt with the COVID And now I'm ready for anything because I know that could happen again in the winter. And, you know, so I guess I really— my mettle was tested as an entrepreneur. You had a building site that's 130,000 square foot with, I think we had 80 contractors on it, and that could have just been shut down, a £20 million, $30 million project. So this was very freaking real. In terms of the tax, well, that's probably not for discussion on a podcast. Mate, I'm just going to go through all my accounts and make sure that absolutely every single thing I can offset, I am. So for example— As you should be doing anyways. Yeah, you should anyway. But there's a lot of things that you can offset that you don't know because you haven't learned it or you haven't got advice or you haven't taught yourself. So for example, you can offset R&D spend. And we haven't ever done that. And we've got tech. And we've got tech that external users use because you can't offset R&D spend on tech you build for yourself. I'm talking in the UK. Everyone else, got to get your own advice. But in the UK, you can offset R&D spend on tech that you sell. And we've got 3 pieces of tech. And we've been doing it for 15 years and we haven't offset any of the R&D tax. So we're doing that right now. So, you know, I basically have to make sure that I'm running my company in a responsible way and I'm offsetting all the costs that I can. Now, this is what the mainstream masses get pissed off about. But bring someone in here who's pissed off with Apple going to Ireland and Amazon going to Ireland to reduce their corp tax and put them in a position where they've got to start their business, they've got to take risk, they've got to put their mortgage on the line, they've got to put their family on the line, they've got shareholders, and they've got fiduciary responsibility to maximise the profit, and then tell me they wouldn't fricking do the same. Because if it's legal, why wouldn't you? So don't— you're shooting the messenger by taking potshots at Bill Gates and Elon Musk. It's not them. It's actually the middle class and the small business that gets hurt the most.

So—

100%.

Because they don't have it. They don't know. They don't know.

No, they can't do that. They don't have the knowledge or the skills. So I will tell you this, though. And this has been a very— well, all my content is candid. So you always get stuff from me that other people probably don't have the balls to say. But if they put the tax up too much, I'm out of here. I'm not paying 85% tax. So in the UK, tax got to 83%. Right now, my tax net-net-net— 83%. Yeah, 83%.

Dude, that's nuts. I'm Canadian. Yeah. That's worse than me.

Yeah. So at the moment, all in, net-net-net-net-net, my tax is 70%. If I can work out a few legitimate expenses, I might be able to get that down a bit. I could probably digest 50%. I mean, it feels a bit unfair working half your week for the government. But you know, I want to pay my dues. And you know, we've got a school system, and we've got an education and a healthcare system. I'm grateful for that. So I'll pay half. But I won't pay 75%. You know, I might be moving. If it gets too bad.

There's a lot of beautiful places in the world that don't take 75%.

Well, everyone's going to Puerto Rico now, aren't they? That's where they're all at the moment.

All the people that made money in crypto are all going to Puerto Rico.

Yeah, but no, it's got to be equitable. Here's the thing, right? I was listening to Noam Chomsky. I really want to get Noam Chomsky on my podcast. He's obviously very knowledgeable on propaganda. And he's a bit of a cult hero in many ways. But he was talking about how corporations have it away because, you know, there's the bailout economy and governments bail out corporations and they get all of this, these tax havens. And I thought, for someone who's so smart, that was a stupid thing to say. Here's why. Because there's only a few massive corporations that get bailout protection from the government. And get all these tax havens. There's literally— well, let me put it into perspective. There's 7 million small businesses in the UK that are corporations that don't get any of that. And people like Noam Chomsky, very smart people, and people who are anti-capitalism and anti-billionaires, they're looking at 7 companies and how they're able to manipulate and reduce tax and trying to smash that nut with a sledgehammer which will kill all the small businesses. They have no fucking idea. And the small businesses generate 90-odd percent of the economy. The politicians, right? So there was this politician that called Elon Musk a grifter. And by the way, she doesn't even know her words because grifter is petty. And Elon Musk is not small. So she got that one wrong. She basically said that, you know, the, the man of the year is, um, evading tax, and they, they want to slam that book shut, which is actually totally incorrect.

It's totally incorrect.

All of her wages and her taxes— she says, I'm paying my taxes. No, he's paying her wages because the private sector pays the public sector, and he paid a ton of tax too.

So he paid a ton of tax. He was paying, he was paying like what people are supposed to pay. He was paying like 50, 60%.

$11 billion.

Yeah, $11 billion. I know, I saw that. It was just, it was just, it was just upsetting because it was just, it was ignorant. It was super ignorant on her behalf to say that for somebody that's, that's done such incredible, incredible stuff with his life.

And these, these are politicians running our country and they don't have a freaking clue about how capitalism works and the economy works and They don't have an understanding of how money moves around or trickles down or who finances what. Where's all the political donations from? Billionaires. It's like fucking irony on a crazy level.

I don't know. It seems like it's more— with Musk in particular, it seemed like it was just— it was like a trend to hop on. It was like the flavor of the day was to hate on Elon Musk not paying taxes, regardless of whether or not that's a correct or accurate statement.

Completely made up. RAOUL PAL: Let me ask you this question, Scott. If I gave you $11 billion, option A, give it to your government to invest wisely. Option B, give it to Elon Musk to invest wisely. Who do you think is going to use $11 billion of capital better? —for the furtherment of humanity? Elon Musk or the government?

Elon Musk 11 out of 10 times, like not even a question.

And I think even many socialists and communists would agree. So how does taking money off Elon Musk and giving it to the government solve the problem? I'll tell you what the real problem here is, Scott, is everyone worrying about Elon Musk instead of worrying about themselves. —because all the people who are attacking Elon Musk, if you started a meaningful enterprise that made a difference in this world and you started building products and services that people value and you started building wealth, then you could contribute to the economy instead of— like I interviewed Peter Schiff and he said government's way too bloated. There's too many people in government. So a lot of our taxes are immediately just going on a bloated government on a wage bill.

I think I would— I've had this conversation many times. I think the only solution is to find a way to bring smarter people into government. Right now it's not an attractive option for smart people, and that's the issue.

Well, why would an entrepreneur want to be in government?

That's exactly the issue. It's not an attractive option. So when you don't have an attractive option, you, you have brain drain. You have people— you have the smartest people who don't want to work in government. Why would they? But that's an issue. That's a major issue. That would solve a lot of problems if you figure out how to solve for that. Is it mandatory retirements at a certain age? Is it maybe upping that base salary? I don't know what it is, but there's something wrong with it because you don't have the best and brightest going to government ever in any country.

Now, I interviewed Nigel Farage, who's quite big in politics in the UK. He's actually quite big in America as well. He's good friends with Trump. I said, why the disdain for small business? Why the lack of support? And he said, well, you know, in the UK there's a private school called Eton which is where many of the politicians go and essentially the talent pool for many politicians in the UK are these private schools. And they look down their nose on small business. It's just, they just don't value them. Paradoxically, The small businesses paying their wages. The hairdressers that they shut is paying their wages. The gyms, the pubs, the bars, the clubs, the restaurants, the local shops that they shut are paying their wages. And then what do they do? Tax them more to pay their wages again. It's fundamentally wrong. But anyway, this is supposed to be quickfire. I'll do the rest really quick.

Listen, man. It's a good conversation to have, and it's not an easy solution at all. I think a lot of people are thinking the same thing over the past— I think it's been more prominent over the past 2 years. More people have been cognizant of how fucked up shit really is over the past 2 years. All right, let's do these. So I'll just add one more super quick thing then.

I think the main solution out of COVID is production. So why is QE high, and why is inflation high? Because there's an undersupply of production. Why are prices high? Because there's an undersupply of production. And across the world, we've got this, oh, but I need to work from home now. And oh, you know, well, my mental health's, you know, really been affected. By the way, if people have got genuine mental health, fair enough. I definitely do not look down on that. Don't forget, my dad has bipolar. But a lot of people are saying their mental health is affected when they're just tired or they've just had a couple of bad days. I need to work from home, and I need work-life balance, and yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, look, if we're in booming economic times of prosperity, prosperity, then all of that shit and a 4-day workweek and all of that, let's put it on the table. But when you are— if there was a war, would people be going, oh, well, I need to do a 4-day week in this war because my mental health is affected? No. Pick up your freaking gun and go and fight. And the way we get out of this shit, I think if people knew how shit the economy could be for a decade, they would take note. It's production. You build up production. You build up supply chains. And production is work. So basically, everyone needs to get back to work and work hard and build and produce and solve. This is the way out of it. But there's this counter mindset of, oh, well, I'm tired and I'm offended and I'm— fuck, man. Come on. Wake up and build shit and make shit and get the production up. That's what you need to do. Look, I'm an entrepreneur. So I guess I'm a little bit biased. But I know with my staff, you know, if they just do their job well, I'm going to keep them. And I know if they do their job 20% better than before COVID I'm going to pay them more. But what a lot of people do, I want to do a 4-day work week and, you know, I want to bring my problems to work and all this stuff. And this is, by the way, I'm not even— it's not even on the people. It's on society. It's on government. It's on media. You know, that guy fired 900 people on Zoom and he got a massive lambasting for it. If that company is in financial trouble and firing 900 people means that that company survives, that entrepreneur is brave. And tell me anyone else who would have had the balls to do that. And he got a load of shit for it, a load of shit by a load of people getting paid in civil service who got furloughed in lockdown. Fuck, come on, people.

I, I, I see, uh, I see there's a couple sore points, a couple sore points that have been fucking ruminating in your head. I, man, well, you know, you know, an entrepreneur is usually built differently. Usually you look at stuff that's happening and you just get, you just get mad. But like, the answer is you can't just get mad. You got to figure out a solution. That's the issue. You got to figure out a solution, evangelize a solution, because you can get as pissed off as you want. But it's not going to change the fact that people do want a 4-hour work week. So what's the fix? What's the fix? What's the fix? Production. Production. But how do you change a mindset? How do you change the mindset of society? How do you do that? I don't know how to do that. That's a different— I work nonstop. I'm cool with it. We're on the same wavelength. But I don't know how to get somebody who wants a 4-hour week to not want a 4-hour work week or a 4-day work week.

Yeah. I think you've got to teach— well, Tim Ferriss needs to— you know, I bet he's worked 5 hours, Tim Ferriss. So I think you teach them really how the world works from a younger age because they don't get it.

Like proper education from the get-go.

People who want to work less, they want to do less because they think that's going to make them happier. But actually, life is the opposite. You feel the best when you produce and you get reward and you overcome challenge. So basically, we have to build and produce and overcome challenge and do hard things. And when we do those things, we get those feelings of fulfillment which are far deeper and more meaningful than those transient feelings of, ah, I feel good now. I don't have to go to work on Friday. So it's about teaching people to actually understand what feeling good is and what reward really is.

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Okay, let's keep going. I feel like we could do more on this. Let's keep going. All right. A couple other lessons to pull out from your life. Who's the biggest influence in your life? You had many people that have influenced you. Who was the biggest influence and why or how did they influence you?

My dad when I was young, as I said, because I wanted to be him. John Demartini probably in terms of mentoring and wisdom and education on Understanding neutrality and the balance of life and how every upside has a downside and in every stressing hides a blessing. And, um, you know, a lot of understanding of polarity and how human beings separate things. So, you know, battery wouldn't work if it didn't have a positive and a negative. In an atom, I think you have a positive and a negative. Um, you know, you have a male and female in terms of sex, but also plugs to male and female. A screw has a hole and a screw. So basically, everything has this polarity which creates neutrality. But what human beings do is we create extreme. So, you know, infatuation and fantasy is perceiving only upside. Depression and anxiety is perceiving only downside. John Demartini taught me that actually everything has both and there is neutrality and everything has equal upside and downside. And for me, that's true wisdom. And COVID was hard, but there've been plenty of upsides. And I've never met anyone who can— I remember hearing John Demartini talk about 100 upsides of 9/11. And I was like, whoa, wow. And he often talks about the upsides of his wife dying. Whoa, wow. When I say often, he's talked to me about it a couple of times. I don't know how much he publicizes it. But wisdom is understanding what is, not what you feel. And what you feel is, I feel good. What does feeling good mean? It means thinking everything is good, i.e., not seeing the things that are not good. What does feeling bad mean? Seeing everything that's bad and not seeing everything that's good. So for me, I mean, it takes a little bit of while to truly get your head around. But for me, that is the ultimate form of wisdom is polarity and neutrality and balance.

If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would that be?

Stop drinking and chasing women. Good advice.

Very good advice. And last question, what does success mean to you?

Doing meaningful and useful things to as many people as possible.