Motivation Daily by Motiversity - THE MINDSET OF HIGH ACHIEVERS #6 - Powerful Motivation for Success

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

THE MINDSET OF HIGH ACHIEVERS: Eye Opening Advice from Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Grant Cardone, Jordan Peterson, Marcus Taylor, Daymond John and Wallstreet Trapper Will Change Your Life! (I'm Speechless!)Special thanks to Tom Bilyeu, The Icons, and Lewis Howes for partnering with us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqroWej4mo4Speakers:Marcus "Elevation" Taylor: http://bit.ly/38FUFoSElon MuskDaymond JohnKeith KrachWarren BuffetAlex HormoziSimon SinekJordan PetersonBarack ObamaWallstreet TrapperMusic:AudiojungleEpidemic Sound Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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One thing I know is that we've all been hit with a measure of adversity at some point in our life. When I was a kid, I was wondering, kind of what's the meaning of life? Like, why are we here? What's it all about? And I came to the conclusion that, uh, What really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions.

Like most of us start, there was no belief that I could do it. I just kind of had an itching to go run my own thing. You know, the only way it could be a failure is not to have failed. To be honest, the first company I went was a total disaster. I'm a bright guy who's terribly interested in what he does. I've spent a lifetime doing it. I've surrounded myself with people that bring out the best in me. And you don't need to be a genius in what I do.

Make a plan. One thing I've noticed is that enthusiasm is common, but endurance is rare. That when and if and hopefully you get to the point that you are successful, nobody can tell you lies. Listening is not about hearing the words that are spoken. It's not being able to parrot back what somebody said to you. Listening is listening for meaning. You are a good listener. The test for being good a listener is if the other person feels heard.

You need the right orientation. Look at what you're interested in. Get disciplined about something. Allow for the possibility that you have something important to contribute to the world and that the world would be a lesser place without that contribution. I think that expectations are little. literally the thing that will destroy your life or will make your life. You know, the secret to happiness is haves over once.

Let's say you have one thing and you want nothing, you will be infinitely happy. The problem is where you might have a million things, but you want two million things, and you will not be happy. I can't get nowhere in life or I don't have money, I have this and that. And I realize the only difference between me, them, or any of us is what we negotiate through life. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they're given an opportunity. And the only way to get good is to work. when you won't know what the ideal opportunity is because you don't have a baseline.

And I believe that research is done through doing. And you learn a lot more by doing stuff in action. And then you will gain the insights of where the opportunities lie. wealthy people do three things, man. They start trading time for money. They make their money work for them. And they give as much value to people as they can. The reason why people think wealthy people with money are sinister is because that's what you

kind of taught in the hood. Like you kind of taught like the people who really have money, like they did some wicked shit to get it. They did some backstabbing, cut those shit to get it. And you'll never get that. All them people with money, they're all crooks. Because being at the bottom teaches you to envy people at the top. One of the things that happens often in the culture

of black people is survival mode. You never get a chance to play offense. You're always on defense. One, because of the people. mindset because you don't see it again the goat dealer and the rapper everybody who's working is struggling and so you never want to be that a good business is just like a good hustler a good business has great product they have great clientele a great hustler has a great product he has consistent clientele I

understand that knowledge is what gives us leverage in life not about how strong you are it's about what you can learn and then how How can you actively apply that? I have this acronym called fear, finally exiting average reality, right? And what happens is until we can overcome the fear, some people actually fear success. Success comes with a lot, right? But until you can overcome that average reality that you live in, no matter what you're on, once you become comfortable there, it becomes average.

Anyone can live in average, everyone can live in mediocrity, right? there's those outliers who consistently push themselves to go to the next level. And to think about the human mind and the human body, it will go as far as you push it. As long as you believe in it, like you said, the only belief that matters is what do you believe you can do? I personally believe that there is nothing I cannot do. And for me, it's all about impact, purpose, fulfillment. Like, the money is a byproduct of everything else that isn't my focus.

My focus is I have a knowledge and information that I know that can. change lives, not just one life, not just like lives. And so the way that you change lives is by consistently learning, finding new ways to put that information out there, being able to open up, being able to be vulnerable because people need to connect. People connect to knowledge in the way that they can see two things that help people, imagery and vocabulary. What they see and what they hear. Right. So most people won't connect to a certain knowledge because the people who speak it don't relate and two can't speak the knowledge in the way that they can eat it. So for me, it's always about how do I attain as much, it's always a challenge for me.

How can I attain as much knowledge as I can because I love learning, but then how do I take that and be able to non-recipricate it or give it to somebody who may not understand calculus or trigonometry, but if I can give it to them in this way, they can say, oh yeah, I got it. And there's more people that struggled in the world that has become successful. So struggle has to become a language that I struggle. So that's the language I'm great at. So if I can break down things into a struggle language, now I make it the game winnable for everybody.

And that's the goal to make the game winable for everybody who's bold enough to step into the batting cage. If you're bold enough to do it, there's an experience that comes from that. And that experience is so exhilarating, it will take you to the next level. Because now you keep chasing the next level of you. And that is when you start understanding life at a whole other kind of. concept when you start understanding that, yo, for the longest, I was just low level living. I was low level thinking. Now that I've been exposed to something, and I say this often, whatever you haven't been exposed to isn't your fault. Once you get exposed to it, you now are

accountable for it. And so once I've become exposed to so much knowledge and information, once I expose you to it, you're accountable because now you can no longer say I didn't know. So like just coming up in the streets, you only see the game from the lowest level. And you look at everybody else in part admiration and part like jealousy. Because you see it and you like, damn, I will never get there. Right. And so the only way that I think I can get that is through sports or hustling. That's it.

That's the only are rapping. Those are the only three options that you have. And so you make a decision on what? you want to go, right? And so you look at it from like, damn. And so me, I'm at the time like, I can't rap. Damn shit, I can't play sports. So husband is what I got.

You limit yourself and nobody comes along and teaches you anything different. The reason why you give people so much value is because if you give them so much value, they'll never leave, and they'll always be for death of you. And you will never need for anything as long as you give wealth and value to people. And so I learned that as I got older,

that part really didn't make sense to me at the time, but the money working for you part, I was like, what the hell? How do you make your money work for you? Again, all I know is how to go get money. That's all I know. So later on in that, he says wealthy people do three things. So we in the cell for about 45 days. So all of his conversations, now that you said,

it's never was black or white. Every conversation with him about money and transition who's always wealthy people do. There's no need even to have a college degree at all, or even high school. I mean, If somebody graduated from a great university, that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things, but it's not necessarily the case. You know, if you look at, say, people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, these guys didn't graduate from college.

But if you had a chance to hire them, of course, that would be a good idea. I would love to talk to Elon Musk, so I'm sure that would be ridiculously fun. I would love to find out. I'd like to ask him about his thought process. And also, I'm really curious about how in the world he manages to do multiple impossible things because doing one impossible thing is impossible, but doing like five impossible things is the product of five impossibilities, and that just seems like hyper impossible.

But he's managed it. You know, I mean, think about it. Think about what he did. He built an electric car, which is like hard. And then he built a rock. and then he blasted the car into space on his rocket. Like that, that's not real. That doesn't happen.

But it did happen and he did it. And so I would really, I would love to talk to him. It's very difficult to start companies and quite painful. I think that's important to bear in mind. I don't know if that's probably not encouraging. Let me go this way. If you need inspiring words, don't do it. A challenge for entrepreneurs is to say, well, what's the difference between,

really believing in your ideals and sticking to them versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit. And that is a really difficult thing to tell you. Can you tell the difference between those two things? So you need to be sort of very rigorous in your self-analysis. I think certainly extremely tenacious and then just work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80 hours. hour, 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.

And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring and make life worth living. If you're creating a company or if you're joining a company, the most important thing is to attract great people. So either if you join a group that's amazing that you really respect, or if you're building a company, you've got to gather great people.

I mean, all the company is is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service. And so depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and the degree to which they are focused cohesively in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company. What do you think is really leading the way forward? I think Space X probably because of Elon coming from, South Africa, having a competitive spirit to make a good bit of money at PayPal, and then put that into his dreams. Elon would like to get involved in selling launches to the Air Force,

but he's being opposed some. He almost went broke. He had three failures, and one more, in his words, would have taken him out of the business of rocket launches. He sort of succeeds in that one pretty much. He has a very good rocket and a very good price. I asked him if he wanted to maybe lead efforts toward Mars by allowing people to use his rocket on their project to fly by of Mars and then combining another company, I said, I'm in touch with very wealthy people, or maybe in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and perhaps we could have some investment money.

He said, no, we don't need any money. The space business is quite hard to start a company in the space business because it's such a capital-intensive business. So it may be better to do something in solar power. or if you're going to do it in cars, do it as kind of a component supplier for cars or something like that. All those things improve the odds of success. Okay. I mean, if other people are putting in 40-hour work weeks and you're putting in 100-hour work weeks, then even if you're doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.

When I was a kid, I was wondering, kind of what's the meaning of life? like why are we here, what's it all about? And I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions. If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that's a good thing.

Like it doesn't have to change the world. doing something that has high value to people, I mean, I think that's fine. Like, stuff doesn't need to change the world just to be good. But in terms of things that I think it most likely to affect the future of humanity, I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity. So it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way. If you could look into Chris Wall and see the future, you would like that outcome. Because it is something that could go wrong, as we've talked about many times.

We really need to make sure it goes right. Working on AI and making sure it's a great future, that's the most important thing I think right now. Obviously, anything to do with genetics, if you can actually solve genetic diseases, prevent dementia, Alzheimer's or something like that, with genetic reprogramming, that would be wonderful. So I think genetics might be the sort of second most... important item. I think having a high bandwidth interface to the brain, like we're currently bandwidth limited. We have a digital tertiary self in the form of our email capabilities like computers, phones, applications, we're effectively superhuman. But

we're extremely bound with constraint in that interface between the cortex and your sort of that tertiary digital form of yourself and helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be very important for the future as well. On signal over noise, a lot of companies get confused that they spend money on things that don't actually make the product better. So for example at Tesla we've we've never spent any money on advertising. We put all of the money into R&D and manufacturing and design to try to make the car as good as possible. And I think that's the way to go.

So for any given company, just keep thinking about, are these efforts that people are expanding, are they resulting in a better product or service? And if they're not, stop those efforts. You may have heard me say that it's good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles, which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine,

and you reason up from there. And this is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense, or if it's just what everybody else is doing. And it's hard to think that way, you can't think that way about everything. It takes a lot of effort. But if you try to do something new,

it's the best way to think. And that framework was developed by physicists to figure out counterintuitive things, like quantum mechanics. So it's really, a powerful, powerful method. You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. You know, don't like anything hold you back.

Imagination is the limit. And go out there and create some magic. Hustler does not waste time. Somebody with talent, somebody with connection, somebody with some education and some experience. All the times, they waste time. They feel like they can afford to. they have permission to, right?

They feel like they've got it figured out. The hustler says, I don't have a second to waste. And so while you're sleepy, while you're being entertained, I'm beating on my craft. The hustler says, I'm beating on my craft. The hustler says, I'm going after it. The hustler says, I can't afford to miss this moment. I can't afford to overlook this critical time. crucial opportunity. I'm going to give everything a half, period. When you've got this hustler's

mentality, you're not looking for a handout. You just know you have to outwork everybody in the room. You've got to put the work in after hours. You're not wasting your time being entertained. You're not wasting your time watching TV all day. You're not wasting your time complaining about what you don't have. The hustlers already come to the conclusion that if they don't have something, They have to become. It's not connections that wins. It's not even education that wins. I can be inundated with information.

I can be educated, but with no application. The hustler moves in a different realm of wisdom, a different realm of application. They're going after it. Everything that they have is on the table. The hustler is going to outwork everybody in the room. The hustler says, if me and you are on the treadmill, two things are going to happen.

Either you're going to get off first or I'm going to die trying to beat you. Right? Because I'm completely sold out to the dream division that I'm carrying. The hustlers mentality within the context of entrepreneurship is, I am totally committed to this. I am totally committed to this. The difference between game changers and city shakers and influencers and disruptors. And the people that just talk about it, people that just dream about it, have visions about it, fill notebooks about it, the difference between the two.

Number one is that they are absolutely clear on what it is that they've been called to do and what it is they've been called to build and who it is they've been called to become. In order to really lock in the hustler's mentality, you must understand the distinctives that really make a hustler a hustler. Number two, a hustler is committed and consistent. And so this is not a Monday to Friday thing. It's a Monday through Monday thing. Every single day I'm beating on my craft. Every single day, I'm looking to become more than I was yesterday. I am not in competition with anybody.

The hustler says the only person I am competing with is who I used to be yesterday. You may not have been born with natural talent. but you can put work in and build a skill set. You can beat on your crap every single day. Put the hours in. No days off mentality. I can't get nowhere in life or I don't have money I have this and that. And I realize the only difference between me, them, or any of us is what we negotiate through life.

How many born with the silver swimming amount? What two percent in the world? So the rest of us have gotten to a level of success or broken the size. cycle in our families or even just become a better person by purely negotiating with themselves and then with others. Like most of us start, there was no belief that I could do it, but I remember walking into a store. I saw this picture of this guy who looked like a young Mike Tyson hanging off a pair of jeans

and it was Carl Canine. And then it just hit me. I thought prior to that, we always thought that you had to be from Italy and France to design you had to be older and like a you know you know the guys with the with the tape around their neck you know the tailors right and so or whatever the fashion designer had looked like in those days and i thought i just i'm just supposed to buy from them when i saw that i was like wow that's amazing okay no problem uh then i'm watching a de la so video i remember and seeing them wearing these hats it almost looked like a ski cap but it has like a tie on the top and i couldn't find that hat uh anywhere in

Queens. I finally find one uptown Manhattan. I pay for the hat. I come home. I show my mother. I said, look, Ma, go get $40 with the fabric. I go to the store. Get $40 with the fabric. I come home. I give my mother the stuff to sew the hats. And she says, I'm not sewing this. You're sewing this. I'm so crap. Now I've got to work at this. I sewed the hats and then all of a sudden, I have all these hats and only one head. So that's when it happened. That's when I went out and sold those hats on the outside on that Good Friday. And I sold $800 worth of hats in one hour. And that's when it just snapped. I just said to myself, wait a minute.

I made this with my own hands. I went and sold this to individuals. And nobody was in my way. I didn't have to get a check from a boss. Nobody told me when or to come to work or go to work. I can't get fired from this because of my color creed or whatever the case is. I'm responsible for what's happening here. And I will either fail because every decision I make or I'll succeed because every decision I make.

When you're working with the power or broke, it does a couple of things. Number one, it makes sure that you learn the process yourself. You can't afford to hire anybody else. So all those people out there who pay $40,000 for a website when it really costs five. Right. Or you can't leverage it by bartering or something. Whatever the case is, right? So you have to learn the process.

And what happens during that period of time of learning the process is that when and if and hopefully you get to the point that you are successful, nobody can tell you lies. you can't have somebody say well I'm not going to tell you about shipping because you know you're firing me and I got to go work it out of yourself I said get the hell out of the way I've been doing this for eight years myself right you you know you get and you learn the process number one

number two is because you don't have a lot of capital you focus on the only thing that you can do you don't drown an opportunity you don't take a bunch of money and go we should try a bunch of stuff here you go here's 10,000 and 10,000 here, 10,000 here.

Go. Yeah, you go. All right, what are we going to do with this hat right now? The first thing to achieve is, why do you want to achieve it? Like, what is your outcome? Many of us walk into the room, even into the room we're talking to ourselves. And they're not honest about the outcome. What is the outcome? Why are you going through the motion?

Is it because society has told you that that's what it should be? Or is it that your parents always wanted that from you? Or is it that you have been neglecting? in some way and you're trying to please a bunch of people that you can't stand? Or that you want to change the world? Is it that you know that you being healthier is going to be able to be around in your family's life much longer? Or you're going to be able to stop some social injustices? Like, what is your why?

First of all, I just started looking at all the best things in my life, the people that I get to motivate, the fact that a little brown boy who's dyslexic from Queens with no money no nothing came up in the world. And hopefully I can empower the next thing. empower the next little brown boy, little brown girl, or anybody of any color, culture, or sexual preference to be, not the next name of John, be the next Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or President Barack Obama. If I can do that, then maybe that's what my life was, you know, that's what God put me on this earth for. It made me also want to live to leave my daughter's a legacy. I wanted them to be proud of their father,

So I refrain from doing and having a lot of the temptations that I've seen a lot of people fall short and get caught up in and nothing wrong with that world human. So when I invest in brands and companies, I invest in them because they're allowing me to be part of their dream, but I'm also learning from them, which is in return allowing me to go back to my special skill set and improve it. How much is it? Like, I'm going to ask that question, whether it matters or not. It doesn't matter where I get in my life. I don't think I'm ever going to be free of. How much was that? Because when I grew up, you had to know what things cost.

Money is a terrifying thing because it's the one thing in life that everybody gets money. It's the one place where everybody gets it. And now what do I do? And I can lose it now. So it's a terrifying concept, like power. Very few of us ever get any kind of influence or power, right? Once you get it, you're like, hey, what do I do with this? Am I going to do the right things with it?

And so I think people withhold themselves because we're not educated about money. We don't know where it comes from. We have a lot of misinformation about it. Our parents terrified us. You know, money doesn't grow in trees. Save your money. It'll save you. All these things our parents told us because they were enamored or encumbered

with the same kind of liabilities around money. I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to keep it. The worst part that we're all at is I don't know how to invest it. Some people get good at getting it. Very few, actually. Fewer people at keeping it. My dad died when I was 10.

So he paid all his debt off, had everything paid. And so that's all I had, right? Everybody around me was like, get money, keep it. Don't use it. You know, but you should invest, but nobody ever learns that third one. And so I think we're just a bunch of people walking around terrified of this appearance of it's scarce and it's not. And, you know, there's nothing scarce about it.

This is what I did for 25 years, from 25 to 51 years old, spent my most valuable asset time to get money, terrified, terrified every second of every day. That's really what's driven me the whole time, was terror. When you don't know, you're going to be scared. So I'm going out to get money. I won't spend any of them because I'm terrified if I can't. I don't know how to get more. I'm worried I can't keep giving more.

So then I'd get the money and then I'd rush off and spend it. my most valuable asset time again to bring it to the bank. Still today, man, it's tough for me to buy blue jeans if they're not on sale. I'm like, this is stupid, man. Like, well, I'm just gonna wait. Right. You know what I'm saying? But it's really stupid that I even worry about it.

Right. And I'm not saying on the come up, I think you should worry about it. Right. But there needs to be where you can turn that switch off. Well, I think number one is there's a bigger problem with hoarding in this country than there is with spenders. What we hear is all the spenders. Oh my God, you know, he did this and he's overspending. But really, really you have more of a hoarding issue than you have a spender issue.

I think people err on saving and not knowing how to use money. So what the advice I would give people is like, I would just assume that everything you know about money is incorrect. So that you can actually have a white, you can have a clean, a clean board to operate from. Because if you go out right now and try to stack, try to stack new information, financial literacy on top of a toxic foundation. It's all going to get all. That's why when I tell people don't go buy a house, everybody freaks out. They're like, that can't be right.

That can't be right. Why? Because that's what you've been told to buy a house your whole life. Because the banks want you to buy a house. Now everybody just heard that's going to say, I just saw you buy a house in Malibu. I can do anything I want now. Here comes the arrogance. But I mean, I'm in a position now.

Like, if I want to buy that house in Malibu, I can. On the come up, buying a house is not what you should do. You should, one, I would scrape off that you don't know anything. Two, I would invest everything you can in you. It's tax deductible. You never lose it. The person's personal appreciation will always be bigger than any other asset class. I love that.

Bitcoin can't match it. Real estate can't match it. My personal asset appreciation will always, it is infinite. Who knows, I could be the next male Oprah or somebody watching could be the next rock or whatever, right? Like what is that appreciation value? It's straight up. So the first thing people should invest money in, even use debt on, is their personal improvement. Number one, invest in yourself.

Number two, I would invest in your business. Whatever your business is or your department, your division is, the first 30 years of my career, I didn't have, I didn't own a company. But I did invest in my department, even though I worked for a company. I had a secretary. I didn't have the company paid for my secretary. I paid for that. I wanted her to work for me. And so invest in yourself, you know, like invest yourself, then invest in your business or your department, your skill set.

If it's your company, then invest in your company, even down to zero. Like, I wouldn't keep, I wouldn't keep money around. I wouldn't save for a rainy day. I wouldn't have an emergency account because you don't need it. You don't, you need, you need, what you need is you need hustle. You need other people's money. You need to go knock on another door, make another contact. You don't need reserves of money.

So what you need is cash flow. by making investments. That's the third. And other things, other things that don't require my skill set. So that would be the third piece of advice. To start investing in real assets, that cash flow can appreciate,

three that provide tax shelters. And if you look at those three criteria, Bitcoin doesn't cover it. Stocks probably don't cover it. Gambling doesn't. That one, gold doesn't, silver doesn't, real estate, real estate. NFTs don't, yeah.

NFTs don't because they don't cash flow. But the most of it. But the most important thing is that people need a leg. You got to know that if you're in, you live in America and you're having a money problem, it is not because you're stupid. And it's not because you're lazy. It's because you have the wrong information. If you got $1,000, I would like just keep, you know, keep investing yourself until you got another $1,000.

And then invest in yourself, you know, now you got $2,000 investing. You go, go, you should start making money faster. At some point, you should start, like, every time you make an investment in yourself, If I put fuel in my car, it's supposed to take me for it. So what do you do with a thousand bucks, right? You know, I think you've just got to keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. Okay, boom, reinvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table.

I think people just need to get on that cycle of like, okay, I'm going to keep repeating this activity. I'm going to reinvest some money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever. Monday, I've got to be hustling again. Until, okay, now I've got $4,000. Okay, now I've got $5,000. Now the income's starting to pick up. Income has to pick up. The income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping you.

That's interesting. I started studying, hey, what do all these successful people have in common? You know, whether it was the mattress dealer, the car dealer, the furniture dealer, or Elon Musk. They spend money, man. You know, they spend money. They spend a lot of money. And they don't worry about money the way I was worried about it. They used money.

You know, they used it. They didn't save it. They didn't hoard money. And the greatest companies on this planet today, the ones that have just like, some of these companies have lost money for 25 years. Look at Amazon. Reinvest.

So when I quit studying individuals and started studying people, everything shifted for me. When I quit trying to be the, you know, when I quit worrying about what Bob was doing or Pete or whoever and started saying, hey man, what is this big company doing?

Because that also relieved me of being competitive with this guy, Pete, and starting saying, okay, I'm going to go do what Coca-Cola does. It was always, it wasn't white people do. It wasn't black people. It was always wealthy people do this. Right. Wealthy people do this. And I was like, damn, and now that you said that this now makes sense to me again.

So he says, wealthy people, first they get into stocks, then they start a business, and then they get real estate. So when people ask me, how do I get into stocks? It's because I follow that rule. Like, first, if he would say real estate business, I would have been to real estate trap. But he said stocks first, and I was like, damn. And so I just, my rest of my time in prison, I wanted to be that. I wanted to be a part of that wealthy conversation.

Explain that basic idea of ownership for people that might not quite put it together that stocks really are owning that company. So I actually got that term from Warren Buffett. owning the stock is like is owning a percentage of a great business and so once i understood that concept i understood that the key to wealth is through ownership like that's what that's that was one of the things that made it click because i studied the wealthy people like i studied them um and i was like damn when you study reginald white wanted the first black man to make a billion dollars on wall street it was about he wanted it to have ownership so i said the key to building

is not how much you can work. You can't work your way to wealth. You got to invest your way to in all wealthy people, black, white, Asian, Chinese, they own a whole bunch of shit. The people who aren't wealthy is because they don't own nothing. You only have your money sitting in cash.

If your money is just sitting in cash, realistically, you're becoming poorer every day. Right. Or they own depreciating assets. And that's what cash is. It's a depreciating asset because the more money they print, the more money that money loses value. So if it's just sitting in it's the reason why the bank wants you to have your money there so they can take it and use it and invest it so

And it's just sitting. I'm gonna give you 50 cents on whatever you had in it And so the idea of ownership was you know we can just start owning Everything that we no matter if it just a stock Like that's powerful because if you can start owning the businesses that you now Consume every day you turn a one-time transaction to a lifetime of profit and that was major for me Because if I go to a store and buy a pair of Nikes, that's a one-time transaction. In order for me to get something from them again, I got to come back and buy another pair of Nike. But if I own the Nike stock, long as I own it, it's a profitable vehicle for me.

So that one-time transaction can become a lifetime of profit if I own that business. If I'm going to buy Apple, if I know I'm an Apple user, if I know I got the phone, I got the AirPods, I got the MacBook, I got the PC, I got excited when Apple was about to drop something. Why wouldn't I own it? As much of it as I can. And so now instead of me getting excited about Apple Lyme being around the corner because it's a new phone, I'm like, yo, y'all have to make me some money.

And another great thing about the stock market is, for me, it now makes me pay attention to the world. And so now I understand what's going on in the world. I started learning business cycles, market cycles. You know what I'm saying? Like because now I can understand, you this is okay things are going out of business is okay we're we're in this cycle okay people are hiring okay we're an expansion cycle and so now i started taking i took an economic class on my own

without just understanding the world and so you start understanding when something is happening in china okay something happening in china so i own apple apple has 20% of their revenue in china okay they might take a little hit right now you know what i'm saying so the stock market helped me start understanding how the world moves the fundamentals. What happens when your perspective, your perception diametrically opposes your reality? If you are going to give and grow and evolve and attain and become, everything rises and falls on your viewpoint. Perspective is everything.

Let's go. I need you to hear me loud and clear. How you see this thing is everything. You cannot change the past, but you can't change your perspective about it. Your viewpoint is your advantage. Your viewpoint is what changes the game. Everybody wants increase in abundance and lifestyle change and new zip codes and new area codes, but you only read once a week and you only work out once or twice a month.

And so the reason why you don't have what it is that you see, the reason why what's in your head is not in your hands, it's not your reality, is because your perspective opposes your potential. You don't have it because you don't see the value in it. If you believe you've been called to beat the difference maker, the game changer, the disruptor, the person that comes into a room and commands the atmosphere, If you believe you've been called to be necessary and not grossly irrelevant, then everything you do, everything you see, everything rises and falls on your perspective, your perception, your viewpoint. How do you see this thing? I see, when we get into the prison of fear because we have fallen in an area,

fear has friends. One of the chief friends of fear is doubt. and doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. There are people who have failed in their head before they even reach the field. So I want to invite you to renounce the spirit of fear. Failure is the only opportunity to begin again. And if I'm talking to anybody that's hungry for the future,

all you need is an opportunity to try again. Failing doesn't make you a failure. It's something you did. It's not who you are. And so one thing we are going to have to get a crystal clear belt is that if I failed, then I can wear. I'm talking to that football team. I'm talking to that baseball team, that basketball team.

I'm talking to that fighter. I'm talking to that track star. I'm talking to that athlete. I'm talking to that student. I'm talking to the person who failed the exam over and over and over. Again, I'm talking to that individual who feels as though all hope is lost, who feels as though they gave it their all. If you are still alive, you've got something left. Thomas Edison, he was fired from his first two jobs.

His teachers coined him. Stupid. That he couldn't learn anything. This is the man who invented the light bulb the first thousand times he failed. But he was never a failure. He just found a thousand ways that don't work. You're no time in a citizen. You didn't try a thousand times.

Try a thousand times. And then come talk to me and tell me you're not enough. Tell me you don't have what it takes. Tell me you're stupid. Tell me you're dumb. Tell me you're slow. Tell me you don't have enough. Whatever pushed you to the ground,

whatever knocked you to the floor, from that place I want you to look it in the eye and tell it tell that person tell that circumstance tell that place tell whatever it is

that knocked you to the floor you can't keep me here if you're going to understand the program of resiliency we are going to have to stop running from difficult times stop praying that the storm will pass over you and pray to grow through the storm. Stop going around it. Go through it. What you go through, you will grow through. Some fights are not won in the first round. Flat out, in the moment that you get that and you get

crystal clear and you accept the fact that there are some giants that you will not defeat in the first round. You need endurance. You need stamina to reach some goals. You're not going to hit the million with the first investment. You're not going to hit the home run always at first sweep. But resiliency says, I belong here and I deserve another shot. I want my opportunity. Give me my opportunity. I've had a good fortune of living the American dream. I just kind of had an itching to go run my own thing. You know, the only way he could be a failure is not to have failed. To be honest, the first company I went up was a total disaster.

It was like running a 100-yard dash and being smacked in the face with a 2x4. I'll never forget. I think it was my second day on the job. The CEO said, Keith, I wanted to say this at the next board meeting. And I go, Maria, I will not say that. That would be a lie. You get that big pit in your stomach and you just turn warm inside. I go, I just made the biggest mistake of my life.

You know, obviously my drive comes from my upbringing, and it's about paying it forward and giving it back. You know, one of the things my dad always said is the key is when the world hands you a sack of sour lemons. The objective of the game is it turning a sweet lemon A. And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. And I ended up hooking up with three PhD scientists from the IBM research labs that had a technology. It would change the way mechanical engineering was done. And it took about two and a half years, but it worked. And we changed the way mechanical engineering is done with that software from RAS.

And we created a thing called mechanical design synthesis and design optimization. We were all set to take it public. And then a company called Paramount Technology came in and bought it from us. So let's talk about ARIBA. So ARIBA starts right after RASNA. Our revenue doubled quarter over quarter for 12 quarters in a row. We took it, you know, we took it public after two and three quarters years, got up to $40 billion. and to this day 3.7 trillion of transaction.

Trillion. More than all the trade in the Western Hemisphere, more than eBay, Alibaba, and Amazon combined. Go through that Eribe Network. The lesson I learned, and it was always straight in front of my face. You know, I grew up in the Midwest, great Midwestern values, integrity was key, same at General Motors, Purdue, all of that, and there was a different value system.

So from there on out, always job wants to make sure every organization, every company had a great set of values and integrity because people can say, hey, I don't like how you look. I don't like where you went to school, but they can't take your integrity away. You know, it's a tremendous honor to be here. This truly is my happy place. And so for the class of 2021, and you're a tremendous honor to be here. and your parents, your families, and your friends, I just have one question for you. Is Purdue the greatest university or what?

First of all, you have to trust yourself. And, you know, that's, because you can't trust anybody else unless you trust yourself. And, you know, I found a way to build that trust is keep jumping in water over your head. But we can come back to that. But so you go into a new environment, go into a new company, something like that. So how do you build trust?

Well, you do it one-on-one. And so the question is, can you build trust at a launch? Can you do it at a dinner? And what I found, one of the things that works is you can't be afraid to be vulnerable. Because when you're vulnerable with somebody, about 95% of the time, they'll reciprocate in kind. And when both sides are vulnerable, that forms a connection. And that is a way that I found all the time.

Or also another one is tell me your story. Everybody loves to tell their story. And I'm just naturally a curious person, so I love hearing. That never bores me. So it's really the power of one-on-one relationships. We need to go back to this playbook. You went through it really quick, but it feels like this playbook has built a couple,

multi-billion-dollar businesses that conduct trillions of dollars worth of business. Walk us through that playbook again. The vision, right? And so for your vision, and our vision at Aribu is really simple. We said we want to build a great sustaining company into the 21st century. The mission is all about leadership because the object of the game, particularly in Silicon Valley, is to be the category king. Because when you're the category king, you get 80% of the industry resources.

and 80% of market cap. Players two, three, four, five, six, they fight over the scrap. So our mission was to create a category called Business to Business, Electronic Commerce, and to be the leader. And then the next thing under that is your values. So, right, integrity's there, courage,

high ambition, accountability, respect, the basics. And then we had a set of team rules that kind of personify those values and by the way same team rules for all the companies the first one is direct open and honest communication in a word the truth because I had seen General Motors when you go through 15 levels you know I started at the lowest of the low production for to the highest of the high where I was a staff for the board of director I could see how that message would change right

the second one is no ideas a bad idea and then we added parentheses unless CEOs so because it's all about making a safe environment And you can make the safe environment when you mock out to CEO. Plus it's fun. The third one is always raise the standard in everything we do. And our people, our processes, and our products. And if somebody can't keep up with that standard, you've got to do something about it. Otherwise, you've automatically lowered your standard.

And the fourth one is, we're a team first and functional specialist second. So you develop a development. You developers put your feet into customer's shoes. You sales guys don't make commitments we can't keep. And then the fifth one is the most powerful one of all. And that is hire the best people, especially if they're better than us.