Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Jay Abraham Shares the Cheat Code to Wealth Without Risk

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

This week, Anthony talks with executive coach and marketing guru Jay Abraham about his new book, Business Wealth Without Risk. Known as the "21.7-billion-dollar man" Jay shares how to break down a business and think like a pro. Together they discuss, growth, risk, managing failure, and get personal on their own journey's and friendship over the years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better.

You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Building business wealth without risk may sound too good to be true, but my guest today, Jay Abraham, has a proven model that can work for anyone. I've been friends with Jay for a while, and he is a wealth of knowledge and experience. I'm thrilled that he could share his secrets with us on today's show. So joining us now on Open Book, a personal friend, someone I greatly admire, Jay Abraham. He is the author alongside of Roland Frazier, title of the book, Business, Wealth Without Risk,

How to Create a Lifetime of Income and Wealth every three to five years. The foreword is by our mutual friend, Tony Robbins, another brilliant guy, self-starter, life coach, extraordinaire, helping all of us. Jay, I know you got a great business with him. Let's go to you, okay, Mr. Business Growth Expert, five decades of doing this. It's great to have you on. You're a marketing legend. Thank you. Let's start with a little on your background first and how you met Mr. Frazier, Roland Frazier. I think the background is interesting because it's not a gentleman.

It has wonderful lessons. And you know this because we've had private conversation. So I got started the first time in the adult world at age 18 got married. Then don't recommend it that early. Had two kids at 20, the need of somebody about 40. Nobody cared. The only people that would give me opportunity were crazy but interesting entrepreneurs who would be pretty much eat what you kill. They'd give me a piece of the revenue or the deals or the client or the

leads or whatever I could negotiate. And because I wasn't time to nominate, it was only result-based. I jumped around concurrently and did sometimes five things at the same time and fortuitously, never in the same industry. I was the accidental tourist. And what happened, Anthony, after about 10 different industries, I realize that people in one industry don't think the same way, don't act the same way, don't strategize the same way, don't source business the same way, don't lead, generate, convert, don't do anything the same way. Not because one is better or worse, they're very linear, they're very insular. And I was able to take very basic methodology from past industries I'd been in, combine them into hybrids, apply them in new ways to industries

where everyone was doing something the same way, same approach. And everything blew up. First, I did I see hot back when it was a mail order company. And we exploded it using a couple of techniques I learned. Then we did Entrepreneur Magazine and exploded. Then I did newsletters. And I got very serious when I recognized the power in what I call funnel vision versus tunnel vision.

And then I became obsessed with trying to learn everything I could about everything I could. And then subsequently, I hopelessly, curiously got involved in about a thousand and unrelated industries on a worldwide basis. And that brings me to Roland. So Roland is an interesting guy. I've spent my whole life working on growing businesses, but not working as much on top line moonshots that I thought were very dangerous, but working on 10x bottom line moonshots that really required almost no extra investment or risk.

Roland has spent his career really thinking much smarter than I. I've got, this is just clinical, probably 50, 70, $100 billion of profit increases to my name, and I've made very, very respectable income. But I was pretty in astute. I never really took equities, and I've made people very, very wealthy. I'm not a pauper, but very wealthy others. Roland, on the other hand, has realized that the real wealth is in getting control of underperforming businesses. He's got some very ingenious ways to fund them and finance them. A couple of the ways are owner-carry, but most of them aren't. And then he's got math.

ways to literally exit for what he calls a mammoth payday and an epic exit. I have the middle, the piece that knows how to get once you get control to blow up EBTA for very little or no extra investment or risk. And when I saw that he had a better approach than I, because he's got interest in about 100, it's like a mini little private equity firm of his own. He's got interest in about 150 different enterprises doing an aggregate of about $6 billion in revenue. But in full disclosure, one of them is a real estate roll-up. So you've got to back that out because it's probably three quarters. It's still significant. And he's getting massive cash flow. And he's had three exits. And the net worth is amazing. And I thought, well, gosh, I'm older, as you know,

but I thought maybe I should change my approach. And that was the Genesis two years ago. And then we started doing this. And it sort of went out of hand. It was going to be a 200-page book. But then I said, well, you got all these ways and not my sophistication of how to find them, how to acquire them, how to fund them. You got all these ways to, you know, to exit. But I got all these ways to blow them up. So let's really develop it. And that's sort of a quick backstory. I love it.

I love it. You know, it's interesting. My assistant, I read the book, not my assistant, my producer. And Holly basically said, okay, I've got to calculate the number of days you have left. on earth, okay, and she's only giving me 6,205 days, which is 17 years, Jay. Yeah, but your runway is that much longer than mine. Which would put me at the ripe old age of 75. I mean, I'm ready to choke her.

Oh, that's funny. I'm ready to literally, I mean, I'm hoping that I can, you know, stay on the plane a little longer than 75, but that's fine. I'm whatever. I'm 75. Right. That's what I'm saying. You look pretty good.

I hope I can figure this out. Thank you. But let's talk about it. Take my viewers and listeners through being an acquirepreneur and take them to say, okay, here are a couple of steps you need to take to make some money and create some wealth. But I'm going to ask permission to make a profound reality check, which I think might be a really good foundation that people will think very reflectively on. May I please? Please. Okay.

So here's, and you're going to have to straddle this because you're in both worlds. But if you think about it, a lot of people today want to start businesses. And that's admirable because there's a great entrepreneurial movement and you might need it if your job is, you know, outplaced by AI. But statistically, the probability is one in 20 startups make it in year one, one in 10 in year five. So you've got a five to a 10% success rate, meaning if you go in debt, you borrow, you put your opes and drink. you lose your ass more often than not. So contrastingly, if you find a business that's underperforming, but has made it through that, you get control of it, you blow it up qualitatively so it's not a manipulative thing. And then you exit in the end of three to five years. You could create the

income or the wealth of a lifetime in that period of your lifetime, your wealth, not necessarily your wealth, my wealth, but with somebody's relative or more. And then you do it over and over again. You rinse and repeat. But the better part for me, because I'm not really as much. into startups as Roland, if you own a business, any kind of business, this is what I love, Anthony, you can grow at convention. You can have great marketing. You can have great strategy. You can have great this or that. But if you add acquisition to it and you do it astutely, you can acquire competitive businesses, of course. You can buy product service companies. People buy the product of before, during after, even instead of what they buy from you. And you might go, well, why instead?

Well, a lot of people get leads. They don't convert. A lot of people sell something that is short-lived. If you, for example, Anthony, were selling not that you would, a supplement for weight loss, the average person might take it for four months, and most of them don't, they're not very vigilant about their protocol and regimen. They don't lose weight, so they either stop that, buy another one, or go to portion control food, or buy equipment, or get a trainer, or buy recipes. And you've already got the sunk cost in finding that person. So you can be masterful. in a lot of ways you don't think about and then probably more inventive and I wish I could give credit to myself. This is Rollins. You can buy access vehicles. What's an access vehicle? It's a podcast like this

if I wanted your audience. It is a blog. It is a discussion group. It is a sales force. You're going to laugh about this. I've had a client. I got a client that is trying to do a roll up in logistics. A lot of little mom and pop, five, 10 million dollar logistics. And some of the owners have an inflated idea what it's worth. But what has happened is oftentimes the owner, a small business like that starts out. Here she is the salesperson. They're doing all the work. And then they get some momentum and then they hire salespeople. Then if they do pretty well, they become the golfer or they become the whatever. They don't even know their clients. You can just hire the sales force for a fraction of what you pay for the company and you get 80% of it.

So it's very enlightened thinking, if that makes sense. Now to your question again. Well, you know, listen to me, it's very, very thoughtful. You also know a lot. I mean, you're almost like the hope of relationships, okay? And so tell us about, and you write about it in the book, so obviously share your thoughts in the book, why relationships are so important. And in many ways, relationships are really the story about creating wealth without risk, because if you're with the right people, you're taking on less risk. Tell us about that. Well, and I'll go to my own background. So I learn from Masters that if you go in the outside market and you get a prospective buyer client. It's a cold, untrusting person that you have to work your heart out and it's very

arduous to convert them to first level trust, which isn't necessarily committed trust. Even when you get first stage committed trust, it's sort of like that. Whereas if you find people that already have hard won the trust, the credibility, the direct access, you can go to them and you can end up getting an immediate sale, an immediate buy-in, you can get a much larger transaction, give you a couple of his suggestions. In the beginning of the HALCIon days of financial newsletters, and I'm dating myself, gold first became legalized Jesus in the 70s or 80s, and all the gold dealers out there were selling in the Wall Street Journal. They were selling on Forbes. They were just running ads, and it was arduous, and it was very expensive. I realized that the real market were the hardcore

conservative people that were subscribing to all the newsletters. I went to all the newsletters, and I made my gold client the recommended provider. We ended up every time there'd be a new subscriber. We had our materials in the new subscriber kit. Four times a year we paid to do a special edition of the newsletter on the Outlook for Hard Assets. We would fund in their name events regionally that their editor and our president would go to. Bottom line is we went from $300,000 to $500 million in two years. Now, admittedly, it's a small margin, but it's still profound.

I was in the seminar business when I was younger. Everyone else was running ads. I basically did $250 million, quarter billion dollars, and I ran about $300,000 of ads. I got Anthony Robbins to do it. I got the newsletters to do it. I got the newsletter to do it. They put the full force of their access, their media, and then I put the fixed cost on the back end and only paid him in direct proportion to revenue that was in my bank.

I mean, there's a great saying, and I think you like this, it's called the Rothschild story. Supposedly somebody years ago wanted to borrow $100,000 from Baron Rothschild. He said, I won't lend you a penny, but I'll do something many times better. I'll walk hand in hand back and forth twice across the Bors, the stock exchange, wherever it is in France or UK. And when we're done with the second walk, everybody there will loan you all the money you want. That's the personification of the power of it. And you know, you can do enormous things. I used to have, when I was in the seminar business, I had, I used to have operations in Singapore, or Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Italy, the UK.

And I never put it penny out. I would just find other people that already had access to the entrepreneur audience. And I made them partners. And they got to share and they did all the heavy lifting. Well, listen, I love you for so many reasons. But the one that inspires me the most are the obstacles. So how do you get through them? How do you fight through things like that?

You know, you are somebody, you know, I have a lot of resilience. I've been fired for the White House. I've had ups and downs on my political and business career. But there are certain principles that you've distilled from the masters, it's called them the masters, on resilience and dealing with obstacles. So what are they, Jay? Well, the first one, and I can tell a great story that I think it embodies it. The first one is that your problem is always going to be the solution to somebody else's bigger problem or opportunity. You just have to figure out who it is and what.

what it is and how to make sure it's articulated. And I'll give you a simple story because I love storytelling. And you and I both know that metaphorically, the brain works better. So when I used to do seminars all over, and you can stop me anyway because you know I go on a tangent. When I used to do seminars in Asia, the first time I ever went to one of the countries, I do this three-day, very expensive seminar at the end I always did through translation Q&A. So this guy comes to the mic and through translation, he goes, what do you do if you're too small and the bank won't lend your money to grow. And I said, well, okay, tell me more. He goes, I'm a small local motorcycle manufacturers in China. I don't deal with China anymore, but we did then. And only in China where you got 100 million population,

would you literally have a small local motorcycle manufacturer. He said, if I had the money, I'd go all over Asia, I'd find a city open a big factory, hire salespeople in every country, recruit dealers. And I said, okay, what's the problem? And he got very frustrated through translation and went, I told me they won't loan me money. I said, you don't need money. You just need to figure out what you're the solution to. Go all over Asia. You find somebody who's got a complementary business that's not competitive, but has already got a huge factory that's underutilized, has salespeople, has dealers, and partner with him. And it took me two minutes. The next time I came back a year later, he comes to the mic. I'm trying to underscore my

point. Hope I'm not being tangential. He said, I did what you said? I said, what did you do? He goes, I went there. I went all over Asia. When I got to Malaysia, KL, I found the largest lawnmore manufacturer. They had a huge factory. Underutilized second shift. We made a deal. I had to bring tools and dyes. It's just the metal that forms the parts that make the assembly that produces the product. And he said they had representation in 10 countries.

They had offices. They had salespeople. We had thousands of dealers. He said, in our first year together, we both netted $20 million apiece. So the first thing is, slow down. Somebody else probably has a bigger problem or latent opportunity you could solve. The second is because I have been. been involved in over a thousand industries, not businesses. I've seen optionality that blows your

mind. Most people, I created something called funnel vision as opposed to tunnel vision. It's predicated on the fact that you have an infinite number of ways to do anything, but you probably don't have the exposure to some of the higher, faster, safer ways to do it. Most people get frustrated. They get disenchanted. They get turned off. They get stymied or constrained because they only have a certain number of options in their reference base. So I'd say to everybody, you've got to expand your knowledge base of what's possible because there's a lot more ways to get at it and there's a lot more steps. And that's the second thing. I would say, I mean, remember a book that Fran Tarkington wrote years ago, right, when he had done a public company that blew up and it was called

Failure's not permanent. You know, it really isn't permanent. I mean, I remember reading another book and said that when you're down, I mean, you're only down for the count, if that's the way you want to be. I mean, you have free will. And there's plenty of ways. Somebody, another thing, this is very important because a lot of young people don't know this. I've had all these mentors. I have knowledge because I had the good fortune of being in a lot of industries, but more importantly, I've helped over 300 of the top world experts and none of them came to me for help with their methodology. But I had to learn a distillation. So I got all these wonderful integrated knowledge. But somebody who was a mentor mine once said when I was young, because I was very, very, very aggressive.

and I could have gone to the dark side. And he said, you can lose your money. And if you keep your integrity, someone will always back. But if you keep your money and sell out your integrity, you'll never get it back. And that was a profound statement. I've always tried to always really contribute. And I've been driven by trying to support people who were on a mission or a crusade to bring true value creation to others in what it really met, whether it means filling a void,

whether it means bringing a level of product service or frictionless transaction to people. So I don't know if I'm giving you tangential answers or relevant ones. No, listen, it's very helpful. And I think the point about integrity can't be overstated. You can have a lot of mistakes in your career. But if you live your life with high integrity, you're always going to have opportunity. You've been called the 21.7 billion man. Let's go there.

What is that about? Tell us about exit strategies. Okay, well, it is actually, it was years ago we tried to calculate and we just rounded down because rounding down is nearer than rounding up. It's probably 50 or 100 billion now, but we tried to conservatively estimate the people we knew we had impacted and we tried to very conservatively compounded and then discounted for the ones that probably didn't sustain it were out of business. I've just had, I mean, I've had a blessed career. I've been all over the world figuratively, not to every country. I've been involved in about every conceivable kind of industry. And I've had impact and very, it's a great pride.

I've probably impacted, I mean, lots and lots of experts, lots and lots of consultants, lots of entrepreneurs. I mean, it's funny because I was in New York a couple of months ago. You know that. And I was helping a client of mine, you're going to laugh. It's the largest duck provisioner in the country. They do $250 million of ducks to all the airs. Asian restaurants, 80% of Asian and about 70% of the Michelin. And he grew from 30 to 250 million

using five concepts. We have lots of stories like that. And we wanted something that would shock people's attention back at exits just to stay with the book because you're being very, very respectful and honoring my side of it. The book is all about the fact that if you go at the conventional, by the way, if you do it right through acquisition, you can take a business that has got a low multiple. You can blow it up, both. in earnings and volume and take it to a much higher multiple level. And, you know, I've got a client of mine. They're in the, they got dental practices. He's, he's done what a DSO does. Or is it a DSO? He basically buys individual ones for a low multiple. He puts it in with his group of 40. And all of a sudden,

he's just raised the multiple X times. We did something really hilarious one time. I was doing something with Tony, Anthony. You'll get a laugh out of this. And we do Q&A together. And somebody came to the mind and said, Tony, I sold my business for a much higher multiple than the business was worth. And I've got a look back deal where I get the same multiple on all the volume above the base level I can produce for the next two years. How can I grow it? And Tony and I both said the same thing. Don't try to grow it. Acquire ones for 3x. If you can get paid 8x. But a lot of people try to make the solution harder. I have a metaphor that I love and I'm throwing things out. You can stop any time. But I was profoundly impacted by the first Indiana Jones movie. And I was more profoundly impacted by one scene

when Indy was being chased down the bizarre by the bad guys somewhere in North Africa. And he was trying to escape and slipped into the alley. And you thought he was safe. And then all of a sudden, it was a dead end. And there was the seven-put giant spinning the sitar's and looking like Indy was a goner, although it was only 20 minutes in the movie. So it probably wasn't going to happen. And after about 10 minutes of Pensive anticipation. He took out a gun and went, stop that shit. And I think it's really important that you have options. You can change the game any time you want. I love that movie. I've actually loved all five of the movies, even the one where he's playing the 80 role in the other shows, which is another statement

about life. You're as old as you feel. You know, the book calculated me out to 6,205 days left. So I don't know. I don't like that about the book. That's probably the only thing I didn't like about. Everything else I did. I want to talk to you about growth. How do you grow a business? How do you grow yourself? How do you expand and stay neurally plastic at any age? It's interesting. I'm going to answer you three ways if I can. I'm going to go back in time and I'll be current and then I'll go future. So I was vividly impacted many years ago reading a book called a technique for creating ideas. It was written by a guy named James Webb Young, who was a, he ran, I think, Jay Walter Thompson's whole creative side when he was back in the 50s, a long time ago. And he wrote a book because

all these magazines, when magazines were the most viable form of advertising, would go to him to come up with a great idea to sell out this month's edition. And he'd give it to him. But when they didn't have an idea, it would, it would peter out. And they ask him, how do you create great ideas? And he thought about it. He wrote this little book. And what he said, and what he said, said the first thing is, and I'll come to the answer to the question, I'm going to come at it with a progression. He said the first thing is your mind was created. Its job is to solve problems and create opportunities, but it's got to know what it's supposed to do. So the first thing is tell it. Then he said, the next thing is take in all the information you can about everything you can on that

subject, everything you can on that subject. And he said, but the real key then is taking all the information you can about everything you can off that subject, because breakthroughs are going to come outside your industry, not inside. And I used to talk about this, Evan, for a long time, so let me dust it off. So if you think about it, fiber optics that transformed telecommunication didn't come from telecommunication. It came from aerospace, and it was borrowed, extrapolated. Either the ballpoint pen or roll on deodorant borrowed the mechanism for one another. Viagra came from a heart. Rogaine from Pimple, FedEx, borrowed the spoken hub check-clearing system from the Federal Reserve Bank and how they clear checks overnight. The most successful

baby buggy, three or four hundred million dollars is a collapsible wheel. So I think you've got to be able to travel outside your comfort zone in terms of knowledge and understanding. There was a book you probably read it. I don't read as much as you and you're voracious, but it was written by a guy named Epstein. It was called Range. Did you read that? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I actually just had that book in my office. I just gave it to somebody. It's a great book. But I think the premise paraphrase is the people that are going to own dominance in the second half of this century are the ones that have the most range because hindsight, even insight isn't the same as dynamisms coming on that takes a whole different kind of thinking also in answering your question. I think there's nine forms of

thinking. I don't remember them all critical, deductive, inductive, strategic, all these things. Most people only have one of them. Another thing you can look at is pattern recognition. I mean, I'm in awe of Tony Robbins. There's nine or ten forms of pattern recognition, and he's almost all of them. I had somebody assess me, and I was about eight of them. But the more you can see patterns and extrapolate, the more power you have. And I don't know if I'm going to the right answer to your question, but on growth, I mean, if you do the same thing, the same way everybody else does it, number one, you're only going to get an incremental growth. You got to do what they don't do in ways they don't do it and understand. See, I've always said there's two kinds of entrepreneurs. And I deal

with entrepreneurs, you deal with more corporate. There's a 2D and a 3D. A 2D entrepreneur thinks in terms of revenue minus expense equals profit. A 3D looks at the value of the asset residually. What's the return they're going to keep getting continually on investment? They look at everything as an investment, a lead, a salesperson, distribution channel, everything. And they have a greater advantage because they're playing a longer game. So that's another way of doing this. A lot of times people don't understand, They understand allowable costs, but they don't understand how powerful it can be. When we did icy hot and I'll go back way in time, but it was hilarious. It was a mailer product originally.

And we bought it out of bankruptcy. It was only doing $20,000. We were going to basically just use the equipment from the business. But we did an analysis and found that the average, anytime we got 10 buyers brand new, it was only $3 a jar, eight of them bought almost every month forever until they died or somebody came up with a cure for arthritis, presidus rheumatism. Of the eight, almost half bought a second product every month of the four, and this is average, two of them would buy bulk every, every two or three months. And the bottom line was every time we got 10 buyers, even though two never repeated,

and they paid $3, we were making $50 net profit a year on that person. And we had no marketing budget. My job was to go to radio stations, television stations, media, and get them to run ads when they had unsold advertising and gave them all the money and we paid them more than all the money and people thought we were crazy, but we built 500,000 repeat buyers in a year doing that. So it's understanding the lifetime value, allowable costs, looking at yourself as an investor, learning what your competitor doesn't know. It's also understanding preemptive advantage. One of the things in the book that I love is there could be a business that seems like a dog and it is by itself. But if you get control of it, it can have multiple advantages.

One, it can access a market ahead of everybody else in your generic region, something people buy before so you have a preemptive advantage. Two, it can be something you can use as a less foreboding way to start a relationship, an easier way to get people to start. Three, it can be something you add to your typical sale, which might be only a modest amount more revenue, but it might double or triple the profit. Three, it might be something expensive you add after they bought. everything else and it might double or triple the lifetime value, which if you just look at it

and profitability is one thing, but it could double or triple your allowable acquisition cost, meaning what you can invest, not spend to bring in a buyer in the first place. I think the bottom line I'm trying to say is you've got to think differently than everybody else. Well, I mean, I think it's brilliant. We're at the point in the podcast where I'm going to read five words and then the author is given the opportunity to say a few things. You can say one word back or a sentence. It's sort of like a Rasha test on what's in the book. So let's start with wealth. What does wealth mean to you? Well, to me, it is a definition of a couple things. Certainly, it can be economic, but I think it's satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose, possibility.

There's a happiness quotient to wealth as well. I just said, I think that that's something that there's a flaw in a lot of people because they're obsessed just with achieving economic. But I think it's an integration of things. But yeah, I think it's many forms of compensation, tangible and tangible. Success. Success is the, is I think, the ability to feel that you've accomplished something meaningful at not just the level you're capable, but that you've stretched yourself. And you've left the world better off because you were in it. Failure. I think failure is an illusory concept because when you don't succeed, you're learning. You're learning what not to do next or you're learning to re-value your belief system. I don't think failure, I think it's an illusion. I think it's very positive if you

don't risk too much. Death. Well, it's interesting. At my age, you know, in my mortality, it's, I think death is something you don't think about when you're young. You first of all, get gripped with it when you're older, and then you celebrate the fact that it's inevitable, so you might as well enjoy the process to the fullest while you have the chance. Okay, so I mean, but it does, it's a clarifying mechanism that focuses you to in some ways make your life more meaningful. You've never been to my office, but it's smack dab right in the center of the Torrance runway. It's not on the runway, it's not even a street, it's just a road, and right the planes go right over us.

And it's a great metaphor because my runway is a lot shorter than yours. And then you relish the day. You take. Not according to this book that you wrote. Okay. When I do this calculation, I mean, it's like unbelievable. I'm going to just like, yeah, I'm yelling at my producer as soon as this is over. Okay, my last word.

Yes, sir. Acquirepreneur. Yeah, an aquirpreneur is a definition that we have given to somebody who doesn't try to start from scratch, but they grow at an outsized, almost an exponential level through acquisition, acquisition of businesses, resources, assets, and knowledge. But it's about really recasting how you see yourself and the way you create success. And I don't know if you read it, the subtitle of the book is how to create the income or wealth of a lifetime every three to five years. And the hypothesis is why I work a whole lifetime and have X when you can have multiples of X and every three or five years,

you can get what you would normally get in that duration. So I think it's just, it's designed to dramatically shift your worldview. Did I mention failure already? I mentioned failure. I talked about it some more. No, I like the failure. I love you on failure, by the way, the fact that it's like not permanent. You know what I mean? I just love that whole messaging related to failure, you know? Because ultimately that's it. I mean, my message, if I could. could go back in time or unless I was in a classroom setting and I said to somebody, well, what was the big, the big idea? For me, the big idea is to keep going. Yeah. You know, remember what Churchill said, when in hell, when going through hell, keep going. That's all you got

to do. Just keep moving. Keep moving. Right? Yeah. And you really say never, never, never give up. I mean, I think people, they take it as a personal effrontery. It's you made a high, you know, one of the things that I learned a long time is if the assumption, something is wrong, that everything flows from it wrong. But if you, if you rethink it and say, okay, what did I learn from that? What am I not going to do that way? Where did I, where did I, where did I err in my assumption? I think everything is a growth opportunity. And if you do that, I mean, you celebrate living at a much more, it makes it intoxicating and far more liberating and fun, don't you think? Totally agree with you. You know, listen, you're a man of the ages, man of letters,

a brilliant guy, lots of fun of talk to. The title of the book is Business Wealth Without Risk, How to Create a Lifetime of Income and Wealth every three to five years. And it's fabulous. I look forward to spending much more time with you, Jay. And congratulations again on the book. And thank you for joining us on Open Book. Thank you for the privilege of sharing.

I adore you. I think you're one of the finest people in one of the most mammoth minds I've ever met. Thank you very much. You're a good man to say that. So there you have it from Jay Abraham. A fount of knowledge, a success guru, a wealth, building guru, a business entrepreneur. But above all out, what I love most about Jay's, he's actually a teacher. And as we see how, 2003 in the start of the new year, get thinking about that business idea

or thing you've been putting off doing. I think Jay's message is you can have a lot of fun and be creative and make money. I've got two of my kids that are in the world of art. One of them is a performance singer. She's a stage actress and a Broadway star. The other one is a movie director. They're both young, and they'll be forever young at heart because they're doing things that they love. And I think Jay's point is that you can do things that you love and you can make money,

but you've got to be disciplined about finding your passion and fighting through whatever fear you may have. And just to play devil's advocate, because you know me by now, a little risk is good. Unfortunately, for me, if I did a hindsight test, which I never like doing, because hindsight's not 2020, it's actually 2010. Unfortunately for me, I probably've taken on too much risk in my life, which is why I get blasted every three to five years. But it's been fun. It's been exhilarating.

I think Jay's message is when you're failing, you're learning. And so you've got to just hang in there. I love Jay. I hope you get out and buy his book. And thank you for joining us. You ready? Okay. Are you coming on the air?

Ma. All right, so this week, my other guest, Ma, came on to talk about wealth. And wealth can be many things, not just financial wealth. So how would you define wealth, ma'amette? Well, 10-year difference and 12-year difference between when I was a kid makes you insecure because you don't like it over you and telling you how wonderful you are that when you are. Okay. So wealth has positives and negatives. Is that fair to say? Right. Okay. Yes. I mean, I had horseback riding lessons. I wrote a motorcycle when I was young. I smoked against my mother knowing it. Right. And I was a little edgy. Yeah. And I think that's because I had everything. Okay. All right. So you're a little bit rebellious. You were like a rebel without a cause in the 1950s, right? Yes. A little bit, right? Okay. But what, but, but, ma, wealth is measured in a lot of different ways, right? Like, I was out with somebody the night. He said, I can't believe this, you know, means.

spirited person, died with more money than my dad. I said, well, your dad was wealthier than him. He had way more friends. And isn't that part of it, too? That you give to the people who are in need, and you don't question it, and you don't belittle the person because they don't have it. You look at the person and you know that there's people in your family that need it, and you give to...

All right, but you're not answering the question. You're trying to praise me, and I love you, Mom. And Merry Christmas to you. I love you, but I'm asking you a question, but, Ma, isn't wealth many different things? That's the point I'm trying to make. You agree with that, or you think it's just about money? Well, I take money talks and shit walks. Okay.

All right. All right. Let me ask you this, Ma. Let me ask you this. You think it's possible to create wealth without taking risk? No. Okay. Tell me why?

Because I think that people that are chancy and have the brain to become chancy. I don't mean just take a chance and not know what you're doing. You're a perfect example with Bitcoin, whatever the hell it is. And it's working. Should we tell everybody on my podcast that you call it BitCon? I probably shouldn't tell people that, right? Because you always mispronounce names, okay?

And you've always been mispronounced words, which is why I have an elocution problem, even at this day, okay? Because, you know, you say trauma instead of trauma. You know, let's just say it, ladies and gentlemen. My mother calls Bitcoin Bitcoin. How much do you love that? Bitcoin. All right, Bitcoin, Bitcoin. All right, but I've taken a lot of risk, Ma, but sometimes I fall on my face, right? The newspaper likes to write about that, right? That's part of earning. Okay.

I think that went through with... But you go crazy, Ma, when they write bad things about me in the paper. Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll probably should end it there. All right. I love you, Ma. Okay. I appreciate you joining me today. All right. I love you, baby. I love you, too, Ma. All right. All right, bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast.

While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at Plus 1-917-909-29-96. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.