The School of Greatness - 146 The Power of Money on Your Mind, Body, and Soul on with Kabir Seghal

Episode Date: March 4, 2015

"The idea of making money is sometimes more powerful than the money itself." - Kabir Sehgal If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/146.

This is episode number 146 with Kabir Sehgal. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Now this interview is with a very special guest.

His name is Kabir Sehgal, and he's got an interesting life. He is a New York Times bestselling author. He is a banker. He is a music producer, musician, a jazz musician, and has achieved extraordinary results in his life. This book is about money, again, coined, the rich life of money and how it has shaped us. We talk a lot about money, what it actually means, the value of money, the history of money, and what it's used for today, and really where it's heading in the future, where money

is heading in the future. So I want to let him share a little bit more about his story right now. is heading in the future. So I want to let him share a little bit more about his story right now. So let's go ahead and dive in and let me introduce you to the one and only Kabir Sehgal. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. I've got a new guest on today. His name is Mr. Kabir Sehgal. How's it going, Kabir? It's going great. Great to be with you. Yeah, we've been meeting to connect for a while. We're finally on the line here talking about your new book, which is called Coined,

The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us. But you don't know, you know a lot about money because you work in that industry, but you actually have a lot of different things you're working on. Can you talk about all the different diverse things that you've been doing?

You just won a Grammy. You've written children's books. Can you talk a little bit about everything you do first? Sure. I mean, I guess it's a wide portfolio, but my sort of main role is writing books. I'm an author. This is my fourth book. And I've spent a lot of time researching the role of money in our lives. I guess I'm a record producer as well. And you're right,

just last week, I was in Los Angeles. And I produced an album called The Offense of the Drum by Arturo O'Farrell and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. So Latin jazz album, and it won a Grammy Award. And so I guess I'm producing more. I've just won a pie eating contest, and they say the reward is more pie. So I'm being asked to do more albums. So let's see if that happens. And then, right, I've written a few books. My fourth book, I wrote a book on jazz music, a book on the civil rights movement with my

godfather, Andrew Young, and a children's book. And sort of my day-to-day work, I'm a banker on Wall Street. Wow. And so what inspired you to write about money and do this book now? I started working on Wall Street just a few months before the 2008 financial crisis, and I was really alarmed with the devastation that it caused. I mean, I wanted to know what's happening in the brain when we think about money, when we deal with money, when we spend money. And I started digging and I found some research by economists and I went into behavioral economics. And finally, I got to neuro economists, people who study the brain. And I found that the money activates

different regions of the brain from the reward and the fear centers. And the same way someone is, you know, about to receive a hit of cocaine. I was like, whoa, money has a really profound impact on you. And, you know, just thinking about money, when I say the word money to you, your skin is, the conductance is increasing, meaning that you're getting stimulation. And actually touching money can numb your senses. Wow, really? Yeah, yeah. So it's important to examine money in new ways. And that's why in this book I look at so many different aspects from the biology and the neuroscience

so that we can have more awareness of how money really shapes our lives without it even really – without really realizing how it does so. Interesting. really shapes our lives without us, without it even really, we fully realizing how it, how it does. So interesting. So why did you even want us? I mean, how did you start learning about this in the first place? Why were you so curious about how money affects our skin and the way I react to things? It was really, it was really just a quest. I started reading books about the financial crises and, uh, I thought, you know, the world did not need another book on the financial crisis. There's many of them. But maybe the world needs or maybe people would like to know more about how money has such a profound impact on us. And so there's a body of literature, you know, thinking fast and slow, Danny Kahneman, who wrote this book on behavioral

economics. He's sort of like the, the pioneer who won the, he won the Nobel prize, um, many years ago for his work on behavioral economics, basically studying how, like, you know, he would identify sort of irrational behaviors, uh, for how we use money. So for instance, my dad plays a lottery every week. And I said, dad, you know, why do you play the lottery? So, you know, I have, I might win it. I was like, well, you know, statistically there's almost a zero chance you're going to win it, but he's, he'll, he starts thinking about the people on the news that win it. He starts thinking about that one time he matched like a few numbers and he got maybe $300, $400 for it.

And so Danny Kahneman calls this a cognitive bias. Okay. And so that is, uh, it's called the availability heuristic. So things that you can more that are more readily available to your memory, we start to inflate the probability of them actually happening. Wow. Yeah. So, and this is all around us. So, you know, if I said to you, for example, let's go, if, uh, if you go into a library and you see someone, um, with elbow patches and a tweed jacket on, is he more likely to be a concert pianist or a truck driver? You might say concert pianist based on how he looks, but there's only, I think, 10,000 concert pianists or violinists in America, whereas there's many, many more truck drivers. So the brain is not equipped to do large statistical problems.

equipped to do large statistical problems. So when I started digging into it, there was a man named Brian Knudson who works at Stanford University. He's one of the leading neuroeconomists. These are basically neuroscientists that look at economic decision making and they scan your brain while you're making financial decisions. So sure enough, when they give someone a, um, a shopping decision, they can scan your brain and they can tell you before you're fully aware of it. They can predict what you're going to choose.

Interesting. So, yeah. And so that, that makes sense. That makes sense. Obviously, like all decisions are made in the brain, but, um, they've even taken it further and they've, they've found that there's actually specific genes. They've been able to correlate genes with, if you possess one set of genes,

you're more likely to have, to take riskier decisions and have lower FICO scores. And conversely, if you have another set of genes, you're more risk averse and they'll have higher credit scores. So this is all to say that, you know, a lot of our financial decisions are being made at what's called a subcortical level, like below consciousness. And I found this so fascinating, and that's why I sort of delved into it with gusto in the research for this book. I'm wondering, this just came up for me, I'm wondering if you know or you heard about how much people, the average person spends on or loses on lottery tickets over the gains they make.

Do you know over a lifetime what the average would be if someone does it three times a week? That I don't know, but I do know that loss aversion, another heuristic called loss aversion, is that we value losses sort of twice as much as gains, meaning that if I gave you a bet or let's flip a coin and I was like, all right, you would want – if you win, you get $22. If you lose, you lose $21, right? So maybe you should take that bet. But most people don't take that bet because the payment isn't

that much. But if I say, listen, you may lose a lot more money, people start to get sensitive. People start to value losses very much more than gains. And that makes sense evolutionary because we're supposed to be avoiding losses because if you lose something, you could eventually lose your life. And so we're always mitigating risks but your question about how much money we've how much money people will expend on on gambling it's it's probably a lot because you know gambling is very uh addict addicted really very so so they take this brain scan of someone there's the harvard neuroscientist

who um scans someone's brain scan a participant participant's brains, and he showed them money. And so then he compared it to people who are cocaine addicts. And he found that it was virtually indistinguishable, that money gets so much excitement, and that the idea of making money is sometimes more powerful than the money itself. So you would actually show the money and that the prospect of gaining would be would be very exciting then they would get the money and then the activation would not be as much i mean they've all yeah go ahead sorry well they've also they've also done studies brian kutson again at stanford university did this very fascinating study where he he took like men heter males, and showed them pictures of dead bodies, naked women, and money.

And it was money that got the most activation in the nucleus accumbens, the reward center of the brain, which is really fascinating. But the question is why? Why is that? And I guess, I mean, you can try to sort of answer it with evolutionary logic, which is, well, maybe it's because we see money really as a tool. We see money as a way that we need money in order to get anything else. We need money to be able to provide for a partner and reproduce. So money is very deeply evolutionary.

And in fact, another brain study I've looked at is they show pictures of people destroying money, and then they scan people's brains. So what part of the brain activates is the part of the brain that is involved in tool making. So when people say money is a tool, that's not just like some kind of empty metaphor. There's actually a neurological basis for what's going on in your brain while we think and destroy and spend money. Wow. I mean, what about before money was even around in the world? What were we feeling and thinking then? We didn't have this effect, or did we?

Or what was happening? Yeah. Well, you know, Lewis, the first currency in the world, people often say, oh, money was invented. You know, there was bartering before there was money. And, you know, Adam Smith says this, Aristotle, even that's his idea of how money was created. But most anthropologists, a lot of anthropologists have gone back and look at this question. They say, well, wait a second. There's never been a society in the history of the world that's ever existed, which is a big claim that relies exclusively on barter. which is a big claim that relies exclusively on barter. And so when you go back and look at the historical record,

you look at, I guess, ancient Mesopotamia, what were they using as currency? Well, there was a very strong, strongly in circulation, there was debt, like loan instruments, like people were loaning items to each other. It was mostly in silver and barley. And it's not until 700 BC. So ancient Mesopotamia, 4000 BC.

And then in 700 BC, you get the invention of coins in Western Lydia. And so you have this idea that really debt is the first type of currency. And this gets back to like, you know, when you start thinking of debt as currency, it makes sense because if you think about sort of the early humans and they were hunting. Now, if you were out with a tribe – sorry, if you're out with a hunt and you get a big piece of game, some deer, right? You want to share that with everyone because one day you may not catch something and you want to be invited back to the tribe to eat. So reciprocity is really big. And so you got to think about the most important currency in the world isn't what's sitting in your wallet, isn't what's sitting in your back pocket. It's sort of the reciprocity.

We talk about that. It's like, oh, I owe you something. I owe you this. I invested in my friendship. And so a gift is really, a gift, I mean, a gift is really a gift is more than a gift. It's not just something you wrap with paper and ribbons. You're also tying the recipient to an obligation. And so in all cultures, yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. And so like in all cultures, you know, to give a gift is to create a social debt. And so

I trace in the book, I trace the movement of gifts throughout different societies. And, you know, I did this crude experiment. I was I was out with friends and you can try the same one. You'll see you'll see how how shocking it can be. Next time you go out for drinks with your friends at a bar, like everyone covers a round of drinks. And then you you say, I'm not going to cover my round of beers. All of a sudden, you'll go from being the stand-up guy to the guy who's-

Mad Fientist Toolbag. Yeah, exactly. He was freeloading. It's like, okay, what happened? It's like, well, you didn't honor the primary currency, which is social debt debt. And so it's, it's, there's all kinds of interest. Like I, part of this book, I still, I traveled to part of my job takes me around the world to 25 countries as part of my research. And one of the most fascinating places I went to was in Japan. And it's incredibly difficult to give a gift to someone in Japan. Really? Yeah. And it's just

bizarre. Like I, I offer, I had a, you know, they have these really nice grapes. I went to a department store. I got these really nice grapes. I was going to give them to a friend, and it was like $40 for grapes because they were, like, custom-blended, everything. So I gave them to some friends,

and they all rejected it, and the ones that eventually... Yeah, exactly. The ones that eventually accepted the grapes, they hid behind a wall so that they wouldn't be seen as receiving a gift. And because they don't want to be seen as taking something they can't repay. The word arigato in Japanese, you know, thank you. It translates loosely to like, this burden is too difficult.

So yeah, in Japan, it matters like how you tie a knot on a wedding present so if you if you're not if the knot is too loose you may be sending a signal that you don't think the marriage will last and and so similarly when you go to a department store in japan um you don't they don't let you wrap the present because if you do a poor job it'll reflect poorly on the store's image so yeah there's a lot of sensitivity and the reason I bring this all up is because there's a lot of sensitivity

there around social debt and like what is the etiquette around it and going to Japan made me sort of so conscious of the fact that really yeah there's money but then there's like this idea of reciprocity, which is the fundamental currency that we all live by. Wow, this is fascinating. So do people in Japan just not want to have to repay anyone ever?

They don't want to deal with the law of reciprocity or what is that? Well, they do. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of gift-giving and the the gift giving seasons are very lucrative in terms of, you know, the department stores. But there is a lot more, I guess, I guess the word is sophistication about how people go about it. So one of my friends, he was working in the 80s in Japan and he his mother passed away, I think, while he was there. And so when he came back to his when he came back to his desk there was all these like i think um presents essentially and he asked around what is the appropriate thing to do and so he came back and um he realized that he had to give gifts back

to the people and half the amount that they had given him a gift it's called a half gift so there's there's a constant cycle of gift giving, but it's very easy to slight. If you're not like clued into it, it's very slight. You can slight people very easily. But there's always this idea of debt. Like for instance, father in giri, meaning father in law, it's like you owe a debt to your father-in-law. And there's even something, I mean, it's called own, own. And people are always saying, remember your own, remember your burden, remember your burden. And sometimes the only way you can repay your own to your parents is by you having parents, excuse me, you having kids. Sometimes the own to your country in the

40s, the only way you could repay your own to your country was in killing yourself in war. And so there's this constant cycle of like feeling a burden. And a burden is very, very controlling. And so that's when you get like weird, weird situations. So this is social debt. But when you start to overlay financial debt instruments on top of social debt, like, what is that? So, like, I mean, it messes people up. Like, again, look at ancient Mesopotamia.

It was illegal to sell. I mean, thankfully, it was illegal to sell your wife or your kids into slavery, except except when you're trying to settling it. You're trying to settle a debt. No way. So people would sell their family to let go of a burden they had from debt. Yeah. And so that raises the question, why is creditworthiness more important than the sanctity of your marriage or the sanctity of your family? And so that may get back into this evolutionary idea that if you're not trustworthy, you can be thrown out of your family. And so that may get back into this evolutionary idea that if you're not trustworthy, you can be thrown out of the tribe.

Wow, this is fascinating. Now, there's so much we could go into there, but I want to dive a little bit more into the three parts of your book because it's kind of broken up in three parts, right? The mind, body, and soul. That's right. Can you talk a little bit about each part of that

and dive in how money affects the mind, body, and soul. That's right. Can you talk about a little bit about each part of that and dive in how money affects the mind, body, and soul or how, uh, or the reverse of that? Yeah. I mean, so when money, listen, money is, uh, it intrudes on every aspect of our lives. So I wanted to use a biographical metaphor to sort of relate it to everyone. And so in the first section, Mind, I wanted to look at the idea of money. Now, you can say, what is money? Money, the traditional definition of money is the instrument of exchange. Okay, so it's a tool. But you can't really, if I looked at just a baseball bat, I wouldn't realize, I wouldn't understand what the purpose of the baseball bat is.

But the purpose of baseball is to sort of win the game and go around the bases. So I looked at the idea of exchange. Where does exchange come from? And so I traced this. I found myself in the middle of the Pacific, in the Galapagos Islands. I begin the book in the Galapagos Islands. And why do I do that? Because I want to get to the point, I want to figure out where does exchange come from in the first place? And it may seem like a kind of, you know, way out there, but I really believe that when you look in the natural world, you know, a bee colony, ant colony, you go underwater, which I did, and you see that there's exchange happening all around us. It just happens to be called energy, right? And energy is the currency of the natural world. And so I go, you know, and I trace this, I trace the idea of money way back to the cell.

And I look at how the beginning of the cell was based on, you know, basically two cells coming together and creating eukaryotes. And so the idea of symbiosis is all around us. And so I trace this into the beginnings of man and the brain. And what ends up happening is we start to become aware that symbiosis is beneficial to us, that we can survive by relying on each other. So we create tools to do that. One of those tools is called money. And so that's where I start this book of the idea of energy and the awareness of the minds And that's when I move into you know, the neuroscience of money what's happening in your brain when I say money To the social brain of money, you know traveling looking at how how this how people define money around around the world

And so then the second part of the book I move from The idea of money to like money the thing. Like what is it when you touch it? And so money is – And how to affect your body as well is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So money is sort of three things.

Money can be hard. It can be metal. So I trace the history of metal money. And then it can be paper. And then it can be paper. So when you look at the creation of paper money under Kublai Khan with Bitcoin, but, you know, 100 years from now, like, what are the science fiction guys talking about? And that's important because, you know, the first time credit cards were ever mentioned was in 1887. It was a book. It was a science fiction book. So if we look at the science fiction literature.

Yes, it was a book about some guy. So it's called Looking Backwards. And it was a book about some guy. It was called Looking Backwards. And it was a book about some guy who goes to sleep in 1887. He wakes up in 2000. And what does he see? He sees these cards that people use to pay for things. And so when you look at the science fiction literature, how do you look at money? What do they use in space?

So I go into space currency and what we can use for money in space. space. So I go into space currency and what we can use for money in space. And so that presents a very intriguing question because when you trade among, if you're in space and using money, it brings up the question of time. How do you trade things when time is relative? Huh. This is insane. Crazy. That's an interesting way to look at it. Wait, so this book was in 1887, you said? Yeah, it was called Looking Backwards. Oh my gosh. That's insane. So you think we'll be trading currency in space in the future, and you're trying to figure out what that'll look like. Yeah, what will money look like? Maybe we'd find some new planet where there's a special type of metal and that replaces gold who knows i mean what do

they use in star wars they use something called latissium which is like a another type of rare metal so that's what i'm looking at across the book and then lastly i look at uh the soul like what is the what what you know almost every god uh the major religions, talks about money. So I found myself in India. I was at Mother Teresa's home for the dying and destitute. This is where they bring in the people with lepers who come really to die. It's a really sad and sort of tragic place. But at least they're getting some care.

And I saw this kid, teenager, and I was like, you know, why are you here? And he was from France, obviously a volunteer. And he had given up his college career, and he was not applying to colleges. He said, I'm here because I want to do what the gospel teaches. And I was like, wow. When I was his age, I was trying to take my assets. He used to get into a good university. A girlfriend or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I had more difficulty with that one. But like, wow. When I was his age, I was trying to take my assets. He is getting into a good university. A good girlfriend or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. I had more difficulty with that one. But yeah, exactly. So that's the – so I went back and I looked at the Gospels. And I said, you know, Jesus is always talking about money, even to the point where it's uncomfortable. When you look at the book of Matthew, 80% of the parables are about money. When you look at the book of Matthew, 80% of the parables are about money. And so there tends to be across all the faiths, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, there tends to be a different type of logic.

Like there's a logic we all live by in the material world, which is more is better. We need more to survive. Evolutionary, we need more, more, more. But across all these faiths, it seems to be that it's the inverse of this logic less is more that you know when you start to lay as jesus says lay up treasures in heaven but not on earth that's only then that you'll attain spiritual riches and so i look at this idea of why you know look at. Not only does it affect our minds and, you know, our neural wiring, it can also affect our souls. Because every god says one of the tests for whether you get sort of permitted into the afterlife can be how you use money. Do you use it to uplift or do you use it as a tool to oppress others?

is a tool to oppress others. So money is really defining us. Money is really a test to see whether we're worthy to get to the next level. What is, I mean, this is fascinating stuff. What is, with your work and research and all this, also you work as a banker and you're traveling around and working with lots of wealthy people constantly. What is, in your mind, the best way to look at, manage, and facilitate money for your mind, body, and soul? Well, they say that there's some research on how much money is enough. And again, Danny Kahneman looks at this and says, you know, well, a lot of people look at the people who are most obsessed with money are the people who have very little of it and people who have a ton of it.

And because either you always try to think about how much more you can get to live or you're always worried about how to manage your money. is that after you hit about $75,000 of income, and this is in America, that your general well-being does not go up significantly. And that means you have enough to sort of get by, and $75,000 a year is well more than the median in America. And so that means that your health is generally looked after, or you would hope. And so after you get to that level, then it's sort of like you can start thinking about hopefully about other things and so thinking

about this logic is you look my i think the lesson here is look at what hinduism says and it's kind of an obscure way to answer this question but there's a there's a this idea that hinduism says you should go out and make as much money as you can. It's your duty to make money. It's your duty to take care of your family. But there's also – but what ends up happening when you pursue the money, you start to get awakened to the fact that you need to eventually renounce it. And I think it's a great sort of pathway for us is that it's only in pursuing money that you realize that like it's not the end all and be all you need it to sort of take care of yourself but there will come a point in your life

whether sooner or rather than later um that you'll you'll need to sort of like start figuring out well okay well maybe this isn't this this this creates like a a yearning for me to do something more and so that's that's one principle i try to live by is like, you know, I'm trying to get more resources, but I know there's going to be a time where I need to do more with less. Wow. What's your definition of money? Money, money, I define money as a symbol of value. And so that's a pretty broad definition. I mean, we've already talked about the conventional definition of money, but money is really a symbol because it represents so many different things to us. And so as I travel the world, I try to meet people who are obsessed about money, but not in the way you may think.

I try to meet the people who are collecting the money, the numismatists, the coin collectors. collecting the money, the numismatists, the coin collectors. And the reason I do that is I was in Sri Lanka and I met the head of the Sri Lankan Coin Society. And I asked him to bring a few coins that represent Sri Lankan culture, society. And so we sat there for a couple hours looking at the symbols on the symbol, the artistic symbols on the money. And you can learn a lot about a country, a nation, just by looking at the symbols on the money. And, you know, just a, if you look at a coin, for instance, I was looking at one coin, if it's made, it's very thick, that means that, that the coin was probably made in a period of like economic greatness. That's because like there was plenty of metal to use and they wanted to put it, they wanted to use their money and they wanted to be proud about

their money. But it was very thin and very difficult to read. Maybe it was a period of economic turbulence. Maybe there wasn't enough metal. Maybe they were using metal for armaments to go to war. Maybe it's difficult to read. Maybe there was a, it was a warlord leader who didn't really care about the education of his people. So money is really a symbol that reveals so much about the society in which it was made. Wow, that's fascinating. What's the most powerful currency? The most powerful currency in the world? Yeah. I mean, financially, the dollar,

because in most central banks, the dollar is involved in most worldwide transactions. So I think, I mean, most of the commodities are like the oil is denominated, energy is denominated in dollars. Most central banks hold dollars in their reserves. That's decreasing. So I think it's gone down to about from 70 70 to 60% in the last 10 to 15 years. And the rise of the Euro, the rise of the Chinese renminbi is there.

That's sort of a financial answer to your question, that the dollar's the most powerful currency. But the most powerful currency in the world, I still think is social debt. It's like, if you don't return the favor, watch out, man, watch out. Right. What is your, what is, what's the biggest thing you learned about yourself and the decisions you make and your ideals about money over this process of writing this book?

I think I learned, I think I learned that money really is so central to almost all of our problems. And so, I mean, Muhammad Yunus, who I'm a great admirer of his, he wrote the foreword to this book. And one of the reasons I was so keen on him being a part of this project is because he's been able to look at how money helps the developing world. And, you know, my job looking at emerging markets is like you can give charity to someone. You can travel throughout the world. You cut someone a check. Great. But it's not a really sustainable solution to their problems.

And so he went out and loaned out money to villagers in Bangladesh. And they were able to pay their money back, pay the loans back in time. They can create their own businesses. And so I started to see money throughout my research and throughout my travels as an incredible way to lift people up out of poverty, lift people up to a place that they need to be. Now, maybe that's not the most conventional wisdom that you get working at an investment bank.

But when I started, I was in New Orleans right before Hurricane Katrina. And I asked my godfather, I said, you know, I want to stay here in New Orleans and I want to help the people of New Orleans rebuild, help the musicians come back. And he said, Kabir, if you want to help people, go work in an investment bank. Really? Yeah. And I said, why? He said, learn how to make the money and then give it away.

But more importantly, help other people learn how to make money. Because helping other people learn how to make money is incredibly sustainable. And it was so central to what Dr. King was talking about many, many years ago. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting you say that because my mission is to teach 100 million people and show them how to make a full-time living doing what they love. I believe when people can make that $70,000 a year, it doesn't have to be millions, but

can make enough that's a full-time living doing something they love, they're going to be fulfilled, they're going to be happier, they're going to be healthier. They're going to have better relationships with others and with themselves. That's interesting you say that. Yeah, that's totally right. I mean, and you are, Lewis, walking and sharing the vision of Dr. King. Dr. King, he used to get into trouble. He used to say, I don't want to be a good Samaritan. And people said, what are you talking about? He's like, I want to make sure that whoever's been beat up,

they weren't beat up in the first place. I want to put a police officer in a traffic light on the Jericho Road. And so while he was unfortunately assassinated, but his goal that he was pushing was helping poor people lift them out of poverty to make sure that they have enough money to fend for themselves. And that's essentially what you're doing. What you're doing is incredible work to sort of make sure people are pursuing their passions but doing it in a profitable manner. Yeah.

So your friend told you to go be an investment banker and make a lot of money and then teach other people to do that. And is that something you're doing? Are you teaching others to do that through this book or through other, other ways? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think so. I think, um, this book is one element of that. I, I, I, I only partly listened to, to my godfather on that. I ended up starting an organization, um, which helped, um, people helped bring musicians back to New Orleans. And, uh and we created a booking service it

was uh basically you came to this website and you would book a jazz musician really anywhere in one of the big cities and then we would create it create a gig and then we would take a tip and send those tips down to charities in new orleans so it was it was a kind of a very it was very inexpensive to run the website but we were booking were booking thousands of dollars worth of bookings every year. It was basically a stock brokerage for musicians. We've since merged the charity with another one, but it goes to show that everyone's busy. Everyone has things they're working on, but you can make a different team in a small way to help other people find some sustainable way to live. Sure, sure.

Very cool. What's next for you? Well, this book tour is coming up fast and furiously. So I'm focused on this book and hopefully making it a success. And other than that, I'm sort of – I need to go on a vacation after spending so many years riding. I'm looking forward to some relaxing after this. Yeah, I hear you, man. You've been achieving a lot of great things lately.

The book, the Grammy, everything, man. This is amazing. Yeah. What are you most grateful for recently besides the Grammy? Listen, I'm grateful for, it sounds when we try to say it, but winning the genetic lottery. I mean, all of us really have. Anyone who's sort of listening to this podcast, it is not to feel so guilty for your fortune in life. But listen, I had two loving parents.

I was born into a place and was educated. My parents focused on education. So oftentimes people say, you know, I'm responsible for my own success. And to a degree, that my parents focused on education. So oftentimes people say, you know, I'm responsible for my own success. And to a degree, that's true. But I'm, Warren Buffett even says, I won the genetic lottery. A lot of what you are doing in life were determined not by you, by your genes, by your disposition, by how you brought things outside of your control. So I try not to take myself too seriously. I try not to take my achievements too seriously because I know, I mean, my dad came from India to America when he was 17 years old. And so what is my achievement in comparison to someone like that making a living on his own? So I try to compare

myself not to the people who have more than me, to the people who have less than me. It makes me more at peace than myself. I like that. What's the mindset that people who have more than me, to the people who have less than me. It makes me more at peace with myself. I like that. What's the mindset that people should have? Maybe not should have, but what's a mindset, a powerful mindset that is effective when thinking about money and making money and investing and saving money and all those things and growing your money? What's a mindset that someone could have that will set them up to win in the best way possible for mind, body, soul? It applies to money. It also applies just to life, which is, you know, I'm in the Navy Reserve. And so when I go work out, there's this poster and it says greatness. You know, greatness is about giving up something good today for something great tomorrow. And for me, that was, you know greatness is about giving up something good today for something great tomorrow

and for me that was you know going off facebook for a few years and um sort of being just researching this idea of money and what it means to writing this book or for instance winning a grammy takes it doesn't just happen there's a lot of hard work that goes into the album this two to three year project so if you want to be great, if you want to make a good amount of money, you have to realize that greatness is accumulated over the long term. It doesn't happen overnight. And so that means that you can translate that down to making sure that you're investing in the right emerging market equity. So there's growth in your portfolio, making sure that you're saving for success. And it all comes back to that cookie test, right?

The kindergartners who, the kids who say, okay, if I wait 20 minutes, I'll take, you can get two cookies instead of one. If you're one of those people and you can defer your own gratification, like you're gonna be all right. Gotcha. Can you talk a little bit about your money-saving investing strategy, your own personal one?

Yeah, sure. What do you do with it and where you put it? I invest most of my money. I have a 401k and I put most of my money in index funds. Most of the literature and the research shows that it's best to put money in index funds. Most of the literature and the research shows that it's best to put money in index funds and not actively traded mutual funds because they eat away at sort of the returns you'll get through trading and fees. So index funds, I try to do emerging market index funds because emerging markets is sort of where the global growth is. So there's that.

I also try to, I mean, sort of in, I guess, the early part of my life, I would hope to think, but, and I try to put money into angel investments and, but not crazy angel investments, people who are trying to make, who've already demonstrating profit and revenue. So I try to, that's where my high growth and stuff is. And I have this cash in a savings account and there's no, there's no return on that right now. But if the Fed decides to raise rates, then maybe I'll move more money back into savings. Sure. Gotcha. So you keep pretty simple. Yeah, it's not complicated. And then I, and I'm really good on the cost side. I think I don't spend a lot of money on just like going on eating but i i'm pretty

spartan with my lifestyle i don't have a lot of things spartan i like that um nice man well i want to acknowledge you before i got a couple questions left but i want to acknowledge you for the the effort and the energy and the research and the commitment you've had over the years to getting to where you are now, not just with this book, but everything. I mean, you're a very well-rounded, well-balanced, and educated individual who's worked your ass off. I can see that you've worked really hard. You don't just become a elite-level jazz musician, a producer, winning Grammys, a New York Times bestseller, writing different genres of books. And so I acknowledge you for your commitment and your hustle

and your passion for creating information to make it easier for people to understand in a way that we can understand it. So thank you for that. I acknowledge you, Kabir, for all that work, man. Thanks, man. It's incredible. Hey, man, I appreciate it. Final question, and you kind of touched on it already, Hey, man, I appreciate it. Final question.

And you kind of touched on it already, but it's what I ask everyone at the end. It's what's your definition of greatness? Greatness is what I said is about doing things for the long, long run. And I think that greatness is doing the, is being extraordinary at the ordinary things. And it's like practicing every day.

You know, it's writing every day. It's like saying no to things that are going to distract you. And so, I mean, we all define greatness in different ways. But for me, it's really about doing the small things every day that you can look back and say, okay, how did he achieve this, this, this? Well, I was working every day at it. And you may just see a trophy, but it's not just a trophy. It's a way of life. Coined, the rich life of money and how its history has shaped us. I'll have it all linked up on the show notes here. I'll tell you where to go in just a second. But Kabir,

thanks so much for coming on, my man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys again so much for joining me today. And this episode is lewishouse.com slash 146. So you get all the show notes back about this interview, the links that we talked about, the things that we mentioned, you get an information on how you can pick up Kabir's book over there as well. Again, lewishouse.com slash 146. You're gonna get all the information over there. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend and let your friend know what it's all about.

And if this is your first time coming on the podcast, thank you so much for being here. Please subscribe to the podcast. Please check out some of the previous episodes. We've had so much for being here. Please subscribe to the podcast. Please check out some of the previous episodes. We've had some incredible guests on here. Jack Canfield recently, we've had Scooter Braun, one of the biggest names in the music business, Tony Robbins, Marie Forley, a lot of incredible guests who've come on recently. And we've got some incredible guests coming up. So make sure to subscribe. Please share it with your friend and keep coming back because I love having you here and I appreciate you so much. So very grateful for

Kabir sharing his wisdom today. Make sure to check out his book as well called Coined. And I'm excited. Lots of great things happening for me to introduce to you shortly. So stay tuned for the future episodes to hear what's going on. And you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.