The School of Greatness - 5 Ways To Build Wealth [MASTERCLASS] EP 1363

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Today’s Masterclass episode is all about how you can start and continue to build your personal wealth. Five experts walk us through common misconceptions around money and why changing your mindset is step number 1 to building your wealth.In this episode,Tony Robbins, entrepreneur & best-selling author, shares his advice on how to strategize and invest in a looming bear market.Dave Ramsey, author and businessman, shows inspiring ways to answer the phone when the world is trying to give you a wake up call.Jaspreet Singh, investor, CEO of Market Briefs, explains the ways you can prepare yourself for a future financial crisis.Ray Dalio, billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, elaborated on the importance of diversifying your portfolio when starting to invest.Grant Cardone, entrepreneur and investor, illustrates the mindset you need to turn 1K into 100K.For more, go to lewishowes.com/1363Full Episodes:Tony Robbins: https://link.chtbl.com/109-podDave Ramsey: https://link.chtbl.com/938-podJaspreet Singh: https://link.chtbl.com/1327-podRay Dalio: https://link.chtbl.com/1266-podGrant Cardone: https://link.chtbl.com/1069-pod

Why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. Corrections happen all the time, but you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down. So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed, but the most important thing is this. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. Why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. You're a millennial, right? So you grew up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now? 33.

Okay. So you were up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now? 33. Okay. So you were what, 27? What were you? 2008. Yeah, 27, I guess. Yeah, 27, 28 years old. So you're a young man and you're watching the world melting down in front of you.

For most millennials, they are the first generation since the generation that went through the Depression that is not investing at the ratio they need to, even close. And they have more debt than everyone probably, right? With all the loans. They have more college debt than everyone. Absolutely true. that went through the depression that is not investing at the ratio they need to even close. And they have more debt than everyone probably, right? With all the- They have more college debt than everyone, absolutely true. I have a friend that has $400,000 in debt, dental school. President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago

while he was still president. What? No. I swear to God. Oh my gosh. It's mind boggling. And he had a bunch of scholarships, but the last bit it took him that long. So what I tell them is listen, debt, paying off your debt's not enough.

You've got to become an owner or you're always going to be in that place. So yes, pay off your debt, but here's what you need to know. You've got to become an owner. You've got to get in the game, but you've got to understand the rules of the game. If you don't know the rules of the game, the old phrase is, when a person with experience meets a person with money, we know the phrase, the person with the money ends up with the experience, and the person with the experience ends up with your money, right?

So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed. But the most important thing is this. Winter's coming, but people react. So let's take last year. Last January 2016, we had the worst stock market opening in the history of the stock market. Worst, first, I think it was 10 days. There was a drop of $2.3 trillion with a T.

Crazy. Everybody's freaking thinking, the bear market's here, the market's over, the crash is here. I think the market dropped 800 points one day, and on that day, all the richest people in the world were in Davos, Switzerland, you know, for the big conference that they do every year.

And they went there, MSNBC went there, and everybody's freaking, what's happening? What are we gonna do? And they said, let's go ask Ray Dalio. Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio as, if you're not in the financial business, you've probably never heard of him. You've probably heard of Warren Buffett, but Ray Dalio's done more. You have to have a $5 billion net worth and $100 million to give him or he wouldn't talk

to you 10 years ago. Now, he doesn't give a f*** how much money you have, he won't talk to you because he's got a closed fund. But they go and they put Dalio on television, CNBC, he's the king, what do we do? And he says, well, you don't need to panic, corrections happen all the time, but you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down. And he said, I spent 15 years of my life to perfect such a strategy, all of my money is in that plan. And he said, it's called All Seasons, and I've never revealed it before, but I gave it to Tony Robbins. He extracted from

me and it's his book. So you got to go read his book. This is what he says on national television the day the markets are crashing. And that day, to give you an idea, which is the beginning of February, I think it was nine days into February, the market was down 9% in the first five weeks of the year. His strategy, which he gave me, which is made money 85 percent of the time for the last 75 years. It's averaged a 10 percent return, just under, and the average loss, when it 15 percent lost, was 1.6. So if you go to Vegas and you could spend 85 percent of the time making money and when

you made money it was 10 percent, your loss is 1.6, you could spend 85% of time make money and when you made money was 10% your losses 1.6 You go forever his plan made 2% while the market was down 9 So it was up 11% difference now. I'm not suggesting. That's the only strategy to do There's many his is the smoothest ride with the least risk, but what it did was Combination of that and then right after that I interviewed Fed chair Alan Greenspan of that. And then right after that, I interviewed Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. He was the head of our economy, the most powerful man in finance for 19 years, four presidents. He was there running. I was just with President Clinton this last week. He was the Fed Chair for him. And I interviewed him for like two hours, you know, three hours off stage, two hours in front.

And I asked him in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could be put in the Fed today, what would you do? And he looks at me and as I said, he leans forward and he says, resign. So I look at that and go, oh my God, I need to write a book that will free people. So here's what will free you. Everybody's afraid of the crash. So here's what you need to know. Two terms you should understand.

Correction versus crash. Anytime the market drops from its high by 10% or more, up to 20, it's called a correction. If it drops 20% or more, up to 80%, like in the Great Depression, then it's called a crash or called a bear market. So how often does a correction happen? How often do we have to be prepared for it? Since 1900, we've had a correction on average every year for 116 years. So when is winter coming? This year on average. It's like, how often does winter come?

You wouldn't be surprised if it stormed and rained. Now, some winters are long, some are short, some are harsh, some are light, but winter always comes. So I wasn't panicked when this happened last year. I'm not panicked whenever it happens because I know it's supposed to be. How long does it last? Average, 56 days. Okay, so just under two months. What's the average drop during that time? 14% over the last 30 years, 13.5 of last 100 years.

So I use the more recent one. 14% gets your attention, right? 14%, you get a little gut check. But here's what you need to know. 80% of all corrections never become a bear market. 80%. So, all this fear, and what people do is what you said you did is they see it, it's freaking out and losing money, I'm the hell out of here, and they get out. The stock market never took a dime from anybody, only you can take it from it.

You sold, that's why you lost. Right? Dying from anybody, only you can take it from you. You sold, that's why you lost. Right. Right? So if you look back and say, what was it like in 2008? I can remember vividly being with my platinum partners and saying, you see these $80 stocks? This is six months before the crash. I told them in April. I brought them to Dubai and I said, these stocks are going to go to $8 and some are going to go to $1. Wow.

And by October, and I told them what to do. So they were able to get out. October, I go on the Today Show in October of 2008 and they go, Tony, there's been $3 trillion meltdown. Pump the country up. You got four minutes. Ready, go. That's not what I do, first of all. And I said, that'd be a lie. I'm not going to bump up. At that point, the $80 stocks were eight. I said, some of those, I said, I'm not a market forecaster, but I work with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest investors in the history of the world.

In the biggest market crash in history, you know, 1987, he made 200% when everybody else was losing their entire life. I've been coaching him continuously now for 24 years, every single day. So I said, I work with the best in the world. And they're telling me based on history in the 30s and history in the 70s, this $8 stock is somewhere going to be a buck. And I remember the day in March of 2009, Citibank, which had been I think $70, sold for $0.97. You could go and take your money out of the ATM, it cost you more to take your money out than to own the bank, it costs you more to take your money up than to own the bank. And then I told people it'll jump from $0.99 to $6, $10, $12 in a month or two, and it's

exactly what it did. So what you've got to know is corrections happen every year. You've got another couple months, you've got to know it's 14%, and you won't lose because 80% of the time it doesn't go to a bear. Now, what about the bear? The bear market, it happens, to give you an idea, in the last 100 years, every three to a bear. Now, what about the bear? The bear market, it happens, to give you an idea, in the last hundred years, every three to five years. You've gone eight without one. We're way overdue. In modern years, last 30 years, it's

about every five years. The average length of a bear is one year. The average drop is 33%. A third of those drops go 40% or above. That, I don't care how well prepared you are, that's a scary thing. But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime to go from wherever you are financially to where you want to be. I hope your audience is listening right now. Hear me. If you want to leapfrog and you're a millennial and you think there's no future or you're a baby boomer and you think you're too old and it's too late, the greatest gift you have is coming. I know it doesn't sound like it. This is not positive thinking bullshit.

This is the truth. Wall Street, the stock market, is the only place that when things go on sale, people freak out. If I said, you like Ferraris? Sure. If I said to you, Ferraris go on sale for 50% off. Awesome. But when I tell you Apple's on sale for 50% off, you go, oh, what am I going to do here?

What's wrong? The whole world's coming to a dead. If you think about it, how old are you? 33. 33. So let's assume if you were 35 and you lived to 85, you got 50, 52 years ahead of you. That means you have 52 more corrections to live through. Right.

That means you're probably in those 50 years going to have 10 more bear markets to live through. If you're going to have gut checks every time or you're going to leave out of it, if you didn't participate because you thought, oh, the market's too volatile, I can't trust it all that stuff, you missed 250% return in the last eight years. I mean, you've missed out on everything while you're waiting for things to be better. And if you won't do it when it's like this, when it crashes, you're not going to get in. So here's the good news about the bear. The good news about the bear, average one's a year. It could be longer, but that's the average. It could be shorter. But here's what's cool. Every single bear market in the history of the United States has led to a bull market, meaning right afterwards. So 2008, this plummeting. What happened in 2009?

Up 67% in a year. I can show you every single bear market and the next year when it comes out, it's this explosion. Now, that's not true in every market in the world. It's true for two centuries in the United States. So that's why Warren Buffett says, I want to be greedy when people are afraid. And I want to be afraid when people are greedy. If you remember 2008, he was telling everybody, buy.

He was having the time of his life. Buy, buy, buy. Everything's on sale. So what you have to do to become unshakable is turn, the metaphor I use is turn the snake into the rope. Meaning, we all know the story. It's the middle of the night. You're walking through the yard or someplace and you see a snake and you're freaked out.

You pull back. You come in the morning and it's a rope once you know it's a rope you're never afraid again I want to take for people investing and show them how to turn that snake into the rope it really is I'll tell you one final stat on all this people always saying you started to bring it up timing mmm how do I time it like right now things are too expensive on a weight people have been saying that for eight years is there gonna going to be a correction? Yes.

But when it corrects, you want to invest again. You'll get dollar cost averaging. If you paid a little too much here, you'll pay paying less here. It'll bring the average price to a reasonable place. It's going to allow you to succeed. But here's what people need to know about timing. If you are not in the market, it's the most dangerous thing. This is so counterintuitive, so I hope your audience is listening.

Let me show you. There's two different research projects. One was done by JPMorgan. I just spoke for them the other day at their Alternative Investments Conference. To be in the room, there are 400 people. You have to have a billion-dollar network to get in the room. Crazy. It was mind-boggling, right?

So JPMorgan did a study, and also Schwab did a separate study. Twenty-year studies. In the last 20 years, to give you an idea, the average S&P 500, that index, has produced 8.2%. Over 30 years, it was 10.28. But in the last 20 years, a little bit less. Still great. You double your money, you know, roughly you're in a position where you double your money a little more than every, you know, what is it now, 7.2. So, it'd be like a little more than 10 years. But here's what they found out.

If you miss the 10 best trading days in 20 years, because you're trying to time the market and you're not in it during one of those days, you win from an 8.2% return over that period per annum, per year. It dropped down almost half, 4.5. What are the chances of you knowing the past 10 days to trade in 20 years? None, right? Warren Buffett said market timers and market forecasters are only there to make fortune tellers look good because No one can do it successfully. Even if they do it for a while. It doesn't last it's luck

You know Jack Bogle told me who started Vanguard, you know, three trillion dollar company He said we took real as a thousand in a room, and had them flip coins. And we said, how many times they got heads, how many got tails? Just gorillas flipping them randomly. And he said, one gorilla in that set of those turns flipped heads 21 times in a row. Now, when you look at that and see all these gorillas doing it, you look at it and say, what a lucky gorilla. He said, but in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 a row, you go, what a brilliant investor. What a genius. And it's just averages and luck at that

time. In fact, he showed me that 96% of all mutual funds fail to match the market over a 10-year period of time. Only 4% make it, and they're constantly changing. So the statistic I want people to know is, if you missed the 20 best trading days in the last 20 years, just 20 days in 20 years, one day a year in 20 years and you're wrong, you're wrong on timing, your 8.2 doesn't drop to 4.5, it drops to 2%. You might as well have been unknowing a bond and had no risk. If you missed the top 40 trading days, to give you an idea, you are minus 2%. So you've got to get in the market. And if you're saying, what about my timing, though?

Study was done by Schwab. If you've got the perfect timing for the year, the right day, the best possible day to buy, some people the worst day, someone else, dollar cost averages, just keeps spending the same amount every month regardless of prices, and somebody stays in cash. Who has the worst return? The guy trying to time or no? Cash. The cash.

You get nothing for cash. Gotcha. The guy who was the best had the best timing. Got it. The guy that was the worst, the guy that dollar cost average and the one that was on the worst day were almost identical. But after seven years, there was only a $20,000 difference in accumulated assets between the worst day and the best day.

The worst was not being in the market. See you've got to be there. And I'm not saying put everything in stocks. We teach in the book all these different assets for the first time. But stocks in the last two centuries have provided the highest return. So you have to have significant exposure to that if you want to get the highest return. Got it. And what I love in the book, you say that 80% of financial success is psychological,

20% is mechanical, right? Yes. So it's not about timing and trying to figure all these things out and when's the best thing or the best fund or best whatever. This is not about trading. It's about investing. Exactly. Trading is trying to do that.

And most people lose money trading. Even the guys that tell you to make money, see how they're making money two or three years from now. They usually eat the dust, right? Exactly. So yes, you've got to have the psychology. And my best way of psychology is not to pump you up. If you want to be unshakable, you want to be educated and you want to know the facts. You want to know, look, every five years I'm going to get a bear, maybe three years. I'm going to get a correction every year, but I'm going to be in the market and make money. Do you know that

six of the 10 best trading days in the 20 years happened within two weeks of the worst trading day? So when Trump was elected, the market dropped, I think it was 800 points that night. Then at 3 or 4 in the morning, he made a speech where he was somewhat human and normal. And the market got all its money back. And since then, we're up 14 in november december january three months february you know three and a half months what are you telling the people right now who are saying you know what i didn't follow your advice i didn't do what i should i

should have done i i still live off credit cards i overbought paid for my house and I've got this expensive lifestyle and credit cards that I I know I'm wrong I've made a mistake I own it and now I'm screwed and I just got 50% cut of my work I might lose my job in two months I've got all these bills like how do you even how do you even respond to something like that yeah well I certainly don't say I told you so. Uh, that's not, that's not the message because I've been there. I've done stupid stuff too and that's not helpful. Uh, and it, it doesn't bring, it doesn't bring any healing. Uh, the thing is this,

we all get wake up calls. We get wake up calls in our relationships, our spiritual walk, our leadership styles. We get wake-up calls on our finances. And some people, the phone's ringing off the hook right now. They're getting wake-up calls on a bunch of things. They're at home with their family, and they're starting to realize, I was disconnected from my family. I haven't been plugged in. They got a wake-up call on their relationships at home. They've gotten a wake up call on, you know, I don't have any savings and I've got, I'm deeply in debt.

This isn't working. And so the, you know, the, the, the cool thing is when you get the call, then you have to make the choice. Are you going to answer the phone? If you pick the phone up, that means maybe it's time to change. And, uh, you can look back and you might be 27 years old right now watching this and you're screwed you lost your job you got no money you had no savings and you feel like it's all over and I remember in

1970 I was 10 years old and I was in my grandpa's backyard we were tearing down an old deck and I pulled some nails out of those old boards as we were taking the boards off and he taught me to put them down and straighten them with the hammer and save those used nails in a coffee can now my grandpa Ramsey was one of my favorite people on the planet this is 1970 and he was still answering the phone that rang in the great depression. It changed his life. He was frugal and careful and wise with money the rest of his life. And so someday 27 year old, you're going to be sitting on the back porch with your grandkid.

And you're going to remember back in all 20, there was the coronavirus and it changed my life, you know, and that you're going to remember back in alt 20 there was the coronavirus and it changed my life you know and that you're going to be that guy you're going to be giving dad jokes you know and grandpa jokes right like i am now and you're going to get that opportunity i was 28 years old when i lost everything it was my fault it was the snl banking climate changed, I'd built a house of cards, I was stupid. And the phone rang. It was my wake-up call.

Are you going to answer the phone? Are you going to change your life to where you say, never again. I'm going to control the controllables to where I'm the little pig in the brick house. Never again. That may be the only thing you get out of this crisis, and if it is, you got enough. Preach to me, Dave. Come on now.

I love this. What's the biggest wake-up call for you that this has had? Maybe it's not the financial side of things or business because you guys are thriving. Is there something, you know, family friendships health is there anything that's woken you up now or in the near future and recently well i've spent the last 15 years pouring into our leadership team and the remsey personalities creating the succession plan of and so um it's not a wake-up call it's more of a source of pride as to how our leadership team

and our Ramsey personalities are reacting in the moment here without me coaching them. They already knew what to do. They're leading. They're out there doing it. They're doing it. They're out there. They're not waiting for Grandpa Dave to say, what do I do?

Tell me the steps. They already did it. They already did it. And then I found out about it you know and that's that's awesome and so it's just a a sense of ah this is starting to work you know i mean when uh rachel cruz and ken hogan and these guys are doing ken coleman are doing all these hits and chris hogan all these guys are doing all these hits he's radio and tv and appearances and all this stuff everywhere and the networks are calling and asking for them, which is awesome.

And so, you know, that kind of thing is, I don't know if it's a wake-up call as much as it is. It's very satisfying to say, you know, all that work of the last decade and a half of getting everybody ready to win because we were winning in a winning environment. But then when you get the pressures on and you get squeezed, you see what comes out and it's good stuff coming out. Hmm. Oh, I love that sound. The sound of yet another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business. And whether your thing is vintage teas or recipes for ghee, start selling with Shopify and join the platform, simplifying commerce for millions of your favorite businesses worldwide. With Shopify, you'll create an online store with your vibe,

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Go to Shopify.com slash greatness to start selling online today. S-H-O-P-I-F-Y.com slash greatness. What was the last, I mean, what year would you say was the last big wake-up call for you around, you know, one of the main areas of your life do you remember when that was where you're like oh you know i'm eating a little too many uh candy bars or um you know my relationship or you know what it sounds like you've had to finance it down for many years but is there another yeah yeah like where you're like oh you know what i really didn't do as good as i should have done here i i guess it's probably

leadership and i probably get one of those calls every day um there's some days i'm a world-class leader and some days i'm just a butt in what way like how are you so i mean sometimes i do a better job than other times as a leader. And I, uh, uh, I own it. I'm I get it, but, uh, you'd think as old as I am, I'd be doing better. So, uh, but I know what I'm supposed to do, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to do it. I don't care. And, uh, I should just care more.

I really should. I shouldn't be such a grouch. Oh, no, you're, you care a lot about a lot of people. I'm curious. What's the best, uh, what's the best dad joke you share oh lord i can't i don't have no idea oh you got me i'm not a dad joke guy really other than just stupid stuff off the cuff that doesn't even make sense generationally so yeah no good dad jokes what um what is the the most common thing that you're hearing with your your the people that

are calling in for you right now what's the thing that you're hearing with the people that are calling in for you right now? What's the thing that you hear over and over again that they need the most support with? I think there's a sense, I think when hope gets gut punched the way it has for folks right now, the answers fall, a lot of them fall in the category of this is not going to last forever. Uh, because there's this sense that, you know, stock market's down. Do I take my investments out? Well, only if you think it's going to stay down forever. Right. Uh, cause you know, you're, you're 35, you're going to be investing for 30 more years.

You don't think it's going to come up in 30 more years. I mean, really, you're predicting the end of America. I mean, that's silly. But your emotions tell you lies when they're based in fear and when they're based in anger. And they tell you lies. And they tell me lies. We believe those lies in situations like this. So, you know, I lost my job. I know. But that's happened before and probably happened again. Just get you another one. Well, yeah, there's a lot of people hiring right now. There are a lot of people hiring. Amazon, but that's happened before and probably happened again. Just get you another one. Well, there's a lot of people hiring right now. There are a lot of people hiring.

Amazon's hiring 100,000 people right now. Yeah. So, I mean, there's jobs. It may not be the one you want, but you can get some food. Yeah. I mean, get you a leaf blower, and rich people are afraid of leaves. You know, I mean, you can make some money. So, there's some stuff to do out there. can make some money so there's some stuff to do out there but the uh uh so the thing that the sense that that that the thing you're afraid of is going to last longer than it is yeah uh whether

it's the actual virus whether it's the shutdowns whether it's economic repercussions of the shutdowns whether it's the employment situation uh whether it's the quarantine it feels like it's going to last forever but i mean the chances of you being in the exact situation you're in in a few months is almost zero your life is not a snapshot you're not trapped in this moment it's a film strip the story's going to continue to unfold yeah and so, that when hope takes a gut punch though, we, and we get down in that fear or we're mad or whatever, however it is, we manifest that stuff, that those negative things, we, the emotions that we all have in these situations, that's where a lot of my questions are coming. They're all built in that. I'm spending all my time going, uh, yeah, but it's not gonna last forever. Uh, yeah, but it's not gonna last

forever. Uh, yeah yeah but let's visit this in may i think you're gonna be okay uh by june are you even gonna remember this it's the great toilet paper shortage of the spring you know i don't know i mean what is it you know it's you know some people are going to have devastating horrible things that are going to be life changing but that that's a very small percentage compared to the number of that are worried about it yeah and so you know and you're gonna get out of it you're gonna get out of it okay most i mean you're you're gonna be okay i like i like preacher dave man this is a it's just a preacher show you know i like this what is the worst investment people should be making during this time and what's the best investment they can make um in my life when i have become desperate right after that's when i become stupid

yeah and explain the other one the other one is when i get well when you, when you get scared and you go rushing towards something out of fear, that sense of desperation, this thing, when you do that, you're getting ready to screw up. I mean, just count on it. And the other time you do that is if you're greedy. If you think you, okay, I got this one. I can take advantage of this and uh i mean greedy as a lack of virtue greedy i don't mean greedy in a a positive way where i'm being ambitious okay i mean the negative sides of greed and so if you're functioning in desperation or in this no holds barred i've i'm gonna just clean up on other people's pain

thing that's when you're getting ready to screw up and you're getting ready to make a major mistake and and so you're set up also for con artists when you do that mmm and so if you're if you're functioning in high emotion your brain just doesn't work good my friend art Laffer says what people when you're panicked and when you're drunk you don't make good decisions and so you know you you're when you're on high emotion your brain is it's your critical thinking skills shut down and and so that's when i've made the biggest mistakes in my life is when i was desperate and the few times that i was greedy where i thought oh i'm gonna slip in there and that's gonna be easy money well What was that? Easy money.

Could you share a story of one of those greedy times where you tried to jump in and it didn't work out? Yeah, a buddy of mine, I was in my 20s, and a buddy of mine was buying gold. Now, this is in the 80s. It's a million years ago. And he's buying gold, and he had this friend that was a gold bug. He was picking gold.

And this guy had picked the gold prices where they were going within a dollar, uh, like 14 times in a row. And so, uh, we both dropped five grand into this thing. And if we had hit, it was a, it was a margin deal. And so I would've made 50 grand and I thought I'm putting a thousand bucks in here. I'm gonna make 50 grand, but it's a margin play, which means in here I'm gonna make 50 grand but it's a margin play which means you're either gonna make 50 grand you're gonna make zero and so he picked it right 14 times the time I got in the 15th time missed it I got zero turned 5,000 bucks into zero instantly last time I bought gold last time I played stuff on margin

last time I got greedy was it is there ever a time where, so what's the difference between greed and a great opportunity of being ambitious? Can you make money? Can you make money fast in certain things or is typically most things take a certain amount of time and energy and effort? The vast majority of people who are successful financially and successful have done it incrementally. There's very few people who you see a meteoric rise in their wealth or their success that keep it. And I think because you build your character along the way to be able to

hold on and be able to do it. I think that's my theory on it. I mean, I got rich quick. I started with nothing. And by the time i was 26 i had four million dollars worth of real estate i built a house of cards you know and i had a million dollar net worth i made 250 000 in 1984 i was making 20 000 bucks a month and in my 20s so i mean but you thought i had it all figured out meteoric rise to the top but the very thing that caused me to be the incredible overdrive of ambition caused me to go so fast uh that i that i missed the blind spots i missed the detour signs i missed the bridge out signs and so i built this house of cards i thought was a stone house but i was naive and didn't know and along comes some regulations changes a few shifts

in the economy uh a little SNL crisis and it all comes down uh you know all of a sudden Dave looks like an idiot instead of a genius uh and so it turns out I was a little of both because you don't build something like that at 25 if you're not somewhat of a genius but I was obviously an idiot in the way I built it and so I get to do it again get the opera the wonderful opportunity to start over and go the right way yeah yeah but i mean in the midst of that as i was falling of it took two and a half years to lose everything we own i had stuff presented to me i almost got conned serious con like people just a real con artist type guy there's not many of them out there most of the time you get screwed by well-meaning ignoramuses but these were real con artists coming into my path and I was about to give them money because I so desperately needed to turn

quick money into big money to save myself I was desperate and right about the time you get desperate when you get stupid so don't don't make decisions. So there's not really – so what I'm hearing you say is the wealthy, wealthy people, it takes time, and it's incremental. It's not an overnight thing. It's not a quick rise. There might be some spikes here and there, but it's typically over time. It's okay to take a spike, but anytime I get a spike, I'm always a little suspicious of it.

Really? It makes me even more careful. I draw back and I go, well, that's really cool. Is it okay? So what are you personally doing to prepare for the next, for when that happens with your own money and assets? And are you saving money, cash? Are you investing now? Yeah. Real estate, all that stuff. And what do you recommend someone to do, whether they're an employee or maybe they have some extra cash? Sure. So I would say, you know, this is a lot going to depend on you because I'll be very personal with what I'm doing because I'm an entrepreneur.

So I look for different types of opportunities than somebody else might. So if you are an employee, there's going to be different opportunities for you. If you're a business owner, there's going to be different opportunities for you if you're a business owner this can be different opportunities for you if you're an entrepreneur there's different opportunities for you so i invest my money in five places invest my money into my own business i talked about market briefs i'd have some money into real estate invest my money into stocks invest money into crypto then i invest my money into physical gold this is the order that i invest my money into this is my type of diversification now i understand what's going on and i do have some cash i always have some cash put aside for like

you know things going wrong investments i always have some cash putting aside there and what i've been doing is i passively invest my money meaning no matter what's happening in the markets, whether the market is up, whether the market's down, it's automatically passive, Every month you have a certain amount going in, yeah. And this is happening into stocks, into crypto, and into physical gold.

That does not change. That never changes. So I get paid. Money is automatically invested no matter what. Then in the past, I've had my more active strategy where I would take money and actively go out and buy real estate, actively go out and buy stocks. And in this situation, I'm looking for good deals, meaning a good price. So I haven't been doing that as much recently, not because of what's happening in the market, but because I see more opportunities for me in the entrepreneurial business side.

So I've been investing money into market briefs like I talked about. Hiring more people on your team. Hiring more people, building infrastructure. And then I'm also working on a tax firm. So I'm going to talk about tax for one second, if that's okay, because there's a very interesting thing happening right now because going off of inflation, President Biden just signed something called the Inflation Reduction Act.

It was like $80 billion or something? It was huge. It was huge, huge. I think it's even bigger than that. $80 billion is just the IRS. The IRS. So the tax side. So they're hiring, they're investing $80 billion in the IRS to start auditing more people, essentially, right?

Exactly. To start trying to get more money from people. And that's only one part of the Inflation Reduction Act. So let's go big to go small because the Inflation Reduction Act is supposed to reduce inflation. That's what the name says. I'm laughing because it's kind of silly because how do you reduce inflation? You spend less money

because the government has spent so much money they didn't have, which caused money printing. You tax more people, you collect more. Exactly. So that's how do you now pay off all this debt? Remember, the government doesn't make money. They tax you, they tax me, they collect taxes, and then that's what they use to pay off their expenses.

Now, it's not surprising that the government is running into an issue because they have $31 almost trillion of national debt that they need to pay off. This is not fixed rate debt. So as interest rates go up, their payments on this debt go up as well. So we talked about what happened in the housing market. Imagine that on a $30 trillion level now. So the payments are getting bigger. So what does that mean? Well, if they have this pool of money, either they're going to need to inject more money into the government, the Fed has to print more money, but they can't do that anymore because of inflation,

or they're going to need more tax dollars. So that's one of the reasons why through this Inflation Reduction Act, one of the things they want to do, which is one of the most financially interesting topics, is they want to invest very heavily billions of dollars into the IRS to help them beef up and collect more tax dollars and past tax dollars. Now, I do want wanna clear up some of the false information out there because the act is working to hire 87,000 more IRS workers. That's crazy. It is crazy, especially considering that today there are about 80,000 IRS workers.

So they're a double. Yes and no. So the 87,000 people that they're hiring are not all IRS agents and they're not all being hired today. They're going to be hired over the course of 10 years. And the whole idea is, this is what they say. Again, this is what they're saying. What might happen is it could be a little bit different. So I want to be just completely transparent because I don't want to mislead people. I want

to make sure everyone's fully understanding what's happening. You have about, what's scheduled is about 50,000 or so people in the IRS are scheduled to retire over the next 10 years. So these 87,000 people are supposed to replace them and beef up the agents that are actually going to be doing the auditing to go and collect more money. Now, even if 50,000 people retire, that's still adding almost 50% more people to the IRS. 50,000 people retire. That's still adding almost 50% more people to the IRS. Who are they going after?

Well, they say the wealthy, the super rich. And there's about 1,000 billionaires in the United States. Do you need tens of thousands of people to go after them? No. So you go a little bit deeper. Now, again, what do we look at? History. I look at history to answer the question.

Because they keep saying that we're not going, saying, it's not in the bill, it's not written anywhere, this is what they say that we're not going to go after middle-income people or anything like that. Well in 2021, 50% of IRS audits were on people earning less than $75,000 a year. Come on. 50%. 50%. 50%. How do they know? Is that public information? Go search it on Google. Google has a lot of information. 50% of the audits were on people that were making less than $75,000 a year. Wow. Why are they doing that? Well, probably because if you're making less money, you're not going to have the resources to hire a good accountant and hire a good attorney to represent you. So it's a little bit easier, less cost. I mean, it's just easier, right? I mean, you're maybe less financially savvy than somebody who's making half a million

dollars a year or $2 million a year, because now you probably have more resources to defend yourself. So that's a bigger fight for the IRS. And you're probably more protected because you have good advisors who've told you what to do. Because now let's say you're making- You're filing your taxes, you're doing all the right steps and maybe- If you make a million, once you start making a lot of money, like if you're making over a million dollars a year,

you're not trying to play the game of trying to hide $10,000 because now you're already under scrutiny. The IRS is trying to see you do something wrong. And so if you try to get $10,000 under the table, it's a bad idea because you already know you're being watched. You're trying to see you do something wrong. And so if you try to get $10,000 under the table, it's a bad idea because you already know you're being watched. You do everything by the book. You try to. And you have good advisors to guide you to do everything legal so you can pay the least amount of taxes possible legally. Now, if you're making $50,000 a year and you have

a side hustle making you $1,000 a year, you might take that in cash because you might say, this is a grand a year. It's just the reality, right? You're taking pictures at people's weddings. You're doing whatever. You're making some cash and you're just doing it under the table. And the IRS wants that thousand bucks. And this is one of those things where it's not surprising because if you look at what's been happening over the last couple of years, this has almost like been a foreshadow of things to come. last couple of years, this has almost like been a foreshadow of things to come because you remember over the last couple of years, we've seen this new rule on Venmo, right? On Venmo

transactions where they want all Venmo transactions over $600 or something like that, where now, if you're, you know, let's say you're a photographer and you're taking pictures at your friend's wedding and he pays you $700 and Venmo has to report that, they want to know that. They never said why, but now you're starting to see all these things start to add up where if you're doing these small things you know it's just like things starting to fall into place where oh no wonder they started wanting all these details for this no wonder they started really going after cryptocurrency brokerages no wonder they really started doing all of this stuff maybe creating a digital dollar because they want to be able to see

every transaction which means they want to be able to see every transaction, which means they want to be able to tax every transaction. Of course, I can't validate this, but I mean, it's just like puzzle pieces starting to come together. And so this is where the tax thing, why is it so important? Because of inflation, because of the national debt, the government needs more tax dollars to be able to go and fund their payments. And so what are they going to do? Well, they're going to try to find the easiest hanging fruit. Is it going after a billionaire? Probably not, because the billionaire is going to say, come after me. I have my resources, I have my army behind me. All my accountants have done everything. We have everything there. Everything is documented because we want to play by the books,

because we know you're already watching. Now, I'm not saying that everything always is right. There's, of course, exceptions to this. But this is where you just have to understand, they say that they're not going to go after anyone making middle income whatever. But after you look at the 1,000 or so billionaires, okay, you got to look at everyone else. So this is, again, right? That's what we would have to predict. And you got 80,000 people working on it. It's like, all right. It's just looking at history, right? I mean, history is the best right? That's what we would have to predict. And you got 80,000 people working on it. It's like, all right. It's just looking at history, right?

I mean, history is the best indicator for what's coming. I keep saying that. And I'm sure your audience is getting very bored on the way to be saying this. But I mean, it's the best indicator. Because I can't look into the future and see what's going to happen. But I can look in the past and see what has happened.

And I see that, hey, this is what happened in 2021. This is what's been happening. Because this is just the situation. And so for me, I've also seen a big difference between good tax advisors and bad tax advisors. Is that why you're starting a tax?

That's why. Because it's the entrepreneurial mind where when I get scammed, I get screwed over, I get these things happen. It makes me want to find a new solution. That's how I started Minority Mindset. I got scammed and I get screwed over. I get, you know, these things happen. It makes me want to find a new solution. That's how I started Minority Mindset. I got scammed when I started Minority Mindset.

I got screwed over when I started my event planning company. I got completely screwed over my first real estate investment deal. Pretty much every part of me had to do with something really bad happening. So I had a really bad tax advisor. He was really just an accountant who filed my taxes and was never on time. And I got this call. It's horrible. It was just a mess. I got a call from my accountant one day. I'm in the office. This is right before my morning huddle. So we have a 9.30 a.m. morning huddle. Calls me. I think it

was like 8.45 in the morning. I'm in the office. Says, hey, Jaspreet, how are you? I said, good. How are you doing? He said, hey, listen, I need you to do me something. Can you wire or send the IRS $100,000 by the end of the day today? And can you also send about $15,000 to the state government by the end of the day today? I was like, what? He said, sorry, we had some miscalculations. We did something wrong.

We missed this and you need to send this by tonight. And I was like, are you serious? He's like, oh yeah, one more thing. You're probably gonna have to pay a penalty on this as well. And this is a completely true story. When was was this? This is not, I mean, this is less than a year ago. Oh my gosh. And so it's, I mean, it's painful. It's very painful. And so I'm like, okay. Like I was very frustrated because I'm like, what did I do wrong? Like, what are you talking about? So you didn't do anything wrong. And I was like, well, if I'm the one that has to pay this and I'm the one who has to pay the penalty something's not right here and so I paid it and then I fired him pretty quickly

right because I you know that's that's not the way I like to do business I like I want I want everything to be clean but I also want people who care about what they do and he was a cheaper accountant yeah I got what I paid for. And so I went on the hunt to find a good top of the line accountant. And I pay a lot more than what I used to. However,

the situation scenario is extremely different because he has a very different personality but a different persona. And the way it works now is one, he manages all my books on time and a handle schedule.

So every month he meets with me and he shows me, hey Jaspreet, here's your profit I'm sorry we'll start from the top here's your revenue here's your expenses here's what your expenses look like here's how they changed here's your profit here's your tax liability and here are the things that you can do to limit your tax liability that's cool here are you know three recommendations or whatever that we believe based off

of what's happening right now to legally limit your tax liability and he has given me so many interesting ideas because the tax code is over 2,000 pages long. And you need, I'm an attorney. I studied a lot of tax. It takes a lot of knowledge and education to understand and read the tax code, but then things keep changing all the time. Like even this Inflation Reduction Act is changing corporate tax structure. So you need somebody who literally eats, breathes, and all they care about is tax. And this is this guy, right? And I'm like, dude, like this is amazing.

Like I love this because I don't have the time. I don't want to spend my time thinking about taxes and all the cashflow stuff. I want to build my business. And so I got to know him, got to build, see how he worked. I really liked it. And after a number of months of working with him and seeing him in action, I was like, hey, man,

you have nothing on social media. Can we work together? He's very good at what he does, but I was like, let me work with you. I think we can create a lot of things here because there's a lot of small businesses that need what you have to offer because there's a lot of small businesses who have bad accountants who all they do is file their taxes. And you need a tax advisor, especially now as we're going to see a big change. You need an advisor who's going to guide you on what to do with your money, how to document what you do, like just to make it completely seamless. That way you don't have to stress about it.

Right. And he was like, I'm down. So over the last couple of months, we've been working to build this together. It's not launched yet. We were just talking about it because it came in conversation. But that's something that I've been really working on. That's cool.

So if you're listening to this and you want a good tax advisor, just email me. There you go. Team at theminoritymindset.com or send me a DM on Instagram, Minority Mindset, and I will connect you. But this is where, what am I doing?

I like entrepreneurship. I like this stuff because it gets me excited. It's the way that my brain works. It's the way that gets me my purpose, right? And so I do that. I like investing in real estate. I like investing in stocks. I'm passively doing it in stocks.

But right now, I just see more opportunity for me to invest in things like market briefs, to invest in things like this tax firm, because I see the opportunity. It's fun. I have a blast doing it. I get to meet really cool people. So it's a matter of now, what is that lifestyle? If I wasn't an entrepreneur, what would I be doing? Yeah, I'd be stacking up cash to find good investments either in the stock market or the real

estate market or to buy a startup because it's very accessible now thanks to the internet, thanks to all the crowdfunding sites out there. And I'd be passively investing. I would not change that. So I think everybody should be doing this. You can put $100 a month away into stocks or into an automated account that is investing for you. Did you know if you're 21 and you start investing $100 a month and you never change that and you just get a 10% return on your money, which is the average stock market return, and you do that until you're 65, you will retire a millionaire. Come on. We're talking about less than $4 a day. 100 bucks a month. 100 bucks a month. Automatic.

Automatic. Automatic. Going into an index fund. And you just keep trying to match the market, right? Doesn't mean you're going to get 10% returns every year, but over the long term. Decades you will, yeah. That's what the historical stock market return is. Now you can just plug this into a calculator and you'll see that the $100 a month from 21 to 65, 66, you will be a millionaire. Is now the time to start investing or is it more just

save up some reserves for six months to have some cash to live your life before you start investing? Or is it important to build the discipline and the habit of investing 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month in a diversified portfolio, no matter how much you're making? I remember going through this because I didn't have any money. When was this, right? Oh, this was 1982, 83. I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to help to take care of my family bills. my family bills. So, but I, so I remember thinking how many weeks could I live if I lost my income?

And I started counting in weeks and I would try to go out because if I got hit, I, so I think, I think that's the way to do it. You know, you start to count how many weeks can it be a month can a year can I get up to a year. I didn't like that, because of the fact that there's an obligation and it's like, oh, if I get that I'm going to be drowning. I'm trying to keep my head against water. This is just my own bias. But anyway, count the how many you can and then assume that it's buying power over the next number of years can fall by three or 4% a year. Or if or if you put it in a risky investment like stocks or something, it could go on by more. So cut that number maybe in half and have twice as much because you have to understand that that's your freedom. That is your safety. So that first band you must take care of that first band, take care of that.

Once you get past that and you feel, okay, I could take care of my family and I could take care of mine in a worst case scenario, then you have the freedom to then take other kinds of risks. But when you're building that portfolio, it's the same thing as when you have a lot of portfolio past that, just you want to diversify well, because you could see what happens to the markets. Every market, stock market, bond market, most markets have had times where they've gone down over an extended period 60 or 70 percent in buying power. So I think diversify, count that and build it and realize that you're that's your saving. I one thing I do for my for my kids and grandkids and always did as long as I could start to afford it was for every holiday like Christmas or their birthday, I would give them a gold coin. And I said, I never want you to sell that gold coin until there's an emergency, a real emergency,

never because you want to buy things. And the reason I did that and they'll build over a period of time, that'll that'll build something. And I said, don't even sell it. You pass it to your kids unless there's an emergency. OK. And so you're building that savings because I think we so easily spend so much money on junk, you know, so anything that I would give them whatever it would be i don't know a piece of clothing a p a thing of a jig a toy or something right will probably be gone

in a year yeah okay and so the power of staving and you know and that resource the relief it gives you and the power it gives you is so great. So yes, save it, diversify it. I'm going to continue to stay on this topic, but also go off a little bit because you mentioned how, I guess it was 40 years ago, you lost your money and you had to borrow $4,000 from your father to just kind of survive and pay your bills. How much money had you built before then, before losing it? I don't remember. It wasn't like it was a ton. You know, I was early, fairly early in my career. I had a small investment business. I don't remember what it was exactly, but it wasn't a ton.

I'm curious how you, from having some money to losing it, how you then went on a 40-year, four-decade run of getting to where you're at now. Was there something in your mindset that allowed you to believe in yourself still? Yeah. That didn't say, oh, I've lost it all out. You know, I don't believe in myself anymore because I just ruined my finances. That extremely painful experience was probably the best experience of my life. Really? And it changed my way of thinking, of my life. Really? And it changed my way of thinking ways I'll describe. But let me let me say before that, I didn't have much money. My my dad was a jazz musician. My mom was a stay at home mom. And I felt, of course, rich. I had two parents who loved me. I went to public school. And then when I was a kid, I I did odd, and I caddied. And so when I put

in the stock market when I was 12, and I got hooked on the game, so I never had much money. But then I built up some and then had that experience. And, and so that experience, and which was also a very public experience, was very painful, but it changed my approach to decision making in really a profound way. First, it gave me the humility and fear of being wrong that that balance my audacity to double check myself. And in fact, try to find the smartest people I could who disagreed with me to have them stress test my thinking. So I'm never sure if I'm right. Like my track record of being right is probably 70 or 75 percent ish, somewhere in that 70 percent, let's say something like that.

And I'm I'm used to being wrong sometimes. And and it's painful. So the stress testing of my opinions gave me an open mindedness to learn a lot. And also diversification. I learned how to diversify without reducing my risks. If I could take a lot of uncorrelated bets, the return will equal the average of those bets, but the risk can be up to 80% less. And it changed my, it really caused me to reflect because I remember thinking to myself, it felt like I was sitting next to a jungle and I could sit on the safe side. There's always risk in return.

And what would I do? Would I have a less great upside and be safe? Or would I go through crossing this jungle in which things could kill me or whatever in an attempt to have a great upside, a great life, a great upside? And so that puzzle led me to do the things I described, but also I knew that I had to go have the great upside and not be constrained by the risk. And so I did the two things that I've described, but going into the puzzle, I found that it was great that to find people who could see things that I couldn't see and vice versa. So that we were on the mission together because people see things differently. I learned how

people see things differently. Somebody will spot this or that. And then that back and forth helps you make better decisions. And if you're on the same mission with them. So one of the things I wanted was this meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And I found that that was so good that when I, you know, sort of got to the other side, like, you know, I had enough money and upside or whatever, I still wanted to stay in the jungle and I still wanted to do this because the act of doing that with people that I was doing this meaningful work and meaningful relationships with was rewarding in and of itself as well as success. So one of the things that you can learn is that you can see

through other people's eyes. That doesn't mean you accept what they say blindly. It's that you think about their reasoning. And if you do that, that's good. It also gave me a principle, which is one of my fundamental principles, which is pain plus reflection equals progress. Okay. We have this pain, whatever it is. And OK, the reaction is a negative reaction and could almost be, why did that thing happen to me? And and so on. If instead, when one calms down from the pain, there is a lesson there about how reality works okay it happened it reality works that way and then um there's a thought how do i deal with it better right to produce better what's my lesson and if you acquire that i used to acquire i would acquire that i still acquire that and I used to acquire, I would acquire that. I still acquire that. And then I wrote them down as principles in my books. That's why the collection of principles, it's like a journal. I wrote pain plus reflection equals that. And then you write down the principle

like a, and that's what the collection of principles came from. What would be the steps they would take? How long do you think it would take them to go from $1,000 or $10,000 to multiply it? And would you say put that all in your own personal investment? Would you invest in the business that you're in? Would you invest in other things like cash flow, appreciate and provide tax shelters? What would you do? If you got $1,000, I would like just keep, you know, keep investing in yourself until you got another thousand.

Okay. And then invest in yourself, you know, now you got 2000 invested in you, you 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 further. Right. Right.

So if I invest in myself, then, and look, you know, there's things I bought that I didn't get a return on right away, but I didn't quit investing in a course or a workshop or training or education because it didn't work or your health or I spent 17 years going to school. None of it was any good for me, but it did teach me, it did teach me how to go to school. How to study. How to study, how to go there, how to complete a course. I completed college. I'm not proud of that, by the way. You're not proud you completed it?

No, because it was ridiculous. I should have dropped out. I knew it was a bad thing. What did you major in? Major in accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some business degree. But you should have dropped out of it i should 100 because i i mean i would still i would still i would well

i'd have a five-year jump on my career but the problem is i was on drugs so so you know physical actual drugs if i wouldn't have been on drugs i would have quit college because i would have had enough confidence in myself when you're on drugs you can't have confidence because you know you're drugged. So everything is second guess because my self-esteem was like through the basement. And so I'm like, I need to quit college. But everybody around me is like, oh, no, you got to finish college. You got to finish college. I'm like, what do I know?

I'm a drug addict. And if I drop out, I don't have a degree. No one's going to hire me. I didn't even worry about any of that because, you know, I don't have a degree, no one's gonna hire me. I didn't even worry about any of that. Cause you know, I didn't worry about that. I just didn't have the confidence to follow my intuition. You can't when you're- On drugs.

When you're not yourself. So what do you do with a thousand bucks, right? I think you just gotta keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. Okay, boom, reininvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table, right? We save it. We don't invest it. So 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 got to be hustling again until, okay, now I got $4,000. Okay. Now I got 5,000. Now the income is starting to pick up. In income has to pick up in the income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping that's interesting until one day you're like okay I have more money here than I can actually invest in myself I can't like there's nothing I can go to to get rid of this money you need to get rid of that money though all my free time is going to my workshops I don't have more free time to invest in me yeah i'm developing skills i'm working i'm earning more yeah now what's the next step yeah and now now now it would be okay i got to spend money on marketing

i wouldn't go make i wouldn't go look for an investment right now i'm going to spend money on marketing now now now now i'm going to spend money on marketing to get me more leads and i would you know big mistake i made in my career was not spending more money on marketing. Because you turned, what, 50 when you really started investing? I was 50, I was 51 when we started playing the social media game. And I was probably 56, 55 or 56 when we started spending money on marketing. Wow. Yeah.

51 when you started doing social media. Yeah, yeah. And I should have been spending money And I should have been spending money. I should have been spending money when I was 25 years old, when I was selling cars. I should have spent money, been spending money on ads. But I was scared, man. So what made you not scared 25 years later, 26 years later at 51? I started studying, hey, what are 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 use 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.

Yeah. Reinvest 1.7 million employees. When I started, I remember I looked at Ernst & Young, I said, I had a buddy that worked at Ernst & Young. I said, how many employees you got? He's like 240,000. Wow. And I'm worried about 10 people. What am I thinking? So, 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 started saying, OK, I'm going to go do what Coca-Cola does. That's when I bought the plane. Really? Yeah. How old were you when you bought the plane? I was 50, maybe 55, the first one. I bought it because I studied what Coca-Cola was doing.

They bought planes. I said, why are they buying planes? Oh, then I learned how they write them off. And then I learned how they trade them every three years. That's crazy. So notice every three years I'm trading a plane. I'm getting rid of it, replacing it with another one. But what are they using it for?

They don't use it for pleasure. They're not using it for Instagram photos. They're using it to go and set up headquarters in other countries. Wow. You know, so that's when I wrote, if you're not first, you're last. Because when I started studying these companies, I'm like, Coca-Cola is everywhere. You can't go anyplace and not see Coca-Cola. And I was like this big.

I was always this big. I was always thinking about what can I keep? And they were thinking about how many shells can we get on? How many eyeballs can we see? So that's when it all clicked for me. And then that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, who am I studying?

And that's when we started, you know, opened up the funds for, I went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see what it was like. These are multi-hundred billion dollar companies. Crazy. You know? And I walked in, I was like, oh my God, man.

It just all hit me in a second. I've been doing everything wrong. What were they doing different? They owned the building. They weren't renting the building. They owned the building. Well, they don't care if they rent. They could rent it, but they owned it.

The elevators were bigger than the studio. One elevator. That's crazy. And 60 people got on that elevator and went to the 120th floor. And then there was six of these elevators. And 60 people got on that elevator and went to the 120th floor. And then there was six of these elevators, people going up and down. Everybody told me, don't take people's money. Do not let investors invest when you keep the whole deal for yourself.

The second I walked into Goldman Sachs. Because all they're doing is getting investor money. That's all they do. Okay. And the difference is what I do is I i could go to goldman's i was there they would give me money and i'm like i'm not going to get money from them i'm going to do what they do from individuals exactly from my friends from people that follow me from people that support me okay goldman sachs will give money to anybody right okay they don't know how to go to these people they're not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn

or TikTok. So I'm going to create a fund where I can tell my audience, Hey, Lewis, you can invest with me. I'm going to kick Goldman out of the deal or JP or whoever. There's a bunch of these, these guys, you know, it's not that they're doing a bad thing or anything. I'm not saying they're, they're, they're the devil, but they're close. Okay, because they're not gonna call you up and say, how are you doing, man? You know, without saying, hey, you got any money to invest? It's just not, you know, that's not what they do.

Their job is to make money, period. So anyway, when I saw that, I'm like, okay, these people are, these are the richest institutions on the planet. They fund everything that happens. The company BlackRock, BlackRock's going to be, BlackRock and Vanguard, these are multi, you know, probably going to be worth $20 trillion each in the next handful of years. They'll own, they say they'll own 99% of all the assets on planet Earth, not just in America.

How are they able to do that? Because, because they scale, right? Because they think, they think big. So they're funding everything. Everything that happens on this planet from media to pharmaceutical is gonna be funded by those two companies. Wow.

So it just, when you're studying your rich uncle or the neighbor down the street, the think is only so big. And then when I started studying these other companies, I was like, okay, this is who, street the the think is only so big and then when i started studying these other companies i was like okay this is who if you want to create that kind of legacy wealth and really help a lot of people because they are in a position to help or hurt a lot of people that's the scale you got to think at yeah but it took you really 25 years to get there to start thinking that way is that right

because you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years you get there, to start thinking that way. Is that right? Because you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years. You were just trying to earn more and more and more. Because I was just trying to, because I was, the grind, the grind, the grind was so, it was such a low level grind. Let's say you had the right information at 25. Let's just say you had a rich uncle that did what these people did and you got to witness this yeah do you think that you wouldn't be able to get there faster yeah one thousand or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it no when you're ready to make it and when you're ready to take on the risk or the responsibility sabrina will never make the

mistakes i made okay because she won't she won't get in the wrong car i got in the wrong vehicle i didn't know the vehicle i got in when i was 28 years old i could actually make 100 grand a year doing this my dart my daughters will never get in that vehicle what would they do they'll be like i'm not getting in a hundred thousand dollar ride if it can't bring me they're going to be like hey if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility if it can't bring me they're going to be like hey if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility that they're going to pick that this is the wealthy they they put their kids the their kids see things differently if they're not ruined right you know if they're not completely ruined and scathed by having whatever they want then they'll see they'll see tr they'll see

opportunities different yeah you know and and but when when you see the possibility then you're like i'm not gonna get in that car that car that car i'm gonna get i'm gonna get i'm gonna get in a spaceship so if i was 28 again today i mean i would know what what industries to pick top three industries to pick uh we got hedge funds have to be one of them advertising and marketing's got to be a space to be in. And probably, you know, something to do with health care. If I can scale health care. If I can scale the organic alternative medicines.

You know, so those are three massive spaces. Maybe financial, too. The financial world. You know, in the next 30 years, we're probably going to have a disruption of the dollar. Right. And the way money's, maybe we're a cryptocurrency, you know, environment in the future. Yeah. So any of that, any of that's going to happen, you know.

But the reason I would go there is like Jeff Bezos. When I saw the first interview with Jeff when he was saying he was studying algorithms. I think he was at one of the big firms selling stocks. Before Amazon. Yeah, before Amazon. And then he saw something that came across his desk where there was a spike in Internet activity. Eyeballs going to the internet. That's when he said, I'm going to go do Amazon.

And he followed traffic. I didn't ever follow traffic. He followed scale. He followed scaling possibilities. And then what did he do? He followed this traffic, the possibility. Then he invested in the possibility. And then he went into debt on the possibility and then

he was willing to not get paid any money. But what did I do? I need money today. I got to have money this week. I need to have a little more money next week. And if I get a little more money after that, I'm going to save it all. And then I'm going to do that again. And I'm going to feed the bank and I'm going to keep feeding the bank.

I don't even know how much money the bank's made off of me for 25 years. We don't know anybody that works harder than Grant Cardone. And as soon as he gets a bag, he brings it to us. What do they do? Hey, y'all wanna borrow this money? Now repeat that 300 million times. Wow. And that's the American people. What about a family that's thinking,

you know, I really feel comfortable having six months to a year of savings because I got kids, I got the rent, I got the, all the bills. Yeah. What do you, what do you say to someone who's like, you know, I see where you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet. Well, then keep the, you know, money, if you think money's going to save you, you know, you're just, again, they're stacking, they're stacking information on top of bad information. Okay.

You know, the money that you have saved in the last six months has probably dropped 11%. So the money that you have, you got 100 grand. I got to have six months of savings. I need, you know, 4,000. My bills are 4,000 or 5,000 bucks a month. I got to have 30 grand in the bank. Got to have 30. But they really have 180.

So first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months and they don't even know it because they're living out of terror. It's not logic. You say it's logic. I need six months, but you got three times more than you need. Sure. Number one.

Number two, you've never had an emergency that cost you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever had that emergency. Everybody hears about it. Oh yeah, my guy got in a bad, this happened, blah, blah, blah. Car accident or this. But if you had assets, if you'd been investing in assets, you can always go use those assets

for collateral to loan out. Cancer surgery. You can get a loan out from the bank if you got it. 100%. Or if you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you, but assets that pay you every month. If you keep investing in that asset class, one day your cashflow will be your emergency account. My emergency account last month paid me a million six. My cashflow, my free cashflow. That's crazy. That's no work involved. That is not one second of one day.

Okay. And that happens every single month in my place. But that's been because I made a bunch of investments for the last, you know, 25 years. Right. End of every year, I dump all my cash out every year. I'm like, you need to get as close to zero as you can. And replace it with assets that in January, if I dump out in December, January, I want a payment from that. It doesn't have to be a big payment.

It just needs to be a drip off that asset. Something, yeah. So I'm not going to buy a cup because the cup won't pay me. So in December, I had a bunch of money. Boom. I'm like, make a deal. You saw you were in it, yes, a couple of days ago. Yeah, yeah.

Take that- He bought that house. Take that cash, that garbage that you have, already had a surplus of money. So if I can't buy two of these, I'm not going to buy one of them. If I can't write off some portion of it, I'm not going to buy it. If I can't do it out of passive income,

I'm not going to touch it. Interesting. So those are my criteria for making investments, and it needs to cash flow so i took a bunch of this cash that was sitting here just deteriorating not providing me with safety and took it and put it into this asset and people like are you still you ridiculous you paid that much money for that thing okay we'll see you know so i i buy this thing this thing will provide rental income i think this year i'll make three million bucks on this deal wow in cash flow and how much do you have to put down or you buy the whole thing i paid cash for this so so but the reason i did it is not

because this is a great deal but but this is a terrible deal keeping the cash even the cash is garbage this this malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made. Why? But I had a bunch of surplus cash. I had already bought, in December, we bought almost 2,000 apartments. If I could have got another apartment deal, I would have bought another apartment deal with $40 million. But I couldn't. You couldn't find one.

I couldn't find another deal. I still had this money left over. End of the year. It's just a thing that I do. End of the year, dump out. Literally like flush the toilet on your savings. So every day I look at my savings accounts, okay? It's not because I'm worried about any more money anymore.

I know for sure the money's going down in value. Everybody knows that this year. Your money is depreciating, right? It's dropping down in value. What you were told that is 100 grand is not 100 grand. The bank's not even telling you the truth. It's 100 less 11,000. It's 11% right now?

Could be 34% less. Some people think it's going down 34%. That's crazy. But you're going to still see 100 because this is invisible taxing, right? It's inflation. So I know that. I know it's not 100. So when you guys look at your checking, I got 180,000. You're lying to yourself because you're not doing all the math on money.

This is why Mike Saylor went and took all that money he had and invested in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, yeah. Because he's done the research. So I would listen to him. And I'm not saying you guys should go buy Bitcoin, but I'm not buying Bitcoin at those levels. OK, I'm buying assets that can provide me with more cash, with more income. Maybe I should be buying Bitcoin. I don't know. But anyway, so I dumped this out. I dumped this for now. I've been shopping this piece of real estate for 19 months. I've been working this deal for 19 months. So I'm not being like, OK, I just got to go buy something. I'm not going to do that. But I'm trying to get rid of this cash to go into an asset

that has the potential to go up in value over time. I dump out in January. Okay. I do three webinars. That's why everybody wants to know, man, what's the rush to make more money? Because I'm broke, man. And I got a new house. Right.

You got bills to pay now. You got expenses. So January 1st comes, I've done three webinars already to start filling this up again. Mm-hmm. Right? Now, if I walked into January 1st

with $40 million sitting in a bank account, dude, I... You're not hungry. What's the rush, bro? You're not hungry. Yeah, let's plan. Let's do some planning this year. Mm-hmm.

But what I do is I dump out. So every year, for the last 15 years, every January, I end up with more assets. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

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