The School of Greatness - The Rich Habits You Need To Become A Millionaire In 2023 [MASTERCLASS] EP 1426

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today!Today’s Masterclass episode is all the rich habits you need to create in your life in order to build wealth and freedom in your life. Three experts share their tips and strategies on how to stop overcomplicating your path to becoming a millionaire. In this episode,Alex Hormozi, Entrepreneur and Author shares how people struggle with their money mindset, how to think about becoming a billionaire and how to change the limiting self-beliefs in yourself.Patrick Bet David, Entrepreneur and Author shares how to look at building wealth as a game, the top investments he’s made in business and the importance of building deep connections.Kevin O’leary, Entrepreneur and Shark Tank Star shares what separates wealthy people from broke people, how the middle class can stop feeling stuck and what he looks for in investments.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1426Check out the full episodesAlex Hormozi - https://link.chtbl.com/1324-podPatrick Bet David - https://link.chtbl.com/992-podKevin O’Leary - https://link.chtbl.com/1076-pod

My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Your mindset is everything. And our brand new book, The Greatest Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller back-to-back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it and finished it already and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book I wish I had

when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life 10 years ago at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life and the book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get your copy today. Again, lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on Audible now, so you can get it on audiobook as well over there also. There's a zillion people who are like, you suck, none of this is true, whatever. And for me, it rolls off my back because I have evidence. Right. But if I didn't have that, I would probably have to... 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. Welcome to this special masterclass. We've 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.

Many of the people that I know who have tremendous amounts of money have huge fears around being poor. And so it's an interesting thought. Like a lot of people who don't have money see people who have money as thinking differently. And they might in that they are more uncomfortable being poor than you are. Like it is more painful for them than it is for you. It might be. I'm just being really real. It might be why some of them are stingy too with their money.

Of course, 100%. I'm gonna spend this $5, I'm gonna keep it, you know, they're very stingy with all of it. Two nights ago, we were out to dinner with a guy who just got valued at a billion, right? And it's off cash flow, it's not one of these software things. Like it's off, like he's getting, yeah,

he's making real money, crazy money. And he's like, I'm not going to that gym. He's like, for equal, I said, I'm not paying $200 a month for gym membership. It's a different perspective. Now, I'm not saying I'm that way. You know what I mean? Like, I'm okay spending on gym membership.

Like, that's fine for me. But, like, everyone has their own things. And, like, there are these behaviors. Like, he got the other guy who had the 250. He got to that point because he lived, he squeezed everything out of his business, which made the business so valuable. And then he was able to sell it. But the billion dollar guy was saying, he's like, you know what they don't tell you about when you sell your business? Because he's sitting next to the guy with the $250,000. And he's like, the moment you sell your business, you have no cash flow.

And so he felt that too. He's like, what are you going to do? He's like, you're going to take the money, and then what are you going to do? You're going to try and buy more cash flow, because you've got to replace the cash flow you have with the business. You've got to get real estate assets, you've got to do something else. He's like, why bother? He's like, I'll just keep it. And so he doesn't have any intention of selling. And so it was an interesting lesson for me too, because like we obviously got rid of our cash flow asset when we sold all three last year. You got a lot more money, but you don't have the money cash coming in. Because then it looks like this finite asset. The business goes on forever, in your mind at least. Right. And so it gives you this illusion of control, this illusion of security. And

me personally, most people wouldn't believe this when they hear it, but like I'm very risk averse. And so I probably need, like what's the core changes that I need to have? I probably need to be a little bit more of a risk taker than I am. Like I tend to always take the lowest risk path when I can.

Even the idea of like when I quit entrepreneurship, or sorry, when I quit my job to start entrepreneurship, it was because I knew that the path that I was on was guaranteed not to get to me where I want. So I had a zero outcome. So this one, even though it was lower, I had a low chance of success. The other one had 100% failure guarantee. And so it felt like the lower risk option for my long-term goals to quit my job and become an entrepreneur for that reason. And so, you know, people are like, I'm really risk averse. I'm like, so am I like I hoard money. Like I'm, I do. You haven't spent any of the money from the exit. So it's

like just sitting in the bank. We started working the next day. We didn't even take it. We didn't take a day off. We literally sold wire hit and we started working on acquisition.com the next day. Let's say you had to start putting that cashflow every month into other things, team, resources, whatever it is. And that wasn't coming in. And let's call it a hundred grand a month was coming in with cashflow. I don't know how much it is, but let's just say that is going into hiring team and other things to support you getting to the billion in two and a half years. What would need to shift inside of you after three months of feeling no cash flow come in to stack your bank account in order for you to be okay with it to get to that

billion quicker? I would just have to be more secure, just realistically. What does that mean? Is that an internal? I use cash flow from businesses as evidence to the fact that I'm not a failure. And so I use, I've always like, it has been easier for me to change my conditions than to change who I am. And so I have used my material success and accolades to quiet the voices of not being good enough. And so for that, like me having that, if I have that little voice that peeps up, it's like, hey, look at that. And I'm like, okay, no, no, I'm okay.

I'm not that bad. It's money that just came in every month. Yeah, no, I'm not that bad. Right, and so I'd have to, I'd really have to re-engineer the conversation I have with myself around how I value myself. Because then people are like, well, if you, you know, if everything disappeared, you know,

how would you feel about yourself? I like to think that I would be uncomfortable and that I would change my views but I haven't needed to do that yet And so my Africa's elsewhere, but that's what probably would have to happen in order for me to make that change. Is it a What is the thing that is you're afraid of inside of yourself? Is it a self-worth thing? Is it a self-love thing? Is it a belief that you're not good enough? Definitely a good enough thing for sure Yeah, it's just like maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. Maybe everything that I've been putting on media, maybe my book, maybe all these things are actually not true and I don't know what I'm talking about. Because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not making any money.

So these things have been, that's why acquisition.com is the other half. The actual businesses of acquisition.com compared to the media of acquisition.com. It is the other half because it's the evidence of the fact that the things that I say are true. Because those are getting results. A hundred percent. And they're growing. Right.

And so that way I feel bulletproof when I make, when I make the content, when I make the book, when I write the stuff, like, you know, there's a zillion people who are like, you suck. None of this is true whatever and for me it rolls off my back because i have evidence right i'm like no no it is true and here's how but if i didn't have that i would probably have to it's because i don't know what the right call is there because i didn't have the evidence it would be hard for me to say you're wrong because i don't have any proof that they're wrong but you have evidence now

right and so i have this evidence so how do you change the belief inside that you're wrong because I don't have any proof that they're wrong. But you have evidence now. Right. And so I have this evidence. So how do you change the belief inside that you're good enough with the years of evidence now? The question is like, have I built a billion dollar thing yet? You know what I mean? And so that would be 10 billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, of course.

No, but like, it's a fun, it's a, it's a fun convo and it's great because I, it's, this was wonderful, Louis, because i get to see my own limiting beliefs um and just for everyone who's listening like everyone deals with this you know what i mean like at every at every level you're dealing with this of like feeling of inadequacy you know feeling not good enough feeling you're not smart feeling like you don't work hard whatever it is like i have that stuff all the time because you think that the external circumstance is gonna is gonna solve that and i would say that it does to a degree. It becomes a crutch.

But then you have this crutch and then you just tie yourself to the accolade or the thing rather than still yourself. And maybe I need to do more work on that, who knows. If you could overcome one thing or eliminate one thing internally to become a better leader to yourself, to quiet the noise or help you take a risk

in a different way, I'm not talking about lose all your money, but take the risk to help you take a risk in a different way. I'm not talking about lose all your money, but take the risk to help you accelerate this. And you don't have to, by any way, but I just believe that it's possible for you to do that. I believe you can be a billionaire in two and a half years. I appreciate that. If you shift whatever inside of you is holding you back

to get to that space, what would be that one thing to eliminate or overcome internally to make it happen? It's need for external validation, 100%. The need for external validation. I knew when you started the question. Why do you need external validation? I mean, I think part of it's so ingrained in us, if you think about us as kids, right? Like, how do you orient yourself with the world?

You get reinforced or punished at all phases, directly, indirectly, but you get reinforced or punished. And the things that you get reinforced, you do more of the things you get punished, you do less of, right? Like that's just how, how we, how we learn behavior, how we learn to function in society, right? Touch that thing. Ah, it hurts. It's that's, we got punished. Okay. You know, you, uh, your parent tells you to sit down and be quiet and eat and you learn to sit down and shut up and eat and then we wonder why adults don't move because we're told to sit when we're running around right we learn at school sit down and be quiet and we and we wonder why we

eat so much when the reward for everything we did when we were a kid was food right we wonder these things so the reason external validation is so hard at least for me is because it's how I learned everything is because external validation gave you know gave me the the directional guidance of what's good and what's not. And then as you get older, it's where am I going to get that validation from? And so I would say that my external validation is still 100% there. It just comes from different sources.

So I'm more selective on whose validation I want. So how much external validation do you need in order to overcome this belief to go all in and do it in half the time? No, I think I just, I need to be able to validate myself. And that's fundamentally, I think Epictetus said this. He said like,

if you need someone else's, if you need, he has this quote, it's so good, but it's basically like, you need to be able to give, you don't need to swear to somebody else you should be able to swear swear to yourself and bear witness to yourself because your word should

be good enough so you need to eliminate external validation right from you feeling good enough probably yeah it's probably that like obviously you need it's good to have feedback and like you know what i mean so i think that's why it's it's also difficult for some in general, because it's not eliminate or have more of. It's to what degree and from whom and about what. And so then it gets a little bit more complex. But even using those different lenses, I think it's good to unpack it for anyone who's listening, which is like, OK. Layla said this, so this is not mine. But most times when we're afraid of something, it's not actually like this amorphous crowd that

we're afraid of it's like one or two people's opinion like it's your dad or it's your whatever it is right and you're worried about what they're gonna think and they're not even thinking about you but you think they're thinking about they're thinking about their dad right whatever it is right and so she restated this earlier on to mike like when we were together five years ago she was like are you and she like made me name the person it wasn't my dad it was somebody else for this particular thing she's like are you gonna let this guy stop us from getting what we want wow and it was like when i saw it it was like looking in front of me i was like she's like what if this guy hates you and thinks you're terrible is that a worthy enough reason to still

keep going and i was like yeah she's like let's You know what I mean? And so she was very good with that. What do you need to say to yourself every day to believe you're good enough? If you could say one thing to you that no one else needed to hear, but you needed to hear it from you, what would that be? I don't know if it would be a saying thing. I don't think it'd be like an affirmation. I think it's just a belief. You know what I mean? What would the belief be? Yeah. I mean, fundamentally the belief would just have to shift that the doingness is enough validation for me. Not the results. Right.

And that's all. I mean, fundamentally, that's always the goal is that you can detach the doingness from the result. I think what I've been able to do has been to extend the time horizon between the doingness and the result, but not necessarily fully eliminate it. I'm patient in that I can continue to do things for very long periods of time before seeing a payoff. But if I were able to truly eliminate it, I think that would be kind of like a next step.

Then again, it's that borderline on insanity because if you never get feedback on sometimes, you're like, maybe I should change direction. You'll keep getting feedback though because you're creating, you're taking action. You know, the more you do that, you'll have more businesses you'll be acquiring,

you'll be creating more content and everything will be growing at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? 100%. I love seeing you, you know,

go through this process internally because I think... I'm open to it. I just want to win. You know what I mean? Like, I just want to be better. What does winning look like?

It's achieving the potential. It's taking all this raw potential. The line in the Bible that always scared me the most was to who much is given much is expected and so for me i always felt like i was given a lot you know what i mean like i i was born in america right off the bat i was born as a guy i have insane genetics like from from that perspective i was six back when i was 15.? I have a pretty high processing load. Like I can usually, I do okay with complex problems. I was bilingual at basically at birth

because parents talked to me in a different language. So that gave me good language abilities. And so it's like, these are all things that were given to me. Right. And I was born into like a, you know, from a money standpoint, a decently wealthy family. Right. And, and, and I was born into like a D you know, from a, from a money standpoint, a decently wealthy family. Right. Um, not, you know, ultra billion, but like never worried about food or shelter or anything like that. Right. And so these are all the things that were given to me.

And so to me, I'm like, man, much is expected. Right. And not necessarily that that's, you know, God, whatever, just, I expect a lot of myself because I see so much potential. Um, and I want to train, like by the time I die, I would like to have nothing left in my potential tank. And it just all had been transformed into my reality. What would you say are the top three to five rules on money, if you could boil it down to three to five? It's a game.

The number one rule is it's a game. You're playing a game. It's that simple, you know. If you look at it as a game, just like anything, you can get better at it. Whatever game you play, if you play Uno, if you play Monopoly, if you play Clue, if you play Jenga, if you play Fortnite, if anything you play, you're gonna get good at.

I remember in my time, I was playing Fester's Quest. I played Zelda. I used to play Final Fantasy I, and I would play obviously Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but it was also, what was the Mario Kart? Is it Super Mario Kart? And you know how you would do the three jumps and then bam, it's going fast?

And I would beat this time, 32 seconds. I was so proud of it, but I played it 50,000 times, right? So the game with money, it's exactly what it is. Once you learn how to play the game with money, then it has to do with timing. Then it has to do with different kind of things. Like, you know, a year ago, I get a call from a guy who needs cash. It's okay. He needs an investment.

He has something he has to sell immediately to get cash in return. Okay? Because he needs the money right away. So it's okay. so what are you selling? He says, it's the two greatest Wayne Gretzky cards. I said, okay. Signed or unsigned? No, this is a PSA 10 1979 OPG Topps.

Signature? No sign, but it's the Holy Grail. So the OPG one sold in 2016 for $453,000. Okay. Wow. And just five years prior to that, it sold for $92,000. So from $92,000 to $451,000 in 2016, and he calls me. And a top sold in 2016 for $205,000. So two cars combined sold in 2016 for $600,000.

He has them both. He has them both. And he wants to sell it to me. And I said, okay, what do you want to sell it for? He's like, $600,000 he has them both and he wants to sell it to me and i said okay what do you want to sell it for he's like 600 000. yeah of course he wants to i said i'm not going to pay you that i mean you know he wants 650 i'm not going to pay you that but we talked about it and eventually he gave me a number right and it was still a number i had to still cough up you know half a million dollar check to the guy but we met at the PSA headquarters, classy guy, total gentleman.

We sat down, transaction happened, the CEO of PSA came, showed us the poster on the PSA headquarters, I think it's a new port of the card is on the wall. It's the most expensive hockey card in the world, right? Okay, no problem. So- And you're a hockey fan? I'm not a hockey fan. I'm an investment guy with hockey, but I've interviewed Wayne Gretzky six years ago.

So I like greatness. I like anybody that just goes and crushes it with their game. So I buy this card. So I buy the card. I don't think much of it. One card, not two? Two cards. It's both of them. I bought both of them. So the other guy who owns the card wouldn't sell his card for a million dollars if you paid it to him. So here's what I do know. So two guys own the card?

Me and the other guy. There's only two of us. You paid a million, he won't sell it to you. So that means there's only one in the market, because it's me, because I'm willing to sell it. So it's on eBay right now. If you go on eBay right now and you type in Wayne Gretzky OPG, it's on market right now for a million dollars. One of them is on the market for a million, the other one's on the market for $400,000. So you ask me for a rule of money, I have cash. If I don't have cash like that, I can't double my money that quickly. So we just talked about three of them. Money's a game, you need cash because opportunity is going to come up, and it's a doubles game.

So if I put it down, it's a doubles game. Everything about money is a doubles game. What's that mean? A doubles game to me is I pay you $1,000, can we double it in six months? No. How long? In 12 months? Okay, no problem. I'll do a double in a year. Here's $1,000. I get a double back.

Right? So if you take $1,000 and you double it, every year what happens? Thousand goes into two, four, eight, 16, 30, 264, 250, 65, 12, a million. $1,000 is nine doubles away from a million. Wow. Now you take a million and see what happens if we double it nine times. One million goes into two million, four million, eight million, sixteen million, thirty-two, sixty-four, one twenty-eight, two fifty, six five, twelve, a billion.

A million is ten doubles away from a billion. But how do you find the doubles? Well, that's the game. That's the part of the game. That's what I'm trying to tell you. So the doubles now becomes investment opportunities. You know, what you buy into. Do you start a company where it has a high value, you know, you can really scale it and

finding something that can scale. Do you invest into things that are going to give you 6, 8, 10% or are you going to go play ball and take the risk? That's the game that you're going to start learning. Part of my money is going to be hedged and I'm going to buy some gold because I'm not going to become a billionaire off gold, but I'm buying it because gold is money and something happens to the economy, I'm protected with the gold. But you know what, I'm going to put some of this money in mutual funds because I'm not going to become a billionaire off gold, but I'm buying it because gold is money and something happens to the economy, I'm protected with the gold. But you know what, I'm going to put some of this money in mutual funds because I know

long term I'm going to make 8-12% on this, I'm fine with that. I might do a real estate deal because long term I may do some money, although right now commercial real estate may be an interesting dynamic because I think Zoom crushed commercial real estate. The commercial real estate model, it's been crushed. And by the way, it may never come back the same way ever again. It's going to be 20 years from now or something. Who knows? I don't even think. I think it's gone.

Really? Here's what I mean. Look, we have this space, right? Okay, you've got this space. If you get this today, right now, office space in Dallas, office space nationwide, companies are looking at their business models and they're just saying, why do I need 100,000 square feet of office space? Why do I need it? But if you go out there and you look at the numbers, you're like, okay, I don't know if I'm into commercial real estate. But if I find some small, if I team up with an investment banker, if I team up with a

guy that's managing money, and I go with a VC team, and this is a guy that's flipping opportunities fairly quickly and I dump a a VC team and this is a guy that's flipping opportunities fairly quickly and I dump a million dollars with him and within five years he turns a million dollars into five million, that's five X in five years. That may not be a bad idea, so you gotta find those, and they're out there, by the way. They're out there.

So Ray Dalio plays a game of doubles. Warren Buffett's a doubles game. All these guys are doubles game. And dollars. Well, that's investing in businesses. Yes, I'm a business guy. I'm not a real estate guy. There are people that are, and by the way, that doesn't mean real estate doesn't work.

I mean, it wouldn't make any sense for me to say there's real estate billionaires everywhere. Our president is a real estate billionaire. So for me to knock real estate would have no value to it. But for me, I'm more about, I have an idea. What are you guys doing? Me and Tiffany are thinking about starting a marketing company. Okay, how can this thing scale? Well, let me tell you what we got. We got three packages. Boom, boom, boom. We're going to be target audience. We're going to

be targeting people in this world. Okay, interesting. How much are they going to pay? We foresee us doing $6 million a year in revenue within 24 months. What have you done to be able to earn this? I'm a Columbia guy. I'm a this, I'm a this. How much money do you need? I need $2 million. I can't give you $2 million. Can I come in for $100,000? I put $100,000. The next thing, this thing sells for $200 million. That $100,000 all of a sudden became $2.2 million. That's a victory. So those opportunities are out there. You just got to focus. And then the last one I would tell you with the money. So we talked about what? We talked about game. Money is a game. You need cash. It's a doubles game. Doubles Yeah, and I'll tell you one more would be you have to be

maniacally Maniacal about being patient. I mean you have to be patiently aggressive You know patiently aggressive. It's so tough to do because you want your money to double now exactly so tough to do. Because you want your money to double now. Exactly. It might take 10 years. Yeah, but if you are willing to do the 10 years, it may double 40 times. It may double 30 times.

You know, like when Bezos said, just hang tight. I'm not going to give you dividends. Just trust me on this. Trust me on this. Right? And at the beginning, if you've heard the story where he goes and raises $2 million, he gets $50,000 from 40 people. That's what? $2 million. And he gives them 20%. Wow. He gives them 20% of that $2 million.

He gives them 20% just for $2 million. You know what that 20% is worth today? $200 billion. That's the point. So can you imagine 1994, Amazon get started, forget about you put $2 million. Just say you put $50 million. Just put $50,000. What is a half a percent of a trillion dollar company right now? A half a percent? You're still a half a billionaire. Your $50,000 is worth $500 million, give or take whatever the numbers we're doing right. The point is, that is a massive victory. The guy who put $10,000 and he gave it to Berkshire Hathaway in 1974, I don't know if you've heard this story. You know, Warren Buffett is starting. He says, I'll give you $10,000.

Never touches the money. Goes back to his regular job, makes $100,000 a year. You know how much that $10,000, have you read this article? No, tell me. The $10,000, if you go on Business Insider, you pull it up, is worth $780,000 today. $780,000? Million. Million.

Never did anything to it. So that's the part about patiently aggressive. Yeah. It's very hard to do. But the doubles get bigger later on, not early on. The doubles are bigger year 15, 20, 25. That's what Papa talks about. Just like his success is he's lived longer.

He's just stayed around longer to let the money continue to compound. And that compounded interest is where it's at. What's the three greatest investments you've made in yourself? And would you recommend those same investments in other people? Or what should they be doing in their life right now? So I will tell you, I went to a Harvard OPM program one time and I spent- OPM? OPM is Owner President Management Program.

So if you run a business that does 10 million or more, you get to go to it, and it's three years of three weeks living on campus, right? I went there, but I didn't go afterwards for different reasons. But I went there, when I spent that $50,000, and I was on campus for three weeks. You spend three weeks with 144 people from 64 different countries. So watch what happens. I'm sitting there, and at this point of the game, I have no idea what it is to be a CEO.

I've gone from being an employee to a salesperson to a sales leader to a good manager, but I don't know what it is to be a CEO. I have no idea what it is to be a CEO. So I sit next to this guy. He becomes my teammate, my partner. He owns the Victoria's Secret of New Zealand and Australia. The reason why I'm laughing is because the last day, eight of us were chosen to go present a business opportunity.

So he keeps telling me, Patrick, I'm going to kill it. Just watch what I'm going to do. I'm going to scare the hell out of Lynette. I think the lady's name is Lynette because she's the main person that does it. Watch what I'm about to do. So he goes up on stage. Louis, he's a very simple guy. I mean, good looking guy, but he's not a charismatic do. So he goes up on stage. Louis is a very simple guy. I mean, good looking guy, but he's not a charismatic guy. He just goes up on stage. He says, let

me tell you why you ought to invest a million dollars into my new lingerie line. He says, here's a PowerPoint. Here's a PowerPoint. See all the sexy women here? You know what? I think it's more important for you to see this face to face. Ladies? No way. Brings them in. Seven models come in half naked wearing the lingerie. The entire place. All the entrepreneurs are going crazy. But the teachers are furious with them. The ladies are running up, takes their jacket off, is trying to cover all these women.

It was phenomenal, right? To see this here. But the point is. On Harvard's campus, right? Think about it. Here's the part. Five years goes by. I'm talking to you this year. But the point is, On Harvard's campus, right? Think about it. Here's the part. Five years goes by, I'm talking to you about it.

That's called marketing, right? You remember it. I remember it. But when I was sitting next to him, I said, I said, listen, man, I'm trying to learn how to be a good CEO. What do you suggest about being a good CEO?

He says, man, I got 7,000 employees and have seven CEOs that report directly to me. I spent three weeks with this guy telling me stuff that he does with his CEO. He's not a motivational speaker. I don't even think he's got a thousand people following him on Instagram. He's worth a couple billion. He's not an influencer. But those three weeks of talking to, I was like a kid in a candy store trying to pull

information out of this guy and it was all technical stuff. It wasn't motivational stuff. What time do you wake up? What's your daily routine? None of that stuff. It's what do you do when you're trying to hire a person and you know you've got to give them equity, but you're afraid to give them too much equity and he leaves early, and you protect yourself that if you fire him, does he still get the other two-thirds?

How do you do this? Well, you set it up this way. What do you do to make sure your attorney that you have, that attorney that you have who is negotiating with the other attorney, and he doesn't really want to go to court. So behind closed doors, they're settling, and he's not really working on your side, he's working on the other side to kind of speed it up. How do you get him to, well you've got to get another attorney who holds him accountable.

I'm like, these are the things that he said to me that you can't read about in places. So you said three investments, that's one of them. Vistage was 100% a great investment because we met once a month for three, four years with a man named John Morris. John Morris is a local guy, Santa Monica guy. It'd be great for you to get connected with him. We're sitting in a meeting one time with John Morris and one of the entrepreneurs going out of business and he says, guys, I got bad news.

Because you would start the meeting and he would say, here's my personal life, here's my health, here's my marriage, here's my business, here's my kids, and we would all talk amongst each other. Everybody had to sign NDAs so you don't tell your story. But one guy gets up and he says, guys, I got bad news. I'm about to go out of business. Why? If I don't get a half a million by this Friday, we're shutting down.

If I get it, I'll last another year and a half and I think we'll make it, but I'm shutting down. This is what John does. Tell me what do you need for half a million. What are you willing to give up for the half a million? What are you willing to do this? He says, give me a second. In front of all of us. Calls a guy who is in his business, same industry, says, here, take this call, go talk to him. Terms. Boom. Guy comes back ecstatic. By Friday, half a million was in his account. This is the kind of guy John

Morris is. So Vistage to me was watching people from different industries every month for nine hours for one day nine hours and everybody would share their problems it was 1500 bucks a month some number like that a hundred percent well worth if you get qualified to go in because Vistage you have to do it's just like Tiger 30 if you ever this thing called Tiger 33 I think it's called it's kind of like you've got to have 50 million plus. Yeah, there's things like that everywhere. This is one of them. Where you got to reveal kind of your financial plan. Network, you have to know who you are. Yeah, there's a lot of that happening right now. And I think it's great. I think it's

great if it's by real business people, not social media influencers. And let me explain to you what I mean by this. What social, like for example, if somebody wants to learn how to create a podcast, I want to go learn from somebody that's running a. I remember, I think you taught a bunch of people how to monetize webinars and podcasts. You were the guy that taught people how to do the webinars. And you made people millions, by the way. You made a lot of people a lot of money with what you were doing with webinars, a time that people didn't think webinars had money.

Yeah, five, six, seven years ago. Yeah, I mean, at a time that nobody was thinking about it, right? So I'd go on, you're doing webinars, why are you doing webinars? Oh, Lewis taught me how to do this. Lewis, yeah, Lewis House. Oh, no, webinars, yeah, okay. But this is not webinars. This is about these guys, how did you go from-

Bigger strategy on everything, yeah. This is stuff that you sit there and you're like, wow, you guys are doing how much per year? $820 million. How many employees you got? 922. How many people on your board? Seven of them. How do you handle conflicts?

Like, this is the stuff that you talk with these guys, right? At Vistage. So I recommend the OPM program. I recommend the Vistage program. And then I'm an obsessive reader, man. I mean, I don't know how many articles and stuff I read. So I would recommend subscribing to, when there's like Business Insider that you can pay $99 per year, pay for it.

If there's a Wall Street Journal that you pay $600 per year, pay for it. If there are these handful of stuff that you can get that's not just the general news, if you spend $1,000, $2,000 on these news sites that are sending the elite articles that's different than the main ones, don't hesitate. Pay for it. Because everybody's going to talk about the general stuff, but that additional stuff is written by... It's advanced stuff. Yeah, it's advanced.

It's the insider stuff written by the CFO of Snapchat that's telling you nine ways to protect yourself against cyber security that will be boring to other people. But you're looking and you're saying, this was legit. So those kinds of investments is what I would say to you. And if you lost your job right now, what investments should you make in your stuff? If I lost my job right now and I don't have a job lined up within four weeks, that means I have a very weak contact list. So the problem is a long-term problem. So you are the long-term.

If you cannot replace yourself with a job within four weeks, you have a terrible contact list. Relationship contact. Exactly. Because you should be able to replace your job within four weeks if you've got a solid contact list. Why shouldn't you be? job within four weeks if you got a solid contact list. Why shouldn't you be? You should like, you know, a person gets like, we fired a guy named Mark and he was with AIG for 22 years and I love this guy, but he just wasn't a fit. So I talked to Mark, I said, Mark this is not gonna work out, but I'm telling you right

now I got a job for you lined up at Columbus. He said, seriously, I said, interview set up, see if Columbus calls me for a review. I said, no question, this guy's a phenomenal guy for you. He gets hired like this within two weeks. You should, if you have the contacts like this, you ought to be. So if you don't, it means the problem is you either don't have enough value in the marketplace or your contacts are weak. When you think about someone you want to connect with, what goes through your mind of the sequencing of how do I reach out to this person? I do a lot of research on the person. I do a lot of research on the person.'s the first questions? I do a lot of research on the person. I do a lot of research on the person.

You're really good at that, yeah. A lot of research on the person. I think people don't know how valuable understanding who someone is and what their history is and what makes them tick. I agree. How meaningful that is when you do that. Yeah, I agree.

You did this when you first interviewed me, you just knew a lot about me and you did research. And I'm like, man, it takes so much time and energy and when you're running a business with a thousand employees you're doing 10 sales calls a day you're you know a husband you're a dad how do you manage building relationships when you have so much going on though you have no free time yeah so so this this goes into at what level you want to go to in life. Meaning, there is levels in this game, right? Like, listen, Gary Payton is alpha, but he's not alpha when Michael's in the room.

When Michael's in the room, Michael's the alpha. Kobe's an alpha, but not when Michael's in the room. But anybody else in the room, Kobe's the alpha, including Magic Johnson, including Shaq. But when Barkley's in the room with Shaq, who's the alpha? Sha Kobe's the alpha, including Magic Johnson, including Shaq. But when Barkley's in the room with Shaq, who's the alpha? Shaq's the alpha. But when Barkley's in the room with Carmelo Anthony, Barkley's the alpha. Everything's about levels, right? So what level do you want to go to? So if you want to go at the next levels, it's going to require you to be a little bit more meticulous and detailed about your strategy, about the kind of help you're going to need, the kind of

research you're going to need, the kind of relationships you're going to need. And then figuring out your scheduling. Sometimes people want to have the four-hour work week. I'm not a four-hour work week guy, but some people want that lifestyle. And you have to give credit to Tim Ferriss because Tim Ferriss started a movement with a bunch of laptop entrepreneurs all over the world and guess what they love it when I talk to these people that read for our work week and I'm in Malaysia and look at my life and I make a few hundred grand a year or a few million a year or whatever maybe for you I could never I'm a terrible

vacation guy after three days I'm a three-day guy yeah but I know myself if I go to to Bora, if I go to Greece and we have to go after three days, my wife will say, Babe, you good? I'm like, Babe, it's three days, babe. She says, I get it, babe. And we typically go because we're entertaining people. We're not going. We're taking 500 people, 400 people. So we're entertaining people.

It's not like you're going because it's when we go, we go, we get our stuff done, and we come back. And we have a great time together because now we have a system. When you have kids, it's different because you can go longer with kids because you're vicariously living through them. I like going to Universal Studios. I can go with my kids to Universal Studios because I see how he looks at Harry Potter and, you know, the spiders and this stuff. It's beautiful when you see their imagination, right?

But going back to the question you're asking, so how do you find time to do research? How do you find time to do all this other stuff? to the question you're asking. So how do you find time to do research? How do you find time to do all this other stuff? If you want to compete in the top 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%, the price is a bigger price. And Lewis, there's no way to describe how to do it. There isn't a formula for it. You just have to figure out a way how to do it. If it means I come home and I have to watch a person's interview from 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock in the morning and I come to the office at 8 a.m. to do my interview and I have to come and go read through 20 pages of notes, I have to do that. And if I don't do that, you can tell in the interview.

If I do do it, you're like, how does he know that guy's date? How does he know when this happened at this time? How do you know when this happened? It's a lot of research you need to do. The level of detail and attention, people will remember for decades. They'll remember and always think back to, you know, that person really cared. That person was really thoughtful. That person was genuinely interested in me. And they'll just continue to remember that. And good things will come to you when you come from that place, when you constantly

do that extra work to care about someone. What do you think are three things that rich people do differently than the poor people or people that aren't thinking about building wealth in that way? Number one, and you'll be surprised to hear me say this, they don't take inordinate risk. You're going to find that the majority of very wealthy people are extremely conservative in how they invest. They don't need to beat the market, they've already done that. They just need to preserve their capital. So what you find them doing, and I don't know what that number is for you, wealth means different things to different people, but when you are fortunate and you become wealthy, what you'll find is most of those people do

not take a lot of risk. And they invest in things that are very long term. They don't use a lot of debt in most cases. They don't use leverage when they're investing. They don't take very speculative positions on. You hear that they might buy Bitcoin or they may buy a speculative stock, but if you look at it as a percentage of what they're worth, it's nothing. And so when they're making that investment, they're saying, I'm willing to lose it. It's entertainment almost for me. It's not something I think that I'm going to have to live off. And the other thing I found, because I advise a lot of

wealthy people, because my companies that I invest in, you know, of which I have over 30, at any one time, 10% of them are being acquired by a private equity firm or being bought by a strategic. And I've known the entrepreneur and maybe it's their first liquidity event. I try and help them on that journey. And some of them, you know them get $100 million or $80 million. We've got plenty of situations like that. And they're young. And what happens is you find out later that entrepreneurs are actually really bad investors. They're very good at running a business and they focus myopically on that their whole lives.

But when they actually get liquidity, it's usually their husband or wife that was the person that was taking care of the family and mitigating the risk. And they're the ones that are the better investor. And that's why I say in a family, you have to have a team approach. But I've learned this, that you really, you'll find that what's successful about families is they know what they're good at, or wealthy people, and they know what they're're not good at and they don't try and do things they don't understand and this is it's important because you have to say I have limits on my skills I I know what I'm good at but I've been very fortunate and I'm not going to go risk anything now doing something I don't know. I see that characteristic a

lot. And the other thing that I would say is different, and this may have a lot to do with the concept of karma. Another lesson I learned from my mother, that if you're successful and you talk to wealthy people, you'll always find that there's something that motivates them to be philanthropic, to give money to something that matters to them. And that's the whole idea of giving back. You've been successful and you have to find the cause that motivates you. You're willing to spend your time and money supporting. That is a big difference because if you believe in karma, and I do, when you do that, it kind of protects you against the horrific downside of something bad happening to you because you're just so greedy. You can't, when you have success and you're a wealthy person,

if you show me a greedy wealthy person, just wait 10 years. Then you'll just show me a person. Somehow karma will separate their money from them. That's what I find. Or they'll get sick or something will happen where, yeah. I really believe this. I really believe it. And you've got to find those things that you can give back on that means something to you. But if you abuse karma, it's got a special gift coming for you. So finding ways to give back. Are you giving back in it's got a special gift coming for you. So finding ways to give back. Are you giving back in a lot of other ways,

philanthropically right now as well? Yeah. I like to have a concentrated approach. I call it five and five. I prefer to pick five charities or in our case, we support a dance company. we support some hospitals, some educational institutions and give enough that it's a material gift and that I have a say in how it's spent very often. And above all I like to see expense ratios reported. I generally don't support charities that can't provide, just like an investment, some kind of a statement on where my money went. Right. And that is actually something I think Bill Gates is famous for early on, saying, why can't I treat my charitable investments as I do my private ones? And ask for some performance metrics.

And I kind of believe that he's right. I'm curious. Do you think the middle class is financially stuck? And if so, what can they do to start achieving more financial freedom? No, they're not stuck. And one thing that's democratized, and we've learned it since this whole pandemic started, you can create a new opportunity for yourself online with virtually no barrier to entry. Many, many people did it as a side hustle and it's now producing more income than their first job. The whole idea of trying to solve for

customer acquisition using creativity, using video, using music, using photography, using storytelling, animatics, graphics to actually sell a service or product starting locally and then expanding. There's millions of new businesses that have been started during the pandemic. We see them every day on Shark Tank, but they are basically taking middle-class people out of middle class. And I'd say, if you look at Shark Tank, we have plenty of people that have been working in the middle class for years and all of a sudden exploded to the upside with a great servicer idea that they did online. And that's why I really think people should empower themselves. You can try things online.

You can see what works. You don't have to get the first one right. But those tools are there for you. Yeah. And most of this is done on Facebook in geo-locked advertising. 80 cents on the dollar of what my company spends is on Facebook. So I always find it very funny to see people bashing Facebook, saying how evil it is when really it's running small business in America

because they have that unique geo-locking advertising feature. So we shouldn't shut it down until we find something better. Yeah. And what would you say are a couple of qualities that you really look for when you're looking to invest in someone or when someone has an idea and whether you invest them or not, you're like, this person is going to be successful, whether it's in this thing or something else. What are those two or three qualities that all of them seem to have in your mind, whether it be a leadership skill or clarity? What would that be? or clarity?

What would that be? I prefer to invest in entrepreneurs that have failed once or twice before, that have felt the sting of failure and have gone down the road and not had success the first time because their motivations are completely different than a more arrogant first-timer that thinks everything they do

is going to make $100 million. It just doesn't work that way. And so that's one thing. I love, there's three things you have to have the ability to do and know if you're going to be successful in business. Number one is you have to be able to articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less. It explains to me why anybody would want that product or service. And if you take more than a minute and a half, you're never going to be successful. You're just not.

than a minute and a half, you're never going to be successful. You're just not. And number two is you have to be able to explain why you're the right person to execute on that idea. In other words, what is it about you that knows how to take this idea, which good ideas are a dime a dozen. Executional skills are really hard to find. So what is it about you that can execute on this business and make it work? I mean, those two together start to be really interesting because then as an investor looks at it and says, well, I'm going to mitigate my risk. I've got a great executional expert here and I've got a great idea. And then lastly, the one that I think you have to have a good command of, you have to know your numbers.

You have to be able to explain gross margins, market share, break even analysis, how many competitors, how fast can you grow. And I think that's who I want to invest in, someone who has the command of all three of those. That's probably got more than a 50% chance of being successful if they can do that right. Yeah. I love your take on things. I wanted to know, for those that are in their late teens, early 20s,

what conversations should they be having with friends or mentors around money? I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about it, or they don't share how much they make or how much a home costs or whatever. It's just like this hush-hush mentality. What should we be talking about in our late teens, early 20s, or even 30s? But what types of conversations should we be having to shift the narrative around money so we can start attracting it in our favor as opposed to rejecting it? Well, first of all, we need to teach it in high school. Luckily, here in Florida, it's been put into the curriculum, and I'm very proud of that. I used to be in the educational software business. There's

110,000 school buildings in America, the majority of them in New York, in Florida, Texas and California and abysmally most of them don't teach even debt. They don't even teach how to use a credit card which is ridiculous. We've got to change that and luckily we are. We're starting to see it creep into the curriculums in all the major states, which is good. But I think parents have a responsibility to talk about money, which is always sitting at the table every day. It always is. And getting their kids to understand how a credit card works is very important.

And again, I talked about not entitling. That's important too. But within your friends, I mean, don't be embarrassed to talk about money. You're going to be talking about money for the rest of your life. It's always going to be part. You can't live without it. You have to deal with it. It can cause great joy and give you personal freedom or can be catastrophic in your life, destroy your happiness completely. Your choice is where does it fit? Do you want it to destroy your life or would you prefer that you understand how it works and respect it for what it is and deal with it? That's a personal choice people have to make. And I would say the

best way to do that is learn more, talk more about it, and don't be afraid to discuss it. I don't care what age you're at, but certainly at the age of 16, you should be discussing that. And above all, taking 10% of whatever anybody gives you, your grandmother, your birthday gift, whatever it is, and set it aside and start investing it. The earlier you start, the less pressure you have when you're in your 60s. Because you've got to have at least a million and a half bucks in the bank. And you can if you just save $100 a week. That's what Beanstalks is all about.

That's why I got involved in Beanstalks. That's the whole idea. And do you think someone in their late 40s and 50s, do you think it's too late for them to start learning about financial literacy if they've struggled in their 20s and 30s and 40s? Do you think it's too late to start investing and saving? What should people do in their 40s and early 50s? No, they should at any age.

I mean, the truth is changing your spending behavior in your 40s is difficult, but you can do it. And at that age, you should start saving 20 to 25% of what you're taking in, which sounds hard to do, but it isn't. You just stop buying those $5 coffees and you stop buying stuff you don't use. Anybody can go look in their closet and see all the crap they bought that they never used. And basically, you killed that money when you did that. You bought something that you could have had invested and it could have grown 6% to 8% a year for you, but instead you bought some piece of junk that you're throwing out now. Everybody's guilty of that. I actually think my mother was right. She's always said that people can save 20%. They just don't have the backbone to do it. And she did. And she

died a very wealthy woman. She had a secret account she kept from both of her husbands. And I was the older brother. I was the executor for the state. And I remember the lawyers calling me up saying, you've got to come down here. Your mother had a lot of money. And I always wondered how she did it.

She basically bought dividend-paying stocks in her 20s and a whole bunch of telco bonds, 50-50 portfolio. She loved telco bonds. They used to yield 6% in those days. And she loved dividend paying stocks, S&P stocks. And over the 50 years that she had this account, it just provided massive appreciation. Wow. Should people die wealthy or should they die broke because they spent their wealth on charity or giving back or whatever, living their life and going on trips and adventures? What's your philosophy there? You know, the trouble these days is you don't know when you're going to die. You make certain

assumptions and then you live an extra 10 years or 20 years and you live at a time in your life when you really needed that money for your comfort, you know, it's probably better to not make an assumption, oh, I think I'm going to die when I'm 88, because you don't know what technology is going to provide or what your genes really have in store for you. I would prefer to die with a good chunk of dough in the bank and then gift it to a cat. A cat?

Yeah. You know, cats only last 14 years. It would be a great 14 years for them i'm just kidding i give it i probably give it to a combination of um you know in my case i feel safe because i can roll it into a trust that doesn't provide for you after um you know you finish college so i don't feel i'm entitling anybody or cursing anybody's future so i'll just probably roll it into one of my family trusts and say i don't need it anymore The only thing I'm taking with me to the afterlife is my watch collection. All of them. I'm going to eternity. I got a lot. I don't even say anymore how many I've got. It's, I haven't, you know, really, I'm very proud of my watch collection.

And it's incredibly, it's got some amazing pieces and it's taken me years to build this collection and I'm going to need it to tell time and eternity. So I'm taking it all with me. What do you think is the best investment you've ever made in yourself? Well, the best investment I ever made in myself was myself. You know, I, you often doubt yourself, but you know, it was, it was, you know, I went through some very tough times right from when my mother cut me off through several business ventures I failed in. And then you just don't know. Serendipity knocks on the door. The thing is, as an entrepreneur, you just got to keep getting up every day. You have to stay in the game. You have to stay in the race. It's very, very hard.

It's like that story of the guy with his fiance. You know, you just have to focus and you have to find somebody that's willing to focus with you. But I'm glad I did what I did. I wouldn't change a thing. I've made plenty of mistakes, but it is who I am today. And I'm very proud to be able to offer the things I do to my family and to support different initiatives and charities and support the arts and collect watches and guitars and cook and all these things are made available because I've been able to focus on being successful in business. That is the great American dream.

It's going to remain that way forever. It's the essence of why Shark Tank works. I'm very proud to be part of the platform. I can guarantee you 13 years ago when we started this thing, we had no idea what was going to happen. I mean, it's just who knew? But now nine-year-old girls to 99-year-old men come up to me saying, look, let's talk about that deal last week on Shark Tank. And I'm happy to do it. I mean, I think it's a wonderful outcome and we're proud of it. And as we start to work on season 13, I mean, it's, you know, no television show last 13 years, practically none, less than 5% of them. So it's great and we're proud to do it. And I don't know that that's the whole idea

that I encourage people don't pursue entrepreneurship out of greed of money. You will fail for sure. Because every time I talk to anybody that's had a big liquidity event, I say, you know, did you see it coming? And how did it happen? They said, we never saw it coming. We were just working one day and then boom, I was poor, now I'm rich. That's always the way it is.

It's not that you're saying you're counting your dollars. You don't have any until one day, boom, something happens. And then the funny thing is you find yourself right back to work. 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. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support

and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.