"I GOT RICH When I Understood This!" (The 5 Proven Ways To Become A MILLIONAIRE) | Tom Bilyeu

you don't want to just not save any money you got to be strategic with it there are three reasons why you should be saving money you save money for an emergency save money for a big purchase want to buy a car you want to buy a house you need some cash to do that save money for an investment if you're not saving money for one of these three reasons you are saving your money the wrong way and your savings are literally making you poorer each and every day while your friends were spending their money at a party you're spending money on building a business right like that fundamental difference of spending it on fun that goes away or equity in this case your own company is a world of difference so I just want to Anchor everybody back around to those like money habits you've got what all my mom would have called pissing money away right literally an alcohol you're just pissing that money away um or putting it into something that's going to go to work for you in your case it was a business it was real estate yeah if people can just grab that fundamental difference like of hey start thinking about the world in this different way there going to be a huge step forward and it's all a learning process because I don't drink I don't smoke I never drink but for me it was the only it was it was a hustle right it it was the only way that I knew to kind of start making some money um and so it it's how you start and you learn and each one of the things that you kind of do you're going to learn something new and you're going to be able to apply that to the next thing and it really is that shift you know I call it the minority mindset thinking differently than the majority of people because it's it's doing something different most of us are taught just to be consed consumers trade time for money go buy cool things to flex exactly and that's it we're never taught to do anything else and I mean think about the last time your teachers taught you about the importance of investing your money of they don't know how to do it either exactly they couldn't hope to teach me and and so that's where you have to be willing to go out of your way to learn how some of these things work because if you don't you're just going to be a pawn in the system and it's very unfortunate it sucks and you know this is where I'm trying to help provide that education because these are things I never grew up learning these are things that I wish somebody would have told me uh you know I've see I see it in so many people I used to guest teach in Detroit public schools whoa and you know these are good kids from rough areas a lot of times don't have two parents in the home sometimes don't even have a parent in the home there were some kids he didn't have or his mom is not around he was R raised by a gang uh just because there's no parents and so they provided him shelter and it's crazy because you get stuck into a system a cycle because you don't have any way of learning or seeing anything else and you know like one of the first times I was there I asked the kids how many of you guys have a job most of them rais their hand most of them have an income and they're in high school right they're going to school and they're working and next question is how many of you have a bank account nobody not a single person had a bank account Jesus man so I was like what so how do you guys what do you do with your money they said we get a check we go to the liquor store we cash the check now the liquor store owner is going to take you know 1 to 10% of that check oh God and then what are you going to do you're going to buy candy you're going to buy pop you're going to buy a bunch of dumb stuff on your way out and now you're left with only half of your check and now what do you do it's it's this I like to call it Net Zero thinking where if I have cash I need to spend it I have $500 in my bank account I got to make that zero if I have $1,000 I got to spend it because we think oh my God if I had 10 grand I would go on this nice vacation if I had 50 Grand I would buy this car we think in terms of is that consumer mindset of if I have this money I need to spend it but this is where we have to break out of that and understand what can we do differently and instead of just spending all of this money and it's much more difficult now because of the higher cost of living but it's so much more important now than ever where you got to create this margin I call it like an equation where you know your your wealth is really you you take your income minus your expenses and that's equal to your Investments plus your savings so you take your income whatever money you make you subtract your expenses your houses your your home your clothes your car whatever your expenses are and if you have some money left either this money is going to be saved or it's going to be invested well if you have some money left you're already you know doing something that a lot of people are not doing you're more than the majority of people right now I just read a study yesterday seven out of 10 Americans across the board are living paycheck to paycheck 50% of Americans that are making $250,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck that's crazy it's not how much money you make it's what you do with the money you make that is so important and so now if you have a buffer you're already better than the majority of people now the question is what do you do with it well we're taught save it save all of it so your Investments are zero and your savings you're trying to grow the thinking that you're trying to you're going to become wealthy but you're never going to be able to outsave inflation you're going to your savings are literally making you poorer each and every day however you don't want to just not save any money you got to be strategic with it what I like to say is there are three reasons why you should be saving money you save money for an emergency have somewhere between 3 to 12 months worth of expenses depending on your risk tolerance save money for a big purchase you want to buy a car you want to buy a house you need some cash to do that save money for an investment if you're not saving money for one of these three reasons you are saving your money the wrong way and it's making you poorer each and every day now you didn't say save for retirement yeah invest for retirement you know you talk about retirement the retire we're about to face a a big retirement crisis because traditionally retirement was what people like to call a three-legged stool you had your Social Security you had your pension and then you had your own Investments or your savings what a lot of people like to do well pensions are something you only read in history books anymore they're a thing of the past so those don't exist anymore Social Security is running into a very very very big dilemma because right now now if you are you know under the age of 45 the Social Security money that you're paying isn't going to go to fund your social security income it's going to fund somebody else to retire because the Social Security program has much bigger expenses than income and so it is on the path of being completely dried up of just running out of money is this because the younger demographics are just a smaller cohort than the older or there's a lot of reasons for it it's how the Social Security money is spent it's it's how many people are requiring Social Security money how long people are living for how long these Social Security checks have to go out for a lot of bad calculations bad investing and so in the Social Security fund is now drying up and so now everyone says well I'm not worried about it because the government can just print more money and do bigger Social Security checks that's what we're seeing this year we saw between 2021 and now the biggest Social Security raise ever is between 5 and 6% something in that range which one is already not keeping up with inflation so yeah you got a bigger social security check but oh no it's not buying you as much as you could have last year but then the second issue is just think about that for a second if the government is going to print more money which means the FED is going to print money give that to the government to give you bigger Social Security checks what does that mean you got a bigger check great but now the cost of things have grown even faster than the growth of your check you cannot out print inflation it it just creates more inflation and so you know so you had the pension that's that's essentially gone for the vast majority of people Social Security is not going to be able to fund your retirement which leaves people with the third stool which is your own Investments now traditionally us say oh I'll save some money save 10% of your income that's not going to do it your savings are going to make you poor each and every day and the second thing is you're 401k and you know it's a great start for the average investor because now it is like automatic putting a little bit of money into some investment however your 401k was never ever ever intended to be your sole investment plan the founder of the 401K even came out and said that the 401K has gone to rry it is a monster because now so many people are hoping that they're going to be able to rely on their 401k to retire and that's not what it's intended for and it will never be able to be enough for you and so a lot of people have this false hope that okay yeah whatever Social Security will give me a little bit extra but my 401k will take care of me but that was never the plan and so now what does that mean your 401k just think of that like as if you invest in your 401k your IRA that is the absolute base your savings are not going to do it this is where you have to go and invest yourself and that's where oh my God how do I do that we're never taught how to do this we're never told how to do this we're never given Direction on how to do this so you have to be the one now to go out of your way to start learning this and thank God for YouTube because now we've decentralized education but the question is now you have to be willing to do it and you have to understand who your teachers are because there's there's crap on YouTube there's also good stuff on YouTube and we're never taught how to learn we're usually just taught what to learn so now we have to be willing and go out of our way to become smarter to once start learning and understand how do we learn the right things and then apply it because the the downfall with investing is it's risky you got to be willing to get punched in the face you have to be willing to lose money because it's a part of the process and it sucks it sucks losing money I I made a video on uh my YouTube channel minority mindset where I went over my worst real estate deal ever and the reason why I made it is so you can see look every real estate investor has got at least one bad deal and to date that's the only deal that I've ever lost money on and I walk you through every single bad thing that I mean because everything that could have gone wrong went wrong plus a whole lot more and it was one of the biggest headaches of my life but my goal is you know yeah you can laugh at me make fun of me but you're going to see like holy cow things can and will go wrong so just anticip at it because that's it's your real life tuition you got to be willing to learn um and and you know it's a price to pay and it's one of those things where you know just like with entrepreneurship everybody wants to be successful as an entrepreneur everybody wants to be rich how many people are going to be willing to get punched in the throat and keep going keep getting back up and keep doing it it's very difficult which is why you know what not everybody should be an entrepreneur try it but it's not for everybody but everybody can work to own this Equity right this ownership these assets and everybody needs to how much did you pay for your first share of Ford Motor Company $2 so this is what I want people to hear and I'm glad it's coming from you I was very honored to have Wall Street Trapper on as well because I want people that are I know minority um in the name of your program isn't about being a literal ethnic minority but it's about thinking in a new way but having people that are minorities at least in this country country um say like hey if you do the right things you're going to be able to change your circumstance what do you say to people that either think well it's okay for other people but for me either because I'm poor or I'm a minority it's never going to work for me so I'll kind of give you the story of my family in that sense because the reason why people come to America is because of opportunity you have the opportunity to own something own a home potentially own equity in companies build your own company you have the opportunity to build something which is something that you can't do in a lot of other places in the world my grandparents were refugees they had some land and in 1947 the state of Punjab was severed and when that happened if you were a sik which is the religion that I am and you're on the west side either you migrate East or you're going to be killed wow so now my grand parents literally all they had were the clothes on their back and a sword in their hand and they ran during that process my grandfather was attacked uh and he had to literally fight for his life he saw his uncle get his head chopped open in front of him Jesus put him on a horse that was the last time he saw him he got to the new east side of Punjab in India and didn't even have shoes on his feet didn't have a place to sleep had literally nothing now from there you got to start right you gotta you got to start now all over from scratch and there's a lot of political issues you know unfortunately over there and so that's when my parents my dad you know my mom were like we want to get out of this country we want to go somewhere we have better opportunity to come to America we you know don't speak the language don't know the culture don't know the people don't know how life is I mean India is a very different world it's a beautiful place but it's very different than here and you start over why as a minority as a minority just for opportunity because that's all you know there's risk but you see the opportunity there and do you think looking back now do you think that because it I often think that what we refer to as being an ethnic problem is actually just there is an element of SCH what I call school of fish like you're just you're going to group up with people that look like you it's just so embedded in the the subconscious but I think a bigger thing is just it's either majority or minority right because globally the Indian um ethnicity is massive billions but when you come to the US now you're a minority do you think that the tradeoff of going from being uh the majority ethnicity I mean everybody in India basically is shares the ethnicity I know there's religious differences but then coming here and being a minority does the opportunity that America provide outweigh whatever detriment there is to being a minority you know again if you're willing to work you have to be willing to work and kind of just break out of whatever anytime you see a majority kind of just group think you have to be willing to question that but you know the opportunity you have here in America is it more difficult now than before absolutely is it more difficult for some people than others absolutely however it's the best opportunity you have in the world and you know that's why literally even until today you have people that are willing to risk their lives to come to this country and I mean actually risk their lives and so you know you have that aspect and and I can speak for me where s the religion that I am they are a minority in India and you know there's a lot of issues that come with being a minority anywhere but again where do you know here you have more opportunity than anywhere else and so the way I look at it you know for me personally is my parents came to this country with next to nothing so I got nothing to lose and everything to gain right and so this is the place where that opportunity exists but now you have to be willing to work hard but you also have to be willing to work smart I I I can't stand what people say work smart don't work hard but to me that's all complete because you have to do both you have to do both because if you're not willing to work hard your smart working is effectively worthless you have to be willing to apply both together and I had none of this you know Financial education right for me it was Dad I want to go invest in real estate you're stupid go become a doctor you know it's it's I I had to do all my entrepreneurial stuff in secret the first my parents didn't even know that I was doing this business stuff until I was on the news I was running a different stock company and this is now you know a couple years after and and um we were doing well and we got featured on the local news now my parents got a call from a family friend and they said oh we saw your son on the news and my parents were like oh God what did he do now and they're like no no he he has this company he's doing really well they're they're growing my dad was like what and so then you know he sits me down he's like what the heck is going on and that was the first time they were like okay you can actually do something with this right and it was like you have to for me it was like I understood what I wanted I knew that I saw this like really I I wanted to achieve success and I knew I was doing it for Good Intentions um I knew I didn't have like bad intentions with what I wanted to do but the question was you know how do I get there because it was like I if I know if I try to convince my parents it is like it's going to be extremely stressful for me I'm going to stress them out it's just not going to work so I'm just going to try to figure it out myself and if I fail well guess said I'm in school so I kind of had that backup but for me like I like I went to law school as well the problem was I wasn't the best student in school um in law school particularly I did well on the bar exam I loved learning and so for me like you know I knew I needed to pass the bar and so I studied hard and I actually did really well but in the classes I was not very good except for the couple of the business ones because I really enjoyed that but for me it was just like I just need to get the degree that way I can like be done with this because I went to law school because my parents found out that I wasn't going to be a doctor they're like you got to at least become an attorney to keep pride in the family and so I was like all right well if I go to law school I can go to law school parttime and if I go to law school parttime I can work on me and my business full-time so that was my mindset with it and you know but I knew that yeah if I graduate law school and things don't work out I don't even know how I'm going to work as an attorney because I have no idea I don't know how to file a lawsuit I have no idea like what to do so if I graduate like I I'm going to have to like start all over and figure it out after I'm done and it used to give me a lot of anxiety but I was like you know this is why I have to figure it out it was a mission because one I wanted to do to give back to my family and myself and second I wanted to do it because I wanted to prove a lot of people wrong and I remember when I used to talk about this everyone's like oh you shouldn't do it out of spite don't do things because you want to prove someone wrong I was like you don't understand you don't get some of the you know the the things that you hear the things that you see and sure you know maybe it can't drive you forever but it can take you I mean that pain of seeing the the things that people say to because you know in between I started a sock company and when I was doing the sock business this is when you know people started to be aware that I was an entrepreneur and I wasn't like super successful I was doing okay uh I was doing and that's when I got on the news but you know just think about this I was supposed to be a doctor now here I am selling socks on the internet and everybody is like oh so you left you know this idea of becoming a a doctor now you're just selling socks and you know hearing that for years is like one day I'm going to have your kid want to work for me and that was like in the back I never said that but I was in the back of my mind your kid's going to want to work for me one day and uh it's like that driving force where I know I'm going to prove this person wrong I'm going to make this person like really like see that hey I I am worthy I can do something but it takes a lot of work you know going back to that but it's it's it's be with anything being willing to try being willing to take risks being willing to make mistakes and being willing to learn from it cuz you know like I said you know for me I was willing to be dumb or stupid I never saw that risk until more recently because for me it was just like I know this is what I want and so the risk really was never even on my Horizon if I had a business idea I would start it like the same night because for me it was like I just got to I I want to do this I want to figure it out books weren't were kind of giving me an idea my teachers weren't teaching me this I don't know who to turn to my experience was my teacher that's how I learned how to be an entrepreneur how I learned to start investing that's when I started learning about money because you know the whole issue with the money stuff I mean this is something that we're never ever even remotely talk tght about and it's now becoming a real pressing issue you have to be willing to try learn risk failure you are going to fail I always try to get people to understand that failure is the most information Rich data stream that exists it sucks it hurts it can be costly but one in triggering the parts of the brain that have to do with pain you trigger the parts of the brain have to do with memory and focus so you're more likely to really look at that thing that you don't want to happen again to figure out why that happened memorize it and then you're going to get better the next time and to your point about um having a chip on your shoulder and people telling you that you can't do something and thinking one day you know your kid's going to ask to work for me it probably is a primary driver over an extended period of time like you said it'd be a little costic to the soul but it's so powerful in terms of so you've got light energy and dark energy right what I have found in my own that the hardest the light energy will only get me so far and then I'll hit a brick wall and I'll want to stop and it's only when I tap into the dark energy of like I will not let this person be right about me I am not going to back down because I know they're just waiting for me to fail that it actually does give me another boost now I try to split it call it 8020 where I'm spending 80% of my my time and the light the beautiful things I want to do the people I want to help but dude let me tell you 20% of the time I'm thinking that the person that really wants to tap down on My Grave it gets you going right yeah 100% and and and you know I I found the same way because for me in the beginning it was just figuring it out I went from business idea to business idea to business idea because for me I was just trying to figure it out hopping from one idea to the next but then you know you talk about the light energy for me it was my really driving my passion and my mission and my purpose and that became more of the light energy because now you know after a certain point you're like the money doesn't drive you it just is what it is right it's just like I'm fine like I I'm not a very materialistic person I don't really care you know about brand names designer names first time I made a million dollars I was driving a $500 car right it just doesn't matter uh like sure it provides some sort of benefit more comfort more value but after a certain point that money is not a driver it's now what is my purpose and for me you know that Minority mindset where where rich started making videos I wasn't doing it to make money I did this as a hobby because I got scammed in that sock company what is up my friend Tom Bilu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10 if your answer is anything less than a 10 I've got something cool for you and let me tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most most people are possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline all right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University until then my friends be legendary peace out just talking about things that you know I wish somebody would have told me when I was younger like having to do with business having to do with money so I did it as a hobby and people will say you can't just do that as a hobby I'm like dude you don't understand I didn't invest any money into it I was making videos off my phone I bought like a 30 or maybe $35 tripod off of Amazon and I was just making videos for fun and like my friend asked me I think I was around 10,000 subscribers and he asked me like how much money are you making off of YouTube like what do you mean like how much money are you making from your ad Revenue off of YouTube I don't know what do you mean he goes into my YouTube back end with me and this is before YouTube had requirements of like you got to have X number of videos X number of subscribers VI time anybody body could monetize any video he's like dude you haven't even turned monetization on click one click and now you can start making money off your videos I was like oh I didn't know that I really enjoyed it for me this was like really fun and something that I loved doing which is why I did it and then minority Minds started to grow started to make some money and I was like oh I can actually like do this like I can work on just spreading this this purpose what is it about what you guys publish that people respond to it's one email right it's a newsletter and you know is coming what time is coming you know where it's going to be every day and so people want to open it we don't need to have a the world is ending you know where it is and then we just break down what's happening this is where I really fell in love with the book is the concept of necessity cuz this is something I talk to people about um and specifically in the context of obsession versus passion yeah and you really went into it not cuz I you're probably going to get some Flack and push back on that one but what you said I was like that is the absolute truth yeah so explain people what's the difference between the two what is the role of obsession well we found so in high performance habits what we did like you mentioned we did the world's largest study of high performers um data from over 190 countries um from what it essentially turns out to be like people who are in that top 15% of whatever they do and we found that there was basically personal habits and social habits and the personal habits was you know like seek Clarity generate energy and that third one was raise necessity which was something I didn't even know really was a thing psychologically um as important as it turned out to be and necessity is kind of short for performance necessity um or what we call psychological necessity which means there is a moment in which you are serving people or you're trying to achieve your goal or your dream in which now it is not a preference it's a must right but to use better languaging it's it becomes necessary for us to excel in this like it's not a a hope anymore it's not I I I it should do it it becomes so necessary that it connects with our identity that we feel it is necessary for me to deliver with Excellence here because that is who I am it's necessary for me to deliver with Excellence here because somebody needs me to do well it's necessary for me to do well here because this topic this thing I'm doing I'm passionate about this I care about this I want to master this I'm obsessed with this and it's necessary for me to do well because the time it's it's a deadline or it's go time or and when all those come together that so that personal side of this is my identity and I'm obsessed about it and that other side where it's like somebody needs me and there is a real deadline right in the middle that's performance necessity and we when we hit that game changer Game Changer but it is uncomfortable because people don't want to exude that much passion in which it becomes Obsession because they're fearful of their obsessions well if I'm obsessed about this topic it's going to take away away from my family from my time um it's going to introduce a lot of you know fear or unknown to meet so they back off but I tell people all the time there is a difference between passion and Obsession and high performers have Obsession about the topic right they are obsessed about the topic in which they're trying to learn Master grow into and so that obsession is real I tell people the difference here's how you know the difference between the two when you're passionate everybody cheers you on they're stoked for you oh you found your passion awesome Follow Your Passion live with passion be passionate Chase your passions everything like passion passion passion passion passion's good like the world be like Yay right when you're obsessed they're like why you got to be so crazy why can't you be satisfied why do you always got to get things so perfect why you spend so much time here when you're obsessed people think you're nuts so it's different and it's like I always tell people if no one thinks you're crazy you're not yet operating to the outer limits of your potential you're not there yet because somebody in your life should say man you really care about this in like a crazy way and when you get there you know you found your thing and not every find not everybody finds that I think that's also why it's scary some people go well I'm passionate or I'm happy but I don't really obsess about anything you know most people obsess about you know their shows on Netflix more than their life I know people who obsess more about their their you know thread count in their sheets at their house than they do about the impact they're making in the world why do you think people can slip into an obsession over Netflix or whatever or thread count but they don't do that for something that could really change their life feedback that's interesting not what I expected you to say what do you mean by that because you know buying something or getting pulled into Netflix being a obsessed about something that gives you no feedback is not scary a real Obsession like trying to make an impact in the world you're going to get feedback you try to make a difference in somebody's life they're going to tell you that doesn't resonate with me Brendan you try to make a difference in a nonprofit you try to change the world you try to start something like this and the views come or they don't come there's feedback and people are terrified it's one of the four Central fears we all have is rejection we're terrified like be rejected and think about if you really want to make an impact you're going to get a lot of judgment you're going to get a lot of hate and ultimately you're going to get rejection people are going to like just diss on you people are going to say that's not good enough people going to say who do you think you are and people are so worried about that that they stop and so it's easier things that don't give you feedback watching Netflix don't give you no feedback it's easy there's no disappointment there even if you don't like the show what do you do you just go on the next show there's no there's no disappointment there you know I I think trying to make an impact there's a lot of disappointment and fear and potential for rejection so people don't get obsessed about making a difference and making an impact because it can hurt go deep on identity so you've talked about how one of the scariest things about an obsession um is the way that you tie it to your identity High performers do that they put themselves at risk they say like your own story I'm I am a writer and the day that you decided you were going to own that you said that that comes with a risk one explain to people what that RIS risk is and then how did you overcome it and how can other people do that yeah well imagine like last night I'm going on the stage right if I if my identity says I am a public speaker and is important for me to be excellent at this and then I go on stage and I bomb what does that say about me as a person so we've got about 50 years of work in Psychology at the field of psychology saying do not tie your efforts to your identity because that risk of disappointment or rejection you know if the task fails you shouldn't take that as as a defining moment in which you say I am a failure right so that's the risk and that's what you know psychologists tell us to be wary of except it turns out that high performers flip that on its face and go well actually um no I do get bothered if it fails I really get upset about it I am attached to the process here I I do care if it turns out well I mean that's why they obsess about the details that's why they care about Excellence it's like no one obsess about the details or cares about Excellence unless it mean something to them and there is a risk the risk is you over attach to the process or the outcome with your identity so that if the process or outcome goes bad now you feel bad about yourself as a human and now you stop your progress but I also tell people there's a balance there I actually wish more people would attach some identity to what they're doing they wouldn't go through their motions as much I mean I think what the world needs less of is halfin interested parents who don't have an identity that says you know what I'm going to be an excellent parent I think we have a lot of CEOs or business po people or entrepreneurs who they've never stepped in and said you know what I'm a CEO I own this business I am responsible for paying the bills I am responsible for making the money I'm responsible for all these people's mortgages who work for me like they I want them to own the identity of a CEO CU most of them if you ask them about their identity and their business they're kind of like you come to find they're kind of approaching like not even hobbyists it's like if you want to win your identity has to be tied into that thing in which you are trying to succeed at and give to and that takes a lot of guts to put yourself all in for something but who's ever contributed something with tremendous impact without being all into it I've never seen it so I think the message of the book you're right I'll get some Flack a lot of psychologists say don't don't tell people to tie more of their Identity or my friends who are Buddhists who say but attachment is the form of all suffering Brandon have you not read your spiritual texts I'm like look out calm down I've hung out with the doll llama I'm totally cool but what I'm trying to tell you is even the Dal Lama has a connection with himself as a spiritual leader his identity is still there that people you know assume that you know we have to release ourselves from having any attachment to something but I'm like I think we all want to be present and engaged fully in the things that we are doing in our lives and that's going to require us to say psychologically you know what I I am all in this that's what I'm about what I loved in the book is you're you were open on the Journey of writing it took you about three years if I'm not mistaken so doing all the research you've collected the however many millions of people that are in your ecosystem and then you start systematically actually researching the data and you can feel that in the book that you were open to being surprised you were open to changing your thinking you talk about going through and trying to find disconfirming evidence and not just wanting to be in a vacuum and and some of the the surprises in the book were really really great and in that whole concept of obsession I loved it cuz it felt so real you tell your um followers one you have to take ownership right so uh you gave a great example about you're in a relationship with somebody you whatever energy you guys are creating you're creating that like don't think that it's just objectively them like you guys are doing it together and I love that love that in the talk about how Obsession can be useful because so I'm like that's really important to me and I want people to understand if you want to achieve at the highest level you're going to have to tap into Obsession period and you put a quote in the book that I think sums it up perfectly um which goes like this and by the way the the quotes people choose for books reveal so much and I just kept taking one after another after another out of your book this is from Einstein only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true Master for this reason Mastery Dem mans all of a person yeah I love that Allin you you have to be Allin and it's the hardest thing to do because if it fails then you can feel like a failure um you know I I think of this idea of performance necessity um two stories kind of come to mind one is I was working with an Olympic gold medalist Sprinter and we're in the tunnel and we're going out and he's talking about the competition and we get out to the blocks and I said uh he was really worried about the competition I said well how do you even gauge like who who who's going to win M you know in in his particular race people are winning but by you know one 100s of a second tenth of seconds I mean these are really close Sprints and I said well how how do you know I said who would you even bet on and he says you know I would bet on the guy who gets down at the blocks gets himself settled looks at the finish line then says I got to do this for my mom and I was like oo that's good his performance necessity in that is it's necessary for him to win that race for his mom um I think of you know when I started my career and I I really decided to go all in with writing and online training um this is like 200 probably six uh I'd gone broke completely bankrupt and failed I I left my corporate job I had this cushy kind of corporate job as a consultant good job um left it to write and I didn't know how to make it as a writer I wanted to do seminars and workshops didn't know how to do that so I was pretty much a hot mess ran out of money um I got nothing to my name nothing kind of no positive prospects no one's calling me except the guys who want the money and um one night I'm riding and the apartment was so small on the bed I had uh all you know my bills my vision boards all my res research all my journals like the bed was basically the desk the extended desk and my lady comes in Denise and she walks past me but she sees I'm like trying to write so she doesn't want to disturb me she goes she crawls under um the covers of the bed and I'm just typing kind of casually typing away and I look over and I see my woman sleeping under my bills w and it was just like you know because none of us want to see our you know our family suffer because we are not performing sure and um I was just like I gotta figure this out and I'm telling you I wrote more that night than any night in my entire life next day I wrote more than ever that birth life golden ticket which became a bestseller and in you know 18 months later because I was like I'm going to figure out this online thing I'm going figure out marketing I'm going to figure out how to teach I'm going to how to train and get paid for it because I'd never really been paid for those things I said I'm going to figure out this industry and I'm going to make it 18 months later after her crawling under the bills i' made $4.6 million Jesus online Total Transformation people like how did you do it I'm like she gave me she was my necessity I was not going to let my my woman be in that situation um and she believed in me she supported me she she married me and uh you know but that was she was my drive and the second part was I went all in with my identity I said I am going to be a great writer and I am going to be one of the greatest online trainers there ever was you know as you said in the intro now we've graduated over 2 million people have taken our online courses video series now I don't think it would have happen if I hadn't had the guts and maybe the no other choice right to say this is who I'm going to be and I'm going to build into that and is necessary for me to become that person so let's go and this is what I figured out through my journey that I was always great at providing a void and I'd feel it but the void that I created usually was promises that I made and I worked really hard to do it instead of work really hard up front to provide value create that void and then what I got really good at was getting rid of the ego guilt and I learned to ask big right I learned to ask like attract someone like Tom in my life so that I could sit and reach millions of people with him and Inspire them to help other people and learn that when you give the universe doesn't know size so it knows I believe that it's just as good for somebody to put a cart back at the grocery store or pick up trash and throw it away or provide a healthy food to somebody that it is to give a a million dollars the universe it's not these are human things this is a lower and so you might as well do as many Good Deeds as you can open as many doors Smile as many people hug as many people as you can and then when you create your Void of giving and Service as big ask in this human vibration this pragmatic World ask big ask for it all cuz it will come to you and that's I think something I did subconsciously when I was 25 right out of law school and it's something I do consciously subcons iously and unconsciously now I asked to empower 75,000 people I want to change the world to make people happy and who are you asking that of the universe so whatever you believe in whatever you believe in I don't care if it's God Jesus Muhammad Joseph Smith the 12th man if you're a Seahawks fan I don't care but ask ask the universe ask who you think put it out there you know there's three ways you got what you think say and do that's one way to put it out there subconsciously there no Pathways in your mind 40,000 of the same thoughts put it out there and then finally your energy your DNA your fingerprint on life that's what truly puts it out there and that system of conscious to subconscious to unconscious is what allows you to truly attract rapidly and accurately what you want it's so interesting because I'm guessing if we flashback let's call it 20 years and I ask the same question I get an equally valid answer because it worked right like both work work hard you would have got work hard hard don't quit you know all of those things and look be a good I was an honest person I I just had my values a little bit screwed up as they got bigger and bigger but I was you know working really hard I just felt like I was in control of everything and now I've completely surrendered doesn't mean I don't work as hard I'm I was going to say I watch your content and there's definitely like um you said I'm in a ballp parket here but like I don't go to bed I pass out and I work until my energy runs out and I thought yeah I get that and so it's so interesting to see yeah not a conflict at all actually it's just it's such an interesting way to come at it so you've got the on the one hand it's the more traditional hard driving um you know I'm going to make this happen if I'm creating a void it's a void of what I'm looking for people to you know pour into hey I've given you something I'm expecting something back and many and many and many a person have built insanely amazing careers doing that right so I know that it works um but then over here now you've done both and it's like this totally different way but yet you still really pour yourself into what you do providing value yeah it's super interesting so like I was watching one of your pieces of content you went to this um event and it was during spring break and so there was only you know I don't know a handful of 30 kids there or something and you said oh these are the ones that'll make it why are they the ones that'll make it you know I believe in being more interested than interesting and that providing value that Define that for people I know know what you mean but like really put a point on it you know for me it we we it's almost connected to the Zero Effect of life and I think there's a consistency that makes people successful and what happens is we lie to ourselves and I'll use health because you're an expert at it but I see this in nutrition and in exercise people will tell me after one month gosh why did I get incremental results or no results at all I said because you zeroed yourself out the kids that showed up during spring break to the event that I had that the ones that were there and they had a lot of other distractions they're the ones that don't zero out they're the ones that get the exponential um Power of the universe meaning if I do something every day day one I get x to the 1 day two to the second third third fourth fifth most people when it comes to nutrition they're always day six ah they they zero themselves out then they start over first a second and during a month they may zero themselves out three or four times at the end of the month they didn't get the exponential results if you stick to something every day this idea of being more interested really asking the extra questions going the extra mile which is completely empty in my opinion if you want no competition in your life go the extra mile 99.9% of the people are zeroing themselves out they're doing 28 days a month not 31 how do you help them with that cuz I'm a psycho for this the level of clarity that you have to have yeah you know I start very pragmatically I have certain things that I think can change someone's life number one student of your calendar it might sound silly but I believe Focus there's a whole field of intention and that the pragmatic way that we figure out what we're doing in a day cuz I look for productivity and accessibility I study my calendar on the way here I was studying my things your awareness Rises when you're looking at something and start thinking all right I'm going to be with Tom what what should I ask Tom this is all being more interested than and it goes from there and then another quick philosophy is do it now uh I whenever I'm doing anything I have a simple question can I do it now because if I can do something now number one I save myself a minimum of half the time it'll take me twice as much time to do something if I don't do it now and two exponentially it becomes less successful if you don't do something now you can forget it you have to go back I mean it just turns into a mess so about 85 to 88% of the things that I'm approaching with I can do now hey you got a referral yeah hold on sometimes it's a little weird and quirky during a meeting but I do it anyway someone ask me I literally make the indu introduction I cut our conversation hey you need to know this guy you and so these little tips of time and then the other side so I give time tips because I believe time's a construct everybody has 24 hours a day it's how productive and accessible can you be in 24 hours and then the other construct is ego so the the two ways I help them is I teach them gratitude empathy accountability and effective communication to help them get out of their own way because that ego and time will be two things that will reduce all the resistance in their lives and allow them to attract what they want and if you understand ego and you understand time you can have faith to be of service so help me understand ego how does it stop most people ego is that voice that little voice inside of you that I use cancel clear connect for that it's all these needs you know guilt is a big one fear is a huge one anxiety so when I can teach young people to identify when they're thinking with their ego when they're in their own way there's only one thing that stands between you and what you want and when I say what you want let me be very clear I believe that all people want is to be happy and in order to make them happy they if they get what they want Health you know money a Ferrari now it won't mean maintain the happiness if you get what you want but the key is if you can rapidly get everything that you want learn from it keep what keeps you happy dump what doesn't and then keep moving on you're going to live a happy existence a fulfilled existence so the ego is only thing that stands between you and what you want and when we can identify it which is the first step we can start working through why do we feel this way that's one of the biggest questions that I ask I still get scared you know I still fight certain things I I I don't know what percentage of the time anymore but I just try to get better I try to pursue my potential of living at the highest vibration or the truth without my ego you know still I mean I every time I talk to my mom I fight my ego because it's such an emotional relationship I fight my ego of all different things that probably carried from the time I was in the womb but energetically the more I work through it and the better I feel the more I'm able to manifest not only for myself but for others as so I've heard what you've said about your mom that she has a third degree black belt in Jewish guilt um so knowing that what does it mean to work through it is it finding your Center is it just having the compassion for her understanding that she only wants good things for you and this is just her best attempt what cuz I know there are so many people watching this that they have the same relationship so what do they do mechanistically what do they do to work through it so what I started doing is I realized that there's only two things my mom really wanted from me me one was to know that I loved her and two appreciated her for that that's my mother and I and I got that by asking her questions and so what I decided to do to change our relationship was to make sure every day so I have this philosophy of doing stuff every day give it a minimum amount of minutes so I gave my mom a minimum of one minute a day to make sure that she loves and appreciates me and meaning I would call text or email her and simply sometimes say hey Mom I was just thinking about you I got back back from China today and I just wanted you to know that I totally love you and appreciate you I live this extraordinary life and I I'm so grateful you know I'm one of six and all the things then I work through it and say to myself why do I still feel this way why why do I feel inferior to my siblings just cuz they all went through the Ivy Leagues and none of them got a be why I'm 50 years old I I have my own beautiful family why do I have this energy about me that I literally know it's not easy for people to say the truth that I know and here's the best thing about it my brothers are super they're super accelerated like humans they're amazing right Harvard sum mum ly amazing and what's funny is we my brother that went to Harvard who's extremely inlight and he's a rabbi now you know I said to him hey man I just I'm working on feeling good around you and he was like pale he goes That's funny because I was thinking the same thing about you you know like that in fear and I go and I hope you take it as a compliment because I just think the world of you and I want you to think the world of me those type of effective Communications can open up and allow you to work through why you feel certain ways because it transcends if you feel that way with your siblings or your parents it's worse for people you just met you're trying to prove yourself one of the energies I carry that ruined me was I had an energy that I was stupid and I projected it that I was smarter than everyone else because I carried a core energy because of my siblings and the way I was raised and my grandma telling me only stupid people get bored smart people think of things to do that I literally projected this insecurity that caused me to oversell backend sell lie manipulate and not feel good about myself no matter how much I had I still needed more and it was for myself to prove that I was smart enough that's so incredible how did you get to the point where you could take accountability for all of that like that is I love your thoughts on accountability by the way extraordinary um but what I find is the people that can take accountability often have to really overcome something like that thing they really don't want to talk about and they still have to take accountability for that how did you face that you it was taking accountability for going bankrupt because to me everything in my life was about being rich it was about having that money my whole identity was that success and so to let go of that identity and to be radically humble and confident and faithful and just say I am accountable I mean it was a bad time that I went bankrupt it was 20072 2008 everybody was losing money people were blaming me and there's lawsuits and and my ego is in the way and the minute I said you know hey you know what I could have done this I attracted this yes my wonderful wife is correct I surrounded myself with the wrong people and the wrong ideas I'm accountable 100% And I'm going to tell everybody about it I'm not going to hide you know what take the there's a great author David Corbin he wrote a book called illuminate and I read that book and he became a friend of mine because I had to search him out after I read it and he he used an example about illumination he said I was doing business and there was guy that was convicted of a white collar crime felony and first thing of every business call that he said he said look before we get started I want to let you know I was convicted in 20 1 of a white collar crime for doing this I serve 6 months in jail I'm completely accountable for it but I learned what I learned and I just want to tell you upfront before we do any business that this is me and if you're not comfortable doing business with a felon I get it and 90 some per of the people trusted that person more than somebody else and then two it you know 100% of the people especially because of Technology and access the information today eventually you're going to find out right and you lose 100% of the people when they find out after and you know for me that was a friend of mine said I love this statement David I would rather people hate me for who I am than love me for who I'm not I'm the exact opposite of you I love that when he told me that and that was part I wanted everyone to love me and you can't yeah that's um easier said than done that's really really interesting and the doing the work of identifying it like you were talking about whether it's ego or what it is but just recognizing that it's there and then being able to process through that find your Center and then move forward with intention it's really really interesting and as I think through that and I think through the steps and how meticulous you have to be why are you such a good negotiator what what is it that you do is there a process like that like what is it absolutely I I think it's part of being more interested than interesting so what I do is I explore the reasons that you want what you want I want to explore the impact that it has and the capabilities that you currently have that you want to have and that you actually need and then I align those with the reasons that I want to do the deal the impact that it has for me and the capabilities that I have want or need and when I figure that all out in negotiation I actually can make a bigger hole than other people I'm dealing hey I could give you this you could give me that and we both really win from things that I've heard you say almost just off the cuff the thing that seems like your superpower from the outside is that you go into everything with an open mind not knowing what the answer might be and looking for ways that are completely outside the realm of even what I would think to ask for and is part of what is anybody's power in the negotiation being able to make the ask yeah so there's three things one people buy On Emotion for logical reasons so you have to address the emotions and so that's that open Nature that you feel and see and from knowing me now the other two is not only an ask it's an attract so I believe there's four mediums that you can ask and attract on the first in person so being more interested than interesting we were going to meet in person today I know that I strategically for the benefit of both of us have asks and ATT tracks right one of those simple asks was you know I really wanted you to sign something to put into my studio right because everyone I do that's just a simple one but I'm thinking about that so in person asking ATT track then on the phone every phone call I receive not push out right I'm on the defensive in my life I'm attracting right I'm allowing things so I know that I'm going to receive phone calls a day I'm going to have asks in attracts and be and I know that because unconditionally I ask people is there anything I can do for you how can I be of service and they'll either tell me or not and invariably they're almost forced you by the laws of nature to ask me what I want I have an ask and attract talk to me about meditation how are you leveraging that in your life meditation for me is 20 minutes every morning first thing that I do and what it does is it finds my Center that's all that's all for me it's you know almost like Baseline testing for a concussion because what I've learned is that life is life is like the big tall Hill in San Francisco with a car on top that's your Center when the car is up there you can hold it you know a truck you can hold with your finger when it's sitting on top of a hill the minute this thing starts rolling downhill you got to put it back up the longer it goes downhill the harder it is to get back up what I used to do during the day is I'd let that truck keep flying down the hill and trying to react instead of act by going back to Center and is this emotional that's how I think of it I think of it as anxiety stress emotion those are the things I'm trying to bring back to Center correct so anything that takes you off of Peace Oneness wholeness that feel peaceful feeling if something moves me in that direction instead of reacting talking yelling all the different things that throwing things whatever you are go back to Center so you had this really cool story about hey my daughter at the time I think she was 16 if she said Dad I want a Ferrari you'd be like cool how do we go about getting it correct and I found that really interesting CU it's so pragmatic but what I want to do now is is really Collide the two things because I think you're uniquely capable like you live in the real world you've built real businesses and been very successful and there's so much tangibility to what you do like and maybe this will be a breakthrough for me I want to know like how those two coexist how do you manifest which I imagine just means essentially Daydream right and then how do I reconcile that then I have to go do something for it that's the biggest conflict that I had too people told me about manifesting I'd rolled my eyes cuz I didn't understand it um manifesting is commanding which means working with the word work is in there you got to take action you got to make it happen you can't sit at home high on your mom's couch manifesting the Publisher's Clearing House to come to to your door you know it would drive me crazy you know this uh the secret I'm on to transformational Leadership Council I'm like the most pragmatic sports agent weirdo on there but those are all the people that created the movie The Secret and I told them drove me crazy when the guys you're teaching the masses sit there and dream about your Ferrari and this was during my transformational time and I sat there it put a pit in my stomach I'm like do you know how hard I had to work to buy my Ferrari like it was a dream of mine but I wasn't home high on my mom's couch dreaming about having that thing I was out working and doing all the things that I needed that combination to me the commanding the commanding of the universe working with it and that includes working with others so I only even in my business ask me you want to go to do something you want to come to the the studio today and and get involved and meet you cuz there's you know saw the posy that came that's cuz they asked us okay how are you going to do it what value are you going to bring to the table oh I can drive I can do this the same works with the universe you know I want to raise a $100 million to give to people and I hear the universe tell tell me okay how are we going to do it now it takes action takes alignment action adjustment but it it does it takes I have to create a plan I'm not just going to dream about it but I believe that it's very important to still think about it focus in on it dream about it that all these things the conscious subconscious and unconscious all work together but without conscious action it probably won't take place talk to me about planning how do you come up with a plan how have you like this is the thing when I really sit down and try to break down for people what you need to do to be successful there's certain places I stop because there's nothing Universal to give them um and the plan is one of them right so I'm I'm just ridiculously psycho about people need a goal a hypers specific goal and a plan so my thing is identify the gap between where you are and where you want to be and that Gap is a gap of skill set and now you have to go and get those skills but most people can't identify what skills actually lie between where they are and they want to go they they get it like from the end result but they don't know how to plan that out and I don't know like I don't even understand other than just sort of by intuition how I'm doing it so here's what's cool cuz this is going to throw you way back because it's completely pragmatic monetary solution to the problem that I tell young people with what they want that they need it to figure out one a direct path to that they that that's your goal what's my direct path to revenue forget the business side what if if you have an idea for business specifically what's my direct path to revenue and when you stay focus on the direct path of Revenue you only need one more thing to stay in business every day and so if you have one objective to stay in business and then two a direct path to revenue and understand that my job is to align with as much as I can being more interested than interesting learning these skills knowledge and maintaining desire you're guaranteed success let me give you one of the coolest things that I've learned and and this is about anything in life if somebody could tell you give me your dream and you're 25 NOS from your dream 25 failures losses from your dream how excited would you be when you got the first no way how about when you get your 25th one that' be over the moon but for me this is where faith comes in I believe that I live in the favor like in the favor of the Universe I believe that everything is mine every there's enough of everything for everyone I just truly believe it and I don't know if it's 25 but I know it's the same philosophy so I take on the energy and perspective of H good news first failure I was wrong again good news and then the 25th comes I'm like oh gosh I know I'm closer than I was this is great where like so many people cannot maintain desire and they get to the 25th time and they're this far away you know the don't quit poem that I love that poem cuz that explains this perfectly you're done man you're going to get there I don't know how long my favorite book I was blessed to do a book with Jack hanfield Chicken Soup for the Soul half a billion he was rejected 200 times by Publishers said it was a stupid idea 200 but if I told him that he would be rejected 200 times before he had the bestselling book of all times and a half a billion sold in a whole brand that lasts for legacy of a lifetimes of people how happy would he have been when he got to 150 and so to me to teach people you need skills integration of skills knowledge and desire maintenance of desire you need a direct path to what you want but you need to stay on course every day it's every single day the only thing that stops you from being successful in business for example is you run out of money you go out of business how many businesses do we know that have evolved I'm sure your business has evolved from where you started true right I know Google did Facebook did right they all were not set out to be but they all had a direct path to what they wanted to do and they stayed in business every day how do you maintain desire I've wanted to ask that from the second you said that that's super powerful it's the en literally to me it's the consistent persistent enjoyment of the pursuit of my potential when my outcomes I have goals people get all the time well don't how can you do that like but I change my goals that are a little different they don't create void shorts and obstacles meaning um someone will tell me I want I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 30 I said can I give you a piece of advice why not double the amount of money you make as fast as you can you're not playing with linear time anymore time's a construct what if you made it way before 30 you've cheated yourself you're creating resistance so for me to stay inspired it's every day enjoying the pursuit of my potential and truly focusing in on man I love that like my real Enlightenment came when I got my butt kicked and walked out of there going wow that was awesome where no ego right it's just like I just learned so much I must be so much closer to what I want because I just learned a ton and I yes I got my butt kick and where the old Dave would have been like what a jerk you know he doesn't know anything no I don't know anything right and I'm here to learn more did you ever cuz you're dyslexic right so I imagin that that wasn't easy to establish a mental vision of yourself that was positive so did you ever worry that you weren't smart enough to pull this off all the time okay and what what happened was whether it was being young and you know again just take failing fourth grade I can look at two things worst thing that ever happened to me it's embarrassing I'm at the age where everybody knows I'm a dummy or wow I got whole new friends you know and I've got this whole new set of friends which ended up happening to me which in two weeks I'm going to have 45 of them come out to my Ranch this is from eth grade so I'm still friends with these people right I have a child in 14 worst than in the world so crazy right oh my God my life is over or wow I've got a beautiful young child you know and it's about how you think how did you know to think of it like that I didn't think of it like that in the beginning that that's my point when when did that change it just as life went on I realized what I thought was horrible became wonderful and why do I spend energy on things I cannot control I had to fail fourth grade why am I going to be upset about it again I think about this after the fact and realize don't spend energy on things you can't control so as my life got as I moved along I started wasting less energy on things like that and then realizing find the silver lining what good came out of this issue you know and I've had a lot of them right so okay so I can't change the things that I could probably cry over so what what lesson did I learn you know and then and now my life in the last 15 years 20 years has been really focused on all the the learnings you know and not the woe is me stuff because we all got those yeah that that's a pretty radical transformation so I I really want to make sure that people don't look at you as the after picture and think this is the before so obviously we've talked about the hardships dyslexia is an ongoing thing so how do you how do you think about your weaknesses and address because speaking for myself so my big fear was was that I wasn't smart enough to be successful like that was at some points in my life almost crippling right and so I really had for me I had to learn about the brain I had to learn about brain plasticity and that that gave me the get out of jail free card of not needing to tell myself that I was too dumb anymore because it was like well maybe you are too dumb right now and that's fine because you can get better did you do you have a strategy for dealing with something like dyslexia I I I think you look at the whole scarcity and abundance kind of concept right and I found that when I would instead of focusing again on the fact that maybe I'm not the best reader maybe I don't retain a lot very you know a lot of things well instead of that the fact that if I find smart people and it's very cliche but it's very true and I surround myself with them that I end up looking smarter right because and and you watch some people and I would it can give you so many examples of people but I won't okay that that are in fear that if I surround myself with someone smarter than me it'll make me look dumb right and and so they surround themselves with with people inferior and then your whole company or division or whatever you're in fails right versus people that have enough confidence to say wow you can fill in the you know the blind spot I don't have or my weakness and you fill it all in and your whole company Rises or whatever you're doing your whole project Rises because all of you combin to make this Uber you know quick fast smart um project go right and so that became pretty evident to me because I didn't have a lot of the skills that why don't I let those people do it you know why don't I bring in more people and the more talent I brought in the quicker we went you know and the less time we wasted and I went all right I think I'm on to something here you know and then to admit it hey I'm not the smartest guy in the room you know I'm the chairman of my company hate running the meetings I don't I don't like being the one that has to tell people what to do I'm not good at that I have I like the the vision right I like I got an idea let's March up this hill that's fun to me but the details let's let people that like to do that better than I do do it it's interesting I would put you into a certain um category of entrepreneur if I didn't know what you did on undercover billionaire because there are people that have like a really extraordinary ability to Galvanize a team to gather talent to surround themselves and then it's basically like all right hey I'm the one that sort of raised the money and put everybody together and now you guys go and actually build this thing but you have that very striking ability but then you also have the ability to create a vision to March forward to put very strategic steps into place take us back to the beginning of undercover billionaire you're sleeping in your truck um you're not even sure what business to do how did you begin to Cobble those ideas together so that you can actually get something done so let me take you back a step on that too for a second if you don't mind so here I am doing my business for a long time and become um fairly large and successful and all the things I thought were wonderful and then I get hit with cancer and at that point my focus became completely different Focus what's the most important thing right and that's my family so I said I'm going to sell my business and I sold it to a very large private Equity Group and I focused on the family and by doing that I was then able to realize that when I got back into business the the problems weren't very large in business no matter what they are compared to cancer compared to yeah your life right so now it's just problem solving right so let's get in the room let's figure it out and then if you look at it cuz I remembered 2007 and 8 which was the worst financial crisis in our lifetimes and I was dead center of it right and when I got cancer because I used to say I never in my life want to go back to that and when I got the cancer I went what I would do to go back to that cuz that was fun I just didn't I wouldn't have called it fun back then painful we're going to lose everything but it was all about getting in people's faces let's figure this out together going to New York and all the Wall Street guys and all the every lawyer and everybody that was out there but it was living right it was it was doing things so when then you take that and you and you realize we're not dying it's just problem solving now all a sudden the fear I guess that business had on me for a while well I lose everything you know you you know and and I don't know if you've ever had it you know you build something and you're feeling great one day and the next day you know these lawyers are going to come and you know and and there's always what can us what can bring us down well once that went away and I started realizing that's just part of the game then the fear of that went away so now I can go out and create and do things so when it came to undercover billionaire and I went out what had happened was people kept asking if I wanted to do a show my wife and I did a show 15 years ago and by luck someone called if we wanted to do it we did it it was called the real Gilligan Island um I ended up winning it she came in second place long story but for years after that people kept calling hey we want you to do another show do you want to do a show and I said look I'm a business guy you know I did that for fun but that's okay I said I tell you a show I would do stripped me from everything take away my name my money my contacts I bet I could rebuild it again because I was getting tired of hearing that you know that the American dream was dead and whatnot and I also wanted to do it because I wanted my children to see that you life is not easy that when you do get into a hole it's not about laying there and and feeling like the victim it's about getting up and pulling yourself up out of ho and figuring it out and so I wanted that and I would say if you want to do a show with me Strip Me of everything and throw me in the middle of nowhere and I would do that over and over again to these production houses that would call me and then Discovery called back and said if you really want to do that show you put your money where your mouth is I said sure and they and they put some little constraints around well how about 90 days I'm going well that's kind of tight you know I said well how about if we start start with like $5,000 is it how about $100 and it kept getting Tighter and I said okay let's see what happens you know and um so off I went I did it I didn't think much right which is the story of my life right I didn't plan I just thought I'll just show up and see what happens and um and I like that you know I like having my back against the wall and I like that feeling and we all I think we all do well at at being um successful right we walk around we give our money to charity and you know we we do things that make us feel like we're good who are we when everything is taken away from us and in 2007 and 8 when everything was taken away in that moment I was in the darkest hole you know and looking around and thinking the whole community and in it street is looking at me who am I now I kind of like that feeling why because that's the real you that's interesting it's it's when when you are not built up on the fakeness of money and people kissing your ass and all those things who are you as just a human being and so that moment when I was at my darkest in 2007 and8 literally it's it's a longer story than we have right now but I stood up and said let's let's go and literally went in front of everybody's face and never hid and said how are we going to get ourselves out of this what do you mean it's your problem Glenn I go no you say I owe you 30 million be Sterns I said how are we going to get out of this because I don't believe I owe it to you you know and and we would go over battles over the loans let's say I gave them stated income loans they said it's my problem because they failed how am I supposed to check the income when you told me it was a state you know so we would battle over the stuff and little things like that would happen and and instead of digging my head in the sand it'll go away let's just fight it out right now and so we did that on everything and it worked and so when it came to Now we move forward and it's undercover billionaire I said I want to be stripped of everything and I want to be in a hole again and I want to show my children what it's like to climb out and I will tell you in the middle of that hole I didn't realize that there' be millions of eyeballs on me like I didn't think that part out and I can see myself when I've watched the show staring off and I'm realizing at that time I'm I know exactly what I was thinking like maybe I can throw this show as it'll never be on because I am going to fail and the whole world is going to watch me fail which means what I did in the past was luck it was all all the things you fear in life of going you know am I really that good or it wasn't luck right and so it was a moment where I said I want to run I want to hide I don't want to face these demons and these things because I'm going to look bad and um and again that was the moment when I go this is the time to stand tall right and so digging out and it worked really well and everything turned out to where I'm very proud of the show it became probably one of my proudest moments of my life because the fear and having that devil on your you know give up give up just you can throw this you can you know they they won't ever have to make the show all those kind of things we all face that in our lives it's just not with millions of people watching right it's just we I don't this job wasn't what I thought it would be maybe but the job over across the Street's better the career over there is better and people hop because they don't stick to it they don't go through the pain they don't go through the fear and then they end up in a cycle that goes over and over and over again right and the ones that are successful and I don't just again mean Financial but the successful and fulfilled they fight through the pain they they stay later they work through it they sacrifice and then they feel proud because it works it will work when you do the right thing and you struggle and you don't give up right and so it all became very uh meaningful because my children then got to to see this and that's all I cared about and then when it got bigger than that and then the whole world I've had thousands of people say wow so inspiring thank you it got me to think about what I need to do I didn't even dream that that would happen you know and I'm so thankful to hear other people who have been touched by by that it's so incredible to it's so easy to look at somebody else and think well they could do it but I wouldn't be able to do it because they don't have the kind of fears or the self-doubt or the limitations that I have right and that's part of what makes your story so incredible is a you're honest about like I was actually thinking about taking a dive and just like making sure that the show never came out right um and then you don't and I want to know is grit something that comes naturally to you or have you developed tenacity over time I would say that it has developed over time and I didn't understand it in the beginning you know I didn't know what would was happening to me right again all of the hard things that happened in my life I'm very grateful for because it did lead me to a place where now it doesn't seem to be that hard and so I happen to have a podcast called GD happens right and it's very but it's about that grit and it's about the determination not giving up feeling um that you're not alone alone and what you touch on I I love that's the best part of why I like to tell my story I don't like to lead with success I like to lead with vulnerability right I like people to go God if that guy can do it I got a 2.1 in college I did a little better than he did right or whatever right or I didn't go to college okay you know I barely went to college you know I mean you know I learned about paying the bills through college I didn't really learn you know much in terms of you know economical statistics or whatever you know how do you your you've got the mental fortitude that you're building up over time you're learning really powerful lessons at a time this is mostly I'm sure pre- internet so you're cobbling all of this stuff together yourself how then do you begin to get what is on display in undercover billionaire where you're pivoting where you're asking things like who's my buyer instead of just what business do I find interesting like when do you begin to learn these business lessons yeah there's been a lot of hardship in my career as well as successes right and and so when I look back on everything that happened to me I always thought this was the end and then there was aha right and then something would just take me to another level you know and I mean I million things I would sit in the meeting with the government with all of these contractors and I would be one of the contractors and they'd be complaining we can't do this anymore because they would all be yelling about some little you know issue and uh I'll give you an example real quick they would they would notorized Deeds they said we cannot notorized government's Deeds anymore unless the government comes and signs in front of us and this is illegal and they would just you know and they're all complaining and I yeah I agree with I thought H so when the the meeting ended I got up and said why don't I bring my notary in every day at lunch to just sign the Deeds so we end up signing tens of thousands of Deeds a year making all the money and I paid her you know an extra you know whatever to come in on our lunchtime right and our company thrived off of that it was just there are this little things that other people see as problems and you can go go it's pretty clear that there's a opportunity right here that's one of the more interesting things to me about your mentality so it's like with investing they say you know when there's blood in the streets that's when you buy um and when other people are you know just like trying to gobble things up that's when you sell at a time where everybody else was closing down you were opening up how do you find the opportunity I've always ran into the fire you know literally when I was a kid I remember remember uh my sister ran into the laundry room in our cuz they would like five times they caught the laundry room on fire whoa and one time my sister had run in there she was like three and I was out there and everyone was like the fire was coming out of the building right and no one was doing anything about it and I ran in there crawled on the floor and found her and dragged her out who and it would be like why didn't anybody else do that like I did I remember remember always for some weird reason running against the crowd I don't know why right but I would just go the opposite way I can you know my dog ate the little you know electric cord and it was flopping around and everyone ran they were afraid and I I ran over there and I pulled it out of the wall right like I'm going why doesn't anyone else they always run away and I I don't know why but then I began to like the fact that when people ran away I'd run the other way and so then business that would happen and it became very clear to me when everyone Dove out the window I thought look at all of this opportunity look at all this Talent nobody's gobbling up this talent I could never get these people in a normal world and so I opened five offices of failed companies November 07 I opened five more with each with like 20 to 50 people in each office and I did that the next year and then we shot to the Moon you know because everyone else had set on the sidelines for two years and I gobbled up all the talent yeah that to me so it's very interesting that that started out very early for you um that definitely did not start early for me but you do begin to realize okay in in disruption there is opportunity and one of the things that given the way you talk on undercover billionaire I'm guessing that this is true for you as well what Ray doio calls Prin principles that you do something in life and you realize okay that worked that didn't work and so you begin to formulate these things the next time I encounter this I will act in this way right and one of the like hard and fast beliefs that I have is in disruption there is opportunity so you want to look for that moment where everybody else is either annoyed that A change is coming along so think of social media so one of the the key elements to my success was recognizing social media was a business tool when everybody else just thought it was a a you know distraction and so people get annoyed or pissed off about something it's like that's the very I want to look at there's something it's causing A disruption in their life which is why they don't like it let me tie this to the Horatio Alger award that a you're a recipient of but you're also part of that committee that looks for people that have overcome extraordinarily difficult situations people that can see an opportunity and difficulty to me that's like the thing right like I said earlier the only belief that matters is is that you can pull it off so somebody that's in that gnarly gnarly gnarly situation how what is it that allows some people to see the opportunity and stops other people from seeing it because I know that in you guys have had I don't know if you call them students recipients whatever that they did well but their brothers and sisters imploded right and we have studied that tried to figure out why why in the same family you'll have three brothers and sisters that that are in jail or die of drugs and one that just uses education as their way out right and they say I don't want to be anything like this family what is the difference they've gone through the same hardship they've been and endured so much adversity why do they stand out and I don't know if we've ever found this answer yet you know but what I do know is that person that young person that has said I'm going to take tools and better myself to get myself out of this situation I want to invest in that person and so that's where I put my energy personally and the Horatio aler Association does that right we get 40,000 applicants a year to help and these are all people who have gone through a lot of severe adversity and we help maybe 35 to 4,000 3500 4,000 students a year by giving them scholarships to college and then we have a um when we go through our uh award ceremony we have about 110 or so Scholars that are National scholar that we bring in and we we meet we Mentor we spend three or four days with them every year in Washington DC and then my wife and I have gone and done other events with them outside of the association but I'm fascinated with that person I feel like I've led a similar life but I did it by accident right like I didn't say education was my way out I fell into the education barely graduated but I learned lessons along the way right I learned how to get a pel grant how to you know these kind of things these kids are determined these kids are focused on knowing that you know if I you know can get myself um a grow education I will be able to get a great job and I'll be able to live a different life and so I absolutely am fascinated by those people and they will be tomorrow's leaders because they also you got to think right when I've had a many friends but one especially that I can tell you he never touched adversity his family you know had really helped make sure he had a very easy life and and at the age of 40 leading his business it had a very big turn and he couldn't get out of bed for 2 weeks right and thought the world was over and yet once he got through all that he really got some thicker skin and he learned that's you know he had lived a pretty extraordinary life never to face any real adversity here these kids have faced so much adversity early on that when they hit a business issue or something it's going to be like yeah this is this is nothing what are some of the tenants of Zen so studied Zen I I got really hardcore into dosm when I was younger like way hardcore uh which led me then to studying Buddhism I I would definitely never claim to say that I practiced it but studied Buddhism um a fair amount Zen I found maybe the most intriguing but confusing what are some of the like core tenants of Zen so um I had this opportunity to meet my mentor um later on uh his name is waha so when I asked him to teach about money he said his first lesson is forget about money so I was so confused yeah one of the things that I found super um confusing and people so the where I was going is the notion of a Zen Cohen and this is something that people probably in the US anyway be tangentially familiar with the most famous one we talk about is what is the sound of one hand clapping um and there are many Zen cones which are like Beyond confusing and of course of course the idea is once you understand sort of the absurdity of the question itself and of course I'm I'm doing this from a logical perspective and Zen is I think meant to be very different than that but um just to get people an anchor Point once you understand the absurdity of the question then it's like you're a step closer to Enlightenment um so when he said forget about money what was he what was he trying to get you to like what does that mean cuz obviously it's not truly forget that it exists yes so what does he mean so I think uh meant about uh where I focus because if you want money you have to forget about money you have to forget about what you can give to other people how much service you can give out to the world and then you receive money so he was telling me not to focus on money because money is the end result of what we get after surveying the world so instead of focusing on what you get you have to really focus on what you give and and and our life is in the middle of giving and receiving reing so unless we receive well unless we we give well we can receive so we are in the cycle of appreciation or or resentment um either cycle you're in um your life exist so if you start appreciating your life about everything including money your life will be filled with money and appreciation if your life will be filled with resentment anger and fear around money and also around life your life will be also surrounded by Li uh fear and resentment and anxiety so he taught me how to focus instead of U just getting the end result of money and he was very well respected because he was talking about philanthropy so I'm teaching uh about happiness and money ever since yeah that the idea that he's been so incredibly successful obviously lends a lot of credence um to the things that he says and one of the things that I I wanted to understand better about his teachings to you and your teachings you've written so prolifically what what is it like how does it get that big how does the topic sort of expand so far what is it that people are getting wrong and what are some of the like Universal principles that are going to lead people to um I'll say wealth and it's probably worth defining how would you define wealth and then we'll go back to those two questions in my mind wealth is uh an emotion you know it doesn't really matter how much you have how much you make because I've interviewed over the course of my career I've interviewed many millionaires and billionaires and some of them are very unhappy and very upset with everything I'm sure you've met some happy ones and very unhappy ones so uh and also among the people uh who are struggling with life they are also happy people and unhappy people so I think wealth is an attitude if you feel like you're so happy and so content with what you have you are already wealthy but if you have uh uh you have if you have to struggle every day and you cannot Fe find happiness uh either in your business or in personal life I think you're not wealthy even if you have billions in your bank account but that doesn't mean that you don't have to have money that's what I like about your approach is there there is a recognition so part of the reason that I think that people continue to strive for money um I lived the nightmare of money can't buy you happiness I had heard a thousand people tell me that money wasn't going to buy me happiness that you know pursuing money outright was going to end up being a problem and I still had to do it and when I ran into the wall of oh really truly money cannot buy you happiness how is it that I ended up here when all the people told me that this was going to be the outcome why did I have to walk this path like why couldn't I just accept their wisdom and I realized that one of the things that people don't talk about is that money really is powerful money is you call it energy um I'll call it power like money gives you the ability to close your eyes imagine something that you want to create and then open your eyes and actually be able to do it and if you have the skill set of course and so there there's real utility in money and when people talk about and and I've heard you say before I don't want to get too spiritual like I want to keep this grounded and I think that that's really important because if you tell people hey forget about money because money doesn't matter there's going to be a turnoff but if you reorient your your behaviors it's going align your behaviors to that's actually going to allow you to generate actual money then I think that it draws people in a little bit more so with that context I want to go back to the two questions so what are the mistakes that people make and what are some Universal things people need to understand if they actually want to be wealthy in the Way That You just defined mhm so I think most of us the uh the biggest problem I think especially today is that we are so afraid of money and so as much as we want money we are so scared of it so uh why do you say that I think that that hit me is very counterintuitive why why do you think people are scared of money it's because of a money trauma I call it money wounds that we we've had since our childhood we used to have some uh unless your parents are perfect and unfortunately it's not the case in in in any any culture so we've been scolded about money you know we spend too much we wasted the money or we denied uh Kate lesson or soccer lesson or ballet lesson or piano lessons because it's expensive some of my friends were taught you are not worth it that's like that's a big blow so uh we've been denied so many times around money so that's why as much as we want money because we we feel uh money can buy happiness or money money can buy at least freedom but at the same times money um have been abused abused us for so many ways so as much as we want to get close to it but if we get too close to it we get Burns or like hurt so uh for a lot of people money is a mystery person so how do they begin to change that relationship I'm assuming some of this is going to be just narrative around how they talk to themselves about money what do you advise people you have to start watching your your language uh my mother used to say that and then uh around money especially uh a lot of people say like you know I was ripped off so there are so many negative language around money and my mentor W said you have to use positive words around money otherwise money will not like you and I really I thought it's very cute you know and then uh in my book I talk about what if uh if if money were a person who would it be like is that person a gentle person or angry person so just um you know uh you have to pay attention to how you relate to money uh if you just um feel like money is just a thing like you don't care but if you don't care you know uh you end up uh being in debt so you have to be very careful and respectful for money uh some Japanese people actually one of my students made huton you know bed for a wallet it's it's so cute to to show respect you know while I rest please uh money and credit cards please rest here too so it's like a a little bed like like a cat cat bed and then you're supposed to put uh your wallet into the bed so it's just a metaphor but unless you show respect to money and uh the money coming in money going out both ways you cannot really feel you cannot feel peaceful around money especially uh uh this hard time of economy you have to really um pay close attention to your emotions and most of us are so controlled by uh anxiety and fear and money that's why do things which are not really true to us to in order to survive so we feel like uh if we have no money we cannot survive that means you're dead death so uh the funny switch is turned on uh it's I think it's our survival mechanism um you know 200 years ago or 300 years ago everybody was a farmer nobody's you know probably don't use much money but uh now unless you have money you you cannot buy food so um money and survival are so tied in your system so as people begin to tell themselves a new narrative they build the futon bed for their wallet um they think about who that person is and they I'm guessing a lot of people are going to think of that person as abusive or um you know they wander off and they don't have a good relationship with that so how do they begin to change their mindset around that how do they begin to to um turn that narrative do you do you tell them to imagine somebody who is kind or gentle um what is that process so um but since we we've been abused we feel like we've been abused by this person we we a little scared of this person right so I think the first step is actually the step that my mentor taught me that is your money thank your money when money comes in either by in a form of government check or salary or commission or whatever um the money you receive you say thank you thank you money for coming in because in these days it's so so rare to find you and then and pay you somebody pays you right either could be government or your husband wife or your clients uh there are so many other people who do the similar job that you do but they chose you to pay you so like there are meanings of reasons to appreciate for the money so when money comes in just say thank you or or D or sh or whatever your language or Mercy you know and and then when you spend money also you know because you're getting something for the money and said out so it's almost like a kartic kid teaching you know walk in walk out so he said Arigato inato out if you do it for two months and then come back so like oh I wanted to have some stock tips or like investment tips or I expected something different but the the thing I got is iato in AR got out and I practiced for two months and I felt genuinely happier so I recommend anybody uh you know uh just H try it at least because it doesn't cost you anything and once you start appreciating money coming in money going out you start appreciating about other things so this uh in out opens a door to a new life which is full of appreciation and I think we definitely need that uh W said appreciation melts fear and anxiety so if you start and if you keep appreciating money coming and going out you cannot worry about money at the same time because a human mind can focus one thing at a time so wah has a a very interesting unique trick uh of um um sort like changing our um wire in the brain so once you start appreciating it's so funny because one of my students said oh gee can I forgot got to worry about money for a week because you f focus on uh appreciation yeah I think this is really powerful is is a very important first step and when I think about my own Journey um I won't say that I had a negative view about money and if you had asked me to describe what money was I probably would have whoever I could think of that was like glamorous and exciting and Powerful like that was my vision of money which is why I was chasing it so hard ultimately coming to understand okay I'm making more money than I've ever made but I'm not happier than I've ever been and the neurochemistry that I want to feel like this is not taking me there and so I began to what what I began to do is change my behavior so I changed my story about money that what I flipped over into was the only thing that matters is feeling alive so I'm going to stop chasing money I'm going to start thinking about value and so I had a very negative connotation around money and I just said out look I'm going to set that aside for now and I'm just going to pursue um fulfillment I'm going to do things to add value to people's lives I'm going to work to improve myself that was a huge part for me was always wanting to get better myself and what I found was I needed both I needed a change of mindset I needed to stop thinking money was going to solve my problems but I also needed to change my behaviors and ultimately I don't I no one is ever going to think their way to success I think that you you're you you have to think in a new way that is advantageous but you have to act in a new way that's advantageous so after you know when you do the wax on wax off like eventually we do find ourselves in a karate tournament and we really do have to fight yes so what does that look like especially now in this crazy economy that we're going through right now let's get let's go to that next phase so people are they're adato money in adato Money out they've got the futon for their wallet like they're in a Zen place like they're doing good now like you retired at 29 not just because you were thinking you retired at 29 cuz you ran businesses you got very thoughtful about how to generate money and save it um how should people be acting with their money so we get now how they should be thinking but how should they be acting with their money thank you Tom I think it's a beautiful question and I I think that's exactly what we need to learn um because once you start appreciating your life shifts too uh for example one of the uh readers on my book U she was a a single mom uh with a low paying job she was working as a secretary and then she came to me and she used to complain about uh her low paying job but after reading uh my book she uh changed her attitude and she started appreciating about life and boss and and and she realized that she didn't have a college degree but she got she was hired as a secretary so that's a big reason to appreciate her boss uh before she was always complaining about him and I think the feeling really probably came across to uh his her boss and she got a big rise uh in a few weeks so once you start appreciating I I've heard so many stories I can even write few books on this uh once you start appreciating your boss your clients uh they appreciate you back so uh in my 20s the reason why I I I was successful was I was little unique in so many different different things for example when I was doing accounting Consulting I divided my group uh clients to two groups one I do regular job the other I always uh bring something whenever I I got to meet them just a herb tea Japanese tea like a book or just not super expensive so in six months I got so many referrals from uh the the gift giving groups you know I didn't ask for any clients right but they gave me uh so many referrals and the second you know a group uh not so much so uh I Rec I recommend everybody to start giving more uh something little extra not like 30% more but something to to show your appreciation and uh it it doesn't really matter if you're florist or cleaners or uh business lawyers or a dentist if you start giving something you get more so uh this is the law I think if you give more um you receive more and then there is one more extra reason to appreciate about so you you your life would shift so your whole energy would be so different and for so content and I think people want to do business with happier people you know people don't want to go with people who are very depressed so the people with Radiance of appreciation often attracts uh more people and more opportunities so this is not a new age or spiritual thing it's a practice to to um to appreciate more so what you appreciate appreciates and I think it's it's so simple so start appreciating about money is the first step and then start second step is start appreciating what you have and if you start sharing what you have I call it gift uh all of us have gifts I've written probably like uh half of my books 20 books on how to discover your gifts and monetize them because uh we are born each of us is born with the special gift and something to be shared with this uh planet and if you can find it and if you can uh improve it and you can you can polish it and just um share with a society I think um that translates into money so I wrote a national bestseller uh do what you love and make sure Money Follows you so it's very important you have to have both but I remember being in there and saying to myself like what the hell am I doing telling myself this crap like if I feel this way this is what I going to be my dad and I remember at that moment I changed the story and I started thinking to myself and it didn't happen overnight so this is what I want to encourage you when you find the bad story find a way to just reverse the whole thing