Kevin O’Leary: “The BIGGEST Myth About Money That Keeps You POOR!”

It's a hobby that eventually should be taken behind the barn and I'm the only shark that tells the truth and I'm your best friend because your idea does suck. It's going to zero and you're not going to waste your time on it any longer if you have the skills, you have the desire, you have the interest, and you have the ability to execute. Within years, you'll be wealthy. AI is just another tool set and way overhyped. It's like the internet was in the, you know, early '90s. Where people are underserved in America is the opportunity to get educated because that actually determines outcomes more than anything else. What do you think the minimum wage should be? I don't believe in a minimum wage. I think the market decides. Being married is not easy. It's a total pain in the ass, but it beats the alternative. The one thing I would have changed in my life if I could have I would have. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. We really, really appreciate it. So, I'm curious. We'll just start right off here cuz I know you're short on time. who should not be an entrepreneur and when do you know when to give up? About 2thirds of America should not be entrepreneurs. And the the reason you would know that is you you're unable to make the first step. If you don't have um the ability to take risk, you'll never be a successful entrepreneur because I'll give you an example. In great business schools, I teach at practically all of them. Almost half the class become consultants. They don't have the guts. Because think about a consultant, they never make any decisions of consequence. You get paid a lot. It's great. If you go to the top of your consulting firm, maybe you make 3 4 million bucks a year. That's great. Can't complain about that. But every decision you make is just a consultation. So that an executive who actually makes decisions, who's a real entrepreneur, can say yes or no to that idea. You're just making decisions of no consequence whatsoever. And the reason I don't hire consultants is after two years they get that virus. They're just generating opinions. They're not doing anything. And I don't mean to insult consultants. I would just never hire them. And so if you really, you know, jump off and become a consultant, you're going into a life of mediocrity. And I'm trying to define the difference between that life of mediocrity and one where that same graduate says, I'm going to take a chance. I'm 28 years old. I don't have a family yet. I'm going to start a business. I don't know if it's going to work or not, but I have the ability to just take that risk, not seeing what's on the other side of the chasm. and I'm going to forego a salary of 200,000 a year because I want something more. Those are the people that become free one day because they're m they make 5 thou $5 million in a day because they're entrepreneurs and that consultant that you use, [laughter] they're back enjoying their lives but in in a sea of mediocrity. Do you think you're born like that though? because it seems as though there is a personality type that's more prone to becoming an entrepreneur who really pushes back against rules, against authority, and they want to take a different path. I don't know if it if you're born that way. I think you have events that occur in your life that are jolting to you. And I every entrepreneur I talk to that's been successful has that defining moment where they say, "I remember this moment in my life and I remember what happened to me and it it just changed my direction. It it it it's like a meteorite in space. knock it off course a fraction of an inch, a hundred years later it's a billion miles in a different place. Well, that's the same thing with an entrepreneur early in their lives. For me, it was getting fired the first day I ever had a job. I realized that that was just somebody else had power over me. I couldn't even deal with that concept. And so that was the I never worked again. And with all the hardships and everything else, but it's very similar. There's some event that triggers somebody. So, I'm not sure you're born with it. Just something in your DNA says I'm going to take that path of risk. What do you think is more important for a successful entrepreneur? To be hungry for money, to be focused on profits, increasing revenue, decreasing expenses, or to be very passionate about the product or service that you're trying to sell. Well, if you're hungry for money, I guarantee you'll fail 100%. If if you start into entrepreneurship and on a journey and all you care about is getting rich, you will fail. You will fail miserably. Every entrepreneur, not some, every single one that achieved some massive liquidity event that I've talked to, and I've met many of them, they don't even remember, you know, the day it happened, they just woke up and said, "Oh my goodness, I'm filthy rich." But they weren't calculating for that. It is because they created something of such value that someone else said, "Well, we want to buy that business." And you own whatever you owned of it. And you That's what happened to me. I woke up one day and we sold the learning company for 4.2 2 billion. I was one of the founding members. I had founders shares. I wasn't even thinking about that the night night before when we were negotiating the deal. And then the funny thing was when we all came back to the office, the 10 of us that were founders, we didn't know anything else except to go back to work. We didn't even know what to do. So the only difference was we were filthy rich. Now, over time, people change sort of their momentum and and their motivation. But if you think that you're you can calculate the exit and that somehow you can start a business because you know you're going to sell it and make a lot of money, you will fail [laughter] 100%. It's the second issue you talked about. It's the passion of loving what you do and getting up every day and working willing to work 25 hours a day, 8 days a week because you love it so much. You love to compete. That's how you become free. It's about not not about the pursuit of capital. It's the pursuit of freedom, personal freedom. I don't have to work anymore. I work harder than I ever have. I really enjoy what I do. I love to compete. I love to do what we're doing right now, talking about this so that others may learn from my mistakes. But the whole idea is personal freedom. That is the American dream. And you have to set your course on that. And there's one attribute you need to pull that off. And I've taught so many people. It's the ability to differentiate the signal from the noise every minute of the day. People are going to chase you with stuff. You're going to get a thousand ideas. They're going to call you and ask you to do stuff. If it's not on task for the signal, it's noise. It's noise. And you have to just push it aside. Those are the great entrepreneurs. They don't deal with the noise. Who are you competing against? It's when I start a business, for example, um let's say watch insurance. I'm a big watch collector. I've looked at every single policy there is for watches. None of them work for me. Why? The problem with watches that if you go and get a rider on your home insurance, you know, you're going to notice when you actually read the fine print that you're going to end up in many cases with a depreciated value of the watch 10 years later when you lose it or it gets stolen or you or you break it. Except the majority of watches these days go up in value and sometimes geometrically. certain brands quadruple in value. And and your your policy a decade later when that watch is out of production can't even contemplate its market value. So I want a policy that actually scrapes market value every 24 hours and I can insure it for exactly what it'll cost to replace it or I can insure it for the purchase price. I can decide myself, but I'd much rather insure my watches for what they were worth last night. So I have a policy with Chub and it's a stated value and I've started doing this with cars, too. I notice [clears throat] it becoming a lot more common. a stated value and then if that watch gets lost or stolen, they replace that I think plus 50% up to the total policy amount. So let's say you have 100,000 in watches. One of those watches is worth 20. You lose it, it gets stolen, they'll cover that up to 30 up to the total policy limit of 100 within a certain period of time. Okay. What happens if that's a a steel widefaced Daytona that you bought for $12,000 is now trading for $58,000. Then you do a stated value of, you know, and that and that eats up how much of your of of what you've got left for the other five. Whatever you say, right? So for my I think I have five watches. I stated values on all of them and I stated the value based on what they're selling for on Chrono 24. So if I were to replace few policies like that, no, I get it, but I'd rather solve for a different problem. I have many watches. I only want to ensure the 25 I travel with and I want to travel maybe for a month with these to go shoot Shark Tank, for example. I'm gonna and I'm going to put them in a bank vault in LA. I want the value of every one of those watches that day should it get lost. And I want to be able to turn that policy off when I swap it out for another 25 watches. Maybe I only have three watches. I only want to wear one. It doesn't matter. I want a different kind of insurance product. There's nothing wrong with what you've got, but it doesn't solve for me. If you think you're going to spend 1.72% which is approximately what you're spending of the replacement value on your watches, I would want it to be accurate. I want to check the language regarding what theft is theft and what loss is loss cuz I'm writing it specifically for watches. And lastly, does it work internationally because I travel a lot and I've talked to thousands of people that are collectors of watches and they all want the same thing and they can't find it. There's nothing wrong with Chub. There's nothing wrong with Lloyds of London. When you make something specific for just watch owners, maybe you've made a better mousetrap. The biggest challenge the watch industry has in insurance is customer acquisition. I do not have that problem. There are millions of people who know I'm a watch collector. And when we tested this, I just put one 15-second ad out and got requests for 2,000 policies. No insurance company's ever been able to do that. So I'm pretty confident that a year from now after I've launched this product, I'll be a great competitor and I'll make this industry better by offering a better product that people have to compete with. That's why I like to be a competitor. I see a hole in the market, I see a need, I see something that's required, I go pursue it. For a young entrepreneur maybe trying to impress some investors or just a young motivated person that wants to get into watches, what type of watch would you recommend they get as their first watch? And what do you think is the most overrated watch company that exists? Although, you know what? Before we go into that, let's do some quick math because minimizing your business's expenses is also the same as maximizing your profits. And we all want profits, right, Jack? That's right. 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And by popular demand, Netswuite has decided to extend its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for just a few more weeks. All you got to do is head to netsweet.com/ic. Again, that's netsweet.com/icist. netsweet.com/istic or you could use the link down below in the description. Thank you again to Netswuite for sponsoring today's video. And let's get back to the podcast. for a young entrepreneur maybe trying to impress some investors or just a young motivated person that wants to get into watches, what type of watch would you recommend they get as their first watch? And what do you think is the most overrated watch company that exists? That's a great question because I've said to people um countless times, never borrow money to buy a watch. A watch should mark a moment in your life as it has for me. I I remember my very first watch, a Cartier Panther that I bought on my my first deal. You know, I think it cost me at that time $5,000, which back then was a fortune to me. But I I could I was able to afford it because I closed a deal. The journey of watch collecting is actually a disease because you don't really need a watch anymore. You get better time off your phone. But because for men and for women too, it marks certain points in their life. I have a another watch that has on the back my first 500 million fund. I cherish that because you know that's not a lot anymore but it was my first when I got 500 million to manage there it was and we all bought watches. This is 2 million subscribers on it on the back. Exactly. So classic Rolex on the back subscribers. Yeah. This was actually a gift from uh a subscriber. You would never want to lose that. Oh gosh. Never. Never. And and and it's it's a very very special piece that you will carry with pride for the rest of your life. And so every single watch I have has that. But the entry levels now and I work with all the brands. People always, you know, call me up say, "Why don't you endorse my brand? Why don't you wear only my watch?" I'm a dial guy. I want to work with every watch maker. I'm a member of the New York Coralological Society. I want to support watch makers and I support as a like a patron new watch makers like Simone Brit. I'm one of his biggest buyers because I love his work and he's got 10,000 people want to buy his watches and he respects his collectors. I'm one of them. Here's some watches that I think are remarkable in terms of value and entry-level pricing. Tutor. In fact, I'm wearing a Tutor right now. Yeah, I noticed that. This is the Tudtor Miami Pink. This is a $7,000 watch, but that dial is absolutely spectacular. It's beautiful. So, Tutor has watches down to three and $4,000 and and the quality of a Tutor is remarkable. Grand Seiko. Spectacular. We were looking at this yesterday. Was it yesterday? in Puerto Rico. We walked in and the guy was talking non-stop about Grand Seiko and their movements are fantastic. The Japanese really have it down for watches. They actually started making watches before the Swiss. The quality of a Grand Seiko piece is unbelievable. So, if you're going to buy an entry- level watch, go look at what Grand Seiko, not Seikko, Grand Seiko, right? There's a difference. Grand Seiko is extremely affordable. They make some amazing pieces. And those are two brands that I feel, you know, Line for women is a fantastic brand and I support them all and I own them all. I mean, I'm a dial guy. Doesn't matter to me. I mean, look, this is a loose PC. It's covered in diamonds. It's a really expensive piece. That's not why I bought it. I bought it cuz it's got a beautiful red band, which is my signature look, but also the dial is spectacular. It's a crazy. I would argue for entrepreneurs, they want something that's recognizable, where the average person on the street looks at a watch and says that person is successful because they have that watch. I think Rolex is really the only brand that has that name recognition where if you're going into a meeting, uh, unless you're a watch like watch people know Grand Seiko, they know Tutor, but nonwatch people I think had the respect for Rolex as a brand of like, oh, they must be successful because they have a a Rolex Submariner. But who you're trying to impress is like a bidding entrepreneur. Like you're trying It is true. Rolex is 40% of the market in that sense but there are other brands I would argue that PC Philippe if you talk about the horsemen of watches in terms of respect in a meeting AP Rolex PC Philippe they're well wellknown they are the three horsemen but also there's some brands that have come up in the last decade that are remarkable FPJ even if you have all those watches those are the FPJ collectors they want a Journ is the a living Picasso of watchmaking everybody knows when he passes all the watches are going to be worth way more. Everybody's trying to get any jorn they can get. It's transcended a micro brand. It's transcended an indep independent brand. It's it's become a brand and that that happened. So watch collecting is really about for me it's styles. Um but I love it and it's a whole community of people. It opens doors all around the world for me. Royal families, uh European leadership, everybody loves watches. Last watch question because we do have to move on. Which brand do you think is overrated? That's a really tough question because do you want me to say I'll say Hublau. Hublau. Okay. Yeah. I mean I get that but Hublau has just come with some dials um the last six months. You know these brands go they eb and flow. Let me give you another example. Richard Mill that was the hottest hottest hottest hottest brand during the crypto craze. People were buying Richard Mills with crypto and I could never wear one because they never were allowed on television. They were just too ostentatious. And then along comes their new titanium 01 thin super stunning dial and I am wearing that on Shark Tank season 16. So there's a brand that I couldn't touch now has become iconic in terms of style with this super thin titanium watch. So you can say that about Hubau, but just you wait 6 months and stuff happens. It's like talking about steel versus gold. Six, seven years ago you nobody touched yellow gold. Now it's smoking hot. And just in Geneva a few weeks ago, the best of show was what Cartier did with the crash, a watch designed back in 1921. They brought these skeleton crashes and everybody went ballistic. And that's Cartier. And so that that's a brand that you may thought was jewelry. Now, I'd say for fashion couture, when you see what's going to be on style for the rest of this year, you're see you're going to see a ton of Cartier. Now, going back to topics, when it comes to business and entrepreneurship, you talked about being comfortable enough to fire your mother. What does that mean to you? When you start a business, you're no longer number one. You start hiring employees, they're they're they're on top of you. Your shareholders, your bankers, they're on top of you. On top of both of them are your customers. They're number one. They'll always be number one. You are at the bottom of the stack because even though you own the business, and that's important, and that's how you'll be free one day, from that point on, you you you are working for everybody above you. If you use nepotism in your business and they don't perform, that's hurting all of the rest of the stack. So, if you have your mother and she can't perform and she's only on there cuz you want to put her on payroll for some reason and she doesn't deliver on her promise to the team, you got to take her out behind the barn, shoot her. You got to shoot her because you're hurting the business. And it's the business that matters the most, not you, not any one individual. If they're not team members, they're cancer. surgery immediately gone. The minute they're not on mandate, gone. I learned this lesson a long time ago. You're either on board or you're not. It seems as though the trend is to be ruthless in business. Is there ever a time to show compassion in business or would you say for the most part that's giving away something that you don't need to be giving away? Let's get back to, you know, behind the barn. No, no, no. There's I I'm very compassionate. I think great leaders are very compassionate. Great managers are very compassionate. They understand people are human beings. But in business, it's very measurable. It's very binary. You either make money or you lose money. There's no in between. I mean, break even business is not sustainable. It's not going to work. You either make money or you lose money. Most companies can't last more than 36 months losing money because they can't raise anymore if they go out of business. So, you you should understand what the goal is. And you know, people tell me all the time, well, shouldn't we have a social mission? Sure you should, as long as you can afford it. If you don't make money, you can't pay out any social mission. You can't support any charity because you're losing money. If you don't understand that, you're probably not going to make it because businesses, the DNA of a business is actually to make money. And lots of people say, "Well, no, it isn't. It's to save some, you know, social cause." That's actually called a charity. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can't mix them up. I'm curious, how do you value your time? Although, you know what? While we're on this topic, AI could be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and billions of dollars are being invested, so buckle up. The problem with this, however, is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. 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I'm curious, how do you value your time? In the segment with Logan Paul and Impulsive, you were talking about an entrepreneur who came and was making $5 million a year from his business and his fiance was upset that he was not spending enough time with her. And you said, "What's more replaceable, the business or her?" and she I guess at the end of the day was probably more replaceable. But how do you balance living life and enjoying things versus the pursuit of money? Well, you have to understand there's different phases in an entrepreneurs's life. Um there is no balance in the early days. And I think you're fooling yourself if you think there is. Which is why I say you better love your idea. You better love your mission. You better love your product. You better love your customers because you're going to have to spend an amount of energy on it and you're not going to have a balanced life if you're successful. That's when you buy your freedom and you can dial in your participation to your business by hiring more people that can execute for you. I'm a very fortunate guy today. I can do whatever I want, but I it doesn't mean I didn't work like hell for it. I did. But now I I pursue things that really matter to me. I think there is a balance in life that you earn and you need it because you have to have the ying and yang. If all you do is do business all day, you will not be creative. You really, really have to balance it. You'll be creative when you have the ying and yang of chaos of art. Let me give you some examples. I love to learn from other successful entrepreneurs. I I I did a a guest stint with Michael Rubin uh from Fanatics, very successful entrepreneur in sports. He was a guest shark and I was working with him and he said a few times, "How big can this be?" when he was being pitched deals. And I really like that about him because he wasn't thinking small. He said, "If I'm going to burn my time, it's got to be big. It may be very competitive, but it's got to be big." And I re and you know what's great about Shark Tank, you meet these wonderful people and you have lunch with them and hang out and do everything else. Those five words really stuck in my mind. So I'm learning. I'm always learning from other entrepreneurs. That's one guy. How big can it be? Just think about how important that is to ask yourself in every opportunity you see. And the other one, Elon Musk, he hates wasting time. If you're engaged in a conversation with him and he thinks it's useless information, he'll just walk away. He doesn't care about the social impact of that. That's why he's so wildly successful. And so you got to think about that. I've seen him do that. And so it's people feel nervous meeting him maybe and they want to make small talk. That's not what he wants. What do you know that's useful information? That's what he wants. Yeah. When does it become unhealthy? Uh I want to give the example back in really from 2020 to 2023. I was in a phase where all I cared about were what I'm doing every like hour of the day. and I calculate the value of my time for an hour. And if someone were to say, "Let's go and grab lunch. Let's go and grab a coffee." I would calculate how much that time is worth. And then think to myself, do I want to pay this amount to go and have coffee with this person? And it got to the point where like almost everything, it just nothing made sense for me to do other than work because my time was so valuable during those certain hours. But also as a secondary example, Graham and I, we were considering getting a hotel room together or separate. [laughter] And Graham was running the calculation of the cost per hour that he would have to pay if we got separate rooms and is it worth that premium? And I think about the other, you know, stuff. It's like, okay, well, we'd have separate bathrooms, maybe we get a better night of sleep, maybe this. And he's still calculating this. And this was probably four or five months ago. And he has plenty of money now. So, at what level do you [laughter] think it becomes counterproductive? It never becomes counterproductive. I'd say you've reached Nana. All right. That was actually how you should operate. There's no question because when when you have enough capital and you can start to say to yourself, well, I'm going to fly first class now because I' I've earned it for myself. But you earned it for yourself. You didn't borrow money to fly first class. In the beginning, we use points for everybody. We were the back of the bus everywhere. Now, if I'm going to fly to Europe tonight, I'm going to fly first class because I I I I earned it. I earned it. But I can afford to do that. But I am the same as you. I break my day into 30 minute segments and I'm always looking with, you know, with the people that schedule me. What's this? What's this thing in the schedule? What is that? Why am I doing that? What am I going to get from that that's either of interest to me that I'll learn something or is going to help one of our businesses? I've wish they're now 54. Why am I doing that? And if it's, oh, well, um, they called up, they said they knew you, and I'll say, well, I I don't know why I would use my most valuable asset is my time. That's what you said earlier. You're right. It is your most valuable asset. Now, when you use it for your family, there's that's very valuable. But when you waste it, that is a crime because you'll never get it back. But when is it counterproductive? Because there are some things where I will deliberate for maybe 30 minutes price matching to save $50 and then I go through this other phase where it's my time is worth more than $50 and the time spent deliberating. I may as well just paid more. But then I feel internally that he doesn't like getting ripped off. I don't like Yeah. I like getting a good deal. And so when I think I'm overspending, I feel like I'm getting ripped off in a sense. And I I looked at myself 10 years ago and I'm thinking 10 years ago me would look at this and and not want to get ripped off. I think that's a very good instinct. I don't think you should ever give up on that. I I you know people ask me all the time, you just bought that watch for $250,000. Why would you spend $250,000 on that watch? And I argue and I have the empirical data to show it that that is probably a better investment than putting it in the S&P 500 because that piece is a piece unique and in 10 years will be worth materially more and I'm making that calculated risk as an alternative asset. I actually have on my balance sheet in my portfolio marktomarket value on every single watch because I don't want to get ripped off. I mark to market every 24 hours the value of every piece. And I know that that's, you know, something I've learned. I can look at things that I study like watches and know when it's a bad purchase and I won't do it. So, it's sort of keeping that in your DNA is a good thing. I don't know why it's a bad thing. Spending a lot doesn't mean that, you know, it's a bad investment. Yeah. I think it's it's the value of of your time versus the amount that you spend. Like even last night, the first thing I do when I look at a restaurant menu is the price and then what it is second. And I'd rather get the item that's $18 and a better deal than the other one that I kind of want a little more if it's 25. But I feel like that's a bit overpriced for the fajita. Like I'd rather the mahi burger. I'm 100% the same way because I mean, [laughter] you know, I also you should you should spend money on good food for your body because that actually makes you much more productive. I don't eat crap food anymore. None. So, it's it's you you'll see as you get older, you realize your energy levels are so much different. You know, either you treat food as medicine or food or or one day you'll be taking medicine cuz you ate [ __ ] food. Like, that's really what happened. It's bad. I mean, it's you you should think about what you're putting in your body. Why do you like making money so much? I don't need more money. I just like the only measure of business and success against competition is profitability. I'll run a business for three or four years. My wine business made no money for 4 years until we turned it profitable and now it's wildly successful because we now ship direct to consumer in 48 states. I think I ship uh 2.7 million bottles a year. I figured that business out and I don't know many people that ship that many bottles. And so I'm competing and I'm winning and I'm making money and I'm building a great team in wine and I enjoy wine. If you're not making money, what are you doing? It's a hobby. It's okay if you want to call it a hobby, but if you're actually burning hours, we've been talking about time. Burning hours and making no money. Why would you do that? Unless it's a hobby. Otherwise, you're just a loser. Now, what about when it comes to body language? Uh, back to the impulsive podcast. You said that there's some downtime when you're filming Shark Tank where cameras will come in, get B-roll, and the contestants are just standing there. And you said that you could tell from their body language how confident they are and if they're going to be successful and if they believe in the product. What do you look for specifically when it comes to body language? Mostly in the eyes. They If you stare at somebody, can they take it? You can stare at somebody on the Shark Tank set for four or five seconds and they just look away and they start looking around the room. They're going to fail. They got to have they have to have in their head that moment before they're even talking, I am here for a reason. I've earned my way here. I'm really good at what I do. I'm going to deliver my message and nobody is going to trip me. That's the mentality you have to have. and because you're going to get fried in there. Even though you've practiced, you know, 50 times in front of a mirror, it's not the same from when the cameras are rolling and you've got all the sharks there and the dynamic that's going on. You have to be confident and it's really in the eyes, I think. Um that's cuz I'm I'm right almost 99% of the time that's a loser. Hasn't even said anything yet. Sure enough, they're losers cuz they just don't have what it takes to drive. You know, there are winners and losers. That's not my fault. It's just the way it is. And what about trusting your gut? Has that ever steered you the wrong way? Because you're very much lead by intuition and you kind of have a a feeling if this is going to work out or not. You don't have gut till you failed a lot. The intuition or the gut feeling is experience. That's what it is. And so I always tell this famous story about my last year of business school. This guy came in the class. They always in these MBA courses they start bringing in guest lecturers and he was came into the cohort that we were graduating a week later and I was sitting beside a guy named Barry Nicole no he passed away it's really unfortunate but I spent two years beside him and this guy walks in and he doesn't say anything you the the the lecturer introduces him and he just starts walking at the bottom of the pit. It's like Harvard. It's a case study. 168 people in the room. And he just walked around and then he started walking up and down the aisles and it was really uncomfortable for everybody. Like why is this guy not talking? And then he goes down to the bottom of the pit and he looks up and he says, "You guys think you're such hot [ __ ] You're going to graduate with your MBA. Aren't you smart? And you think you're going to go out and change the world. A third of you are going to fail in 36 months. You're going to get fired. A third of you are going to go into mediocrity as consultants and a third of you are going to work like hell for 10 to 15 years and maybe make it as an entrepreneur. And I [laughter] I leaned over to Barry and I whispered, "This guy's a real asshole." And that I'm that guy today. I'm that guy. He is right. He was 100% right. That's exactly what happened. He was 100% right. The arrogance you have when you're young and you've never felt the sting of failure is unbelievable. And only life can beat the crap out of you and make you have experience. That's the whole idea. And that's really what I learned. And now when I go in and I give that same lecture to people, it's out of experience. And so when I see deals now and I meet entrepreneurs or I'm offered to invest in stuff, I have a pretty good um spider sense whether it's going to be successful or not. Do you think it's better to tell them it's going to fail and just say, "Your idea sucks. You're not confident. This is not going to work out." Or do you think it's better to let them fail and go through that experience? They could learn from it. Well, that's what I do all day. That's why I'm the hated shark. I always say that idea sucks. It has no merit. It's going to go bankrupt and you're going to lose your house. Versus what Lori and Barbara do. Oh, Kumbaya, you keep going. I admire what you're doing. I'm not going to give you any money, but you just keep on going. You go, girl. You go. I lean over to them. I say, "What are you talking about? this idea is [ __ ] It's going to zero for sure. It's disingenuous what you're doing. We have that debate all the time. And and you know, and I get the rap for being the guy that tells the truth. I'm the I'm the only shark that tells the truth and I'm your best friend because your idea does suck. It's going to zero and you're not going to waste your time on it any longer. You'll start something else. That's the whole idea of entrepreneurship. Maybe you try three times. You only need one success. What time were you most surprised by the pitch where you thought, "Okay, this is horrible. you're going to lose your house. But then it ended up being a success and there was demand for that. Before we get into that, here's a funny story, guys. I for some reason thought that I was a stock market investing genius. I put $20,000 into a Robin Hood portfolio and I brought it all the way up to $70,000 in like 5 months. Have you ever seen anything like that before, man? Those are the times, man. 2020 through 2021, anything you picked was going to go up in value. It's just that was the market at the time. But guess what happened to my $70,000? It went down to $4,000. I lost everything. It was devastating. The thing is though, your intentions were good when it came to it. Like, you wanted to invest your money. You wanted to beat inflation. At the time, a lot of things were doing well. And it's simply a matter of just not getting the proper education to lock in profits and properly diversify. Since then, I've made a lot of money investing. I'm investing for the long term in the right stocks. And same goes for Graham. And one of the places that I actually turn to for information happens to be sponsoring this episode, which is crazy. And that would be Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance allows you to read comprehensive financial news analysis or just learn more about investing in general. It's also the website that I personally visit every single day. I get some video ideas from them. It's just a great resource to go and learn about investing, see what's going on, and the best part about it, it's completely free. So, if you guys want to learn more about investing and make sure that you're making the right decisions, unlike me, check out Yahoo Finance. There's a link down below in the description. Thank you so much, Yahoo Finance, for sponsoring this episode. And back to the podcast. What time were you most surprised by the pitch where you thought, "Okay, this is horrible. You're going to lose your house." But then it ended up being a success and there was demand for that base pause. I think it was 2020 or 2019. Anna Sky walks out says, "I have a cat DNA testing kit for $29." And I looked at her, I said, "I can buy a new cat for five bucks. Why would I spend $29 on a DNA testing kit? What a stupid idea this is. She was so compelling. No one gave her a dime except at the end of her pitch. I just thought, "Wow, this woman just does not stop. She is vicious. She is so focused on this idea that she can help cats live longer and that people care enough about their cats that they'll give them 29 bucks." I said, "Okay, I can't take it anymore. I'll give you I'll give you the 250,000 whatever it was I gave her." And I said, "You can't help it [laughter] anymore. I I couldn't take it. She just was not going to leave. 250 grand just to stop. She was not going to leave without a deal. And so I finally I caved. That was one of the it was the highest IR return in Shark Tank history. A matter of months later, she sold it to a giant pharmaceutical, not because of the kits, because of the data, right? She had the cat DNA data by the hundreds of thousands. And I thought to myself, wow, even though you think you know, you don't know. That's why you got to invest in a whole bunch of deals because it's the ones that you think are going to be great that end up being turds and the ones that are just insane like base paws. What about wicked good cupcakes? What a monster hit that was. Cupcakes in a jar. Nobody would give them a dime. Tracy and Danny, it was 12 years ago. It was the same situation. They were so compelling with their whole pitch and their story. I thought, "Okay, this is they're just so good at telling it. Maybe someone else will like it, too. Sold to Hickory Farms. Huge hit. Huge hit. Imagine putting a cupcake in a mason jar. Shipping costs go up by three times. But that's not what their story was. It was gifting. And it was really really So, I've I've learned that you just don't know. And you've got to cut a lot of slack in these deals. Who knows what last year's crop's going to do in four years from now? Who knows what I'm going to see next week when we start again? That's why I have a lot of latitude and I I don't even have to like you. I just want to figure out can you execute? Like Anna in Base Paw, she was a ferocious beast. Her her past record of execution skills was insane. She just never fails. That's the other thing. 75% of the deals for me in 15 years have been the ones that were successful run by women. What's different about them that makes them more focused on profit or better business? Well, we actually studied this. We went back and looked at seven years of data trying to figure this out. And what we learned was there, you know, there's something to this adage, you want something done, give it to a busy mother because they juggle a lot of things in a small startup company. But the real secret sauce was in setting goals, growth goals that were attainable. So their average growth rate was only 17% versus the men in our portfolio 30%. but they only hit their targets 65% of the time and women hit them 95% of the time. And I thought, why does that even matter in manifesting itself for a better cash outcome? And the answer is nobody wanted to quit the new, you know, the New England Patriots when Brady was the quarterback cuz they had a chance of getting a ring, a quarterback that just delivered the, you know, championship year after year at the Super Bowl. They win Super Bowls. So women entrepreneurs that set goals that everybody achieves, the culture gets very sticky and there's no attrition. There's no nobody quits. As a small business, when you lose the head of sales, the head of accounting, head of logistics, very disruptive. That's sort of what the secret sauce was. So now we really reduce our growth targets to make sure we can achieve them. That's what matters. How important do you think a morning routine is? You've got [clears throat] quite the uh early morning routine, right? You you're up at uh 4:00 or 5 a.m. No, I got up this morning at 5. I went down to the gym. I listened to um three or four European feeds while I was working out. Did some aerobics, did some weights. It's a constant routine. You need that just to clear your mind, but you're also, you know, garnering a lot of data. And so, I was um on the road at 7:00. I gave a keynote today here in Miami to entrepreneurs, a room of 3,000 entrepreneurs. I really enjoyed that. And here we are now sitting talking about the same topic. So, you know, that routine is important particularly around uh mental wellness and physical wellness. And you've got to be you got to, you know, you I don't smoke. I don't take drugs. I drink wine. I like that. That's my one curse. It's bad for sleeping. I wear an aura rig. And I've done something else which is a little unusual, but I I learned it from bunch of guys I'm involved in in longevity. I decided a couple years ago to start wearing a glucose monitor, even though I'm not a diabetic, just to learn which foods spike my glucose because every DNA is different. So, I learned, for example, if you drink a beer, I love beer, you're trying to keep your glucose range between 50 and 150 because there's a it's not a theory anymore. It's a proven fact. If you spend your life spiking your glucose with sugar, your propensity to develop dementia, not Alzheimer, goes up geometrically. In fact, they've been able to arrest dementia by reducing heavy glucose loading. Essentially, you're frying your brain with sugar. So, if you understand that, you start saying, "Well, let's see what foods do that." Well, for me, it's beer. I go from, you know, 88 to 280 after half a bottle of beer. Well, that's really dumb. Don't do that to yourself. Or if you eat like a lot of watermelon, boom, through the roof, a lot of grapes. You see, you end up finding foods that you're much stabler with in terms of this mandate to maintain the range. But what happens is you lose a ton of weight. You're not even hungry and you're just losing a ton of weight. And I lost 30 lbs and my energy level went up, my blood pressure went down. And that's the kind of thing that is just maintenance in a routine. So, I cycle every day. I work out. I really watch what I eat and my only sin is I love my wine. Yeah. How do you look the same age? Like I feel like forever like ever since I first found out about you. I don't even know how long ago it was, but you look exactly the same. You know, it it's I I think [laughter] I I was having this debate. Um I was in Washington DC two nights ago at a fundraiser and I got that same question. My mother was half le she was she was Lebanese and my father was Irish. If you look at Mediterranean people and their diets, you look at blue zones, they're all over the Mediterranean. [clears throat] Look at, you know, these islands off the coast of Greece or where I lived in Cyprus, people walk 40, 50,000 steps a day. They eat two meals a day of salad and fish and olive oil and olives. And they don't eat any sugar in their bread. And I I don't know that's the secret, but I've lived remember I grew up that way. That's all I knew living in Nicicoia Cyprus, eating Lebanese food cooked by Lebanese women that I didn't appreciate it back then. But that diet is crazy healthy. Like there's you don't eat any [ __ ] That's just not part of their culture. And so the same with the Italians. If you see go to Europe and see it's so much about what you put in your body every day. Now look, if you want to take drugs, you want to smoke, you want to do all that crap, well, you're going to look like [ __ ] That's what's going to happen. So, if you want to age out gracefully, think about what you put in your body and how you treat yourself. And the other thing, which sleep, get some sleep. I wear an aura ring. I've tried for 7 minutes 11 7 hours and 11 minutes of sleep and I've learned one thing and I'll tell you right now you got to stop drinking 3 hours before you go to bed. You just kill your REM. You kill your REM. You kill your sleep. Look, I'm I'm don't achieve that every day. But I'm telling you, I try not to drink during the week so that I have these great nights of sleep. And I think that just helps you for longevity. Good food for thought for everybody. And all of this technology is so inexpensive now. Aura rings are this technology would have cost you a hundred grand 10 years ago. They were a sponsor of our channel. I love the Aura Ring. It's fantastic. And the firmware updates are great. I wear it all the time and I'm always checking my sleep and I snooze in limos everywhere when I'm going between gigs. I zone out. Get 10, 15, 20 minutes of sleep. Yeah. When people say, "Oh, it's no it's not valuable sleep." Every minute of sleep is valuable. It's funny you mentioned the diet. The US diet is so terrible that uh in January I did uh the caveman diet. So I just really keto. Yeah. Not keto, the caveman. So it's just like just whole foods. Kind of like paleo. Yeah. Yeah. Just one ingredient food. So like chicken, rice, broccoli. Processed food, no sugar. You got to watch white rice. That's a very big spiker. You should move to uh brown rice. Yeah, I do brown. Uh but my point being the first few weeks was actually really difficult because it was hard to find foods that were not processed, fried, or loaded with sugar. And when I got the diet down after about a week, and you have to be very careful about what you eat, like going out to a restaurant, I had to be I'd look through what's in it. I'm thinking, "Oh, I can't eat that. I can't eat that. I can't eat that." Uh, in the first few months though, I lost 10 lbs. And it's just body fat. You feel great, right? You get energy goes up. Oh, totally. And it was just that what we screwed ourselves with in America that I've realized in the last five years is we put too much sugar in our bread. We dose our bread with cane sugar, which is insane because it's the worst thing you can eat. Europe, they do sourdough breads with no sugar. So when you eat a piece of bread here, you spike your glucose through the roof. You know, plain white bread is, in my view, it's my personal opinion, is poison. It's I wouldn't touch that [ __ ] It's poison. I have to go out of my way here to find bakeries in Miami that make sourdough bread with no sugar. I don't want any sugar. I don't want any cane sugar. A lot of problems with cane sugar. There's too much of it. And slowly you'll see that the adoption of that kind of practice gets you in a much healthier place and reduces weight. But when you're in a restaurant, you're eating a loaf of bread or, you know, ch and eating it before your meal comes. You're eating just cane sugar. It's garbage. If you had to pick a number, how much would you pay to go back 20 years? Oh, that's a great question. I would like to do that because I would have treated myself so much differently if I if I could have done that. The way that my lifestyle back then in the peak of, you know, being an operator, I was killing myself. I was just killing myself. I was working 21 hours a day, flying all over the world, not eating well. I weighed almost 40 lbs heavier. I wasn't sleeping at all. It was. And I think to myself now, why was I doing that to myself? What did that cost me? Like it can't have been free. And so if if I could somehow there would be value. How much it would be, I don't know. Because I don't want to change anything in my life. I'm pretty happy with what I got right now. But if I could if I if I my advice to anybody in their 20s is think about what you're doing to yourself every day. If you kind of get hip to this, you'll live to 120 years old and it'll be a really high quality life if you really think about exercise and diet and smoking. What are you an idiot? I mean, I used to smoke, but that you have to be a complete [ __ ] to do that. That you have to be beyond moronic. You ha you have to want to die in a horrible way. That is the worst thing you can do to your body. It's insane to inhale tobacco smoke. It's [ __ ] crazy. But, you know, 20 30% of the population does it. Nuts. You got to talk to Ben Mala. You got to get him to quit. Do you know Ben Ma? Yeah. I mean, look, it's it's it's so it's such a dramatic change when you kick it. Within 90 days, you start to feel different. You start tasting things. Everybody I've talked to that's pulled it off. You got to take anything you can to stop yourself from smoking. How much would you pay though to go back 20 years? Now, let's just say everything is the same. It's just you today, right here, right now. Nothing has changed, but you're 20 years younger. Yeah. It's priceless. I mean, there is no I'd pay any amount, but can't do it. That that's been anybody would want to do that because But it's it's I the only way that deal makes sense is if I get to keep the knowledge I have today. You do. Okay. You would give everything. Okay. That that if I if I could keep if I could keep my portfolio because [laughter] that's, you know, portfolio. I'm keeping the portfolio. Okay. Yeah. [clears throat] I want everything. I've like I work hard for this stuff, so I've got it now. Um [laughter] I don't want to lose any houses or anything like that. I want to keep my planes, all that stuff, guitars, watches. I want all of that. [laughter] I want everything. It's all coming back with me. But if I could get back the years, um yeah, that would be of course that that is that's priceless. If anybody ever develops that techn technology, he'll be the most successful entrepreneur on Earth. I'm curious for people that do self-sabotaging behavior like smoking and drinking and eating bad food and stuff like that. Do you think that they're just kind of born into that and they just for some reason have like a biological predisposition to not really think about things critically and how things may impact them future in in the future? Or do you think that's because they've just grown up accustomed to eating really poor foods which then infects their their brain into that self-sabotaging? I think the food thing um is because they were brought up on a very high glucose diet, a high sugar diet, a high um because if you think about people in Europe, you look at France or um Italy or Middle East, they don't have that propensity to overeat because they were never even even alcoholism in places like France where they introduce wine into children's diets at the age of 11. Many Europeans don't even drink at night. They drink during their their main meal at lunch um because they like to sleep better not because they know about they just don't if you look look at the European style the big meals at lunch and then there's a small repass in the evening much healthier. I think it's the way we've our culture has probably made a mistake. The Japanese also look at the way they eat. I mean they do a phenomenal job and they eat lots of protein there. I I visit Japan all the time. We have uh gone offside in our culture in terms of how we we actually u develop that that that culture in terms of eating and being obsessed with food and eating the wrong food. But no one's perfect. I mean, if if I were really on message and if I was really, you know, going to my own mandate about what I eat, I would I wouldn't drink anything. I'd stop drinking alcohol. I should, but I don't. So, that's my one crutch. So, I have to moderate how much I do it. and when I do it. But there you have it. 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That's v a n t a.com/ic d or the link is also down below in the description. Thank you so much Vanta for sponsoring this episode. And let's get back to the podcast. How often is it during a Shark Tank pitch that it's not the product or service at all and everything the person's personality that completely ruins it? Everyone. Every time. The reason you don't get a deal is not your product 90% of the time. It's you. You suck. You suck. You You can't communicate. You have a personality nobody wants to work with. It doesn't look like you can take the idea and execute it. I don't have to like you, but I have to believe you can execute. And the more you peel the onion, you start to realize this person has no executional skills. I'm the only guy tells the truth. I'll say, "Look, I don't think you can pull this off. I I don't think you're good enough, and I don't think you've you've made enough mistakes to realize that yet, and I don't think you've learned enough lessons. I have no interest in investing in you." I heard there's a therapist on set for people that have breakdowns after they're told no. Is that is that true? It is true. It is true. How often does that get does it get utilized every time to make sure every deal? Every deal whether it's successful or not. People should understand the the Shark Tank experience what you see on TV is 8 minutes, but they some of them are over an hour long and they're very traumatic. It's it's a very intense thing you're doing to yourself. It's not easy. You cannot prepare for the real pitch. You can try, but it'll never be the experience you'll achieve when you're in there. And you know, they do rehearse everything, but when you those doors open for the real moment and the 20 plus cameras are rolling and the sharks are there and you know, it's now it's the moment. It's very traumatic. Isn't there a chance though that maybe somebody has a great idea, they have the skills, it's just they get so nervous in front of all the cameras and knowing millions of people could see this and maybe that just chokes them up a little bit. It's not them. It's just the situation that they've never been in before. Yes. And that's why we don't invest in them. That's the whole point. I mean, you you have to understand when when life offer that offers you that moment, you got to step up. There's no optionality. There's no starting again. And there's no second chance. You either deliver it or you don't. And I've seen it happen a thousand times. I mean, it's heartbreaking, but I get over it. You know, you you got to remember, and I say this to so many people, usually around valuation issues. They come in the Shark Tank, they have a great idea, they've delivered a fantastic presentation, great execution skills, and we want to invest or I want to invest. And the valuation is ridiculous. It's just stupid. You know, they want $100 million and they have no sales. Something ridiculous. And I say to them, you know something? Think about the moment we're in. Just let's focus on this moment. Just this moment. If I do your deal and you become part of the Shark Tank family and you start this journey with a 100 million eyeballs in syndication for years to come and all of the aura of the of the Shark Tank, the relationships with retailers and international sales and manufacturing and all of that, that could change your life forever. If I don't invest in your deal, I'm going to forget who you are in 30 seconds. You're not going to change my life. My life's already been changed. I'm done. your deal is not going to change my life. No matter how successful it is, it's not going to change my life. And that's our dilemma. Here I am. I can change your life, but you can't really change mine. And you're quibbling over valuation. Why don't you think about that for another 30 seconds? And if you're so dumb that you don't get what I'm telling you, I don't want to invest in you cuz you're too stupid. Yeah. [snorts] I don't know. I'm just getting a flurry of so much one of those days. Important man. Oh gosh. No, no, this is the spam is awful. The spam is like these I do the same thing. I have two numbers. Uh a Vegas line is my personal line and then I have another one. The other one Tik Tok phone. What's that mean? It it's it's a burner. You have a phone for Tik Tok? Yeah, we advertise. Tik Tok's Chinese spyware. We all know that. So, wait, really? So, you have your own phone for Tik Tok? Yeah, but there's nothing on here that's real. Just Tik Tok. just I have other apps I don't care about but the real stuff is on my other phone like all my banking information and all my personal contacts and everything else. This is full of fake [ __ ] This is the tick the supreme leader in China sees this phone and he he thinks I live in the Antarctic somewhere. So it's it's Tik Tok is is spyware. There's no question about it. And that thing is going to go and get sold. I'm going to buy it by the way. That's another So I'm So I'm curious pivoting uh really quick on the Tik Tok topic. I have the attitude and the belief that if they have my data, there's really nothing there that I'm worried about or concerned about. I kind of think my data is already out there. Whatever I'm doing is already there. What could they do with it? If if they want to track me across websites, if I'm ser kind of I mean, that's the I mean, as long as they're not like, you know, taking money from my bank account, then I kind of think what's the I'm not worried about. Look, you're about 30% of the population. Other people have a different opinion. Certainly governments and countries now India was the first to turn it off. Just turned it off 5 years ago. 27 million users just turned it off 48 hours later. Nobody cared. Same thing could happen here in in January. Um governments, our governments made a decision. The US government said uh this is spyware. It's illegal. After January, the perverse situation the company's management is in right now is suing the people of the United States through their Congress. I feel sorry for that guy's resume down the road. How much of though do you think this is purely the United States doesn't want to compete with China and that they feel like China's maybe too much of a threat to the United States infrastructure and maybe that's the reason why because I've seen people make the argument that Facebook is doing the exact same thing but we don't quite regulate Facebook to the same degree I I know national security I kind of understand that but Facebook I read it differently I mean I don't agree with your premise I think what the United States wants and certainly I want is a level playing field I'm happy to compete with China if I have the same level playing field on policy that they have. For example, I can't sue them when they steal my IP. I can't um if if my business is being threatened to be shut down by Chinese, which they don't even allow in the first place. You can't do a Tik Tok in China. It has to be controlled by the government. I can't sue them. There's no Congress to sue. There's only the Supreme Leader. And yet, they have the benefit of bringing their companies and put putting them on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. and they're opaque in accounting and compliance. I have to pay millions for my companies that are listed companies. I have to be compliant with the SEC and the regulator. I have to pay for that. They don't. I'm sorry. I'm come to the end of my tether on that one. My idea is that China understands the stick. I don't want I love the Chinese people. I don't trust their leadership at all because I've lived through what they've done. I want them to be treated the same as they treat us. And I want it to be equal, level playing field. So, I think that we should delist their companies until they comply under the same rules I have to. I say they don't have access to our courts if I can't have access to theirs. So, this guy that's suing Congress, I think we should just say, "Nah, sorry. We can't sue the Supreme Leader. You can't sue us." Um, I think that company will be shut down if it isn't sold. I actually think they're going to shut it down in Canada, too. I think they're going to shut it down in Europe. They're going to shut it down everywhere. What do you think the role of the government should be to provide a regulatory environment? I think we saw this happen with crypto which is a good recent example. A level playing field where all competitors can compete. Now people have different versions of what they want from government particularly around healthcare and other sectors. But when it comes to the largest there's 11 sectors in the economy and many of them are regulated. My preference is to simply set the rules so you can play the football game. That's it. What you want is policy that's pro business, pro job creation and then let people compete because that's what created the American economy over 200 years ago was this idea of capitalism and competition. I think we've swung too far the other direction where it's too much of a nanny state and I'm not pro Trump, you know, or against Trump or it's not even forget partisanship. I don't care. I don't care who you like as a politician. What I like is good policy. I've never made money in politics. I've made money understanding where policy will go. If I understand policy, I can make sectoral bets and I've been pretty successful really reading policy. Like I read the Chips and Science Act. I read the IRA. Like I actually read what the government's doing to understand who will benefit from that and then go invest in those sectors. It's public information. And I spend a lot of time on the Capitol Hill. I mean, I spend at least a week a month now in Washington because I care so much about policy. It gives me a competitive advantage to understand policy and I'm very fortunate. I have something called the Shark Tank passport. It gets you in everywhere. I haven't met a politician on either side of the aisle that doesn't like American entrepreneurship. I haven't met a leader, a world leader anywhere that doesn't love Shark Tank and entrepreneurship in their country. And I mean everywhere. It could be United Arab Emirates. It could be, you know, Doha in in in Qatar. It could be France. It doesn't matter. The Shark Tank passport has been given me an opportunity to really drill down into policy. And so the role of government is really to be pro- entrepreneur. That's what I believe because that's where all the wealth of America came from, creating jobs. And so it's very defined. I say, "Look, this policy is bad for business. then I don't like it. It doesn't matter if it's red or blue. It's bad policy. I think a lot of people make the argument though that the middle class is shrinking because some of these policies and that the rich keep getting richer. And these last four years, I think, were a good example that uh if you had assets and you had investments, you did phenomenally well. And if you didn't, you were hit hard by inflation and policies that maybe made it more difficult for you to get ahead, more difficult to save money. Yeah. And then the the natural reaction to that is well we should tax those people more um on their unrealized gains which [laughter] every country that's tried that including France and England that was a miserable failure. I mean people just took their assets out of the country and it just it crushed growth. I mean you can't even measure it. It's so difficult. It's very popular these days to say tax the rich but the rich already pay all the tax. That's the truth. And so there's not enough rich people to tax them into prosperity anymore because you lose them. The you should never penalize somebody for being wildly successful creating millions of jobs. In the case of Elon Musk or in you know the case of Amazon where you know Bezos people want to pursue him. These guys created the American economy as we know it. And I don't know why we'd want to punish them for that. It's very a populist point of view but I'm against that kind of thing. The majority of us that are entrepreneurs just want to create a a business and do well and keep our families well off if we can and educate our children. That is the American dream. And the more the government gets involved in it, the less it happens because government spending is very inefficient. I'd like to see less of it. So, we ask this question to everybody and I'd love to hear your take on this. If you're living in America between the ages of 25 and 60 and you're poor, is it your fault? And you're bored? Poor. Oh, poor. I thought you [laughter] said poor. You're poor. And you're poor. No, you got Tik Tok. If you're bored, I would say yes. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of shocked at that. Um, [laughter] no, it's not. It It's It's a setting of your circumstance, you know. It's The answer to that question has been forever education. Where people are underserved in America is the opportunity to get educated because that actually determines outcomes more than anything else. If you find yourself poor, some large portion of that is because you didn't have the opportunity to be educated. We don't invest enough in our teachers and our schools and the system of education. The most basic things in advancing reading and math scores because that's the way we lock the door on you. If you can't read and you have low math scores, you can't go through the education system. I know that from my days in, you know, the learning company, we spent so much time developing math and testing software. I think if you have to be poor and you have to start, you land on the planet. Better way to answer your question. Which country on earth would you like to land in if you start with nothing? You come out of space with nothing, no clothes even, and you just it's like the Terminator. You just you're just there. I don't think there's any country better than the United States of America to just drop out of space being naked. Because if you have the skills, you have the desire, you have the interest, and you have the ability to execute within years, you'll be wealthy. Why do you think common sense is not taught in schools of just budgeting, finance, just being a good person, knowing how to take care of yourself? It doesn't seem like any of these topics are taught. And that was one of my issues in school was that every topic that I learned, I had a really difficult time paying attention to because I thought to myself, this is never going to apply to me. I'm never going to be, you know, a physicist. If I'm interested in business, there was nothing for me in high school that piqued my interest. That's a good question. However, it is changing. Financial literacy, which is the weakest portion of our, you know, you talk about going back to being poor. The number one reason for bankruptcy is you start taking on debt when you're in your late teens. Our system wants to give you a credit card when you're 18. And you don't understand how that works. and you end up building a big balance at a 21% interest. We don't teach people about that in schools. And I think the great news is it's changing. The state of Florida started introducing that into high school curriculum, uh, financial literacy, and other states are picking it up. Texas, New York, California. I think we can fix that problem. I think school is really trying to find out who you are and find out what you're passionate about. Same with college. You got to find something that really turns your crank to get up in the morning. Some people pursue a life of philanthropic work you know working with charities that's fine too whatever you like you want to be a writer you want to be an artist we provide you with that opportunity in America we have 11 sectors of the economy one thing I have seen for example in the last 5 years is I used to say if you want to get a job just be an engineer engineer engineer it's not true anymore our fastest growing expanser artists people that tell stories on social media videographers sound editors you know story writers cameramen, soundmen. I mean, they they we spend we spend millions every month across the gamut of all our companies just producing content for social media. Those people I used to pay 38,000 a year. Now, some of them make 250,000 because I have to compete against people that pull them aside because they can make their own job and get 80 to 100 grand themselves as influencers. You know, obviously you figured that out. Yeah. What about social programs? What do you think the government should offer to people who maybe don't have the capacity to work to that degree or maybe fall on really hard times and need something to hold them together? My definition of social programs is education. So if if you're looking to change your life, you have to learn another skill. That's education. It's not really social work. I mean, we have a lot of me mental illness problems here. I get that. Education is the key is to to train people to work in the new digital sectors. That's what the government should do with my taxpayer dollars. What do you think the tax rate should be? Imagine you're president. You can decide what the tax rate is. Is it progressive? Is it the opposite? Regressive? Is it flat? Yeah, it's flat. It's 29 and a half% for everybody. For everybody. Everybody. 29.5. Yeah. How'd you come to that number? I you know, there's two things I would do if I were president. One is I'd go to the flat tax for everybody, including corporations. 29.5. I don't think you'd have companies contorting and leaving at 29.5. Some people feel it's 22, but it's somewhere between 22 and 29.5. You don't want to put a three handle on it. Sounds too high. But the other thing I would do is take the lesson from Norway back in the mid70s. They have vast resources of fossil fuels as we do here. They simply put a royalty on it with one covenant. It could not be used for any other purpose except building up a trust fund. could not be used for anything else. Could not be used for social programs. Could not be used by government to spend it. Alberta and Canada did the same thing. Norway did theirs with a covenant that could only be used to pay down national debt or build a trust fund. Today, Norway is the richest per capita country on earth. Canada, unfortunately, is the wealthiest per capita on earth in terms of natural resources per capita, but it's run by idiots. So, huge difference is what has occurred as two examples. They have a trillion plus dollars sitting in their trust fund and they use it to develop their country and educate their people. In the US, what we should do is open up every source of gas and oil, including the Anoir, and put a 7% royalty on it with only one mandate. It has to pay off national debt. That's all you can do with it. Not Do you think that would even make a difference, though? I worry you do. It would. Oh my goodness. The idea that we're we're going to transition out of fossil fuel anytime soon, I find laughable. it it there's no transition. There's just diversification. We'll be using fossil fuel for another 100red 200 years. So, this is something we're talking to Peter Schiff about in terms of the national debt and then propping up the stock market and the housing market. Do you think that's the case? And do you think that we could essentially just in perpetuity continue printing money? How long could that continue? No, we can't. But we also have a solution. We we have to continue growth with a moderate tax rate. So, we have a GDP growth of north of 3%. That's how you pay down your national debt. but also do what Norway did. Say, "Okay, we're going to do this mandate on fossil fuels. We're going to provide the world to with fossil fuels and we're going to just pay down our debt with it. That's it." You could take a big chunk of it, maybe 20% away in the next 10 years. You said most of the tax is paid by the ultra wealthy, and I'm sure that comes to a surprise to a lot of people. They're under the impression that like they hear, oh, Amazon only paid like a effective 2% tax rate, or Elon Musk paid 8%, but he's got billions of dollars. How do you square that? It's not it's not factual. You know, wealthy people pay billions of dollars in taxes as well, and they also provide a massive amount of philanthropic donations because they're incented to do that on a tax basis. They pay it in capital gains mostly, not in income. That's the big difference. So, they may go years paying no tax. And then when Elon Mus takes out 45 billion to buy Twitter, he paid a ton of tax on that because he turned it into cash and he finally paid his tax. And so that he's probably was the highest taxpayer in the country that year. But it's it's big bursts of tax they're paying, but they still pay a ton of tax. If you could partner with one entrepreneur for a venture, who would it be? It'd be Mr. Wonderful. I love that [laughter] guy. No question. He's the That guy really understands Deal Star. He's got it. Yeah. They're always saying, "Which shark do you want to partner with?" I I partner with a guy I love. He's Mr. Wonderful. He's the best. That's it. What do you think of the $20 California minimum wage? Huge uh policy mistake. you're going to see a lot of um restaurant tours shut down. Um you can't minimum your wage into success. All you do is push out business because they can't compete. That was also an unfair policy cuz certain restaurants it really affected fast food. Certain restaurants had to pay, others didn't, which is such stupid policy. California is actually the worst managed state in the union. I would never invest there. It's a loser state and it it's it's been that way for a while. You can see the collapse of cities like San Francisco and now LA. San Francisco is a war zone. I mean, you don't walk around there at night. It's it's completely in disarray. And and I think a good example of what happens when you don't have good management. What do you think the minimum wage should be? I don't believe in a minimum wage. I think the market decides. I don't You know, people don't work if they can't make ends meet. They go find jobs where they get paid more. If you let the market decide, you get a much more efficient economy. The minimum wage is a concept that's foreign to me because all it does is contort business. I think you'd make more money without a minimum wage. You would, in particular, if you're good at what you do. How do you feel like AI is going to be affecting that? Cuz we noticed even in New York, we went to a sushi restaurant and it was almost entirely automated. They had a little iPad on the side. You press in what you want and a conveyor belt brings out the food to you and you could check out there. It's really efficient. Uh McDonald's in Japan, go to the kiosk, you type in what you want and just someone brings it. I think a lot of people were always fearing um you know that television would replace radio. Good analogy. Never happened. I mean the next technology just advances. It's just a tool. It's not it's not going to wipe out mankind. I've always thought that narrative was ridiculous. It'll take boring jobs and make them redundant for humans and let humans do other things with more creativity involved. So I I really think that AI is just another tool set and way overhyped. It's like the internet was in the, you know, early '9s. It's being overhyped right now. It will not deliver on all its promises and it'll get stabilized as a tool in many other platforms. Where do you see it going in 20 years from now? It'll just be, you know, an added feature to the software you use every day. It may maybe we have fully automated driving, maybe we don't. Maybe it's some kind of a derivative of it. I see a lot of good use of it. We're using it ourselves in our businesses. But I just think that it's a tool and by then it'll be just normal dayto-day. I tend to think that it's going to eliminate a whole bunch of jobs. Like I was thinking the other day, how cool would it be if you're building a house to type into an AI program, build me a house or construct a house that conforms to code. It already knows what the city regulations are and it builds you the blueprints of a house that you could look through online and it just does it with AI and you could alter it a little bit. It knows it could source all the materials. It could price them for you and all you got to do is give that to a person and they just build it. So I think it could eliminate a lot of jobs. It's doing that already. It has building. I think there's a lot of logistics being used in shipping. We know that. I think it's already a very useful tool. And by the way, it's been around longer than people think. It's just been made famous because it's now in your cell phone. But I don't see the dark, you know, ending of society because of AI. I just don't buy that crap. It's just another technology. Why does it seem like everyone is so bearish on civilization right now, especially in the United States? Like, everyone thinks that we're doomed to fail. It seems like, you know, mental illness is just skyrocketing, depression, anxiety. It seems as though divorces are happening more often than not. I think it's like over 50% still, right? It's it's gone down, but those are for like second, third, fourth marriages. People are still financially suffering or seemingly. So, what do you think is something that everyone is ignoring and just not thinking about that they should if they're trying to wake up from this? A lot of people blame social media, particularly with young people, get giving him anxiety. I don't really buy that. It's the same as Elvis shaking his hips on TV in the '60s. We go through different cycles in our society where the next generation shows up. Maybe [snorts] this generation feels entitled because they actually grew up in a time when money had no cost. Interest rates were zero. and now they're feeling the sting of a normalized Fed that does impact all sectors. So probably it's a little bit of that. I don't really worry too much about um you know the the daytoday, oh I think we're all screwed and societyy's screwed and AI is going to wipe us out. I don't buy any of that. I really don't. I I think that we're just in a cycle of change, constantly changing. And the one thing that has accelerated that change is the fact that social media is ubiquitous. So when something occurs someplace, you're going to see it times a million times. It'll go viral in seconds. And I'm not concerned about that either. It's just what we have in our technology today. I just don't spend that much time worrying about this stuff cuz it really it's it's noise. As I said earlier, it's not signal, just noise. It seems as though you're you're interested, at least from our last conversation a few years back, in relationships. That was what we actually talked about a lot off camera. I'm a single bachelor living in Vegas, 25 years old. Graham's getting married soon. Congratulations. Very soon, actually. So, he's got a lovely fiance. Do you have any advice for either of us or for people listening right now that want to improve their relationship or find a relationship? I wrote a book a few years ago called Men, Women, Money. And I did some research with some divorce lawyers trying to figure out why is it that 50% of marriages end in, you know, failure. And I thought it was about infidelity, but it's not. Most marriages can survive infidelity. What they can't survive is financial stress. So in marriage, what turns out to really matter is that you both share the same financial goals and one doesn't outspend the other and go into bankruptcy. And I think a lot of due diligence is not done because people are in euphoric state of love when they should be asking questions about where'd you come from, how much debt you have, did you bankrupt your family, are you bankrupt or you know just asking what's because you find that out anyways after you've been married a few years. But if you don't have a stable plan for building a family pillar around stable finances, you're going to fail. It's you're going to you already are failing 50% of the time within seven years. So what are the questions that you should ask and how soon should you ask them? Because I'm guessing if you're on a first date and you just ask a what's your credit score, that might be a bit of a turnoff to people. Definitely not for Graham. Graham would love to ask and answer that question. But when do you bring up these questions? Third date, second glass of wine. [laughter] You have a mad science. Third date, second glass of wine. I'll tell you why. By the time you've got to a third date, uh, both sides are interested and you really, you start to feel that way on the second date, but you don't want to press too, you know, hard issues on the second date. you're still kind of getting to know each other. Third date, now you're you're really starting to think, well, is this person going to be part of my life in one way or another? It's a great time to introduce the idea that you care about that to see what reaction your significant other has. If you can't talk about money with them or they freak out, you're not going to have a fourth date. That's my guess. You got to have something in common regarding, you know, financial stability. And that's the right time to have the conversation. Say, you know, I'm really interested in you. Um, I was just wondering how you think about money. Like, let's talk about money. But don't you think it's a good thing if one person's really financially responsible, one person isn't, and you can teach them? Because then it would be [clears throat] bad for everyone if just financially irresponsible people are just getting together and then having kids and teaching that to them. Who cares more about financial responsibility? Do you find it's men or women more? Yeah, they're smart. They understand it. It's not going to work um if there's no money. I mean, it's that simple. I don't agree with that idea you can teach them. They may have bad habits, bad spending habits that came from years ago you can't change. You know, you really, it's really worth doing diligence in that area because it later when it affects you, it really destroys lives. You have, you know, collectors of debt, losing assets, losing houses. It's all bad. It's all bad. And so, it's better to just resolve that saying, look, if you believe in the same way I do, I'd like to control our spending. Maybe we're able move in together. Whatever. Any conversation you can have about money if they don't want to talk about it, that's a huge red flag. Huge red flag. What if they have massive debt? Find someone else. [laughter] And how do you know when to settle down? I think it just comes naturally. Really, if you want to have a family, you really don't want to go too late. I mean, you know, I didn't get married till I was 36. That's pretty late. But we had kids right away. I I the one thing I would have changed in my life if I could have, I would have got married a lot earlier, a lot younger, and had more kids sooner. that would have been better because now I really realize the value of that and the family is so important but you don't know that when you're young and you keep pushing it off but that's why you're seeing a reversal trend you're seeing a lot of people getting married in their early 20s now they kind of figured it out they want to go back to the way it was is it so I'm getting married 34 and I don't want kids for another like few years at minimum just because I kind of feel like I want your wife uh she'll be 26 yeah okay so she can wait a few years but you know you also want to be alive when they make high It's sort of right. You want to kind of Yeah, but if I could live until 120, I feel like I've got plenty. But it's just just in case you don't. [laughter] It's the idea that you probably want to have some kids by the time you're 36. If you just look at the clock of how it works and the amount of energy it takes to raise two kids, even if you know there's a lot of energy, particularly on if the wife is going to stay home or maybe not, maybe you do. It doesn't matter. But the amount of energy is a lot, a lot, a lot. And people don't realize it till they're in that second, third year. Like you have one kid that's four and one that's two. That is maximum energy. Like it is just a What's difficult specifically about that? You need to take care of them 24/7 and um they have a lot of energy and their personalities are growing and they're and they're they're starting to explore the boundaries of you. Parenting is very tough for a lot of people and they don't get how this works and they never have the experience. Best thing is you can bring someone who knows you that's why grandparents are so important. They can say well that's what you don't want to do about that or you want to do about this. families work. You know, it's that's why it's great to have kids in a in a broader family environment because you'll find a lot of knowledge from people that have done it before. And a lot of stress in marriages happen on that first child when you realize, wow, there's this person here every day. And we don't get to do the stuff we used to do. And that you you did forgo that you have sacrificed it, but for the benefits of gains down the road one day. And what are those gains? Is it purely just Well, it's very enjoyable to have a family. It's very enjoyable to work with one. It's it's great to watch your kids grow up. All these things are things you don't know until you do them. And so, you know, it's it's just experience. You ask anybody and sometimes you have a, you know, not a great family. That can happen too where, you know, kids go rogue or whatever or they're entitled and it's a bad outcome. But generally speaking, it's it makes life interesting. And that's why money alone in later years without any family is kind of lonely. You can buy anything you want, but you have no family. It's kind of sucks. What advice would you give guys in relationships to keep the relationship steady to keep your partner, you know, in love with you? Have you heard of the term mental load? Yeah. I I I have I have a single word, listen. Listen. Listen. Yeah. If you don't listen to your spouse and you don't consider their ideas, you'll get divorced because if you know, you just that is a problem. You have to have a two-way street. No matter what kind of relationship it is, gay, married, whatever, you got to listen. You got to let them be who they are. You got to listen to what they want. You and they have to listen to you. If you can't do that, there's no mutual respect. It'll it'll collapse for sure. The issue that I have with that uh is that sometimes I'll listen, but I'll want to provide solutions. And I'm like, "Oh, that's an easy problem to fix. Just do this." And it's like, "No, but you you know, I want to talk about that's a style problem. That's a style problem." But really, listening does matter. You learn it the hard way. You've got to listen. And if you know the great thing about a long relationship is it you don't suffer the traumatic turmoil of divorce which has monetary issues. It's got family issues. It's got all kinds of stuff. People don't consider what divorce is like 5 years later. Particularly if there's kids. I've got lots of divorced friends. They're not that happy. And they they almost reconsider going back because they just realize it's nowhere near as good as it even though it was bad. It's a weird thing. Divorce is is quite traumatic and I know people have been divorced three times. They're not good at being married. So that's they shouldn't do that. Do you give advice to people who come to you and say, "Hey, we're thinking about getting divorced." Do you ever interject? I I do. I I get I get, you know, lots of people calling me. I try and give the advice that I think I I should give. Uh I'm I'm not really a divorce counselor, obviously, but I've seen it so much and I've lived through it so many times. And every family has the same thing going on. I I just give them pragmatic advice. It's take a cool down period. Separate for a couple of years or maybe a year and just get some space between you and see how you like that and then very often you'll see people get back together again. Look, being married is not easy. It's a total pain in the ass. I mean, but it beats the alternative. What's so difficult about it? It's the amount of work that is required to maintain the relationship that over time you may resent because you know you're not single anymore. And if you resent it, it's because you're not helping each other. enjoy each other's company. It should be fun to be together. And the minute it's not fun, you have to have to ask yourself, why is this not fun? Why am I loathing going home? Sitting in this bar drinking and I'm not going home or I'm screwing around on the side. Why am I doing that? That's the real question you should ask yourself. What is it about my partner that I didn't see or I don't like or um I don't, you know, want anymore? And very often the that answer is financial. You know what's interesting is we had a divorce attorney on the podcast a while ago and he said that people never resent their dog. Even if their dog goes and poops on the carpet or, you know, throws up somewhere or is barking at night, like you never grow resentment. You're just like, "Oh, there's toodles." You know, being toodles. But for some reason, we grow resentment for our partner. Even for our best friends, it's kind of hard to grow resentment for them because you just seemingly there's like a an inner peace, an inner bond. But with our our actual partner, a soulmate, for some reason, resentment grows. Yeah. Because um people can talk to each other and say hurtful things. Dogs don't talk. They generally like their owners because the owner feeds them. I mean, there's a great symbiotic relationship there of survival. It's different with men and women or men and men or women and women, it doesn't matter. It's it's um you know you're in a constant dynamic all the time, every day, 24/7. And sometimes, and this is true, a successful marriage should be defined by you you want to be with your spouse 51% of the time. That's a very successful marriage. If you only want to be with your spouse 49% of the marriage or time, you're going to get divorced. It's that fine line of majority. And you know, people tell me, "I'm so happy. All I want to do is, you know, be with my spouse. I've been married 50 years. That's complete BS. It's become part of your life. You're happy with that part of your life. And you're you've come to the realization this is my fabric versus I'm so miserable. I am always miserable and I'm just never happy the majority of the time, which is when you're only 48 49% happy. You should get divorced because you can get a better life. kind of a random question, but I feel like for a lot of people that are in the current dating pool, they're under the impression that you need to go out and you need to date a bunch of people and gather all of these data points of what you like, what you don't like, and then apply that to a certain function, and then with that like function, you then can go out into the dating marketplace and find exactly who's right for you. Do you disagree with this notion? And do you think that people are turning love too much into a science? Or do you think it's more so of like, hey, you find someone that's decent and you make it work? Uh, the latter. Find someone that's decent, make it work. I think that first part's all [ __ ] That's never going to work. When you find the right one, you'll know it. It just, you know, it's just never you're, you know, passionately in love. You can't believe how lucky you are. That that works for like a month. It it's it's sort of like, um, this is this is a relationship that I'm in that's better than being alone, and I'm going to stick with this. I'm going to make it work. and and the the the significant other has to feel the same way. It's an investment. You're investing in time. You're spending time and you're developing something together. And it's also money. You've got to start thinking about how are we going to financially support this union. If it grows into a family, how do we do that? If you don't have a plan for that, you're going to fail and you're going to get divorced. It's, as I say, it's the majority are always financial stress, not fidelity issues. You know what's interesting is that I feel like relationships are very similar to businesses. They both require a lot of attention to detail. You need to know it inside and out very thoroughly. And yet I feel like entrepreneurs a lot of the times suffer in relationships. Why do you think that is? Well, it's true. They are. Families are actually businesses. They really are. They're businesses. And some families are successful. Some aren't. You the person sitting at the table you never see is money. Because if you're sitting around the table, you don't have any money. You don't have a family. Can't keep it together. It's very, very hard. very hard because you have to provide and so just to to say that it's all about love and no money that's complete BS too. You have to plan to have some kind of financial stability otherwise you'll fail. It's you know it's really really tragic to see um people that don't get that joke early on in their marriage and get divorced for the only one reason. They just didn't have a financial plan. That's it. So you talk about being in the business of marriage as well as or of divorce as well as the business of death, right? divorce. Those are two businesses I do invest in. Marriage. Um it's one it's one time in your life where you don't care about gross margin on product services. People overpay for everything at weddings. It's just insane. And also in death. Um it's another time when you don't care so much about the price of something. If you want that coffin, you want that coffin. So I'm an investor in both sides. Coming and going. Um you know, I have this amazing business run by two women called Hello Prenup. It empowers women to create their own prenups online and I it's been wildly successful. I knew when I saw them at Shark Tank that they would be if I could help them get the message out and acquire customers. But they are the essence of success in marriage because what we're learning is when you go get the hello prenup um download it forces you diligence your partner. You can't do a prenup without asking questions. And in that in that journey in that process you learn things you like or you don't like. But it certainly gets you to a place where you have a prenup in place, particular maybe cohabitation agreement. If you're not going to get married, you move in. And many people that go through this dynamic, this process realize that they're with the wrong person, which is I feel like I'm doing a great thing for them to identify that early before they go through marriage and then get divorced. It's amazing product to low prenup. And every woman should use it because you should never go into a marriage with the assumption that you're going to, you know, be dependent on your husband's checking account. You should never give up your banking relationships. You should keep them your whole life. Women should have their own credit cards, their own bank accounts, their own credit history, cuz divorce happens enough that if you divorce after losing all of your credit history and you're in your 40s, our society doesn't treat you well. It's very hard. What do you say to the people who say it's unethical to maximize profit on death? No, there's competition in death. There's thousands of funeral homes. Most people reach out to a professional. Um, we have a company called Parting Stone which takes over 50% of of death now is ends in cremation. Mhm. And you end up with an urn. People want to have some of the ashes. So, parting stone crystallizes the ashes into a stone. And you can hand out up to 60 of these to your family members. That's really cool. Very successful. And it it's it's really a product sold by funeral homes. So, um you know, in fact, one of my good friends died years ago, and every year we have a a lunch for him, one of my bankers, and I have I'm the only guy left with his his ashes. And everybody wants the urn all the time to take it away for a few weeks or whatever. And I said, "Yeah, I got to solve this problem." Parting stone is the answer. Last question. What's the one thing that people don't know about you that you'd like them to know? I can't make everybody happy, so I don't try. I just don't try. It's It's, you know, when you start to realize when you when you start getting a lot of people following me on social media, the first million, the second million, the third million. I've I'm over 9 million now. I don't know how many I've got anymore. There's always the lunatic fringe of two and a half percent that are saying very, you know, damaging things and and and being very crazy. I couldn't give a [ __ ] I just don't care because I know there's nothing in my power that I can do to change their minds and I shouldn't waste any energy trying to. And so that forces a certain purity in in your messaging. And my strategy has been now in just the way I lead my life is here's the truth. you know, I'm just going to tell you what I think. You don't like it, I don't care. And and the reason I don't care is it's still the truth. It's going to be the truth in 10 minutes, in a month, in 10 years, in 20 years, but it's still the truth. And it comes from this lesson I learned decades ago from my mother. She said when I was a teenager, "Always tell the truth, and you'll never have to remember what you said." That made a lot of sense to me. and and until I started telling the truth and getting people crapping all over me and I thought it's still the truth. Let's see what happens a year from now or two years from now. And then over time I got that reputation as the guy that is really mean. But that didn't change anything either. I don't want people to like me. I want them to respect me. So if you say I want everybody like me, you can never achieve that goal. But if you want people to respect you, all you have to do is tell the truth. And they will over time come to the realization that, well, I didn't like what he said, but it was the truth. And so I don't have to worry about him in the sense that he's going to lie to me. I don't like him, but he tells the truth. And that's kind of where I land. And that's I think where I sit in the continuum of, you know, personalities that people know. And by the way, it's served me very well in business. It really has because I don't lie to people. And when I'm negotiating with them, I say, "Well, I'm never going to do that deal. Here's why." And there's nothing you tell me that would change my mind. But if you do this and I'm and you and you know that I'm not that I'm telling you the truth, and I will do it if you you know, it's sort of like here's a bunch of things that I'll do. And this this is true. That's a much easier way to negotiate with somebody. Way easier than stringing them along or giving them some BS story or telling because you're going to get found out anyways. It's the best way to to draw this analogy is this. Think about it this way. This will serve you so well in in in love, which we were talking about so much. When you first meet that person that you're so euphorically madly in love with, the thought of cheating on them is not even remotely in your mind. And then you get married and seven, eight years go by and one night you do that awful thing. You just cheat on them. You have a decision to make. And here's your decision. This person that I have 100% equity with, that I've been in a marriage with, and I've never cheated on, right? Do I lie to them by not telling what I did last night or just hoping they never find out? Or do I wake up, call them, and just hit them with the truth? Which is the better path? And I'll tell you what the better path is, cuz I'm going to draw the analogy for business. If you tell the truth on your own incentive, you get up and you tell them, "I did something crazy last night. I got drunk in a bar and I slept with another woman. I feel so bad about it. I I cuz you have to tell the truth." The reason you're making the call is you just realized that you broke that trust that which is hard to do and you don't want to do it and you're looking at your phone. Oh, I don't want to call her. I don't want to do it. I don't want to call him. Whatever. versus I'm going to forget about it and I'm just going to hope that nobody finds out. I guarantee you they will find out. It could be two years, could be three years, could be four years, could be 2 months. And when they find out that way, you will lose 50% of the equity in that relationship forever. They will never completely trust you ever again. Ever. There's nothing you can do to repair that damage. All because you were so weak that you couldn't make the call on your own. If you had done that, yes, there would have been damage. But the fact that you were honest with them built so much back that you can repair that marriage. Now, you will you'll not necessarily get divorced just because you told the truth, but you will never have the same relationship with your your significant other ever again. Same in business. The first time you lie to somebody and they catch you in that lie, whether it be someone in your company or someone you're negotiating with or some random person, they will tell others what happened. And your reputation is irreparable. There's nothing you can do to fix it because you are a liar. The hardest thing to do is always tell the truth. But look at the path I just gave you for success on this. You have to pursue the truth because it protects you against damage you can never repair. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. You can't fix it once you lied once. There's nothing you can do. You will always be the liar to an ever growing number of people you don't even know cuz that story will get around. Great business leaders, great business leaders are known for their honesty. Even though it's painful, people say, "I trust him. I trust her." Same thing in marriage. Same thing in business. That's the best way to end this. Wow. Thank you, Kevin. That was amazing. True. Edge of my seat. Thank you so much. And you're getting married. You better listen. Of [laughter] course. Thank you so much. I'll link to all of your information in the description. That's great. That's great. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting us into your home. Lovely home, by the way. I mean, this view is I mean, it's it's hard for me not to Yeah. You know, I'm never tired this view. I love to watch people on the beach. I like to go on the beach. I'll be there later. There's sand in the elevator in here. I love it. Don't give out the address. No. Thank you. Till next time. All right.