Kevin O'Leary: Every Time You Get Paid, Do This! It 10xs Your Income Without Having To Work Harder!

0:00 That is the stupidest thing you can ever do. Well, what is the most important thing for someone who's just trying to grow their money? So, I learned this from my mother and I actually built a whole company around it. Yeah, there she is. So, I haven't seen that picture in a while. Damn. I mean, what she did, the performance was extraordinary. And with that, did she put my brother and I through college? She took care of our family when they fell on hard times.

0:33 When I saw the results, I said, "That's it. That's how I'm going to invest for the rest of my life." So, talk me through this one as much detail as possible. Okay, let's start with this. Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, is the self-made millionaire and investor who's built and sold companies for billions. There's a lot of people don't like me for my bluntness. I don't care because there's people that don't think ahead and find themselves mired in debt, but then pissing away money, spending $28 for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid.

1:01 What about a house? The mistake that people make is they buy too much house. Never let the mortgage and the cost of maintaining the house be more than 1/3 of your income. And how much does the person that you fall in love with have an impact? You're kidding? It's everything. And I did some research and most marriages can survive infidelity. They can't survive financial stress. But, if everybody that's listening does this one thing, you will have over a million and a half dollars.

1:27 Kevin, can anybody be an entrepreneur? No, only a third of people can become successful entrepreneurs because there's a couple of things that you must achieve to be successful. First, Kevin, I'm going to ask you to do something which is quite difficult because I'd find it quite hard if someone asked me to do this. But, before we get into the detail, can you give me a 30,000 ft view on your entrepreneurship and investing career? Just the just the three bullet points that are most pertinent before we dig into those specifics. Every entrepreneur I've ever talked to that finds himself where I am today has has a defining moment where they are pushed into this path. It's It's something they can remember and they remember it in perpetuity. And I'll remember my moment getting fired in an ice cream store.

2:15 That simple. First day on the job, asked to serve and scoop ice cream. And I did that all day, but when people sample ice cream, they get a taster and they take their gum out and they throw it on the floor. Somebody's got to scrape the gum off the floor at the end of the day. I only took that job because I was very interested in a girl who was working in the shoe store and I figured I could you know, hang out with her afterwards. And I saw her waiting for me and the woman who owned the store said, "You've got to scrape the gum off the floor."

2:47 And I didn't want her to see me on my knees with a scraper. It'd be bad for my brand. I was in high school. And she said, "No, no, you have to do it." And I said, "You know, you hired me as a scooper, not a scraper." She said, "How about you're fired?" And I didn't even know what that meant and it was the defining moment for me because I realized there's two kinds of people in the world. There's people that own the store and there's people that scrape the off the floor. And you have to decide who you are and I'm not saying being employed is a bad thing, not at all. But for me, it it hit me. It just hit me. Kevin, there's a present for you. We give a present to all of our guests. Really? Underneath that black Can I open it?

3:30 You can open it. I just take this out? Oh, look at that. You've heard the story. That is exactly how it looked, except it was black gum. And that was exactly the tile. It was just like that Mexican tile. That's really freaking me out. So, you were asked to scrape gum off a Mexican tile. Yes, just like that. And in order to do that, you got to get down on your knees and do it. And I just couldn't do it.

3:55 And I And I And And then you know the rest of the story. I eventually could afford to bulldoze the whole mall if I wanted to. And we went back to meet her and thank her for her pushing me off the treadmill into that direction. And she was gone and there was a bodega there instead. You said that that you realized that there's kind of two people in life. There's the entrepreneur, there's the person that owns the ice cream parlor, and there's the person that scrapes it off the floor.

4:19 Yeah. That provoked a question in me, which is do you think anybody can own the ice cream parlor? I do you think anybody can be an entrepreneur? No. I've tried to teach it and I mentor it all the time to the CEOs that I work with. there are some attributes of people that can do this. A certain element of risk tolerance, a certain element of focus. And then the other element which I've really started to believe in of late is karma.

4:49 Luck. You need to be lucky. You need It's like Napoleon was once asked, "Who are your favorite generals?" And he said, "My favorite generals are lucky generals, my lucky generals." And I'm starting to think that in life particularly entrepreneurship, you look at the difference to the path of success and failure and I Nobody's exposed to it more than I am in terms of how many investments I made I've made over the decades. I think if you want a percentage, and then I teach these cohorts in in at Harvard, I'm an executive fellow there. I'm very proud of that work.

5:26 You get a class of 120 people in a room. Two-thirds of them want to become consultants. That's why they're there. And lead a life of mediocrity and never make a decision of consequence in their lives. And after 24 months, they are tainted with that disease forever. They'll always be good consultants, but they will never achieve greatness in any way. In life, only a third of people can become successful entrepreneurs. That's it. And the rest can be very successful employees, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can have a fantastic life.

5:58 You won't be shackled to the you know, the the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the challenge of it, how hard it is. But, you will never be free. And that's the debate. That's it right there. Do you want personal freedom? It's the only path. That's it. It's the only path. It is the only path. I mean, you can't I I've always said it's not about the pursuit of money. It's not about the pursuit of greed. You will fail if you do that. It's It's the undying love freedom.

6:24 So, that 1/3 of people that you say will be successful, they'll pursue their their dreams, they'll build a business, whatever it might be. Yeah. Do you think it's possible for us in this conversation to increase the probability of their success? You said you don't think you can you can make someone an entrepreneur. But, is there things you can do to increase their probability of success? Yes, there are a couple of things that you must achieve to be successful. And let me explain what they would be. And this is not some academic study. This is real data from real situations of real CEOs I've worked with and learned from, because I used to work for guys like Steve Jobs and others in my career.

7:04 Let me Let me give you one that I think's very important. We'll start with this one. I used to work for Steve Jobs in the early '90s making all of his educational software. And it was just Yeah, there they are. My goodness, you guys do good research. Those are the kind of things that we did for him. You know, yeah. Yeah, all of that. It's hard to find. Those are CD-ROMs. But, you know, in developing that software, we used to go quarterly. Heidi Roizen was there in the room. She's still a very famous venture capitalist.

7:39 And I would say, "Steve, you know, we got to do some market research on Oregon Trail. I mean, it's a huge title. It's in 110,000 school buildings. We got to do an update. It's going to cost you 12, 15 million bucks. We want to find out what the students want. We want to find out what the teachers want. We want to find out what the parents want. Steve would say, by the way, not a nice guy.

8:01 Not a nice guy. He would say to a room full of people, "Kevin, I don't give a what the students want or the parents think or anybody thinks. It's what I want. They don't know what they want till I tell them what they want." And I said, "Steve, you sound like such an You have no idea what that sounds like." He says, "No, no. That's how it is, Kevin. Now, are you making money with me? Are we Are you Am I your fastest growing OEM?

8:31 Have we not been wildly successful and continue to be?" I said, "Yes, Steve, that's true." He said, "Then shut up and do what I say." That's how he would talk to you? 100% and here's what I learned. Look how wildly successful he was. But, here's why. There's a concept that he understood that very few people focused on back then in the early '90s of signal-to-noise ratio.

9:02 What was so brilliant about Jobs that I tell every CEO now, and I don't care if you're an S&P 500 CEO or you're just starting a business. His vision of signal was the top three to five things you have to get done in the next 18 hours. Not your vision for the business next week or next month or next year. Just the next 18 hours you're awake. You're going to get those three things or those five things done that you have deemed critical for your mission. They must get done today.

9:34 Anything that stops you from doing that is the noise. So, the signal-to-noise ratio to be successful for Steve Jobs was 80/20. 80 signal, 20 noise. And I knew that to be true with him because he would email me at 2:30 in the morning, expect me to get back to him because back then we didn't have texts. It was all email. He was right. He was right. And the only other person that I've seen that has a higher ratio than that is Elon Musk. He has no noise.

10:06 He does not deal with noise. He is 100% signal 24 seconds of, you know, every cycle. I mean, the guy is just 60 seconds of every minute, 60 minutes of every hour, the 18 hours he's awake, it's all signal. And look what he's achieved. Now, that's very awkward for him socially because noise is dealing with your family sometimes, or noise is saying hi to a friend, or noise is is is listening to some doom scrolling on, you know, some social media app that just takes your mind, or maybe playing your guitar. But, very few people on Earth, and if you go back in history, you're going to find out that the geniuses of their time were close to 100% signal.

10:46 And so, I can really sort of summarize this for my audience. Signal is the most urgent thing you should be focused on right now, and noise is basically everything else. No, the goals you set for that the the way the that you were awake. If you're going to be awake 18 hours, Yeah. and you've determined that there's three things you have to get done, you're going to get those done. No matter what it takes, you're going to get those done. And you're not going to let anything distract you from the three to five things.

11:10 If you're a CEO, and you achieve that, and you can get those done with 80% of your time based on that, you're extraordinarily successful. You are absolutely And you're Steve Jobs, or you're an Elon Musk, or you're somebody If you If you even talk to Bezos, I don't know him personally, but I've heard in many interviews, like I knew I I know, I've I've met Elon just a few times. I spent a lot of time with Jobs.

11:34 But they say the same thing. Bezos will not make a decision after 1:00 in the afternoon because he felt that the noise was too high. The signal for him was in the morning hours. If this is a crucial aspect of success that that I now understand to be the ability of defines an entrepreneur. A man or woman that understands the signal noise ratio that focuses on that they'll be successful. The ones that can't that get down to a 50/50 signal noise, they'll fail. It's that simple.

12:09 And it's a very simple concept. You know you made one of your things today this interview. You're going to get it done. You're going to all these people around and everything else. This is one of the three to five things you're going to get done. I have five things today. I'm going to get them done. I'll do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. And you have to decide how much signal you need to get those three to five things done.

12:34 And for Jobs it was 80%. What's the opposite of that? Sometimes looking at the opposite helps us to understand something. So the opposite of having Well, I hire managers and CEOs that have a balance in life between the discipline the binary aspect of business which is I make money I lose money. And the chaos of the arts or some other pursuit dance, painting, photography collecting crystals, whatever it is that that they that they have that balance you you need you need the yin and yang in your mind to make correct decisions.

13:05 It doesn't mean it takes you off the signal. The signal is you got to get stuff done. But how do you live your life? And so I spend a fair amount of my time practicing my guitar or working with my photography or my my watch you know I tonight very late tonight I will meet a master watchmaker and we will deal with the design of a new piece unique is going to make for me and I'm going to love that moment. That's going to be something completely different to what I did all day long and we'll start our journey together over the next 2 years to make this piece unique. And that's something that just takes me away from all the I'm going to be dealing with today. And I also tell successful entrepreneurs in the same day you'll get a and I this happened to me today. It happens every day.

13:49 You're going to get a call from some aspect of of your what you do you call it your empire whatever you want where your this company's going bankrupt. It's just going to go bankrupt and you're going to lose I don't know 10 million bucks on that deal. And that's a piece of information you're dealing with. Half an hour later this actually happened to me today. One of my company's going public. It's a 450X for me. The stock will get unlocked sometime in the fall but how can how do you how do you fit that together?

14:26 Utter catastrophe, destruction, woe, loss utter euphoria half an hour later. That's that's what my life is like. That's entrepreneurship. Obviously on a different scale for most founders. Well, the founders deal with the same thing. They get disastrous news. They lose a an account like a Costco or something if it's consumer goods or service and they get something else. The the the ebb and flow is is the management of expectations and your ability emotionally to navigate those ups and downs is part of what entrepreneurship is but it goes back to the signal.

15:03 It can't take you off the signal. This is what Steve taught me. Yes, it's great news. Yes, it's bad news but focus on the signal O'Leary. Focus on the signal. That's it. Where does this analogy come from of signal and noise? It was his genius of a of of making it so simple. What are the three things you got to get done today? What are they? What are they? How do you know what they are? They will make themselves apparent. They will definitely make themselves apparent.

15:32 They will make themselves apparent and you will realize I have to deal with that. You may have them set up from the day before. I actually still use sticky notes on my mirror. Got to get these three things done. And or five thing or whatever it is, but then something else will hit. That's the skill of understanding. Is that noise hitting me or is that signal? There is the essence of the great entrepreneur, the great manager, the great leader.

15:58 Is that signal or is that noise? What is it? That's what you're looking for. You're hiring somebody that can actually distinguish signal and noise. Because it could be noise. It could be irrelevant. You have to determine only you makes that decision. That's the key right there. This is what I teach entrepreneurs and engineers and This is the most important thing. It's not judgement of prioritization but then the sort of force of execution to get it done.

16:29 Can you interpret signal and noise? And can you keep the noise away from from the things you got to get done? That's one. The other which is something that I've learned over the last five years. And this you might find this interesting but most of my particularly the nascent startups and you're you're involved in the same format I am. You're Dragon's Den in England. I'm Shark Tank in the US. I you know, you put up 500,000 or a million bucks into somebody's business.

16:58 Eight eight out of 10 are going to fail, maybe six out of 10 depend you just don't know. And I love it when people tell me, oh, I I know when I make an investment it's going to work. They are so full of They They have I'm talking about startups. They have no idea what's going to work and you won't know for 5 to 7 years, which is why you need diversification in the portfolio, but I would go as far to say now, you know, when I meet venture capital firms and young analysts that work there and they think they're so damn smart, they've never operated a business. They don't know nothing. They have no idea what they're doing. They're going to hope that one or two of their portfolio is going to work out in 7 years and pay for all the other mistakes.

17:45 But the serendipitous nature of success in entrepreneurship is brutal. It is. So that does that mean though that it's I guess I was going to say does that not mean that it's highly luck? If investing's highly luck, entrepreneurship must be. Well, I said karma, you know, I call it karma, but you need execution skills, but here's another skill that I think we should talk about. when you look at at least my experience over decades of making these nascent these early stage investments, these A round investments, remarkably, and I've done them in all 11 sectors of the of the economy, the majority of the successes 5 to 7 years later are companies run by women.

18:27 Why is that? Why is that? And so they don't know each other, they're in different sectors, they never meet each other. Why is that? And I have come to the conclusion two things. They set goals that they can achieve so that in the early stage of their businesses, they put growth rate targets like 15, 16% versus men at 30% very often. Men hit their target 65% of the time at least in my portfolio and and women 90 plus per time percent of the time. And that keeps the the team very sticky. They want to be part of a so they don't have a lot of attrition when they're small. They don't lose the head of finance, head of marketing. That that works. But they have another attribute and this was pointed out to me by one of my female CEOs a few years ago to me. She said, "You know, Kevin, you talk too much.

19:15 You talk too much. you talk 2/3, you listen 1/3. Why don't you try reversing the ratio?" She said that to you? Yeah. Yeah. I'm very thankful, actually, cuz I tried it. And she's right. If you don't talk and you listen, you become far more effective as a manager or an investor in my case by getting information that you weren't going to get by talking. And so, if you go into a room I just did this a few minutes ago before I came here. I'm involved in a litigation.

19:48 And we decided to attempt settlement talks. Which is why I was a few minutes late. And you know, we knew we were going in there to settle. And it it's long protruded, you know, a long It's a long long long litigation. And I remembered her as we sat at the table like this. There were other people in the room, but the two you know, we were across from each other. I just looked at him. I didn't say anything.

20:21 For a long time. A long time. And it gets uncomfortable and no one else is talking. You know, just looking. And maybe after 90 seconds, he blurted out something he shouldn't have said. And I knew exactly what the price was. Right there. That was the end of it. You learn that as a podcaster.

20:52 You learn that there's actually something going on in the silence. There is something going on in silence and it's it's it's the number that he was going to settle at. He showed his hand. So, we saved ourselves 2 hours, you know. It's a It's an attribute that many people can't do cuz they can't stand the social uncomfort of it. I have no problem with it. I can sit here and look at you for 10 minutes. It wouldn't matter to me.

21:13 And I've actually found it to be a very useful piece of information. It's not just in negotiating, but to listen to employees, listen to investors, listen to financiers, listen to alternate ideas to yours, and become more powerful from it. You're in the very business of people selling to you and pitching to you. We both sit on a similar show and my people come in and pitch to us. You're seeing at times 10 to 12 a day. So, you've developed this muscle over the last couple of decades now.

21:42 Almost this instinctive spidey sense of when an entrepreneur will be successful, at least in the context of securing investment. What have you come to learn about the the attributes of the ones that are successful? Is there is there anything one can take from that? In the moment when that entrepreneur comes out on the carpet in the context of Shark Tank or Dragon's Den even, they need the set up shot of the product with the entrepreneur and they have a in our case a steady cam or a a jib that comes down and shoots it. So, the the stage director Eric is his name. I've worked with him for years.

22:17 Says to the entrepreneurs I've never met, usually it's a team or it's a family or it's whatever, three or four, two people, whatever. Hold. Hold. Hold. Don't speak. Hold. Hold. Don't mind the camera coming into your face. Hold. Hold. Maybe for 2 minutes. And I'm right there in front of them. I'm 12 ft from them and I just look at them. Not smiling, not blinking, not frowning, just looking at them.

22:48 And before they say a single word, I know if they're winners or losers. Just like that. And why is that? Why is that? When and I'm right probably 99% of the time. Maybe I get it wrong one out of 100. I doubt it though. You walk in a room, even though you've practiced, you know, you're in the context of of Shark Tank, 20 plus cameras, a billion plus dollars in in the five chairs there. You've been practicing for months your pitch, but it wasn't the real deal.

23:26 Here you are. Cameras are rolling, tape is running. You know you've only got so many minutes. This is your moment. And you're on national television, 100 plus million people will see you in syndication. It's all in your mind. It's all in your mind. It's going through your head. Can you project who you are with your eyes and the way you're standing? Can you project your confidence? Are you looking at the ground? Are you looking away from me cuz you can't stand me looking at you directly without saying anything to you?

24:01 Or do you push back? Or do you say I'm going to I'm going to stake my aura. I'm going to stake my ground here. I'm going to show you I'm ready. See what I'm getting at? Yeah. And I can feel it. I can see that they're ready to do battle. They're ready to answer. They're ready to present. They're ready, ready, ready, ready, or they're not. And I've taken that out of the Shark Tank. I see that every day in life. I see it.

24:26 So, you have to learn how to project yourself in front of your peers or who's who you want to you want to lead or teach or if you're a general or a preacher, that is maybe an innate something you're born with or maybe you can learn that. I don't know. I don't care. But if you don't have it, you're going to fail. And you're just that's before a word is spoken. It'll before the first word is spoken.

24:57 And so, then what has to happen? Then Eric says, "Go. You're on." And everybody's just sitting there looking at you. Can you articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less? Can you, whatever props you have or whatever you're going to say, can I get the big idea right away? The ones that had that aura generally get there. 30 seconds later, I get it. I get what they're here for. I understand their product. Okay, that's good. Unfortunately, great ideas are dime a dozen.

25:33 I mean, there's millions of them. The next phase begins. This is after 90 seconds. Can you explain why you're the right person to execute on this idea and create a business from it because you know something about this space. You worked for a competitor. You've tried three times before and failed. You figured out what you did wrong. What is it about you or your team that can take this idea and make it happen? Now, we get those two things together, you can feel the aura of the room.

26:06 The isotope is sizzling because you've de-risked a great idea. You got an operator in it and they But then the third thing, this is the killer. This is the killer. I've seen it so many times in real life and Shark Tank's real life it is, but you got to know your numbers. How big is the market? How fast is it growing? What's the gross margin? I've said this a million times to people. I teach this every day.

26:28 How many competitors are there? When are you going to break even? What month? If you get the first two right and you don't know your numbers, you deserve to burn in hell and I'll put you there myself. I mean, you wasted an opportunity for an entrepreneur that did know their numbers that could have been in that spot that I could have invested in. You don't know your numbers. I'd take you out behind the barn and shoot you. You should have brought somebody that understands the language of business because those three together are the definition of leadership right there.

26:54 I've never heard someone talk about aura in entrepreneurship quite like that. And I was I was just trying to for the people listening that are either trying to figure out if they have an aura or to grow that aura, what does it what does it look and feel like? Is it physically? Is it shoulders back? Is it You said it's eye contact. Or is it indescribable? And do you think you could take someone who doesn't have that aura in business and teach them it? Does business give you that aura?

27:24 I think you can teach it. I certainly try and teach it to my children. I try and teach it to my students. And the best way to do it is to look at yourself in the mirror sometime. You know, just what do you look like to yourself? You know, if you're going to go make a presentation to take down a million-dollar line of credit or something, you want to dress the part, obviously. But you're going to walk in a room with, you know, a loan officer and maybe an assistant, maybe one other, depending on the size of the deal.

27:56 And they all never met you, probably. And you're going to have to project yourself in those seconds as you're walking up to shake their hands. What does that take? It takes an aura of confidence, and it's in the eyes, it's in the way you're you're standing, it's in how the way you're dressed. It's It's not a joke to be dressed for success. You know, it's it's it's but it's it's something about presenting yourself and keeping your eyes focused on who's talking to you, so that they know that you're absorbing the information, that you respect the information, that you're about to get into a narrative with them of respect, even though there may be disagreements. All of this is happening in the first 60 seconds, and it's setting up for the rest of your life with that person. It could be who you're going to marry, it could be who you're going to work with, it could be your partner in business, it could be your banker, it could be anybody. It could be a soldier that's going to give up their life for you. It's sort of Who are you?

28:58 That's it. Just closing off on the point you made about women being your most successful investments and the companies that have given you the greatest returns tend to be led by women. Does that mean that you focus on hiring women into executive roles? Yeah, I'm practically all women, particularly Asian women. I am a you know, this whole thing about DEI and all this stuff, I've always had diversity because I only hire on merit. I don't care if what sex you are or what you call yourself or what where you came from or the color of your skin or what planet you were born on. I couldn't give a Can you execute?

29:37 And the way I hire people, and that's why I have such a diverse staff in my operating company, I don't hire you. I say, "Look, you sound good and you look great on paper, but that doesn't mean anything if you can't work within the team. So, I know you want a job and you want benefits and all that stuff, but I'm not going to do that. If you want to be part of my universe, you're going to work for 4 to 6 months as a contractor at a much higher salary cuz you're not going to get any stock options, you're not going to get any benefits, but I just want to see what it's like for you to work with all of the people that we deal with every day, all the lawyers, all the bankers, all of the you know, the CEOs that we have investments in and and your co-workers because I don't do 9:00 to 5:00 anymore. I do project-based work. I don't care where you live. We have people working in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, England. I mean, everywhere, everywhere.

30:33 And and you know, we meet we try and find an hour every week where we can see each other, but we're just constantly communicating using modern-day tools today. But, you know, can you actually be given a mandate and execute on it? That's it. I don't care when you do it. If you have to get the financials out, let's say you're running in finance, you got to get them out the 15th for taxes. I don't care when you do it, but if you miss the 15th, I care.

31:02 So, I I need to find out if those people can fit into that kind of an environment. Some of them make it, some of them don't. Some sometimes we know right away after 90 days, you know, let's hire him, bring him in the team, and you know, let's give him the whole package. And sometimes after a month we say, "No, it's not going to work." Here's like, you know, that's it. I think I think more companies should do that, actually. It's more like the Swiss apprentice system. They bring you into a lot like it, you know, my stepfather's Swiss. I've been going to Switzerland for 50 years. So, if you're a giant company, like a Pfizer or a Nestle, you pull them out of high school at 14.

31:34 You give them a job in the afternoon. They become an apprentice. They want to learn. They want to work. They want to understand what it's like. And then you find the the winners at while they're still in high school. Then you give them summer jobs, and then you bring them into the company. That's where I got the idea from. The Swiss are genius that way. Cuz you're sort of mitigating the risk, I guess. You're taking less of a a risk on this.

31:55 No, but you're also finding out if their their DNA is going to fit with your I mean, I want my team to make a ton of money. I I just I want them to be successful. I want every person to be proud to work with the other and and just we're almost invincible. We're so damn good at what we do. You have the same thing here. You you don't have people that don't work for you well, you get rid of them. You whack them. I'm more just formal about it. Boom, you're gone.

32:20 With with the investments that you've made, how many investments, how many offers have you done on Shark Tank now? Probably like Oh, I just We don't even count it anymore. We look at the portfolio rolling over 5 to 7-year period. A lot. Yeah, like a lot. And And the thing is the thing what I've learned is you get a you get an exit like Basepaws from 5 years ago or something Anaya from remarkable woman. That was the the cat DNA Cat DNA thing. I mean, nobody saw that coming. I thought the thing was a joke.

32:50 I was so wrong. I mean, that's the whole point and and she she had the highest IRR in in I think in the whole format's history. Nobody's made her she was around for 36 months. And taken out at such an extreme number in all cash that there was an NDA signed between Sony and the the pharmaceutical company. I can't even tell you what it was. It was extraordinary. It was an extraordinary Was it nine figures? Believe me, it's a tough NDA because and I understand why they did it.

33:20 They didn't buy it for the cat DNA testing. They bought it for the data. Mhm. With AI didn't really wasn't emerging then. It would existed, but it wasn't With the data they have now they can develop products for animals that are extraordinary in terms of feeds and medicines. Yeah. And nobody had that much data on the 110 million cats in America because she got it all during the pandemic. Thousands and thousands and thousands of of you know It was it was never about it was it was a data company. It's like my son telling me when he got his internship at Tesla.

33:59 Hey Dad, it's not a car company. It's a data company. Mhm. Buy the stock. I said never mind the stock. It's too joke. It's so expensive. He said, "You're an idiot. It's not a car company." So I bought the stock. And he was right. It became my most successful investment. I I had to keep selling it down to 5%. my cost base is zero on Tesla now. you. Yeah, but before it split and he worked there for 5 years.

34:21 One of the personas that I have that watches this show a lot are young people not always young, but that are on the sofa thinking about being an entrepreneur and they talk about it a lot. You know, they they come up to me in the street 2/3 will never do it. 2/3 will never do it. You you might as well do it when you have less burdensome risk like a mortgage and a family. You might as well do it in your 20s.

34:43 You're going to fail the first time, maybe the second, maybe the third. You only need one success. You know, I had plenty of failures and I I still have failures. I mean, it's just, you know, that what I I talked about this morning. It's, you know, when I I I, you know, I I tell I said to the largest shareholders as as as as in the car and your assistant was, you know, looking at me in the limo. I was telling the other two shareholders, "Listen, guys, it's it's a binary decision. As soon as I get out of this interview, we're going to make a decision.

35:11 This company's going bankrupt. Oh, on the bankrupt company. Yeah, that yeah. And so, if we want to save it, everybody's going to have to pony up X million. And we're going to own the whole thing. We're just going to own it all. We're going to We're just going to do a cram-down round at a fraction of a cent. We're going to own the whole thing. You want to do that or you want to let it go bankrupt? You guys choose. I'm 1/3 of it, so it's going to have to be, you know, two against one. And I'll do whatever they want because that's how I am. But it's, you know, you want to get yourself in a position in life that I think most CEOs understand this.

35:45 You are going to have bad outcomes. They're going to be bad outcomes. But never put yourself in a situation where one bad outcome defines who you are. I mean, for those shareholders, they're going to be unhappy. But then I got the call on the IPO. Those shareholders may be very happy. They're going to make 400 400X. So, it and that was one of my deals. And so, it's sort of like learn to live with the idea that you are going to fail. You are going to lose money by taking risk.

36:21 Will it change relationships permanently? Maybe. But if there if you're respected and you're honest and you're transparent, probably not. I think there's a lot of people don't like me for my bluntness. I don't care. I think a lot of people respect me for my bluntness. They may not like me. And you know, it's sort of it doesn't matter because the only people that really matter to me are probably my 20 is closest friends and my family. Do you think if you hadn't worked with the known Steve Jobs, you would be a different person?

36:52 100%. Steve changed my life. There's no question. I didn't like him. But I feel so bad that he he didn't have to die that way. He just wouldn't go with the modern medicine at the time. That's my view. But he was a freaking genius. He was so smart in terms of keeping on track to get getting stuff done and look what he did achieved. But he was difficult.

37:28 Difficult cuz he wasn't always right. But he was right so much that the mistakes just didn't matter. And I thought, you know, the people that spent enough time with him know what I'm talking about. You know, it occurred to me cuz I know Wozniak too, not as well as Jobs, but they really needed each other. They really needed each other. Because Woz understood he was he understood what the Let me draw an analogy here for you. I think it's a good one.

38:05 Take the situation going on right now with Nvidia, AMD, to a certain extent Intel, maybe Broadcom, where policy makers in Washington have decided that we can't sell those chips to countries like China or Russia or whatever the list is of adversaries. That's bad policy. And here's why. What I learned from from Jobs was the the computer, the chip, is the queen bee.

38:43 It's It's the It's the queen bee. But it has no value without the honeybees, which are the programmers around that form a community that spend all of their energy writing code that works with the queen bee, which is the chip, that pushes out its influence because every coder that becomes familiar with that firmware, that Wozniak computer, writes to that platform is part of the honeybees.

39:16 Jobs understood that. He said, "I've got to get every honeybee writing for the Mac, writing for the OS of Apple." It's the same with the Nvidia chip. We need to sell it to everybody. Every Even adversaries because within that country of Russia or China is some genius kid. You don't know who he is or she is that's going to write the next piece of firmware or advance AI from the queen bee, the chip, the American queen bee.

39:56 The minute you shut down a market and you don't your adversary sends their queen bee in, which is Huawei. We can't let that happen because I don't think the lawmakers understand what Jobs understood. You create the hive with the queen in the middle. That's the chip. You convince every bee around to make the honey, which is the software and is the AI right in this in this case. You make it off that chip and when you advance the chip again, everybody knows how to take that set and stay within the American chip that you're advancing.

40:35 Maybe you keep them one generation behind, maybe. Maybe that's the policy, but you don't ever let an adversary put their queen bee in the middle of the hive. You see what I'm saying? Of course. I mean And that is what Jobs did. That was the war between Gates and Jobs on the OS, on the operating system. thinking about the App Store and Yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah. It's exactly the same thing. And so so when I see this policy now, I go out of my mind. I mean, the first thing I do is get on a plane and go to Washington because AI is so important for all of the investments I've made. I do not want to be putting Chinese honey into my companies at all.

41:12 It's that simple. So for that person that's stewing over their ideas now, if they had just a couple of minutes with you and they and they asked you the question, Kevin, I'm about to start this business. I'm about to go on this journey of trying to go from zero to something in my life. Is there anything else that I need to know as I set up upon this sort of next 10 years of my life? I'm 21 years old.

41:34 What what I cuz I think every entrepreneur has like their principles. You you talked about one which is the signal versus noise thing. Are there any other foundational principles that you think are conducive with success? That you might have learned Yeah, I mean I've what I'm telling 20 21-year-olds now is look, go work for 24 months in a sector you love that you're passionate about, even if they don't pay you. Go in there and be an apprentice.

42:01 if you're that passionate, you're going to be able to convince some manager to go work for free in there. You're just they're going to recognize your passion and they're going to bring you in. Do that first. Most young entrepreneurs say, "Nah, nah, I don't want to work for anybody." I said, "Yeah, you do actually. You you do want to work for somebody. You want to just understand how all the cogs move." Just 24 months. And after that, launch.

42:25 The first one will probably fail. You're going to start with your parents giving you 10,000 bucks or whatever it is, friends and family. But you will have the baseline knowledge of your industry. You will know who the participants are. You will understand how it works. And you'll have a much higher probability of success. But the key is to launch sort of in your in your mid to early 20s because you need to burn a few years failing. And and that that matters.

42:51 On the point of how to lead people, when people hear about Jobs' approach, they sometimes assume that you also have to be an And this is the this is the conflicting thing because the world has changed since Jobs was in a leadership position. Things have gone a little bit more soft, shall one say. Have you seen all all types of leadership win out in that regard? The direct, you know, signal-focused, kind of brash approach, but also the kind approach.

43:23 I know that kind works. I think respect works. I I The same number of are out there being successful now as they were back in the '90s. it doesn't matter whether you're an or whether people like you or not. I mean, people get so stuck on this stuff. It It's the team you're building are not your friends. They are the team you're building to execute on a mandate. Your customers come first. They're more important. And then, of course, the employees and how are they respected or not. There are people that work for me I don't like.

44:00 It doesn't matter. I respect them. I respect their ability to execute. And that above all is the most important thing. If you start getting into interpersonal relationships, you will fail because you may have to fire that person one day. People that hire family take huge risk. Nepotism is a horrible disease. It's It's some of the greatest private companies on Earth never let the kids run them. They just put them on the board and they hire professional management. That's how they keep wealth multi-generational.

44:32 Think about Tetra Pak, for example. People may not know that name, but it's a massive successful company. IKEA. I mean, you know, it's sort of you have to learn those lessons. It's It's It's about respect in both directions. It's not about likeability or softness or some social met- metric. It really isn't. And trying to redefine leadership that way because it's on trend, it's not going to work.

45:05 I started my first business at 12 years old, and then I started more businesses at 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. And at that time, what I didn't realize is that being a founder with no money meant that I also had to be the marketer, the sales rep, the finance team, customer service, and the recruiter. But if you're starting a business today, thankfully, there's a tool that wears all of those hats for you. Our sponsor today, which is Shopify. Because of all of its AI integrations, using Shopify feels like like you've hired an entire growth team from day one, taking care of writing product descriptions, your website design, and enhancing your product's images. Not to mention the bits you'd expect Shopify to handle, like the shipping, like the taxes, like the inventory. And if you're looking to get your business started, go to shopify.com/bartlett and sign up for a $1 per month trial.

45:58 That's shopify.com/bartlett. What about finding the definition of the word company as a of people? So, in terms of finding great people, is there anything that you can offer to entrepreneurs that are listening about how you've done that and what you've learned over time, the mistakes you've made with assembling your group of people? Yeah, hiring them without testing them first. I've made that mistake. So, so you now test them first. Yeah. Just cuz someone says they can execute doesn't mean they can. I mean, it's of course in your interview, you're not going to say I can't execute. You know, you're looking at their past you're saying this looks terrific. Looks like you can fit in, but it's on a piece of paper. They haven't been road tested.

46:35 They haven't put in a situation where they have to make individual decisions that that have consequence. The people you want are able to make decisions that have consequence. Good bad good consequence bad consequence. You don't know yet, but they have to have be able to make that decision on their own without calling you up because you gave them that mandate. Maybe you put a set of parameter you can spend a million bucks no more, but they're calling me, but whatever it is.

47:01 I don't want to hear from them. I just want the outcome. What about resilience and hard work? How much does that matter to you? Cuz I know you said they can work when, you know, they as long as they get the job done, but are you trying to figure out if they are a bit of a psychopath in terms of hard work? If they're possessed themselves. find the ones that are psychopaths hard worker actually the most successful.

47:21 It's not the case. I find the ones that are eclectic people that have other pursuits that are nothing to do with the business they're in. That do crazy stuff. You know, maybe it's riding motorcycles in the desert. I don't know you know, these are the examples I'm just using cuz I'm living with them. And say, look, I've got to go and ride a bicycle across the the desert. Okay. How many days you're going to be gone?

47:48 I don't know, maybe three. Okay. Is there anything that is immediate? That tells me that if you look at if you look at the year's outcome from that person, you're going to find that they probably outperformed. You You want You want You want the eclectic ones. You want the ones that are not just robots working. It's It's going to be cheaper to get a robot if you want a robot. I'm going to buy those two when they come available. But, I want people that have creative and unusual solutions that, you know, just think outside of the box.

48:28 It's It's really interesting that way. The other thing that, everybody wants to hear from you about is how to keep and grow your wealth. Because, you know, making wealth I kind of understand through the lens of entrepreneurship, take a big bet, hopefully have an exit or, you know, draw a dividend or make profit from a company you started. But, in terms of what you did and your relationship with your money, what are the most important things for someone to understand who's just trying to grow their money? Yeah, yeah, and I learned this from my mother, and I actually built a whole indexing company around it. When I was very young, I found out something, that, So, she, was fiercely independent. She was one of three daughters, of Lebanese descent. My Irish was father My father My original father, biological father, was Irish.

49:14 She didn't Yeah, there she is, Georgia. So, I haven't seen that picture in a while.

49:49 Okay. She was very independent. And she never ever wanted a man to control her life. So, she started at an early age when she was working for her father. They paid the girls, the family all worked there, and she worked in the accounting department and billing, but she got paid cash. And so, she would take 20% of that cash each week.

50:23 And she would put it into two asset classes. Stocks that paid dividends, large cap stocks, and Telco bonds. Seven-year Telco bonds paid about 6 and 1/2 to 8% back then. She bought the long bonds. And she had that portfolio for 55 years. Wow. she never spent any of the principal. Only the dividends and the interests. She put my brother and I through college, and you know, she took care of her family and her sisters when they fell on hard times.

51:00 But her rule was very simple. No more than 5% in any one stock or bond of the portfolio, and no more than 20% in any one sector, ever. Ever. So, when a stock ran up past five, she'd sell it down. This is not genius. This is just diversification. And when she passed and I I was the older brother and I saw the portfolio, cuz the lawyer said, "Listen, you got to come down here. You're the executor of the will." And I said, "Yeah, but you know, my mother was middle class."

51:30 He said, "No, you got to come down here. she kept her accounts secret from both of her husbands. She wanted her own independent money. And back then you could do that. And damn, I mean, what that portfolio did. The performance was extraordinary. It was beyond any hedge fund guy or anything. 55 years. When I saw the results, I said, "That's it. That's how I'm going to invest for the rest of my life." Exactly the way Georgette did. No more than 5% in any one stock ever, no matter no matter what it is, and no more than 20% in any one sector with the exception of real estate, which is a very large part of what I have in net worth. And I That's a It's a third. So, that's broken the rule, but there's reasons for that, and I'm very happy with that portfolio.

52:23 But, that if she if you if everybody that's listening to this does that, they will maintain and grow their wealth. But, it's people bet they make big bets. They're just They think they're so damn right, they put half their net worth into one sector or one stock, and they get wiped out. That's what happens. So, would your mother pick the stocks herself, or would she invest in an index fund or She indexed. She used to So, okay.

52:48 Even even back then, you know, they didn't have ETFs, but they had mutual funds that said their own only stock in this mutual fund is doesn't have any debt, and it pays dividends, you know, whatever. They were very rudimentary back then. They were just collections of stocks. I think she had like thir- 28 names or something like that in the portfolio. But, if you looked at them, they were really boring large cap names. But, they were sec- totally diverse. There wasn't 10 sectors back then. There was only There there wasn't 11, there was 10.

53:19 So, they didn't have real estate as a sector. So, but you know, I looked at it saying, "Wow, these are really boring." You learned a lot about money from your early upbringing, right? From your that early context. Yeah, because what she said to me was, "Look, you know, I I even do this today with wealthy people call me up all the time and say, "Look, you know, they get divorced. It's really I I This is a very wealthy woman got divorced recently and she said, "Look, I you know, I'm divorcing and she was a billionaire. She was divorcing She was more multi-billionaire and so she said, "Look, I I I'm getting Everybody's calling me up to be my advisor cuz I'm separating from my husband and it's all his guys that did all the management of our family wealth.

54:05 "Would you be my advisor?" I said, "No, I don't do that. but you know, I can I can just give you some basic advice and you can hire people to stick on the mandate." And I gave her Georgette's strategy, but she I I had to do something else, too. I said, "Let's get a piece of paper. You're a billionaire. Let's put everything on this piece of paper on the last 90 days that you've spent on whatever the hell it is. I don't care.

54:29 And let's put on No computer, no spreadsheet. On this Let's look at all the income that you've made off your portfolio as it stands now, whether it's gold you have or land or stocks or bonds. Let's just do a gut check on do you outspend yourself? She said, "Why would I give a shit?" I said, "Wouldn't you like to know how much money you're burning living your lifestyle the way you live it? Just out of interest. Maybe you have enough for the rest of your life, but maybe you want to give some of it to your family when they are or give it to charity.

55:02 Wouldn't you like to know? Because one of my rules is never outspend yourself on any 30- or 60-day cycle, ever. Just ever. I don't have any debt. So So I'm very careful about that. And we went through this little thing. She freaked out. She was pissing away money. Just bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars a week. I mean, I don't care how rich you are. You don't want to be stupid. And I said, "Does that shock you? One of the things that has to happen I mean, you're you're losing millions of dollars a quarter. Like Why?

55:39 Why? Like you don't you have you've had nobody restrict what you do with your money cuz you're going to have to sell stocks at some point or sell gold or sell land to keep this up. And are you really that happy? Like what do you what's all this you're buying? Like what is all this crap that you don't need? It was an eye-opener for her. So I My point is most people don't do that exercise. I don't care if you're only making 56,000 a year or 68 the average salary.

56:06 So are you in the camp that you shouldn't spend money on the small things like the coffee if you don't need it you should make the coffee at home? Is that kind of I I just I can't stand it when I see kids that are making 70 grand a year spending $28 for lunch. I mean that's just stupid. It's just think about that in the context of that being put into an index and making 8% 8 to 10% a year for the next 50 years.

56:30 What's an index for someone that doesn't So okay. I mean you know I even have it I even built an app for this purpose just so I could There's many apps out there you don't have to use mine. Mine's called Beanstocks but you just allocate 15% of your salary and it automatically puts it into two buckets some stocks and some bonds. The stocks are ETFs exchange-traded funds that just track the S&P 500 very simply. Mine's a little The S&P 500 is the top 500 stocks.

56:56 Yeah so it's just you know people will tell me oh I can beat the S&P P I can pick stocks. They're so full of crap. Not over the long period they can. So it's better you might as well just own ETFs. I have a version of the S&P that I designed with other people that strips out all the crappy balance sheets but that's just me. You can just buy the index that you want you know the ETF and then you pay low fees and then over time it appreciates and then if you buy some treasury bills or what fixed income you get that. You should have less of those when you're young and more of them when you're older just just diversification.

57:25 But you you know the best test I do with my kids' friends too. Go into a closet. Go into your closet, and look at how much you have you don't wear. Because you either bought it cuz you thought you were going to wear it and never wore it or wore it once, and you end up wearing 20% of your portfolio all of the time and 80% you you pissed away. I mean, that's really stupid. And so, for a young person, a young woman or man, don't do that. Start putting in just buy the minimum stuff. And another thing in my life with my mother, this is interesting cuz I saw it happen at her death.

58:03 She, you know, would buy two Chanel jackets a year. Really expensive Chanel jackets. Handmade Chanel jackets. I do business with Chanel because of, you know, the legacy of my mother and the whole Coco Chanel thing and watches. I love those guys. And her theory was, this will never get old. And it never did. A classic vintage Chanel jacket from the '50s, this well-kept, is worth a fortune today. The classic It still wears beautifully. They're so well made. So, she wouldn't buy crap. She'd buy really good stuff, but a little just small amounts of it. And over the years, she'd built up this portfolio of amazing clothing. And when she died, the women in in our family had a cat fight over her portfolio. Unbelievable. Is that in part why you have so many watches? I've noticed you have a watch on either wrist right now.

58:55 Yeah, I'm pretty big in watches. I mean, but but watches to me, every piece I have marks something in my life that was important. A deal, a child, graduation, you know, something. Every piece. I've got a lot of watches. How many have you got? I I don't even say anymore cuz of the insurance policy I have. I got a lot. Do you invest in You You're talking about your your mother's investing strategy, and one of the things you said is she invested in dividend stocks.

59:21 Yes. What is a dividend stock, and should I be investing in dividend stocks? Yeah, I mean, you know, a if it's profitable and it's operating and its business plan is working and it's growing market share, at some point says, "I'm going to distribute some of the success of our profits to our shareholders." That's a dividend. And so, they send that cash to you and you can either redeploy it in other ways or live off it or whatever. Many tech stocks until recently did not pay dividends, but now the behemoth tech stocks do pay dividends because the demand of an aging population is I need to eat. And so, I like to own the stock for growth, but I also want to get some of the profits. And so, dividend-paying stocks used to be utilities, but not so today. Every Every sector has dividend-paying stocks, so I prefer to own dividend-paying stocks, div payers.

60:07 And then I also own fixed income products. I also own crypto now and I own alternative assets like gold and watches. My watch collection's actually done quite well, even though there's been a correction. There's volatility, but I have some watches that have, you know, I bought for 200,000 and worth over a million today. Crypto. So, are you still bullish on crypto as an investment? I am actually, but people get crypto confused with its real potential. let's talk about digital payment systems because what's about to pass first, we're days away from this happening, is the Genius Act, which is actually the stable coin act. It was just passed by the Senate 48 hours ago. It's going back to the house. I I actually worked on that bill 2 years ago. So, if that bill passes, it's really nothing to do with speculating on crypto. It's a new form of payment. So, if I wanted to order a watch in from Simon Birch, who's somebody I buy watches from, he's a master watchmaker, right now I have to take US dollars.

61:04 I've got to get through a know your client prerogative. I'm treated like a criminal by transferring 100,000 dollars over, turn it into Swiss francs. Takes about a week. I get screwed for about 200 basis points in the whole thing. If I If he accepted USDC, which is actually a stable coin backed by the US dollar, just went public, very successful IPO. I was a shareholder in that company, too. That's one of my best IPOs in in the last 2 years. The transaction would happen in less than a second.

61:31 And the fees would be a hundredth of what the costs are right now. So, it's a digital payment system. The price doesn't It's not It's not It's no speculation on it. It's backed by the US dollar Treasury bills. So, it's sort of a new form of of digital payment. That's different than Bitcoin, which is a speculation. It's If you believe in Bitcoin, you think it's a digital gold, and you live through the volatility. I believe in both. I believe that that crypto will be the 12th sector of the S&P in some period of time because it provides productivity to all 11 other sectors. So, the way I own it is I own the exchanges.

62:13 My exchange of in one called WonderFi up in Canada just got acquired last week or 2 weeks ago by Robinhood. I'm happy cuz I think Vlad who runs Robinhood is great. And now he's got a million plus accounts in Canada in market that he'd never participated in. But the point is this is never going away. It's going to stay forever. So, how do you participate? You can buy some Bitcoin, just like you can buy gold, buy it in ETF or actually own it yourself. You can buy the exchanges. You can use you know, you can buy Circle stock now it's public. You can Circle makes USDC. You can buy USDC in in an account and make 4.1% interest on it right now.

62:51 So, there's a lot of ways to participate, but yes, I'm here to stay. But I've grow I've grown up. I was around during the period where the crypto cowboys lived. And and I survived that all. And I even testified in front of the Senate and the House and whatever else the testimonies were during the the tumultuous period. And most of those guys went to jail. Your portfolio in terms of Bitcoin allocation or crypto allocation, what is it now? It's at about all in.

63:15 we we marked to market last month, it was 19.1%. 19.1%? Yeah, we have to keep it under 20. It's a sector, so. But remember, in that is the cryptos itself, Bitcoin, the USDC, and the shares of the infrastructure companies, like Circle and everything else. I've got, you know, it was a very successful IPO. One of the first things most people do when they get a bit of money, usually from their their job, is they get a mortgage on a house.

63:40 Because we're kind of taught as we grow up that the best way to make or that not maybe the best, but the most obvious way to create wealth is to buy your first home. Yeah, there's a very basic rule for that, and I understand it, and I did the same thing. But what I made sure again from my mother was never let the mortgage and the cost of maintaining the house be more than 1/3 of your income.

64:06 1/3 of your income. If it's more than 1/3, you bought too much house. So, it's better to buy a house that's maybe it's only going to be 1,900 square feet to start in a neighborhood that you may not want to stay in for the rest of your life, but start to accrue the benefit of real estate from that point of view, learn how to manage it, maybe you rent part of it out or whatever, but it can't be more than a third of your income. The mistake that people made and they're starting to suffer from it now is when money was so cheap, mortgage mortgage rates were under 4%, they were 3.2% some of them.

64:36 They bought massive houses. And now they're running into having to refinance those houses at much higher rates, more than 7%. And it's becoming 60, 70, 80% of their income. They're screwed. They bought too much house. So, it's about making sure that you can manage that, and also you want some diversification. Yes, a mortgage is okay, particularly if you're having a family, cuz you're going to pay rent or you're going to pay a mortgage, one of the two.

65:02 But you want some diversification and to starting to build up that investment account for when you retire, so that you have something to live off. If you only put aside 15%. If you're you're making 70,000 a year and you put 15% aside from when you're 25, you'll have over a million and a half dollars if you just invested it in the stock index, in the S&P 500. That's what That's what history has told you. In what time frame?

65:28 Your whole career. I mean, you're going to be 65. You're 25, 65. You just stick with that protocol and you'll watch it grow. You'll watch it grow. You go up and down as the market goes up and down. Some years it'll go flat, whatever, but it's the people that don't even think ahead and find themselves at 45 mired in debt including a mortgage. You want to get rid of your mortgage in your 40s. Most people's primary investment asset is the house they buy.

65:51 Is that a small Yes, it is, but it's also the debt they own. It's a primary asset. How much debt does it have on it? It's only the equity value is the asset. So, if you're buying a house that's too big and it's you've only put down 10% and it's a 90% mortgage, what do you really own? You really own the 10% at whatever price it is. Sometimes housing goes flat for a while. It's It's okay, but it's not okay if it's too much house. If you're a 25-year-old and you're on that 70k that you talked about, and your objective was to make money, you don't have kids, you don't you don't have a relationship, would you buy a house? No.

66:30 No, I wouldn't because why do I need a house if I'm only unless I'm renting it as an income property. I'm buying a house because I'm getting married and I'm going to raise a family. I need a house. I mean, that Is that the use case for buying a house you thought? I think it is. People But you know, it's not There are many people that say, "Oh, I love real estate. I'm going to buy three houses. I'm going to rent them out."

66:47 That's a different business. And I know people in their 20s that do that. In fact, they're successful. That's all they do. And so, that their job is to find houses, buy them, fix them up, and rent them. And they manage that geographically tight portfolio. It happens a lot in student housing, for example. I've got a good friend who's involved in student housing. He's very successful. He just focuses on one aspect, buildings that rent to students, and he manages it. And he, you know, raises a family, he's successful, but that's one thing he does. That's not the same as saying I'm going to buy a house cuz I'm I just got married, and I'm going to raise I'm going to have a child in the next 24 months.

67:21 Then you should have a house. But if you're You said to me, "I'm single, I want to make money." I wouldn't buy a house. That's not the number one asset class, I think. I'd get a diversified portfolio, and just ride the pony with that for a while until I meet that special person I'm going to, you know, raise a family with, and then I'd have a little nest egg I can work with. I mean, wealth creation comes down to one word, discipline.

67:47 That's it. The ability to look at something and say, "I'm not going to buy that. I'm going to keep that money working for me." Not many people have that discipline. Wealthy people have that discipline. You meet them later in life, you realize when they were young and had nothing, even the ones that were employees their whole lives that are now financially free, had the discipline to say no. There's so much stuff you don't need. And you should never buy a watch unless you can afford it, ever go in debt for a watch cuz people hear this stuff say, "I'm going to buy watches like O'Leary's red bands." No, you're not. That's why I wear watches now that cost under $500 to show kids, you want to get into horology, you don't have to spend, you know, $50,000. Here's a Here's a Timex for $265. It looks beautiful. Get that.

68:36 You said, you know, don't buy the house until you meet your partner, etc. How much does the person that you fall in love with have an impact on your finances, your money, your chance of success in your view? It's everything. Are you kidding? I mean, it's it's everything. If you read I mean, think about this. You need to find somebody. If you're an entrepreneur, so that's for the We're talking about the third now that want to go on the rocket ship ride.

69:01 You better find somebody that's willing to tolerate the fact that you're never home for the first 10 years. They're going to raise a family by themselves because there's no balance in life. That that idea of balance is complete I mean, it's just You have to work so hard to compete globally these days in every sector. You're going to work your ass off and it's not going to happen over I mean, Anna Sky did it in 3 years, but she had worked much harder previously. It was not her first deal.

69:28 But she was just lucky. I mean, she Was this the cat DNA? Cat DNA. I mean, she she she she she But she's you know, she's she's working again. She's back She wants to work. I mean, that's what happens. You never stop working. But the thing is that partnership and this is what people don't get about marriage. Marriage is a business. I know people go nuts when I say that, but it's a business and the first child you're going to have is money.

69:57 It's going to be the first child and it's going to sit at the table with you every day. It's It's there. Sitting there. If you don't have money, you don't have a marriage. I mean, the reason people get married is to form a form of financial stability so that they can afford a family. And you have to figure out you know, I'm I'm I've been with my wife a long time and we've been separated for a couple of years, but you know, family is very important to me, so I we got back together again and we and you know, our daughter got back together. I'm very happy we did it. But it's we make financial decisions together. We we always check in.

70:33 You know, anything that's material you know, if we're going to do a renovation or something and and I respect her for that. I have a lot of respect for her because she doesn't just spend money. We didn't have any money when we started. We had nothing. And so that's why a great marriage can work because you build it together. You really care about it. You care about your family. You also care about what you you've created in wealth. And I consider my money her money. Like it's cuz she was the family that let me go and do the stuff. Now, I don't have the same relationship with our kids that she does because she raised them. But that's the thing you give up and you have to give something up. That's it. You can be a great father, great provider, but you're never going to have the closeness that she had reading them stories when they were young. I wasn't there. But, you know, the outcome has been good. I think everybody looks at that and says, "All right, that's great."

71:19 But my mother never believed in entitlement and so I don't believe in it either. I'm not gifting my kids a ton of money. You know, I I want them to launch and they've done that successfully. They got to They got to work, you know, they got to do their thing. I've heard you say before that the most important financial decision you'll ever make is who you'll marry. Yes. Why? Because think of the geometric loss of wealth. Every time you get divorced, you pay the woman that you divorced or man and you pay the government a third often through capital gains and liquidation because you can't separate all the assets without liquidating them sometimes. So you've got the government sitting there, you've got the other spouse sitting there. This is the stupidest thing you can ever do. It took your whole life to to actually create this nest egg. Could be, you know, you're 45 or whatever.

72:14 You've You've got a comfortable life and all of a sudden you don't like your wife or husband. Think about that for a while. Because you are going to wipe out up to two-thirds of your wealth. You better really like somebody else a lot. And frankly, sometimes it's not the other person that you're divorcing. It's you. You're the problem. If you're getting married for the third time, you're a guy or woman, it's not them. It's you. There's something wrong with you and you should probably not get into another economic union. You should probably just date till you drop dead because it's stupid.

72:51 Marriages are tough. I mean, they're tough. Anybody who's been married for more than 20 years knows exactly what I'm talking about. But they have they accrue more benefit than than, you know, anything. So it is like if you're happy 51% of the day with your wife, stay with him or her, husband or wife. You That's very important. How often do you think divorces are a result of money issues? Well, you may be shocked at this. I wrote a book about this and I decided men, women, and money a long time ago, 10 years plus. Right. There it is.

73:24 And I did some research and I I went to meet some of the top divorce lawyers in North America in New York, in Boston, and other cities. And I said, "Look, I I want to kind of do a pie chart of the reasons for divorce that seemed to 50% seemed to end in divorce within 5 to 7 years." Every one of them, they didn't know each other, said, "It's not infidelity. Nothing to do with it. Most marriages can survive infidelity.

73:54 They can't survive financial stress. And so what happens invariably is you fall in love, but you didn't do any due diligence on that person's spending habits or their financial history because l'amore is so wonderful in the early days, you didn't do any diligence on their family or them or their brother or bankruptcy in the past or whatever it is. And then you get married and, you know, the euphoria starts to wear off and you notice that the other is outspending you.

74:29 Just buying a lot of stuff. Beyond your means. And that starts the first friction. And then that credit card comes in with a $100,000 on it at 23% interest and another purse was bought or whatever the hell it is. And you're you're starting to sink because you may have married somebody who can't stop spending. This is just a typical There are people that can't have no discipline. They just can't. They got to have the boat, they got to have this, they got to have that, and they pressure their other to say, "Look, I want to keep up with the Joneses next door."

75:07 even though they may only each have a salary of a hundred grand each. Can't do it. And they have kids and they're trying to put them through college. That's divorce. That's why almost 90% of of unions break up is is is that classic financial pressure. And divorce gets them out of that mess because they can no longer spend on your credit card anymore, but it's a horrible way to go. So, I've you know, I'm I'm an investor in a company called HelloPrenup that does divorces for does prenups for women. And prenups force during the euphoric period diligence.

75:45 It's that simple. You're going to find out if that person has a financial problem going into the marriage. They have to disclose their financial background. So, you you talk about these five love languages of money. The mooch, someone who won't pay for anything. Right. Should I date someone like that? It's a warning signal. It's a problem. It's a problem so Or they don't really want you for companionship. They just want you for financial support. The spendaholic, someone who always offers to pay for everything to appear popular and successful.

76:18 Bad warning sign. Huge. I mean, that isn't that is insecurity measurable by cash outlay. The loafer, someone who has no ambition and drive for money. Avoid with extreme prejudice. The thief, someone who steals. You can have no tolerance for that. And the meanie, a balanced spender who lives within their means. Love that. Marry a meanie. That's it. That's That's the Those are the marriages that last an entire life. That's it. That's what you're looking for. That's great advice right there.

76:52 Whatever the book costs, that's that's the best value right there. And then ask yourself, am I dating one of these or not? You know? You know, you should talk about money on the third date. Think about a date Think about dating. First date, oh my goodness, this is a really interesting person. or not. Then there's your second date. Second date, I want to learn more. I'm really interested. You're going into a third date, there's something going on. There's something going on. You both want to meet again.

77:20 That's the first time you should say, "Look, I know this is crazy, but we're here together a third time because something's going on here. And I'm just wondering, what are your long-term goals? I mean, it's not about our marriage or anything else other than we're having a great time, but what are your ambitions? I'm really interested in you. I'd like to know what you think." And then maybe the woman says or the guy says, "What are you checking me out?"

77:42 You say, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm really interested in you." It's a form of finding out if the connection, you know, I I I should be a marriage counselor. That's what I think. I mean, it's it's really Dating is is the is the dance, but it should involve exploring where we're going financially. For many years, you've probably seen this iPad sat in front of me. You've probably wondered what's on it, and I'm going to tell you today because they're now our show sponsor, thankfully. It's an app called Goodnotes, and it's where I store all of my research, all of my information, but also where I take notes in real time when the guest is speaking to me. I love this app because it's so dynamic, but also because of this new feature, which is called Ask Goodnotes.

78:24 It's basically my AI companion. I can search the 200 pages sometimes of notes and information that I have in front of me in just seconds. I can type into the Ask Goodnotes feature, "What was the name of Kevin's mother?" I'm speaking to Kevin O'Leary on the podcast. He starts talking about his mother. I have a couple of seconds to figure out what she's called so I can ask him a question about her in a polite way. Ask GoodNotes to look through all of my notes, respond back to me in seconds. If you're someone that loves taking notes but your notes are a mess and you can't read your own handwriting, I may, I think GoodNotes might be the solution for you. And Ask GoodNotes, which is their new AI feature, might just be the tool that turns you into an organized person.

79:04 That's certainly how it feels for me. So I asked GoodNotes if they would give my listeners a 30-day free trial to try it out and they've given us one on iOS and Mac. So if you want to use that 30-day free trial, go to goodnotes.com/doac or sign up now for your yearly subscription for just $9.99 per year. That's $9.99 per year. Go to goodnotes.com/doac. I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early-stage founders. They spend very little time thinking about HR. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care.

79:39 It's because they're obsessed with building their companies and I can't fault them for that. At that stage you're thinking about the product, how to attract new customers, how to grow your team, really how to survive. And HR slips down the list because it doesn't feel urgent. But sooner or later, it is. And when things get messy, tools like our sponsor today, JustWorks, go from being a nice-to-have to being a necessity. Something goes sideways and you find yourself having conversations you did not see coming. This is when you learn that HR really is the infrastructure of your company and without it, things wobble. And JustWorks stops you learning this the hard way. It takes care of the stuff that would otherwise drain your energy and your time, automating payroll, health insurance benefits, and it gives your team human support at any hour. It grows with your small business from startup through to growth, even when you start hiring team members abroad. So if you want HR support that's there through the exciting times and the challenging times, head to just works.com now.

80:33 That's justworks.com. One of the bigger protagonists in the story of many things we discussed, money, investing, building businesses now is this thing called artificial intelligence which you mentioned earlier. Yes. It's like entered the room. Yes. And it's changing lots of these equations in a really profound way. Again, for that person who is maybe at the start of their career or even, you know, they're they're a lawyer right now. How are you thinking about AI? What should they be thinking about? Because I don't think we've seen something quite like this. Not certainly not in my lifetime. I've not seen disruption of this scale. I wasn't around for the dot com boom. I was too young. I was 10 or something. I was eight. Yeah.

81:07 So so how should we be thinking about this moment? Is it a huge opportunity for wealth creation or Yeah, it's immense. It's bigger than the internet and I'll tell you why. I want to keep it down to earth because I'm actually using it now in use cases. There's every sector of the economy, every aspect of research, every aspect of business has a huge opportunity here. But let's just take use cases that you would understand, everybody listening would understand.

81:33 In today's post-pandemic world most businesses have developed, large or small, direct-to-consumer strategies where they try and build relationships with customers and sell them product direct. Yeah, they still use retail. Say you're Nike or something. And you we were 27% you know, direct-to-consumer before the pandemic, you're now 50%. And and direct-to-consumer gets you higher margins but also gets you data. Gets you information about the preferences of your customer base, what they like, what they don't like, the flavors and what they buy, when they buy, where they buy it, all that stuff.

82:05 That's very interesting that data. And let me give you an example, wine business. If you think about the wine business, the challenge of a thousand-year-old business. You don't know what the weather's going to be like. You don't know what varietals to to to grow because you don't know what the preference of the customer is because you're selling it through multiple tiers of distribution. During the pandemic, 43 states in America opened up direct-to-consumer sales from the wineries in the West Coast. For the first time ever, the wineries found out what people buy, where they buy it, when they buy it, what they drink, what varietals. And I'm in the wine business. I sell over 3 million bottles a year of wine.

82:45 One of my companies, actually a Shark Tank company. and we partner with a company called QVC. We sell online. And And so, I can tell you today, this month, this week, the number one varietal in Southern Florida for women ages 44 to 64 is Moscato, a sweet wine. I think it tastes like I don't care what I think. It's the number one wine right now. And I knew that to to make that varietal available 6 months ago, so that I would be able to ship it and put the inventory, the CapEx in the right place at the right time to support that demand for the rest of this summer.

83:25 A sweet, cold Moscato wine. That means I spent a lot less money and a lot less risk. I don't have any varietals they don't want this summer. I have exactly what they want. That was AI. It cost me virtually nothing to get that data. 5, 10 years ago would have cost me a million bucks to go do all the market research. I got that for $18,000. So, that's using an AI tool. Here's another example. So, do I use that tool?

83:53 100%. And there's many tools. You don't have to just use chat There's many different competing platforms. So, we use them all. We check the assumptions by checking it all on all of them to see the little variances. Number two. I have to shoot an ad. I have to shoot a commercial. I'm going to shoot it here in LA. I'm going to do it in a studio like this with a green screen. And I'm going to spend, you know, $250,000 for a 30 you know, 15, a 30, and a 60 out of the same shoot.

84:23 And I'm then going to go into post with the green screen and I'm going to spend more money in post. I'm going to add whatever I need, whatever background I'm going to need. Or I could fly to Dubai where they have a giant studio with a 6K digital wall where AI links up your script to the background. There is no post-production. You basically shoot the commercial in 4 hours and it's done. The background's perfect.

84:57 The imagery's perfect. Your script is perfect. And I did that 2 weeks ago for the first time. I'd never seen that before. We did it for a fraction of the cost of what it would have cost to do it in the old way in post-production. But then I'll tell you what freaked me out. They reshot the commercial without me there using Kevin agent. An AI of you. I wasn't even there. And just to show that they could produce a new commercial with the same background for $9,000.

85:33 That would have cost $400,000 from scratch. So there's going to be a lot of job disruption then because as you said that You don't say. But on the other hand, I've now got content for that particular business I was shooting that you know, I've got content for that particular business I was going to shoot that commercial for. And I said, "Guys let's tweak it and shoot it again." He said, "Yeah, we'll do it in 2 seconds.

85:57 We'll send you the the 15 seconds back." I said I I I don't like what I said there. Can I change what I said? He says, "Yeah, well, do you want it in Spanish? You want it in Japanese? You want it in Arabic?" That's the power, the productivity that we're going to get. We're going to Our budgets for producing content are going to drop dramatically over the next And software and everything else, right? Creating everything is going to get Now full circle to your your thing about the chips, that all came from Nvidia chips.

86:24 That not That's not from Chinese chips. Whoever controls the chip and the honeybees that The honeybees are Those guys are all Indians and Pakistanis. They're genius mathematicians. That's the team over there running off that platform. If we had let Anyways, I don't want to I'm just freaked out that we got to control that. We We need democracy to control that. Your children, what are you saying to them though about their professional ambitions in a world where creating stuff like that and, you know, whether it's Who do you want to do your your taxes? An accountant or an AI? Who do you want to do your legal documents? Who do you want to do your any sort of like white-collar job, your make your videos, edit your videos?

87:02 I I tell them, you know, everybody's got a lot of anxiety. I I I tell them, "Listen, everybody chillax. It's a tool. You know, it's the same classic thing where radio was going to be displaced by television. Radio's bigger than it ever has been. It It just It doesn't matter. The one thing I concern myself with with AI is warfare. And I think the country that has the best AI and data centers and the most advanced chip technology will win the wars of the future, which will be fought by drones and robots. I know that sounds kind of crazy. That's where it's happening now and that's where it's going to go. So So when I when I solicit the ear of a senator, I try and explain to them my honeybee analogy saying this is about defense.

87:49 I don't want to live under authoritarian, you know, I know we debate the whole political environment these days, but I don't want to live around Chinese honey. I just don't. And those are going to be the two superpowers. You both You're in one vertical. Either you let the Chinese make the honey on AI or we make the honey and let the Chinese buy some honey from us. I know where I want to live. I know what I want to do, and I think I can convince a lot of senators the same idea because you got to understand the Wozniak Jobs analogy that we that you brought out earlier.

88:23 That was the genius of Jobs. Make the honey, but know who the queen bee is. The genius of Jobs brings me to a question I've wanted to ask someone like you for a long, long time, which is do you think Apple is dead? No. You don't? No, I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. You know, it's so interesting. people don't understand the genius of Apple because this is again came from Jobs. You know, he used to say to my team over and over again, and I mentioned earlier, they don't know what they want until I tell them.

88:53 And I always just just as close as you and I are right now, you're Steve. I say, Steve, how the do you know that? How do you know that? You don't know that. You don't know what you don't know. He said, show me where I'm wrong. Show me one instance of us working together I'm wrong. I said, it hasn't happened yet, Steve. Doesn't mean it won't. Get back to work. Don't worry about it. I'll worry about it. You make the software. I have the chips. Make the software. Go make the honey.

89:28 I have the queen bee. Don't worry about it. And that is pretty interesting because you got to prove it that he was wrong. Let's take Let's accelerate. He's dead now. But the philosophy of Apple, and I'll give you them what the way you win at you look at it. I can go buy a $330 laptop right here with the same processing power of this $1,800 Mac laptop.

90:00 Why would I been spend 1,800 when I could buy this for 300? Why? Brand. I want to be part of this universe. This honey right over here. The AppleCare, the fact that the OS works on all the platforms, and the messages are shown on all platforms simultaneously. All the OS, all the honey. That platform is the power of brand. It's I'm not leaving this universe. And Apple is one of the world's largest companies.

90:35 And you may say, "Oh, an innovation is going to make everybody leave that platform." I don't think so. They let other people sometimes bring in a new market, and then they take it over. And I saw Steve do that multiple times. He did it with the phone. I was around for that. That was crazy. I mean, he had the vision that we would someday run our software on the phone. I said, "You're out of your mind. It's The screen's too small." He said, "No.

91:02 You're going to go vertical. You're going to rewrite all this crap vertically." I mean, I can't fault him on anything, although I kept telling him, "You're going to get it wrong one day. You're not going to be right all the time." I can't find when he wasn't right. That That's That's the frustration, because I teach this, you know, to a hard bunch of really smart kids at Harvard, of which by the way a third are international students.

91:25 And they say, "Well, when did you catch him?" I said, "I didn't." What was he doing? Was Did he have a practice or or principles that allow him to see around the corner? He spent a lot of time at night you know, even studying fonts and looking at art, and focusing on the signal. I think his wife talked about that a lot. He I mean, she spent more time with him than anybody else, although Woz talks about a lot, because those guys spent countless hours together.

92:02 And but but Jobs defined he would take instances from nature into his head or from Japanese, you know, scripture or text or imagery and redefine it into technology in a way that no one else was doing. And that's the idea of the honey and the bee and the queen and all that stuff. It kind of comes from his view of the world.

92:32 And I don't know if you can understand this, but because it was so it came from nature, it was easy for people to assimilate it. It wasn't foreign. When they looked at the imagery and the design, he he tried to pull from from pleasing images from nature. Like the fonts on the first Mac. I remember when we were writing the code for that thing, Steve, this is not what people are used to seeing on a computer screen. He said, "No, it isn't.

93:01 That's why it's going to work." You If you think about the very first scalable fonts, I saw that first. And I said, "See, this is this is almost foreign." He said, "Well, how's it make you feel?" I said, "It makes me feel pretty good. It just looks like it's on a piece of paper." If you I don't think you weren't even born when this stuff was happening. But it was it he was so far ahead. And this is the same way Elon is redefining whether it's, you know, SpaceX or whether it's what he's doing in neurosurgery or Tesla or, you know, all of these initiatives, you know, his satellite technologies, they are the same, those guys, except you know, Elon's 100% signal. I said that earlier.

93:44 They are the same and they should be they're treasures. They're national treasures. It doesn't matter if you like them. It doesn't matter what their politics are. It's It's irrelevant. The contributions they're making to society and to America, frankly, into competitive competitive nature of of of countries. That's why I thought it was so important that Trump make up with Elon. The most powerful man on Earth should have a a very good relationship with the most the richest man on Earth because he's the largest industrialist on Earth. Maybe there's like an inherent inability by way of them being who you just said they are. The most powerful But they know, they're smart enough to know. It's the same way I felt about Jobs. I'm getting back on the plane this quarter. I know he's going to beat me on but it doesn't matter. It It's the greater good is that we get this software out there advancing you know math and reading scores.

94:32 Was he happy? Steve. I don't know the answer to that question. he was a happy person? I don't know. He I've never I never saw him happy. He was always barking at me. I never saw him happy. I don't think I ever saw him laugh. I don't He may not have been, you know, that I mean, that's probably something his wife would know, but he looked like a tortured guy to me. But you know, that may have been his curse.

94:59 I You know, you some some you Do you love him? Yeah. I can see it in your face. 100%. I saw a lot of emotion in your face the first time you spoke about him and I thought that's surprising for someone that barked at you. Well, he respected me. That's for sure. He wouldn't execute on my ideas. He expected me to execute on his, but he was never wrong. Where did the emotion stem from? Oh, you know, it brings me back into that room with Heidi Roizen and all the crazy crap. I mean, it was just nuts.

95:30 And you know, the you know, I'd have to spend a lot of time The only the only meeting I really remember the the one that's really sticks in my mind when we were in Cupertino and we were just I think I don't know we're going after him for 18 million or something and Heidi was there. Who's Heidi? Heidi Roizen, she's a famous venture capitalist, but she was also kind of the muse, the person that could actually deal with Jobs all day long at Apple and bring him back to earth when he was out of his mind. I'll give you an example how that would work.

96:08 And I've seen her since, you know, it's it's it's I don't even know if she remembers this particular Anyways, we leave. He's barking at me. He's he and he's got one of my product managers in tears cuz she wanted to do the market research and he said, "No way. We're just going to do what I say." And she just felt like her job was useless. And and for him it was. I mean, he just didn't give a what she thought.

96:28 Although she ran the universe of Oregon Trail or something, some massive title, like a huge multi-million dollar title on the Mac in every 110,000 schools in America. And he he was so pissed that, you know, that in these old buildings they have the little window where you have a little knob and it only opens up 4 inches so you can't jump out of it in a hotel or something. So, we were we had a Hertz rental and we're the whole team's going out. I'm going to drive the car back to San Francisco. I'm going to fly back to Boston.

96:58 And he he undos the window and he's got his head stuck in there and he's yelling at me from from I'm looking up at him and saying, you know, what the Like what what more can we we what you already kicked us out, you know? And then on the way we had these old brick the earliest cell phones, these brick phones. Heidi calls me says, "Okay, he'll do it for 12 million." I said, "Heidi, why do we have to go through all that Like why do we even have to get abused?" She said, "Why is the sky blue?

97:35 You know? Just get back on the plane and go do it." Like it was a huge hit. Like it's just, you know, it's a huge hit. Like it's just the guy was if you looked at it like he he he could he could write the hit songs. what he did. He write the hit songs. So you know what, even if you hate the producer, you want the the guy that can do the hit songs, right? If you're an artist, you put up with a crazy producer. Could he not have been nice, do you think?

97:59 Not in his DNA. No. Do you think if he was a nice person, he wouldn't You know what he would say about that? That's noise. Who gives a Yeah, he doesn't give a No, I being nice is noise. That's for him. I mean, we spent a lot of time talking about him, but I think there's a lot of lessons learned from him that I think managers today, parents today, certainly CEOs today, you know, your your about this show is about CEOs, I wish every CEO had spent the time the minimal time that I spent with Jobs had such an impact on me.

98:32 I mean, it it it I I'm I owe a lot of my success to him cuz I think I always think, "What would Steve do?" And I make decisions like that. It's amazing. The guy's still around. I bet you if you talk to, you know, any of the management at Apple, they they have that ghost in those rooms, for sure. Including the current CEO, who I think is doing a phenomenal job. He he spent so many hours with Jobs. He knows exactly what I'm talking about.

99:01 Nobody spent more time in business than that guy, for sure. I was just about to go there. First, Steve Jobs was happy, but are you happy? I get happier the older I get and because I've I've I'm very comfortable. I found a place you know, that I'm And I I this may be just what aging does. I mean, it's just, you know, in in when I was in my 30s, I had a lot of trauma and turmoil and and just, you know, hard time to find it trying to figure out who I was and I also suffered from dyslexia, which I've come to think of as a superpower, not not an affliction. But it it was kind of like it's hard to know what journey you're going to be on until you find it. And then I found it, and then I started on a new journey. And and you know it's it's something where you know you you you ask yourself every day goes by and you know with this the noise and signal thing and how much of this day was I happy doing the things that I wanted to do. And I am very happy if you if I measure it by is there anything that I spend my time doing that I don't want to do today? The answer is no, because I don't have to.

100:18 And so I don't waste my time. I do you know even coming here to spend two hours with you when I first you know heard about it, I went online and said oh yeah this guy this guy's great. I'd love to work with him. You know that kind of thing you you allocate your time. This is this is I'm happy to do this. I want to be here. And I think you know we had a very interesting couple hours together. But that's the definition of happiness. What concerns me and my wife often says to me we don't need any more money. Why are why are you flying 300 hours a year on an airplane? What are you doing?

100:56 I said I'm happy. Like you know I'm I'm happy doing this. I want to do this stuff. You know I sometimes I do five cities in a day. It's freaking crazy. And that's the wonderful thing about you know air travel today you can do that. But it's It's spooky. It's it's it's so interesting. I get so many interesting opportunities. I can't turn them down. They're just such you know Are you driven or are you dragged? You know you used the word trauma there and I often ask myself that question because I I came from a all white area. I was the black kid with the strange hair and the strange family. I was insecure. And I think that resulted in this this force of will to try and crack the insecurity or to prove something to myself which then resulted in success.

101:39 there is no drag, there's only driven. I don't understand being dragged. Drag insinuates that you don't care about performance, you don't care whether you succeed or not, you're just being sucked into the void of success. You might be able to say that for a rock star that gets a hit song, but most of them doesn't last. I mean, you need massive amounts of of drive. And I love the most the most exciting thing I like to do is when someone tells me "You can't do that." Like watch insurance. You will never launch a watch insurance company. It you will never do that. You will never get around the compliance state by state.

102:16 You will never launch in the Middle East. You will never launch in England. That's exactly what I did. I found the right team. I found the right partners. I figured it out. I I was passionate about it. And I think I'm going to kick ass. I think I'm I think in two or three years from now, you won't be able to catch up with me. That's right. I'm 32 years old. What what is the advice that you wish you got at 32 years old, Kevin?

102:41 What I have learned, and this is something that you should really think about for yourself. Your real value, your real brand, are your followers. This army of people that have decided to invest their time in you. You know, you've cut across a a vast swath of people. So, you influence very successful managers, CEOs, and a lot of young entrepreneurs want to hear what you have to say because they they're expecting you to deliver valuable information across multiple sectors. And you also have your own data, but men and women. And so, where do you take that? Because, you know, it's Do you want to launch a clothing line?

103:34 Do you want to sell burgers? Do you want to do consulting? You know, it's it's You have all those opportunities, but what fits your brand? And so, I have and you'll get to do this. You'll get to do this. You'll be approached by a lot of people that want to ride that network you've built. And my advice to you is cuz this has really worked for me. Is this a product or service that I personally would use?

104:05 That I would actually use. Because you'll get offered a lot of money to talk about one brand or another brand. They will, and you may be weak and take it. But the minute anybody in your network, in your community thinks you're not authentic, you're And you know that. Yeah. And so, you better be authentic, you better be transparent, you better be honest even when turmoil hits, whatever it's going to be.

104:40 I found that saved my ass so many times by just saying, "Here's what I know. Here's what happened." And that actually bonds them even closer to you. And And that's that's the difficulty you're going to have is how much do you want to take next? Cuz you're going to have that opportunity. But if you stay authentic and say, "I'm going to do I'm going to support this brand cuz I use it." Every single brand or commission I have in supporting a business, I use myself.

105:09 I'm a shareholder in it and I believe in it, and I use the product or, you know, whatever. Like the wines I make myself with my wife, we drink them in our family and everybody knows that. So, you if it's I wouldn't drink it if it's wine. So, it's it's sort of like that's my advice to you because I meet a lot of people, but you're very rare. You What you've built, maybe by happenstance that it occurred. Whatever.

105:37 Alchemy occurred, you have it now. It's yours to lose. Don't it up. Now, everything you said is so true and obviously the things that I the things that we talk about on the show in terms of brands that I promote, pretty much all of them I've invested my own money into. Yeah. And this is like what I talked about my Whoop. Yeah. if you look at the investments I have and the things I talk about, there's a really clear through line through them.

106:02 So, there's a really clear through line and it's actually reflective of just where I am in my life. There's actually a sponsor I used to have on the show that I was very big on and I just stopped I stopped consuming the product. They offered me 6 million pounds, which is about what 8 million dollars, to continue for another year and a half. And I said like it just wouldn't I'm about to basically start talking about and investing in the antithesis of what you do. Yeah. So, I had to turn down that 7 million dollars, which is a lot of money for anybody. Yeah. But, it's because my life shifted and I shifted in a different direction. People don't see those things. They they don't see that the this foreign government comes along and offers you 4 million dollars to go and talk about their country or to go do the diversity in their country. They don't see those decisions that you make, but I think hopefully if you listen to me long enough, you'll see a through line between the things that are authentic to me. Yeah, and I think that So, you've already figured it out. And the other thing that I would do and say anybody your age and because I wish I'd done it is start focusing on longevity in your 30s. Start thinking about what you eat and what you drink and how much sleep you do and how much exercise you have.

107:02 You're you could live to 120 years old. I mean You know, it's sort of if if you understand If you're wearing a Whoop, you know what I'm talking about. It's sort of I'm very, very focused on what I do and exercise and what I eat and all that. but that makes you feel healthier and and more and just better about the your day as you go through it. But, the fact that you figured that out at your age, because most people at your age would have taken the 7 million pounds or whatever it was, that would have been a huge mistake. Because now the next product that you do endorse, I will know with certainty that you use it because you told me this.

107:37 We have a closing traditional in this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that was left for you, funnily enough, I feel like I might have asked it, is where do you believe happiness really comes from? You know, I think the answer is very simple. Consistently achieving your goals. Because happiness is not a destination, it's a journey. That's what it is. So, you have to set those goals, whether it's noise to signal, going full circle, what we talked about, or long-term, whatever it is, it's consistently achieving those goals, you will be happy.

108:18 Consistently not achieving them, you'll be unhappy. Because it is not a destination. Happiness is not a destination. Ever. It's a mistake that's so elusive. I mean, it's just not a destination, it's a journey. That's it. This is one of the great things you've taught me today. I'm reaffirmed for me today is this idea of like signaling noise and radical prioritization because kind of dovetailing into what we were just talking about, when you have a lot of opportunity, it gets even harder, I think, to know which one should be taking your 18 hours a day. This is something I struggle with.

108:54 should feel it. You know, you're you're you're kind of a weird dude, cuz you're like a 70-year-old man in a 30-year-old body. You've got You've got the intellect of of experience, which most people don't have at your age. But, deals, there's a certain feeling that you if if you should feel that it's a good deal. It should It should be in your gut. And I've learned this. There's many deals that sound great that when I just do the gut check, I don't participate in. They just don't give me And that came from experience, but you seem to have that in some weird way to avoid that one we just talked about. That's it it's it's it's intuitive feeling that you generally get by having a lot of winners and losers over time.

109:38 Mhm. But you seem to have accelerated that somehow. It's an intuitive nature of where you want to get to and what it's going to take to get there, and there's going to be sacrifice along the way. It's never about the money. Never. It's not about the money. It's you know, it's do I want to achieve that goal? You know, I'm having a it's it's just a weird thing because I'm I had a similar situation just a couple of days ago.

110:10 You know, when somebody approached me and said, "Look, can you get behind this and and back it, and I'll pay you a ton, like just a crazy amount of money." And I thought, "Do I actually want to spend 1 hour pursuing that?" And I went back to him and said, "Look, no. I I just it's just not interesting. I I just I don't I can't see my I I can't see myself getting involved in that narrative." Which was it was a complicated situation, but And then he said, "Look, how about I give you 2 and 1/2% of the company?"

110:46 I said, "No." I I just don't want to be associated I you know, it's just it's same idea. It would intuitively It was noise. Yeah, and what that would do is some opportunity you don't know about down the future that you have you you you you pursued some goal that somehow tainted your brand, and that opportunity never comes to you. You you're you're the you're the captain of your brand. You you to you have to define yourself right through the journey. It's hard.

111:16 It's really hard. You know, it's it's it's really hard. And that And that if if there's going to be a downfall for you, you will have chosen unwisely somewhere. But it better not be for money. That's there should never be an amount that you would take because if your gut says no, it doesn't matter what the money is. Not after what you've achieved. I mean, you don't need to buy a guarantee anymore. You got it. I'm assuming you've put some away.

111:48 I mean, it's very simple. If you've got 5 million bucks in the bank, you can do whatever you want now. I mean, it's may sound I want more, but that is enough under ca- Always have Always I have an account that just sits there with 5 million bucks in it in T-bills. I never touch it. That's my nest egg. Kevin, thank you. You got