Tai Lopez has a 5000 book library, which is good, because he reads a book every day. He considers himself to be a student of life, and has used everything that he has learned to become a self-made millionaire in his 20s. He has now founded 12 multimillion dollar companies and lives in Hollywood next door to Cameron Diaz and Katy Perry. He has managed to do this by using what he has learned about life and applying it to his business. Tai is now an investor and is helping other people create their own success in their businesses. Learn The Tai Lopez 67 Steps To Becoming a Millionaire.
Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast Guest Name Interview – Tai Lopez Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast, the place where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their businesses entirely from scratch before they knew what the heck they were doing. Now, here’s your host, Andy Drish. Andy: Welcome everyone to another episode of Starting from Nothing – the Foundation podcast, Andy Drish here. Today I’ve got Tai Lopez on the call with me. I’m going to introduce Tai in just a moment but first I wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who’s reached out and emailed me recently. At the end of March and beginning of April, I was really losing steam with the podcast and I noticed that it wasn’t energizing me and I would feel drained after interviews and I wouldn’t look forward to doing them anymore. And so if you listen to episodes in January/February you probably felt that. So one big shift I’ve been making in my life recently — well, over the past year — has been committing to following flow and committing to doing the things that give me endless amounts of energy and the things that are just fun and exciting to me. So in April, I committed to only doing interviews with people who I was deeply excited about spending an hour with and talking with. The next episodes we did an episode with Bryan Franklin and Jennifer Russell where we talked about the universe, and the cosmos, and paradox, and all of this. What it means to be an entrepreneur. Dane and I did our 50th anniversary episode which has gotten more feedback than pretty much any other podcast we’ve ever done. And recently Peter Shallard and I just did another round of podcast. For all of you who have been reaching out, sending me notes, thank you. Keep them coming. It’s the inspiration that I have to keep doing these. So just wanted to give that little note. And now I want to introduce Tai. Normally I do an introduction a little bit shorter but I want to read Tai’s entire bio because I think it’s so fascinating and so well-written. Tai is an aspiring renaissance man. He’s the author of a few books on unrelated subjects, a member of Mensa, the high IQ society which I didn’t actually know existed until I read this, a self-made millionaire in his 20s, a certified financial planner, couple other designations there that I don’t know what they are, and most importantly a student of life with a ton of books that he’s read 5,000 plus at the moment, at his last count. He wishes no one had ever seen when he was on Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker which, Tai, I watched part of the episode and I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I want to hear how you got on that show at one point. He dropped out of college but managed to earn a couple of credits. He’s been an entrepreneur for nearly 18 years and started 12 multimillion dollar companies that are all still running successfully. Plus a handful of other stuff: he loves traveling, jiu-jitsu, salsa dancing and playing classical piano. Tai, dude, you sound absolutely awesome. I loved the chat that we got to have about a month or so ago and so I’m stoked to have you on today. Thanks for carving out the time. Tai: Thanks, man. Thanks. I hope you didn’t watch The Millionaire Matchmaker too closely. Andy: Oh dude, it was hilarious. That was your business partner and stuff, is that right? Tai: Dude, its TV. People always think reality. I’m like reality isn’t true man but he’s actually a buddy of mine that live in North Carolina, but they changed the whole story and blah, blah, blah. Andy: One of my friends was on the Under Deck, the one about renting yachts or whatever. Tai: Okay. Andy: He said that they intentionally created drama for the sake that if they didn’t create drama they wouldn’t get aired and they wanted to get aired. So it’s really fascinating. Tai: Dude, Hollywood is all about lowest common denominator stuff. What entertains people is not always what educates them. I’m actually working on what I call edutainment but that’s for another — We’ll talk about that later. Andy: So Tai, you live in the Hollywood Hills. Your place is next to a couple of famous actresses. Is that right? Tai: Yeah. Cameron Diaz is my next door neighbor and Katy Perry, or the pop star. Russell Brand, when she was married he’s my neighbor. But he moved out now. Andy: Why are you in LA? Tai: I was actually born in LA. One of my mentors told me, “Tai …” Joel Salatin. He told me, “Tai, you should bloom where you’re planted – if you can.” For me honestly, if you look at — I know you have all these different entrepreneurs, tech entrepreneurs — if you really look at what runs the world right now, for the most part, it’s Hollywood. People don’t like to admit that because it feels stupid but there’s a good book I’m reading right now called Social by Lieberman — it’s this Harvard guy. He basically said, “Look, the human default state is a social state.” And so the default — when you get in the social dynamics, obviously Alpha is what people are looking for. Playboy was purchased by this private equity fund, Rizvi Traverse, about three years ago, and I was working on the Playboy deal with Suhail Rizvi. He’s one of the richest guys in the world. I don’t know, $2 billion, $3 billion. We were talking and he’s been buying — Back then he was buying up Twitter. He bought up privately like 20% or 30% of the shares at Twitter and I said why. He said, “Dude, Twitter is celebrity based and the world is increasingly becoming dominated a lot by celebrities because …” Now, a lot of people think that’s stupid. You got the Kardashians live down the street from me, Paris Hilton and all this, and you think it’s dumb, but it’s the default state and it’s going to be that way. The rise of multimedia, phones in our hand connecting us, it’s only going to go up. So whoever controls Hollywood is pretty much going to control the values of the world, the aspirations of the world. In addition to obviously what we wear, what we listen to, and so on. Andy: This is exactly why I felt so connected with you and so excited to interview you, man. Hollywood controls the values of society. When you tell me that, I’m like, wow! It feels really true. The majority of the world — that is the world that they live in — is the world of reality TV and news and following what’s hot on Twitter. Tai: But here’s the thing. A lot of people lament that and they’re like, “Oh, it’s Kim Kardashian. Why is she the number one show?” I was just at the Clipper playoff game and Justin Bieber was there and Wahlberg. The crowd goes nuts over Rihanna and all that. I always say it, the world have rules and you want rules. You want to know that if you get in a plane and you create certain amount of lift, the plane flies. In the same way those laws of physics, you want there to be social rules. That’s called heuristics. So the way the human mind works is it tries to find the quickest shortcut. So our brain is only about 2% of our body weight but it takes 20% to 30% of all of our glycogen, of all the energy in our whole system, right? And so the brain is very expensive. The neocortex part of your brain and the higher functions are extremely load intensively. So what our brain tries to do is create quick, heuristical patterns that bypass complex thought. Think about this. There’s two fish, they’re guppies. Scientists study these guppies. The female fish, they look for whichever male is the most orange. So if they find a really orange one, they’re most attracted to him. But the question is what happens when there’s two orange guppies, right? Two males that are equally orange. Well then what the females do is they look for which — the other females, they look for social proof. So in the same way, our brain is definitely hardwired to try to take some shortcuts and go, “Alright, I’m seeing two to four thousand advertisements per day. Which one do I trust? Coca-Cola is telling me to drink coke, McDonald’s telling me to eat burgers. What do I trust?” Well, if we recognize a figure whether it’d be Rihanna, Don Draper, or freaking Kim Kardashian, we’re bypassing and going, “Well, if she likes it …” that’s called the Association Bias. There’s 25 cognitive biases we have. The Association Bias is so strong that Hollywood
might as well join. You know the old saying, “If you can’t beat it, you might as well join it.” People like to go, “Oh, it sucks.” There’s no solution for it. The solution is to try to get some better people in Hollywood, that’s one of the goals, get some smarter people, but also entertainment, man. You got to entertain people. On a scale of one to ten, a ten is a textbook. It’s not entertaining at all. Most people will never, in their spare time, go, “You know what I’m going to do? Pick up a textbook.” Just doesn’t happen. And on a one is like Duck Dynasty, or some stupid TV show, or Kim Kardashian. It has no redeeming value, right? So what I’m trying to do is go “If I’m a ten, nobody listens to me” if I’m a textbook, except when they’re forced to at school. If I’m a one, everybody listens to me but nobody benefits. Civilization is degraded. So how can I create things that are like sixies? Millionaire Matchmaker, the TV show is on. That’s like a four. It purports to teach you something but really you end up dumber. So the question is how can I create a six? Maybe a six, sometimes I think of the show Loveline with Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla. That old … Andy: Was that like in the ‘90s on MTV or something? Tai: Yeah. Well, the radio program. And it’s still on but Adam Carolla is not on it. But there was some redeeming value. A doctor was talking about sexuality and … Andy: Like Dr. Oz for example. So I grew up in Iowa in a town of 600 people, my mom — anything that Dr. Oz says like is Bible is how it feels. Tai: Right. Andy: Yeah. So Hollywood. So you’re in Hollywood. You got started in like, well, with a handful of things but I know you went through a phase at one point with … in like the nightclub industry. Tai: Yeah. Andy: Why did you do that and tell me about the benefits of being involved in nightclubs. Tai: Well, you know there’s a saying. I just saw, I was at Barnes and Noble, I’d go there all the time. I saw this new book. I forget her name right now but I was at the ESPYS. I don’t know if you know what those are. They’re like the Academy Award for sports people. Andy: Yeah. Tai: And there’s a lady — she had cancer and she’s Good Morning America host — and she said, “Sometimes you got to make your mess your message.” One of the things, for me, I was in my early 20s and what do guys in their early 20s like to do? You like to party, you like girls. I always say, you know, there’s this old saying, “if you’re in a room and you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.” So when I went to nightclubs I’m like “Wait a second.” These guys are buying me drinks or selling you drinks that costs — whatever, eight bucks and they’re buying them for 50 cents. Number two, when you’re in a nightclub as a guy trying to pick up girls, you’re the sucker because women are usually there with their friends. It’s also a tough environment because the one good looking guy is getting all the girls’ attention. So I’m like, “Dude, this is a sucker situation, man. I’m not going to be a sucker.” So what do I like to do? Try to buy the nightclub and try to figure out a way. I didn’t have any money so I slowly figured out a way that I could start out, doing some promoting. But then when I got enough momentum, I was able to actually get some owners in a nightclubs and one of the top restaurant guys in the US to partner with me. I said, “Hey dude, you got these restaurants …” I should tell you the story how it’s funny. I started with UFC fights. I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I would invite people over to watch UFC. This is back like UFC 8 or 10. Now they’re like UFC 500 or whatever. Andy: 170. Yeah. Tai: Yeah. I invited and like a hundred people came and then I had this little apartment like 200 people came so I didn’t have room. I went to this guy that owns this little café and I said, “Can I use your café?” It was called Verde and it was in North Carolina. He’s like “Sure.” So then I slowly built that up, filled that thing up. And then he said “You can use my big restaurant that hold 500 people.” And then I went from there and I ended up with clubs that would hold 2,000 or 3,000 people at a time. So it’s a slow progression. I call that the first base. Everybody is trying to hit a homerun but like Warren Buffett says, “What you really want to do is, number one, not make any big mistakes that set you back by a decade. And number two, if you hit a series of base runs, the next thing you know you score a lot of homeruns.” That was the first thing. The second thing was I made my mess my message. I was like, “Okay, I want girls, I want fun, but I don’t want to be the sucker so I reverse the situation.” It’s like whenever people go to Vegas, I’m like “Just remember who the sucker is in a casino.” Andy: What would you do in Vegas? Tai: Always the sucker man. If you’re always the sucker you want to own the casino. Andy: Got it. Tai: You want to own the thing man. Andy: Dude, it’s so fascinating chatting with you. I’ve got a handful of directions that we could go and … Tai: You want me to tell you what I think is an interesting one for your audience? Maybe we can talk about or if you have something better but … Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Tai: What I’m working on right now is I’m always into like taking complicated ideas and make them simple. So I read a book a day and I’ve got 5,000 book library, but it’s always like how can you distill ideas into one thing? There’s a good book by Gary Keller called The One Thing and it’s all about focus, you know, education one. Andy: Yeah, it’s on my shelf. Tai: It’s on your shelf, okay, good. When it comes to distilling the big picture idea for entrepreneurs, people really want to know what’s the formula. You see all the marketing out there, you see all the bullshit. Scam marketing it’s like, “Oh, become a millionaire overnight and here’s the three steps you need to be a millionaire.” So I’ve refined it down to 67 things. It’s a 67 set process. I think if you pull off all 67 or at least get close, you’ll have a multimillion dollar business. The question is for me now, I’ve actually got more than 67 but I’m trying to get it down to 67. Because 66 days is what scientists have found is the length of time it takes to start a new habit. Most people think, like, Tony Robbins and those guys used to say 30 days. It’s bullshit. It takes about 66 days to start a habit. So I’m building out 66, 67 things that you need to — like a roadmap. Andy: [Unclear 00:14:56]? Tai: Yeah. But the question is which one goes first. This is a very hard question. So these are mental frameworks that you must understand. You know the book by Kawasaki called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Everybody knows that. I had a dad and a stepdad but both of them are poor so I never had the rich dad. But I will tell you my experience is rich friends, poor friends. I have 12 business partners — I’m an investor now. What I basically do is travel around the world and talk to the best people in the world in a certain industry into doing a business 50/50 with me. So that’s kind of what I do for a living. So I’ve got … Andy: How does that work? Give me an example. Tai: I’m working on a real estate thing. This guy is like number four real estate guy in America, and I’m working on building out an educational platform to teach people how to invest in real estate, let’s say, right? So I found him, he’s an older guy, he’s almost 65-ish and he’s made — I don’t know. His company, you may not quite [unclear 00:15:54] but he’s made a good $800, $900 million in his life. So talk those guys into saying “Hey, let’s start something together.” Andy: Why would he partner with you? Tai: That’s a good question. Well, I’ll tell you this. Number one, if you want — I’ve had two billionaires as mentors. People go “How the hell do you get a billionaire to be your mentor?” There’s a few ways but the most important is be interesting. Interesting people are appealing to everybody. The reason I tell people. The average American buys 17 books a year. They read at most 12 of them, that’s one a month. If you want to stand out from the crowd you should be reading a book a week minimum and ideally a book every three days. If that seems too much you can do audio books, you can do YouTube, but you got to be ingesting large volumes of knowledge and because … There’s many benefits to it. The old school one is like Warren Buffett says, “The more you learn the more you earn.” But more importantly, in terms of the quality of people you attract, these people find me interesting, even billionaires. Everybody at the top of the game realizes they need allies. So who do you want to ally with? You got to think about that. The classic tool people are like, “Hey Tai, how do I become a millionaire?” Currently the number one framework that I know is “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want.” This is Charlie Munger. If you think about it it’s profound because what he says is the world is not yet crazy enough of a place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people. We have this mentality that to be a millionaire, it’s going to come through some opportunity. You’re going to be walking down the street, you’re going to see something, read something, boom! That’s the next opportunity. I’m going to open up a business and next thing you know I’m a millionaire. Well, I’ve held over 6,000 people [unclear 00:17:37] coach since 2001 in finance. I own a big investment company. We manage money for people, hundreds and millions of dollars. So I’ve seen it from every angle. At the end of the day people who have impact on the world, not just wealthy people. It could be Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., they deserved it. They created a mindset that I have to deserve it. You know guys in pick up world. I know that you have a lot of men. A lot of men are like “How the heck, Tai, are you able to find all these?” I’ve invested in the model industry so I know all these Ford models and dated some of the most beautiful girls in the world. People are like, “How do you do it?” I’m like, “At the end of the day, man, you got to deserve it. The world will not consistently reward undeserving people.” If you want to be friends with a billionaire, you have to be interesting to a billionaire. There is no other way. Now the question is what’s interesting to them. At the end of the day it’s things that you can bring that reward them. What do you know that they don’t know? Everybody knows something that a billionaire doesn’t know. If you could bring that to the table, they’ll open up to you and you become an ally. Andy: It’s super fascinating too because what happens is after money takes care of like your baseline living expense, like you’ve got the stuff that you want. For the most part, I think you reach like a point where it’s like, “Okay, everything’s pretty much taken care of” and then you’re left with problems that money doesn’t solve. And if you can help people with those problems, it’s a completely different ball game. Tai: Yeah. Well, I should say there’s four levels of moneymaking and financial. So I’m working on this. We’re launching a new brand and really what I’m focused on now is this company called Grand Theory of Everything. That’s the brand, GTOE – Grand Theory of Everything. And so all of us, every person on this call have four steps that they have to do to accomplish the good life. You got to create health, wealth, love and happiness, right? And so those first three are the foundational step: health, wealth, love. So health, we’re all born and we have to survive the evolutionary gain. Can you get out of the womb? Most people die young. I mean you’re most susceptible to illness. Everyone on this call has somewhat mastered the health gain, just to be here on this call. As Buffett says “You won the evolutionary lottery.” Number two, then that brings you to resource acquisition. See, people misunderstand fundamentally what money is. You must acquire resources. For some people that’s a billion dollars, for other people that’s a much lower number. So I said there’s four levels within resource accumulation. You have scarcity which is most people. So when you’re living in scarcity in America, the most part is under $80,000 a year. There’s a good Nobel Prize guy wrote a paper talking about the number where you’d basically get out scarcity is around $80,000 to $120,000 a year. So after you have this $80,000 to $120,000 a year, you move in to what I call financial independence. So financial independence is anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 a year, but then beyond that you get into prosperity. So prosperity becomes when you then have the resources to take ideas in your brain. Okay, you’re no longer on the treadmill. Because in financial independence you can still be in the treadmill. You’re keeping the financial dependence going by continually running on this treadmill. When you get in prosperity, you can take ideas in the brain and turn them into actuality. But then you want to get to the fourth and final and that’s impact. Global impact comes after prosperity. If you look at someone like Bill Gates who’s changed the world the most. There’s a lot of ways to argue who’s changed the world but think of this: malaria. Malaria has plagued humans basically since we came out of the African savanna and it started [unclear 00:21:25]. It came with agriculture. We started settling down. Malaria’s killed tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. One guy, Bill Gates, he got past prosperity, he got in to impact, and now he’s solved problems that whole government’s haven’t been able to solve. It’s insanity. So the world will be saved by entrepreneurs. The world would be saved by the people that are [unclear 00:21:49]. But only if you can move through the stages. Andy: Dude, I totally agree with you, hands down. I have a question around — So you’ve grown very, very quickly from very like middle to low class family, to where you’re at now which is incredible. It feels like it went very fast for you. I see the issue that people run into over and over is actually is the upper limit issues where it’s like the Gay Hendricks and The Big Leap where life can’t be this good. They start fearing actually getting the success that they’ve wanted. That actually I think holds people back more than a fear of failure. Tai: Right. Andy: So much has to shift. Like when you go through those levels from scarcity to financial independence to prosperity. Was that the third? Tai: Yeah, prosperity and impact. Andy: It’s you having entire identity shift through each level, right? Tai: Right. Andy: How do that affects you as you’re going through all of these levels? How did you not sabotage yourself or get caught in the upper limit? Tai: I’ve done many things. I haven’t always been business guy. I spent two and a half years living with the Amish. I don’t know if you — Not Mormons, the Amish. They live in old-fashion farms, no electricity. Andy: I grew up in Southeast Iowa, there’s a huge Amish community. Tai: Oh yeah, yeah. For sure, yeah. Kalona, Iowa. Andy: I have family in Kalona. Tai: Yeah. Here’s how I think our brains are wired or it seems that this is the way they do it. I remember I was looking — we had this farm, we had 500 cows. You see this mother cow and you see a baby cow. And we’ve all been taught that the three forms of learning are audio, visual, and kinesthetic. That’s kind of what they teach you in school, right? So I watched this mother cow. That baby cow is going to grow up with everything that the mother cow knows is going to somehow transfer. So the question is how does the transfer happen? It’s not through audio, the cow doesn’t talk. It’s not even through visual, cows don’t look. And it’s not even in a way through kinesthetic. What it is is the fourth dimension of learning that nobody is talking about. It’s rubbing off. It’s osmosis. You think they’ll rub often so I called this. I teach what I called a law of 33%. You take your day, 16 hours you’re awake on average — you sleep eight hours, you’re awake 16 hours. Think about this in your own life. How many hours a day did you spend yesterday with somebody who’s ten to 20 years ahead of you in exactly whatever it is you want to do? Most people, it’s a horrifying number. Andy: Yeah. Tai: Think last week. The new way to think about it is this. You divide your day into three categories. The first law of 33% is you spend your time three, four, five hours with people below you. These are the people you can help, you can mentor, and they also help your self-esteem by realizing there’s somebody doing worse than you are, right? Andy: I’m awesome. Yeah, totally. Tai: And then you’ve create the next 33% which is time around your peers. It’s like Mahatma Gandhi. I read his autobiography and he said, “On the rise to the top, as you’re becoming ambitious, it will be lonely out there.” So the people you will connect with are people similar to you. So if you’re making $500,000 a year, those are the people on your level. But this last 33%, where you need to allocate your time, is the hardest and very few people do it because it makes you uncomfortable. It’s like lifting heavyweights. There’s a burn, you’d feel the burn, and that is with people 20 years ahead of you. If you can spend on average three hours a day with people 20 years ahead of you, most of the things that you’re talking about self-sabotage, feeling — a lot of these things come from what’s called a Contrast Bias, when you don’t have any compare yourself to. I either meet entrepreneurs that think they’re badass or that think they’re not doing very well. If you divide your life into these 33% categories, you’ll have the contrast of people worst than you so that give you the confidence to know that you’re pretty good at what you’re doing. You’ll have the contrast with your peers that allow you to connect on friendship basis but that last 33% will push you. I have a friend, one of my best friends, he makes a million dollars a day right now. He’s an entrepreneur and he has a company. He’s actually going to IPO it. Sell his company after seven years. He’s going to sell for a billion probably. So he’s built not a seven-figure business, not an eight-figure, not a ninefigure, he built a ten-figure business. Interesting mechanism that this guy does. The other day he texted me or called me a couple of months ago and he’s like, “Dude, I’m so far behind.” I thought he was joking but he’s not, he’s very sincere. And I was like, “What’s up?” and he’s like, “Oh, I’m at the school goal invitation only conference in Arizona with all these top CEOs. Sergey Brin’s there, Larry Page is there. He’s like, “I’m at dinner with this Korean kid … My friend’s 35 or something like that. And then he said “This kid’s 29 years old. He started a video game company. He’s already worth $3 billion. What the hell have I been doing with my life?” So what he’s doing is he’s playing with the contrasts. Andy: Yeah. Tai: You got to play with the contrast. If you think you’re in shape, go hangout with, you know, go look at pictures Arnold Schwarzenegger at the same age. Andy: Totally. Tai: You don’t want to overdo that because then you can get to a position of absolute neurosis but you … Andy: Complete insecurity. Tai: That’s why I state law of 33%, divide it up. And most people forget that 33%. That last one. Andy: We focus on a lot of identity working and helping people with their belief structures inside The Foundation and we talk a lot around the idea of reversing limiting beliefs that are holding you back. The best way to shift identity and the best way to shift beliefs is to hang out with people who have different beliefs than you. That’s why it’s like if you want to quit drinking, you’re going to have to change your friend group, you know? Tai: Yes. Andy: And it’s the exact same way. You want to learn to build a successful business, change your friend group and it will naturally happen. You won’t even have to put as much effort for it. It just … Tai: [Unclear 00:27:52] Andy: Yeah. Tai: What you’re really talking about is the fact that most humans have problems on their way to prosperity. The real fundamental, philosophical question: why do we make mistakes, right? We have this complex brain, more powerful than any computer so far. Maybe there’ll be a point of singularity at some point but it hasn’t come yet, okay? Andy: Mm-hmm. Tai: So the question is why does the human mind make so many mistakes? We know now, that’s the fascinating thing. So there’s 25 cognitive biases but even more important, one of the most important books anybody could ever read, there’s a book — I’m actually coauthoring a paper with Dr. David Buss. He’s the number one evolutionary psychologist in the world in textbooks or in Harvard [unclear 00:28:39]. We’re pretty good friends. There’s this concept call mismatch theory. So mismatch theory basically says take any problem in the world. I don’t care whether it’s political, health-wise, whatever, and you can get it back. You can trace it back to an evolutionary mismatch. Here’s what I mean. I think something like 60 million Americans are obese. Okay? Why? People think that we’re our own minds but we’re not. We have, I call it the voices of 10,000 generations whispering in our ears. So whatever you’re going to do you have the voices of your grandfather, your great, great, great, great grandfather whispering on an evolutionary basis. So, when it comes to eating food, what are the whispers from your ancestors? Well, what they are is get as quick energy, as much fat as you can because a dark day is coming. We grew up 98% of human existence on a historical basis was on the African savanna. Most of us come from places. Even if you’re white, Asian, whatever, we all evolve back from there and there was times of tremendous drought. Okay? And there’s times of tremendous famine. When we found a big pile of honey like a beehive, we were programmed to eat it as fast as we can. Most humans have been [unclear 00:30:01]. So what happens now is that we flipped it. There’s a mismatch. Our bodies are used to scarcity when it comes to food but the modern world provides massive kilotons of energy running through 18-wheelers hitting your local Walmart store or hitting your local convenience store. So when we walk in we’re hardwired to go, “Oh, let me eat that candy bar.” When it comes to your social life, whether it would be dating or friendships, we evolved around something — There was a sociologist, his last name was Dunbar. So there’s this thing called Dunbar’s number. We evolve to be in groups of their own 150 people; 130 to 150. Well, I live here in Hollywood. Right out that window in the Hills, there’s 14 million people in the greater metropolitan, Southern California area. Actually more. So all of my social problems, and all of your social problems are standing from mismatch as my brain has correlated, I mean is wired to be able to understand 150 people. But all of a sudden I got to understand. I got to meet a girl and go on a date with her. She was born in Iowa and I have no social ties, no social connection. I have no affinity to other groups of hers. And so all of a sudden everything gets 50% divorce rate and get huge isolation of humans in terms of their mind. You can live in the middle of LA or New York or London and be the most lonely person in the world because we’ve forgotten about our evolutionary Dunbar number, so mismatch. Now when it comes to business … Andy: One second. Because we go into the business piece, I want to play on this for a little bit because so many people join The Foundation because they’re lonely. Tai: Yes. Andy: I remember growing up in Iowa feeling like the odd ball out, feeling lonely. I’m in Boulder right now and I’m still having that experience of like trying to find that group of people. So if you were in a place and you wanted to get connected to the most influential people in like a city or vicinity, how would you go about doing that? Tai: Well, okay, so the first thing is go back to the mental framework. Always go back to the frameworks. To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. So in this case what we want is we want the respect and friendship of our peers. So the first question is are you worthy of that respect? Because a lot of people are lonely because it’s a competitive world even socially and you’re not that interesting so all the interesting people want to hang out with each other and not want to hang out with you. So first you got to … There’s something Peter Drucker, the great business writer, says. He says, “Most of us think we know our strengths, most of us are wrong.” He wrote a book called Managing Oneself. And so when you look at yourself, most of us operate what I call American Idol Syndrome. We think we can sing, we think we’re amazing. I dated a girl a couple of years ago. She almost won American Idol in 2011, okay? She told me. I was like “Tell me about how that started.” She’s like, “Well, I went to a stadium in Orlando.” The audition’s 15,000 people showed up in Orlando. At the end of the day, I think they took three people. Her and two others. They cut 14,997 people. Why did she make it through? Because she deserve it; because she was good at singing. So at the end of the day, when people are like, “Well, I feel lonely,” you start by going, “Well, maybe you deserve to be lonely.” Now that sounds harsh but, hey man, toughen up. What the world doesn’t need is 50,000 more people running after Louis Vuitton shoes. We need 300 more Spartans. So I tell people if you’re a guy or a girl, you got to be a little Spartan. The Spartans were tough, man. They randomly pick somebody out of the crowd, out of the Spartans, and whip them almost to death because whoever survived, that was the man. And if you do that long enough you’re left with the society of tough people. So the first thing I tell people is toughen up, get rid of delusion in your brain. Look at yourself honestly. If you didn’t know yourself, would you be stoked about hanging out with yourself? And if the answer is no then you make few changes. Read a book. Get an interest, get passionate about something little. One of the things I did, I became a professional salsa dancer. Go take salsa classes and go nuts learning salsa, you know? I did that for five years. It’s not that hard. You got to be … So the question is what are humans attracted to? Whether it’d be romantically or socially. Number one I alluded to earlier, interesting. Somebody that knows shit you don’t know. If you don’t have any insight in your brain, you’re definitely not that interesting. You need to be able to talk about something that somebody hasn’t heard [unclear 00:34:44]. There’s a girl who works for me and she’s like, “Ugh, LA is such a hard place to date,” and I was like, “Well, you’re probably getting dates, you’re just not getting second dates.” And I said, “You know what will get you a second date? Be more interesting.” So I handed her a book. I keep the Yale classics and it was Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, thousands of years ago. I gave her this book. She found one interesting thing that Hippocrates says. He was talking about the Atkins’ Diet not eating bread 3,000 years ago if you want to be skinny. So she was out on a date with some guy in LA, you know, personal trainer. The guy looked good. She’s like, “Yeah, I was reading Hippocrates and he was saying that you shouldn’t eat bread.” She brought up Hippocrates on that date, that guy mind was blown. I’ll send him out with a girl that even knows the word Hippocrates? That’s how you get a second date. Andy: Yeah. Tai: You got to be interesting. That’s number one. So you have to deserve by being interesting. Number two, you have to have curiosity. Humans are attracted to curiosity and passion, right? So you got to have a level of passion. The beauty is it can be about anything. That’s the beauty. So number three, you need to try to also focus on just a small group. Man, you don’t need a million; you need at most 150 people that you know their name. I’m reading the story of Geronimo, the Apache Indian. It’s an insane story about Geronimo. A hundred and fifty Apache Indians from basically 1870 to about 1885, 15 years held off 30,000 American troops. The ratio of deaths and casualties, for every Apache Indian killed by the American Army, okay, 400 American troops were either killed or wounded. Andy: Holy shit! Tai: A hundred and thirty people that are like band of brothers. That’s what you want. You want a tribe, you want people go to war with you. That’s what the world means. I saw it at the Amish, man. You need people where your lives are intricately woven into the fabric of each other. You’re interested in the same business. Now, with technology, they don’t always have to live close but it’s a hell of a lot nicer when they’re close. And if you live in a big city whether it’d be Denver or whether it’d be Los Angeles or even smaller towns, if you’re committed and you spend time, you will find it. Now, the next thing — and this is hard for people to grasp. I’m not big on the 4-Hour Workweek, the Tim Ferriss mentality, okay? I always tell people, I say, look, if I came to you and I was like “Andy, I got the greatest news, man. I met a girl. I’ve been dating this girl. My dream girl. We’re getting married,” and you’re like, “Oh, congratulations.” I’m like “But I got one other piece of news for you. What’s great about this marriage is I figured out a way to only spend four hours a week with her. Isn’t that great?” Now your first thought is going to be like, “Well, why the hell are you marrying a girl that the most exciting thing about it is that you’re only going to spend four hours a week?” If I said every hour I spend with this girl is amazing time and time slows down, that’s what you want. I guess the point I’m trying, because this is a business concept, but when it comes to social — people want to move around too much. You need a home base. Tim Ferriss has taught this mentality that ton of entrepreneurs have been trying to unteach. I love Tim Ferriss, I love what he did, I’m not anti-Tim Ferriss. There’s insane value and great marketing – that’s one of the great lessons. But the central thesis is flawed. You don’t want a life where you want to travel around. You must spread roots, man. The human mind is designed to trust people that they have seen for five years more than people they’ve seen for five weeks. So if you’re the dude always popping in and out of places, you’re going to have less social ties. Remember I said at the beginning? You want there to be rules. See, I’ve been putting roots in Hollywood. I want there to be rules that I can walk up to my best friend who is a producer of one of the biggest TV shows and he’s known me for seven years. I want him to trust me more than a kid who moved in here and rented a house in the Hills and is here for one week. You want there to be rules. One of those rules is you must put down roots in order to build trust in a group. So one of the things that’s absolutely vital for everyone on this call. You can travel around, you can have multiple basis. I have five different houses. I have a house on the East Coast. I’ve got a house in La Hoya. I’m putting a house in London right now – I’m getting a house there. But at the end of the day, my roots are in Southern California and by [unclear 00:39:20] the slow accumulation. The Amish used to tell me, “Tai, a fence that gets built fast, you build a fence for your cows fast, you put it up in one day, that thing falls down in one day. A fence that goes up slowly falls down slowly.” And you want your life to be built in such a way that it’s this methodical thing. And so if you just moved in to a place, you want to feel a little isolated because that then — As Joel Salatin told me, “Nature always last last my friend.” Natural pattern of friendships and social is that it takes time to accumulate roots. So one thing that I recommend for people, move places that you’ve known people for a long time or do what I do. I move all my best friends to LA. I give them a job [unclear 00:40:05]. An Amish guy told me one time, William Yutzy. I went and visited him in Wisconsin. We had known each other for ten years. He said, “You know Tai, I moved up here to Wisconsin and I met a lot of new people.” And he was talking about me. He said, “You know, new friends are good but old friends are better.” So try to find those people that you’ve known for a long time. And dude, we live in a world of jet fuel. We live in the world of commuting. Move some of your friends out. Get two or three and nucleus then become a more interesting person then realize it will take time and then get a massive passion and curiosity around one or two things and then give it some time, man. Oak tree starts from a damn acorn. Everybody wants the oak tree, nobody wants to talk about the acorn. It’s called media bias. We only hear the stories about WhatsApp, [unclear 00:40:55], three, four, five years Instagram. Andy: Totally. Tai: But if you look at billionaires, the average billionaire takes 12 to 20 years. I’m reading the story of Ray Kroc grinding it out, he started McDonald’s – became the richest man in America. He ground it out before he bumps into McDonald’s brothers at 52 years old. He wasn’t wealthy till in his 60s. Bill Gates started at 12, at 31 he was a billionaire. Nineteen years. One of my business partners retired at 25, made a $100 million. He started at 14. Warren Buffett started at seven and became a billionaire at 57. Fifty years. And this is a man with 155 IQ. By age 12 I had read every book in the Omaha Library System, he had bought his first investment at 12, invested in a farm at 14, mentored by Benjamin Graham, went to
took him to 57. So slow down man, enjoy life, build methodically and the next thing you know, if you deserve it and you’re patient, eventually you’ll get it. And that applies to your social life. It applies to women, it applies to dating. I’m like, “Man, you want to date the most beautiful woman in the world? Well, if you were the most beautiful woman in the world, who would you want to date?” You would want to date the Dos Equis man. Andy: Totally. Tai: I know that guy. He lives here in Marina del Rey. If you’re not the best looking guy in the world, you’re all right because it’s not necessary the most good looking. Now I’ll end this little thought with my favorite quote; made the most powerful quote – Charles Darwin. Evolutionary theory made me the most. Even if you’re religious, you could still appreciate evolution at some level. Charles Darwin said, “Just remember, it’s not the most intelligent, it’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the most adaptable to change.” If you’re doing something and it’s not working, you’re not getting any friends, you’re grinding it out, you’re becoming interesting, make some adjustments in your hypothesis. If you’re trying salsa dancing and you hate everybody that you meet and you don’t connect with, stop salsa dancing. You know a good thing? Take a class in some local universities. I’d take classes, I walk — Its crazy. USC is one of the most expensive schools in the world, right? UCLA, USC? Andy: Yeah. Tai: I call the professors or I get friends and I could show up for free. I’m getting to US. I dropped out of college. I was down at taking this media class at USC – me and my cousin went. We get there and it’s 300 students and it’s like all about mass media. So the teacher is just showing us a movie and my cousin’s like, “Why are we here? We’re just watching a movie.” And I’m like “Hold on, hold on.” We take a break and we come back and I see Larry Flynt walk in. I don’t know if you know who he is. He started Hustler and he went to the Supreme Court. So I’m sitting here watching the class by Larry Flynt on censorship and I’m going “This is free, man. Yale classes are online YouTube. We live in the best times in the world, man.” (Crosstalk) Everything’s amazing and nobody is happy. Andy: Dude, I love it man. It’s so true. Before we wrap up, I want you to talk about starting with the end in mind and developing a one-sentence plan for your life. Tai: Okay. So yeah. I have this academy and I do mentorship and I tell people one of the foundational things. I was about 19 years old and I was in the back of a pickup truck with this wealthiest guy in Ireland, he became one of my mentors. His name is Mike. He’s a big investor. We’re around this farm. He looks at me. I was telling him about some guy that I had seen somewhere and I was like, “Oh man, I’m going to go travel and meet this guy,” and Mike turned to me and he said, “Is he worth a damn, Tai?” and I was like, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Well, look Tai. Every day I get 30 people …” he was a venture capital guy. He said, “I get 30 people coming to me, asking me to invest in their business.” And he goes, “The problem is I ask them ‘What are you doing?’ in one sentence. And if they can’t tell me in one sentence, I know they’re not ready.” Might be a good idea but you must be able to distill your ideas. So for me, if somebody ask me, “Tai, your current state, what are you doing?” I got a simple one sentence. I’m using mass media to spread good ideas. That’s what I do. So mass media is radio, TV, magazines, internet, so on. So for everybody listening to this call, in terms of building a foundation for business, and I know — no pun intended — but to me the foundation … Andy: [Unclear 00:45:24] that way. Tai: Yes. Yes. To me the foundation is two things: it’s understanding the lottery ticket versus the sculpture, and then it’s understanding the one sentence. So if I may, I’ll step back to explain the one sentence even better. Andy: Yeah. Tai: Most people are tricked by the media into thinking success is relatively fast. What you want to do is figure out your business destiny. If you can figure out your business destiny, and the way you figure that out is you draw like four concentric circle on a piece of paper. You go, what did I grow up around? Helen Fisher, the Ph.D., talks about we all form a mental map that what we’re comfortable with growing up. So if you grew up around professors or you grew up around doctors, some of you grew up around no parents and you got to admit this step. The second [unclear 00:46:15] is what you grow up around. The second is what have third party people, people who are not your family, they’re not your friend, whatever they consistently complemented you on? It can be your smile, it can be your ability to map. For me it was I was a fast reader, for some people it’s your social, you organize things. So that’s the second question. The third question is what have you been doing the last ten years. And the fourth and last one is what can you talk about on a Saturday night with your friends effortlessly? Okay? What do you have a lot of passion [unclear 00:46:43]? If you can find what all those concentric circles need, that’s probably your business destiny. Some people, what they do, most entrepreneurs, and I have [unclear 00:46:52] and it’s the biggest mistake. If you want to be rich, if you want to have global impact, listen to this. As Charlie Munger says, “There’s no shame in somebody making money in something you passed up on.” It’s okay to pass up on opportunities. You must find your business destiny then within the business destiny. So for me, if you look at the four concentric circles, I grew up around — My dad was in prison when I was born. My mom went and — I was raised by my grandparents and my mom. My grandparents were professors at Yale, they were very academic. So I grew up around books, I grew up around knowledge, education, they were teachers. My upbringing was very much around education. The second thing is what if people complimented me consistently that didn’t know me? They’re like, “Oh, you read a lot. Oh, you’re kind of interesting.” So it’s been around kind of like ideas. The third thing, what have I been doing the last ten years? Most of the businesses, even nightclubs, the way that we positioned it, it was very like idea base. Nightclubs was not the only thing but we did finance and I’ve done all these different businesses, real estate, blah, blah, blah. So they’ve been around spreading ideas. And then the last thing is what can I talk about effortlessly when out my friend? I love to talk about ideas, I like to talk about things I read. So what’s a natural business destiny? For me, it’s to be in education business. And also, I grew up around Southern California, so my natural destiny is things related to Hollywood. So for everyone on this call, some of you it will be a little harder to come up with you, but if you think, and I tell people, take three months to think through your business destiny. What you’re looking for is not the product, products come and go. So it’s not like you’re going to go “My business destiny is to make an iPhone.” You see, Steve Jobs, his business destiny was in well-designed technology, right? So that’s his industry. And he’s stuck with that his whole career and he was wise to do that – even when he was fired from Apple. He went and formed another company that was creating cool, well-designed technology. The products will come and go. And so what’s cool thing that The Foundation obviously teaches is how to identify what are the opportunity is in products, right? If your passion is around the food industry, if you grew up around cooks, if you love cooking, if you have last ten years you’ve been in the hospitality industry. When you’re around your friends you like to talk about crazy hotels and restaurants and all this, then look for only opportunities and product within that frame. Don’t start getting into real estate. That’s the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make because they bought in to this lie that there’s an idea. Your life must become sculpture, you start with a rock and that’s the industry and it slowly trip away. Warren Buffett at seven years old was like I want to allocate capital. I went to a movie with Steven Spielberg, believe it or not, of all people. I got to meet Steven Spielberg. From seven years old he was messing around with camera lenses. So he knew always I’m going to visually create movies and stories but the products came and went. The opportunity was ET, the opportunity was blob, whatever movie that. I don’t know. Indiana Jones, that’s what I went and watched with him. So products will come and go and you can be an opportunist on the product. You could switch products relatively. In fact most products are only hot for three to five years. Then as the economic says, new entrance come in and they drive the margins down. But in terms of the actual industry, you probably only want to be in two industries in your whole life. You stay in one for 30 or 40 years like Bill Gates. He went from technology now he’s going into charity. But he’s stuck with one for about 50 years and then the last 40 years of his life are going to be spent. Don’t be jumping around industry. You jump around industries then I can guess how much money is in your bank account and it sure as hell it won’t be a lot. Andy: It’s true. Tai: When I meet people that find one industry, they may change products as an opportunity but don’t change the industry. Get the industry right. Andy: I think the reason for that is because everything’s relationship-driven. Tai: Yes. Andy: And if you go into a new industry, there’s games being played that you’re unaware of that the games are being played. I remember the first time learning about like these high-end mastermind groups and where all this stuff happens, and how pretty much all of the players of any industry are all friends at some level and all know each other. Tai: Right. Andy: And it’s hard to grit into that. It takes time to build those relationships over time. Yeah. Tai: So once you get to this business destiny, all right? And I’m trying to distill down 67 things into one thing. Andy: Yeah. Tai: So if you take this business destiny and get that right, the second thing you have to do is then refine down to a simple thing. You got to imagine that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett is at house party, they’re walking out the door, you see them, they’re getting ready to get in the limo, the door’s closing, you got to be able to yell out something interesting to them and you got five words. One of my business partners, he’s this big real estate guy, he said “Tai, I realize I want to be in real estate at 19 years old. I knew I needed a mentor. So I went out and I found in this little town the number one real estate developer. I showed up at his office. I said to his secretary, ‘Hey, I want to meet this real estate developer. I want to ask him to mentor me.’ She said, “Dude, this guy is busy. He doesn’t have time to meet you.” So my friend left, he came back the next day, knocked in the door. The secretary said, “No, no, no.” He said “I went back 17 times in a row, 17 days in a row.” Finally the secretary said “Look, I feel sorry for you, man. I know he’s busy but what I want you to do is hide behind the plant by the elevator. When he comes out of the office and gets in the elevator to leave for the day, jump in from behind the plant. Jump in to the elevator,” and she said, “You’ll have four floors to say something interesting.” And I don’t know what my friend, business partner said, but he said something interesting enough that that guy said to him, “You know what? Show up at the airstrip in my private jet. We’ll head down to my hotels in Florida and I’ll start teaching you the business.” And he said at 19 years old, this guy began to teach him the business. My friend’s are making $100,000 a week doing real estate deals. That will stem from him having clear understanding of the industry he wanted to be and he’s never leaving any of that, real estate. And he want to be an investor of real estate and he want to do commercial kind of real estate. He was able, from that focus, to distill them as idea so that he could be in an elevator for two minutes with this guy going down and the guy was like, “I know what you want to do.” So you got to refine it. For me it’s entertainment and education blending. That’s the industry I want to be. I want to spread good ideas and the best way to spread them is use Hollywood. The best framework in Hollywood is somewhat entertaining. I can’t have pure textbook style. So for everybody on this call, figure that out and then refine down. It should be no more than ten or 15 words. And you constantly refine that down over year then it will change a little bit but that’s foundational. Andy: So, no, I love this idea. To be clear, it takes time to distill it down. I’m reading Poor Charlie, his autobiography, and he talks about how — People think that simplicity is where things start but it’s actually where things end. And that you have to take these ideas and distill them down. And so for us right now, what we’re building in one sentence is the go-to home for entrepreneurs starting from nothing, like period. That’s the place and that’s it. And when we tell people that they get it but it’s taken almost two years to actually understand that’s the thing that we’re after building. Tai: So when you’re making your one sentence, a few little tips. I wrote an article on this. You want to use my 96-year old grandma rule. My grandma’s 96 years old and if she doesn’t understand it and use multi syllable words she’ll be like “What the hell are you talking about?” So even on your one sentence the go-to, I would just say … Andy: The home. Tai: Or a website. Isn’t that going to be a website? Andy: No. It’s like a community. Like we’re online, we’re offline. It’s just (crosstalk) … Tai: I would say a community then. Use that word. My grandma would know community more than go-to. Andy: Beautiful. Tai: Remember, you have the average person seeing 2,000 images in ads a day. There’s a bouncer in the human brain. It sits about back here. You have your limbic brain, right? Andy: Yeah. Tai: When I was still in nightclubs, if you look at Studio 54, the most famous nightclub ever in New York City. What was the key? There was one doorman and he was the king. People used to come up to the door and he’d be like, “You’re ugly. Go home. You ain’t never getting in here.” Other people he’d be like “Look how you’re dressed. Fuck you! You’re gone.” He was that club. You should Google pictures of Studio 54. They used to have 2,000 people standing out. And I took that motto for my nightclubs. I had some nightclubs. One time I had a four-block line to get in to my club. The doorman’s everything. So in the brain of your customers, potential investors, potential business partners, they have a bouncer that goes go-to, that’s too fucking hard. I don’t want to use a lot of glycogen to process that. Tell it to me simple — my 96- year old grandma. So one of the best businesses that you could — Krispy Kreme. Krispy Kreme, not a good business in terms of helping the world but in terms of –If I was starting Krispy Kreme, I could be like I sell hot donuts through a glass window where families can watch the donuts being made. One syllable word: simple, simple, simple. Anybody on this call’s like I know what that is. McDonald’s? Man, that’s simple business. It was like we sell 15 set hamburgers, that’s how it started. We sell 15 cent hamburgers and the best fries in the world. Walmart, Sam Walton. Maybe the best businessman of all time. He’s like ‘discount retail stores,’ three words. Warren Buffett’s like ‘I allocate capital,’ Bill Gates ‘I build software.’ Right? Andy: Yeah. Tai: You must get to that level. It’s all simple words. And I agree with you, it’s that simplicity. That’s what I said. Mike told me. He’s like, “If someone tells me a complicated idea, I know they’re not ready. It’s the signal to me that they might have a good idea but they haven’t been doing it long enough.” So I think it takes usually three to 12 months to distill that down. And people go, “That’s too long.” I’m like, “It’s not too long. You know what’s too long? Getting good at the wrong thing.” I posted a YouTube, like a audio, and he was like, “Dude, I’m weeping right now. I’m 42 years old. My wife’s asking me what’s wrong. I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago.” Getting good at the wrong thing is probably … I have a business partner. He pays himself salary $1 million a month. Okay? Some of you internet guys will know him, I won’t say who it is. But he makes about $50 million a year gross, keeps about $15 million. He’s in his early 30s. He told me the other day he said, “Tai, every day I wake up unhappy, literally angry, and I know why.” He jumped into a business that he saw an opportunity to make money. It did not match the business destiny that he should be in. And the worst thing is … Allan Nation, one of my first mentor said, “Tai, be careful about making a lot of money too fast because it will trap you. Because you sure as hell are not going to give up a business making you a million bucks a month. Not many people have the Buddha.” Buddha was able to give up wealth but most of us aren’t Buddha, right? Most of us are like, “Oh, million bucks a month.” But what happens is he’s wasting away his life doing what he hates. And boy, the prime of your life is very short. Humans live, let’s say 80 years. It takes you 20 years to — We’re slow growing primates, right? We grow slow. Twenty years and then you’re out of your prime around 60. So you may be at best have 20, 30, 40 years. Most of your life is outside of your prime. So this prime, one year of your prime is worth ten years outside of your prime. So you better guard these with your life. So if some people are like, “Tai, I don’t want to spend three-month planning,” then I’m like, “Man, dude, think. You’re penny-wise, dollar foolish.” Again, if you come back, get the basics now … Andy: It’s okay to use that word. Tai: Yeah. Get the foundation. It’s going to feel like a product placement for your Foundation. Get it down, man. Get it down. And then start getting these mental frameworks in your mind. I think there’s 67 of them. You can see some of them on my board here back there. I keep them on my board for all my employees. Stop making mistakes. Man, people make too many mistakes. Warren Buffett goes, “I made some mistakes but a hell of a lot less than most people.” Andy: Mm-hmm. Tai: That’s the key. And the way you make less mistakes is understanding the evolution of this matter. Start feeding in the 67 things that you need to think their frameworks deserve it. Content fairness, understanding things like reciprocal bias, and all these kind of thing. You could see on my board, I call them the four P’s, the change of habit, understand being … How to keep your pulse on the finger business, understanding how to get in the industries where you compete with the idiots. I was just at the Berkshire Hathaway with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger said some guy asked a question, “How do you know what you should be doing?” So Warren Buffett gave his answer but I love Charlie Munger even more than Buffett. And Charlie Munger said “Well, competent …” because what Warren Buffett said is do something you’re competent in. So, Charlie Munger he’s like, “Do you have anything to say?” Charlie Munger was 90 years old. He’s like, “Well, competence is relative. What you really want to do is be competing with a bunch of idiots.” So, that’s a good framework. But I have, you know, literally I have the Sherlock Holmes [unclear 01:00:58] worth a damn. All of these. If you could start getting frameworks, and I know that you guys teach frameworks. If you can think right and speak the language of wealth if you want to be wealthy. Another thing, you got to understand Math. People are like, “Oh, I’m not a numbers guy.” I’m like, “Well then, you’re probably not a rich guy. Go make the choice.” Andy: Tai, this has been incredible, man. We need to wrap it up. Tai: Yeah. Andy: If people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you? Where can they get in touch with you? Tai: So, the best place is just go to my site, my personal site tailopez.com. Right in the middle of the page — I read a book a day and I write a summary. The best way to read a book a day is have someone else read it for you. So if you don’t like to read a book a day, I’ll read one for you. It’s all free. I give away these summaries and I give away a lot high-level thought that I’ve learned from my 12 business partners and five mentors. So, tailopez.com. It’s right there in the middle. I have a podcast, I just launched a podcast. I think it’s called The Tai Lopez Show or something. Andy: Beautiful. Tai: Got lots of stuff going. Andy: Tai, thank you so much for coming on. If you guys like this interview, just give me a shout out at andy@thefoundation.com. Let me know. I absolutely love chatting with you Tai. It’s so fun. Tai: Yeah. I’m going to be putting up by the way, tailopez.com, for free I’m going to be putting up a mind map of these 67 mental frameworks. There’s not three steps to being a millionaire but there’s also not three million. I think there’s about 60 to a hundred. So I’ve distilled it down to 67 things. I’m giving that away free. I give most of my stuff away free just because I make my money in my other investments. So checkout on tailopez.com and thank you so much my friend. Andy: Later brother. Thank you, man. Tai: All right. Thanks, Andy. Closing: Thank you for joining us. We’ve taken this interview and created a custom action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for free. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.