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Let’s get into this sad state of affairs where people think that a bunch of money that you didn’t earn or that maybe you borrowed is going to make you successful. It is a fallacy. It’s a false narrative. I’m going to explain to you why.
Not too long ago Daymond John, Ashton Kutcher and some other famous person got together for an apparel line and they dropped $7 million into that business, and it went belly up. Now Daymond John knows apparel. He’s on Shark Tank. Ashton Kutcher has about $150 million. These are not unsophisticated investors. They’re accomplished in many ways in their own right. They put this money in this company and it didn’t float.
Daymond said they made a critical mistake because they thought celebrity would push the brand. They had money. They had experience and it still didn’t work. I say that to submit to you that this idea about money being enough to start a successful business is a fallacy.
I had a client who has been watching the channel. They came to me and said, “I have a bunch of money, what business should I start?” I said, “Don’t start any.” After talking to this person, I realized they had no business experience whatsoever. I said, “All you’re going to do is lose your money.” I advised him, “What you can do is take some money and put 95% of the money away and take 5% and risk that. That way if things don’t go well, you’ve still got most of your money and you’re good.”
So, we go through this process. It’s about two years. We build what I call micro businesses. They’re small businesses that have a designated purpose. The person was really hyped because before they inherited all this money, they didn’t make a lot of money. They started these businesses and developed business skills. Now it is five years later and they are in a position to take some money and put it into something, because now they have experience.
You can’t replace business experience with money. You can’t do it. I know there will be people who will argue with me.
When you spend money to build a business without experience and without a team, you will lose the money. What’s that saying? A fool and his money will soon be parted. It makes sense.
The real economics of success are experience. If you have experience, you can get money. If you have experience, you can build stuff. I tell people to stop trying to leave what you know how to do and go out here and do this other thing that you don’t know how to do. You’ve got a learning curve and all this stuff going against you. But people still do it. When you go after the money instead of your interests, it probably won’t end well.
The thing about experience is it takes time to get. So many people are trying to get the income of a decade of experience in a few days. Tim Ferriss’s book, the 4-Hour Work Week is a prime example of that. The book’s good. There is a lot of stuff in there. He tells the truth and says he had to work for years to get to that 4-hour work week.
Hear me and hear me now. Start getting experience in something. If you’re young, experiment and take some chances.
If you’re coming out of high school and you have no clue what you want to do and you have no money; I’m going to say don’t go to college. Don’t take out a ton of student loans. Instead, get yourself a job and go out and experience life for about three years. If you want to go to college later, you can go. If you get the wrong degree and spend this money on the wrong degree, that decision can negatively impact you for two to five decades or until you die.
I’ll tell you a little story. I used to suck ass at dating. Part of it was because I was shy and had no self- confidence. Life wasn’t good for me then. It’s really hard to approach a woman full of confidence when your life is like that.
So, I began to hack it. I watched people that were successful with women. I observed that their behavior was radically different than what I was taught. So, I began to act like them and got good results. It was a little awkward at first, because I was doing stuff I thought was wrong. I became really good at dating. Then I took that experience online and I was crushing it.
Get to the point where you have confidence in what you do. Stop watching so much hustler porn. When I evaluate an online personality, I don’t look at what they say. I look at how they’re living. That always tells the tale.
If you’re out here claiming to make millions and you live in a matchbox, that’s bullshit. If you have to run a GoFundMe page because your dog gets sick, that makes no sense. If you create a Facebook page and you see normal people activity, then something’s up.
I’ll tell you a secret. Folks who have money and who have done well in life often have been wounded for being successful. You don’t see people on their Facebook page, unless everybody is like them. People are often hesitant to really show how they’re living, because they will be attacked and have people asking them for stuff.
Anyone who is successful online has an internet record. If you come across somebody who has no record, you should ask yourself why. If you come across somebody who claims to make millions of dollars and you can’t find much about them on Google, ask yourself why. There’s a lot of people who claim to be internet millionaires and you can’t find an LLC and some of them you can’t even find their high school picture. Look at all that stuff.
When you investigate a millionaire’s past, you should see that in the beginning it was rough. That’s normal. You should see a path of progression. It’s usually going to be over three to ten years. When you see they stuck with it and learned some stuff, then you know that person is cool. But if all you see is fluff and hustler porn, and when they talk it is all about high-level stuff and theories but not applicable stuff, ask yourself why.
Building wealth today is easier than it used to be. But, it’s still hard. You have people who want to be rich for the sake of being rich with no higher purpose. That’s when you have Donald Trumps. That’s when you have these morally bankrupt people.
For those of you interested in pushing the dial, be sure to join Hustle Camp. We’ll teach you how to manage your money, increase your net worth, balance out your life and make more money.
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