5 Money Beliefs To Rewire Your Mind For Wealth
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I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com.

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The government seems like some of them could be lying to us potentially about the economy. There are so many wars that are causing transfers of money that we're not sure where the money is going.

student loans, debt is at an all-time high, and it's harder and harder for people to make money these days. We brought on one of the leading experts on the internet today, Jaspreet Singh, who is a trusted individual and advisor to millions around the world about money, managing money, making money, understanding money in their lives. I'm confused, and I feel like a lot of people are confused around money. Can you give us any insights about

on how we should first emotionally navigate the money troubles that millions of people are dealing with today. There's a lot to unpack there. So I think the first thing is understanding now how money plays a part in your life. And I know we've talked about this before.

But I really think the key here is understanding that number one, money is important and understanding your personal relationship with money. And what I like to define that is there's a few things that you have to understand. Number one is that it is my duty to become wealthy. Number two, money is a tool.

Number three, money is abundant. And number four is I will become wealthy. Can you say those one more time? Sure. Number one is it is my duty to become wealthy. Yes. Number two is that money is abundant. Number three is that money is a tool. And number four is that I will become wealthy. And-

The reason why I say this is because you really have to understand that you can do it. Now, there's a difference between what I'm talking right now and thinking and growing rich. Because if we kind of now dissect this, everybody wants this outcome. And the outcome is, I want financial freedom. I want to be rich. I want to be wealthy. I want cash flow. You can use whatever term you want for that outcome. Maybe you want some sort of financial freedom. In order to receive this outcome, you have to go back a little bit.

which means I have to take certain actions. I have to do things with my money. I have to do things to achieve this outcome. But let's go back even more. How do you get that action to happen? I have to have a thought to go out and do something with my money. I have to think I need to invest. I have to think that I can become wealthy. And this is where most people think that you have to start. Think and grow rich. If I think rich, I can take the right actions and have the right outcome. But that's a lie because what you'll realize, many of us have this, is

In the back of our minds, you might have this little voice saying, I know this is not true. So you can sit there and say, I'm going to grow rich and try to manifest this wealth. I'm going to grow rich. I'm going to become wealthy. Money is going to fall into my laps. But...

It won't happen if that voice in the back of your mind is saying, I know I'm just doing this so I can have this outcome. I don't know if it's true. Somebody like me can't become wealthy. Somebody that looks like me can't actually do it. Somebody from my background, somebody with my upbringing, somebody with whatever circumstances I have can't do it. And when you have that back of that mind thought,

It doesn't matter what you're thinking. You're trying to just, you're trying to outspeak your mind. It doesn't work like that. So your mind and your words and your actions need to be in congruency and alignment. Right. And that's where we need to go one step back. We talked about we want this outcome. You need to take an action to have that outcome. You need to have a thought to have that action. But what's before the thought?

I call this your subconscious or your pre-thought, where this is now really getting into your true beliefs, not just your thought, your true subconscious beliefs. And that's what you have to work on first. That way you can actually think the right thing so you can have the right outcomes. Because what ends up happening, if you're just thinking this with the frontal part of your mind, and I don't know which part of your brain does this, I'm just saying this.

If you're just thinking this, but you really know deep down that money is evil, money is bad, I can't become wealthy, you're never going to actually achieve the outcome that you want, which is why you have to start with really that deep understanding of your relationship with money and why you have that. Because the real reason why generation or poverty is generational is

Is it because of the circumstances that you're dealt with externally? It's because you grew up being told, we can't have this. We can't afford nice things. We don't have money for this. We're not rich like them. Rich people are evil. When you grow up hearing this, you grow up,

Living life thinking this is true. Believing it. You believe it. And why wouldn't you? That's what you were told. Everybody around you said that. People in your school probably said the same thing. You live this life thinking that money is limited, it is taboo, it is bad, and we can't have nice things because we're not rich. Okay, no big deal. That's what's normal. Now, you grow older, you get a job, maybe you're making some decent money, but you're going to have those same money beliefs forever.

And then maybe you start having kids. I know your kids want to have the nice PS4, 5, 6, whatever we're on. And what do you say? Oh, we can't afford that. We can't afford the nice things. We don't have money for that. That's for rich people. We're not rich. It's now that starts to get passed down.

And this is where now the first step, but we've talked about this many times, the first step to building wealth is to start with the money mindset, the beliefs that you have around money and understand, number one, that you can become wealthy. Not just that you can become wealthy, you will become wealthy. And that money is abundant. There's a lot of money in the world. When people start to enter this financial education space,

We start to assume that if you're rich, I can't be rich. If you have money, I can't have money. So it starts to create that jealousy or just this negative association with, oh my God, I don't want to tell you my business idea because what if you steal it and take my money? Well, both of us can have money because there's a lot of money in the world. If you look at it from a financial perspective, the Federal Reserve Bank is printing trillions and trillions of dollars. There's a lot of money out there. You just need a small sliver of it and you can have millions and live a life of true financial freedom.

And not just that, understanding that money is a tool. Because the reason why we put these smoke screens around money, that money is bad, it's taboo, it's evil, is because many times people are insecure about their own money. And so when I can't go out and buy that nice vacation for my kids, I can't buy my husband that thing that he wants, I can't buy my wife that YSL or Gucci purse that she wants, I can't go on the nice vacations. Well, you

You know, money is bad. We shouldn't stress about money. It's these stupid vacations. We don't need those. We can enjoy our time here. It's such a scam to go out there and sit on an all-inclusive beach and have food delivered to you. Right? I mean, we start to create these smoke screens where, oh, why would anybody want to have an expensive car like that? Why would anybody want to have these nice and expensive things? Judging people who have money. Yeah. And so now it's, you know what? If you don't want it, that's completely fine. But make sure you can afford it.

And understanding now, money is not going to make you a good person. It's also not going to make you a bad person. It's just a piece of paper. It's fuel. It amplifies who you are. When you have more of that money, you can do more of the things that money can buy. One of those things is have freedom, have options, options to choose what you want to buy, options to choose where you want to eat, options to choose when you want to go on vacation, not just...

Can you go on vacation? And options to choose how you want to live your life. And not just that, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it also can influence what type of healthcare you can get, what type of healthcare your parents can get, what type of healthcare your kids can get, what type of college your kids can go to, what type of education your kids can go to. It matters. And so now at the end of the day, you can hate it or you can understand it. And so we create these smoke screens without really understanding anything.

How money plays a part in our life. Because at the end of the day, money talks.

And the people who have money will get to be able to live their freedom. And the people who don't, you become subservient to the people who have money. And I don't say that to be mean. I say this to be factual. They're facts. Yeah. Right? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class has been shrinking. Because most people don't understand money. They don't know how to use their money. They don't understand what inflation is. They don't understand how the system works. The system is designed to produce inflation.

And you're going to say, well, how do you know that? The Federal Reserve Bank says this. They publish this all the time. They say that we want a 2% inflation target. Why? Why not 1%? But why not 0%? Why do we want inflation in the first place? Because that's the way our economic system works. Our economic system runs on spending. And inflation increases the monetary supply, right? It increases the monetary dollars out there.

That means the government has more money to spend. If the government has more money to spend, they can continue spending money and giving people jobs, right? If they go out and give a contract to greatness so you can produce some content, well, you can go out and hire some people to go out and do things. But the question is, how are they paying for that? Because if I'm paying you to do that, I have to make a profit or I have to generate revenue from my business, right? To go out and write you this check.

The government can just levy a tax or they can just get the money printed, which is a whole lot easier. And so then one of these things can create more inflation in that sense. And that's why, again, our system is this way. We talk about why is financial education so important? Because it is designed to benefit the financially educated. It's designed to benefit investors.

And anybody can be an investor, but we're never taught to be investors. We're taught to go to school to get a job and spend our money. We're never taught what to do with that money. We're never taught to start a business. And we're never taught how to take this money that we're earning and convert it into wealth. We're taught to turn this money into cars and clothes. Flashy things. And vacations. So, when you say then that the government is designed to...

keep people poor unless they're willing to invest in financial literacy and education and make the right choices to get them into creating more wealth? Our economic system is designed to keep people poor. The government continues to spend money, which creates inflation, which keeps people poor.

And this is where now in order for you to break out of that system, you have to, number one, learn the system. Number two, believe you can do it. Number three, do something about it. And do something about it means you got to stop spending a lot of money, which is uncomfortable, right? Because we want to have the nice things. But I'm not saying don't ever have a nice thing again. Don't ever go to Starbucks or go to Gucci. No, what I'm saying is go through the decade of sacrifice, of spending less, earning more.

It's tough financially, but that's going to give you some more money. Now, when you take this money, you're going to start investing it. You're going to be very disappointed in the first couple of years because you see no returns. You don't see anything happening, but you got to stick with it. And you keep doing it. You built your financial education, learn more about how to invest. You start studying the financial trends. You keep building the financial preparedness. Maybe you see a market downturn. It creates more opportunities for you to invest, but you just stick with it.

Then what's going to end up happening? You go through the decade of sacrifice. Now you turn around and you don't recognize the person that you were 10 years ago. You won't even recognize yourself three years ago, but this is where now you will start to build this real wealth fund for yourself. Now you can start spending more money, but it's not necessarily coming out of your paycheck. You can start having nice things. You don't have to worry about the price because the money is being funded by your investments.

And that's why now understanding the system is designed to keep the majority of people broke. And the reason why is because they want you to spend all of your money. And they want you to spend money you don't have, because that means you get to spend more money, right? If I make 50 grand a year, I only have $50,000 worth of buying power, you would think. But no, you have more because of credit. We live in a credit-based economy. So if I can only spend $50,000, I mean, I can only stimulate the economy by $50,000. Right?

And that's where this clever financial strategizing came in and said, well, how do we get somebody making $50,000 a year

to stimulate the economy by $80,000 a year. Credit cards, lines of credit, other forms of debt. That way now, what is debt? You're taking next year's income, spending it today, and then you pay it back next year plus interest. So now you constantly, you're working just to make everybody else rich. You're working to make your bank rich. You're working to make Gucci rich. You're working to make everybody else rich except yourself. And this is where that's what the system is designed to do. But if you want to build wealth,

You got to number one, learn and stop spending a lot of money. Who should be most afraid? People that are making under $100,000? People that are making it from $100,000 to $500,000 a year? Or people that are making $500,000 to $1 million a year? Over the next few years, with the elections, the economy, wars, inflation...

Who is at the biggest risk financially? Well, I think it's everybody. I wouldn't say one or the other. It depends on the percentage of money you're keeping for yourself versus spending. Because if you make a million dollars a year and you're spending 110% of your money a year, but you're making 50 versus somebody else is making 50 grand, I'm living off of 75,000. I'm more worried about the million dollar a year person because you are one bad step away from bankruptcy. Right.

Versus if you're making 50 grand a year, but you're smart with their money, which I've met a lot of people doing that. You are, you're ready for whatever happens. And you said, bring it on because I'm going to find the opportunity. It's a very different mindset. When I got injured playing football, my whole world collapsed and my dream of being a professional athlete was gone. Just like that. I was broke, sleeping on my sister's couch, feeling sorry for myself. But at some point I had to make a choice, stay stuck in that pain or embrace a

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And you're not living in, you know...

You're not living out of your means. So you've figured out how to have a comfortable lifestyle, a lifestyle that suits you, that aligns with your financial income, and you're not choosing to overspend. And I've met a lot of people who rent, who have great relationships, who have good family ties and community that are able to...

use their time without having to spend money to have fun. Yeah. To enjoy their life. Yeah. Beyond, obviously you got to buy food and you got to pay rent and bills and expenses, but they don't need to overspend. They can go in nature. They can go on walks. They can be with their dog or their friends or family and do things and activities that stimulate more fulfillment and joy than spending on watches and clothes. You know, the first, my wife grew up with, um,

a very tough financial upbringing. And when we got married, she always expressed that she would want to, she'd always wanted a designer purse or some other things like that. And so she went out and I wanted to make sure she had whatever she wanted. So she got the designer purses and all that nice stuff. And then pretty quickly, she realizes, okay,

This doesn't really give me much fulfillment. Now what? Now what? I can buy my purses, but it doesn't... The attraction to these things are the highest when you can't afford them. When you can comfortably afford it,

You no longer really crave that stuff. Now you realize, well, what's something bigger? What's going to really give me that fulfillment? What is going to give me those memories? And it really goes back to what you were just saying, which is a mindset shift. Because everyone says, oh, it's going to suck living smaller. It's going to suck doing this. Well, it doesn't have to. I'm sure when you were starting your business, you were working hard, but you were probably having the time of your life. Yeah, it was a thrill. I mean, there's ups and downs. There's ups and downs, but it's...

When I was first getting started, when I started my party promotion business, I knew nothing about anything. I was a naive 17-year-old kid. I mean, I was really financially dumb. But I knew I wanted to start building some income and start doing more things with my money. And I had two other guy friends that were doing this with me. They were kind of like partners that we worked hard with.

And we were working around the clock, but we were having the time of our lives. It was tough. I mean, we were working hard, but we were having so much fun. We were laughing so much because we were just having fun. Exactly. It's really like- It can be exciting too, all this new adventure. And it's really that mind, again, mindset. People also need perspective. I think you gain a mindset when you experience a perspective that wakes you up. We were just talking about, you know,

Indian culture, I've been to India, I've been to Guatemala five times, I go to Mexico all the time. Even in, you know, wealthy areas of Mexico. You know, the thing that breaks my heart the most and gives me a lot of perspective and a lot of appreciation for my life is when I see seven-year-old girls walking in the street, nine-year-old boys, four-year-old girls walking by themselves with little candies and

working all day and all night to survive that day because their parents don't have money and their parents are out working as well selling whatever they can sell and you see a girl trying to get 20 pesos for a little piece of gum or something or a little candy and that is her life every day she's walking the streets in mexico or guatemala or india or whatever it might be to survive that day and

It puts your mindset in perspective. Yeah. When you're eating at a nice restaurant and you're getting your cup of coffee and you're spending $8 for coffee and you see a child working 12 hours a day because she needs to support the parents to live that day. It puts your life in perspective and makes you realize, oh, okay, maybe I can be more fulfilled with what I have. Maybe I can make some different choices. Maybe I can appreciate that.

where I'm working right now, or I can appreciate, you know, what I've created for myself far. Maybe I don't have to be so jealous of everyone else around me of what they're buying and consuming or where they're going on their trips. I can value my life in a different way. And I think perspective like that wakes you up in a big way. It's a cultural shift too. I mean, it's, it's,

When you grow up in a country like America where resources are plentiful, it's hard to sometimes see them because in other countries, they're not always there. And people, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that when you're in a country like America, like if you can understand the words that I'm saying,

You have the opportunities to build wealth. You have the opportunities to do whatever you want, where you might not get those opportunities in other parts of the world. And when you have so much, we'll call it privilege, of being able to speak English, of being able to be in a first world country, you start to then create victimizations of yourself and you start to create these like, it's difficult for me because of X, Y, and Z.

versus where other parts of the world, you might not have that privilege. Again, I make a lot of mistakes, so I would definitely not want to put myself as a perfect person or anything even close. I make a lot of mistakes in every which way, but I think the goal is always just to try to be a little bit better every day. You can improve no matter where you are. I think all of us, myself included, especially, have a lot to improve. There is

opportunity, and availability for you to go out and live a life financially of more freedom. But that requires you to number one, breathe, understand it's possible, take action. And even when things get tough, you keep going. And beyond that, right, you got to make those financial sacrifices. That way you can do more of the financial things, travel, spend money

And not have to worry about the price because now you have the money, right? The goal is not to ever enjoy the nice things. It's to be able to afford the nice things without having to worry about the price because you've put in the work and now you earned it.

What is the personality type do you think that is for starting or buying a business versus a personality type that is not for owning a business? Yeah. Well, I don't think you can spell rich without risk. And so if you really want richness in your life, like if you want to be very, very rich, you are not going to get there if you take no risk. Unfortunately, I've never seen it done that way. Maybe you guys could tell me if I'm wrong. So and if you want to get rich, here's the here's the stats.

One thing that's cool, Stat, 79% of all millionaires in the U.S. are self-made. That number shocked me. Because if you heard in the news, you'd think, no, no, it's all handed down. But 60% of all millionaires own a business. So you immediately know, well, I have a

60% higher likelihood of becoming a millionaire if I own a business. And if I want to make crazy levels of money, like $30 million plus, 88% of people who are worth $30 million plus own a business. First, you've got to be honest with yourself. What do I really want? If I want to be a millionaire, and if I want to be worth $10 million plus, hard to get there without having some version of ownership or equity.

And taking risks and working your butt off nonstop. 100%. Like I giggled because another YouTube video did a video of me and it was like,

"Make Millions, It's Easy, No Work." What's the title? - Passive. - Oh my God, I was like, I'm pretty sure I've never said that in my life. - How many hours do you think you work a week? - Oh, a lot. I mean, when I was in finance, I was working 70, 80 hours a week. I remember one of my colleagues, Eduardo, we were walking back from a, we were in New York at the time, and we were walking back from

from work one day, super late at night, and he just passed out in the middle of the road. And I was like, "Holy hell, Eduardo, are you okay? "What's going on?" And he was exhausted. It was like passing out from exhaustion.

Working 80-hour weeks for years, probably. Yeah. And he was young. So, analyst program, I was only there for like two years. He would have been about the same. But just that compounding plus it's a work hard, play hard environment. And that was an employee job. You were an employee. You were making a lot of money as an employee, but that was what it took to put in the time, to have a skill set at the right business, to deliver results, to get that type of income. It took you 78 hours a week. Yeah, for sure.

So you can't do it with like 40 hours a week, just kind of casually showing up and expect like multiple six figures. I don't think so. Do you know any business that's paying someone to just...

Do the bare minimum? No, unless you are the capital. That's where you start. Unless you have the money. Unless you got the money. Then I have many businesses that I do no work for now. Right, right, right. But that's because I did risk. You invested. I put money down. And you can lose it all. And I could lose it all. And the only way you get around that is you work really hard as an employee for somebody else and you get a percentage of the company, which is something that we do for our employees and I think really important. But you got to become valuable enough to do it.

How valuable do you need to be? How much do you need to be earning for that business, like bringing in for that business? Well, there's two ways that you can actually get equity in businesses that we learned in private equity that I think are useful for people. The first way is you can ask to buy in. So you can say, "Hey, I don't have a lot of cash, but we're going to do this deal over here."

Could I put $10,000 into this business deal? You know, hey, you're going to do this partnership. Could I like buy into the partnership for 10K? And we don't we're not taught how to do that as normal people. And we should think that way, because what is that telling me? That's like, hey, you're willing to put a little risk on the table. And also, you're not trying to sell me that you should get X, Y, Z entitlement. You're saying, let me put some skin in the game. Right. Right.

And that's how most private equity guys make their first dollars, is they are just allowed to put some skin in the game, which is great. And then the second way is you become so valuable that the business can't see itself operating without you. And this is typically how startups do. So it's like, hey, you're so valuable, you're gonna do the first stage of XYZ of the company. Because of that, we're gonna give you a percentage.

and every single year you'll get a little bit more of that percentage over like three to five years. So two ways to get a percentage of a deal. And we teach one in the book called partial acquisitions. And so basically if right now you're working, like let's say somebody's working for you or me, right? And if you're working for a company right now today and you love what you do and you wanna stay there, but you wanna get some income on the side, you have a skillset, you're a photographer, I don't know, you're a videographer.

Then what could you do? You could go to other companies that need your skill set and you could say, "Hey, if I can increase the revenue of your business, if I could decrease the costs of your business, or I could decrease your pain of the business, could I get a percentage of the business?"

And you could do that both for distributing equity, that's where you cash flow, or regular equity. This is what I'm teaching a lot more people to do, 'cause there's a stair-step way to buy a business. Maybe you're not ready to go all in. Well, learn how to get a small percentage instead. Yeah. Yeah.

So if you're not a personality type that doesn't like risk, you shouldn't be a business owner. Not outright. Not outright. I don't think you're going to want the call on a Friday night when you're going to run out of cash. How many hours do you put in a week on average as a business owner versus when you're an employee? Well, I like work. So I just worked a lot both times. I think, you know, I was probably working from seven until...

seven or eight or nine. As an employee. As an employee. And now as an owner. I'm probably working from seven until six as an owner, but a little bit on the weekends. And maybe when I was an employee, I wasn't working on the weekends. And I think when you're an owner, your schedule kind of looks more, when your name's on the door,

it's easier to work more hours. Like, let's be honest. It's just easier. Yeah, it's yours. It's yours. And so, but when you're the owner, it's also easier when you set the hours to work more of them. And so, you know, for me, I got no problem taking, you know, four weeks off and going to Europe. And I'm checking on stuff every day a little bit, but they're mainly running the business. When I was an employee, that wasn't an option. But when I did go on vacation as an employee, wasn't checking.

You know, I was like, good luck. Bye. So it really depends on how you want to run your life.

But I think the one thing that I do want to impress upon people is like, there is nothing wrong with being an employee. Being an employee is amazing. It means that you do not carry all the risk and you can actually become massively wealthy as an employee if you understand how to become so valuable that you get a piece of multiple gains. Like for instance, right now we're hiring a president for one of our companies and he's from a huge company. So do we have a right?

It's not really reasonable that he would come and do this for one of my companies, given what he's done in the past. And you couldn't pay him the salary where he's making it a big company. Maybe one-fifth of that. So why would he come work for me? Because I'm like, "Listen, you could go work for this one company and have one shot at gold. If that company wins, you're going to win big. But the founder has to sell at the right time. You guys have to hit these huge milestones. The investor has to get paid. You've got one bet.

Or with me, you can come into this company and you can take an equity bet on this company, but also a bunch of these other little bites. And so that's why I think private equity is so interesting and why people stay as private equity employees for decades. I mean, I have a friend, let's call him Frank,

who's probably one of the richest guys I know, and he has been an employee in a private equity firm for like 30 years. He's like dating celebrities, has a plane, he's an employee, but he gets little bites at the apple. And so I'm trying to really explain this to my employees. - And less risk. - No risk. The only risk is getting fired. - Right, right. - And that you have to work a lot. - He's not managing payroll, he's not having to hire and fire people necessarily, or maybe that's his job, but he's not.

Dealing with having to bring in all the money constantly to keep the business running. Right. Let's talk about the truth of the matter here. 90% of startups fail.

in a 10-year period. Most startups fail in the first three to four years, and in those first three to four years, you make $0. In fact, you spend on average $30,000 to $50,000 a year attempting to make money. Oh, man. And then when you eventually do make money in year three or four, the average entrepreneur pays themselves anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 a year in salary. So you go five years making no money essentially. Exactly. Working more hours than as a employee. Right. What's the benefit then if you spend half a decade of your life

where most likely you're going to fail? I think that is the question we have to ask ourselves. It doesn't seem exciting, Ness. No, that's why I get excited about boring businesses, because what are the two reasons that most businesses fail? Well, 60% of businesses fail because they don't have product market fit, which means like,

an idea i wanted to sell these uh graphic mugs these graphic months are amazing i asked all my buddies you can buy one lewis like yeah of course great idea you should go be your own ceo this is the best idea ever you're gonna sell millions right then you go and create the company and all of a sudden lewis is a little cheap nobody's nobody's buying my mugs right

So the market didn't actually want what you were selling. And then the second reason most businesses fail, which is about 20% of the reason, is lack of cash flow. So you have this big idea, nobody wants it, you run out of cash before you get to figure it out.

And so I think we've been sold a total lie about business creation and startups, which is that employment sucks and also we should go start a business instead. And what often happens, and I hire a lot of these people, is they go start their business, they're like, oh my God, this is worse than employment and I'm not making any money. And so if you're going to play the odds, if you're going to go gamble, you can play the slots and know that you have the worst odds out there playing the slots.

And if you're going to gamble, you at least are probably going to play blackjack if you're good at it, because that's where you have the best odds. Business is very similar. The best odds is somewhere where the business party has product market fit and the business is already cash flowing. It's already making money. It's already profitable.

And it's been doing it for years. And so that's why I'm obsessed with this idea of boring businesses and buying them because statistically, it has less risk and it has more ability for you to earn over time. It's not no risk, but it is less risk than a startup. And nobody--

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Talks about that. What are the main reason people are selling their profitable businesses then? If a business has been profitable for five or 10 years and it's so hard to be successful, why sell the business?

There is a huge gap in education between asset value in business owners and ability to sell your assets. Think about it this way. If you owned a house anywhere in the country and that house was too small for you and it was still livable, it's still a house. Maybe it's not the nicest house. It's not really what you want. You would never just go, let's just light that.

and like walk away, right? That would be crazy. You'd be like, okay, well, let's sell it for whatever it's worth, or let's put a renter in there, or let's do something with that asset. We think about a house like an asset. In the US, we do not think about our businesses as assets. We do not think about our business lines and divisions as assets.

And so what do we do instead? We just walk away from the house that somebody else could live in. And so, you know, there was a, who was I talking to? It was, oh, it was Sean Rad, founder of Tinder. So him and I were chatting the other day. Yeah, he's a buddy. Love him. I got him connected to, he's lost a lot of weight in the last year because I got him set up with my trainers. No way. Yeah, so he's been, you know.

just transforming his health. He's been doing great. - Oh, good. I'll have to tell him that we're buddies. So he was funny 'cause I was explaining this to him and he's like, "You know what's interesting? "Because I went into a," oh God, I might mess this up slightly, but let's say that he went into an old bookbinding shop

And in this book buying shop in LA, he looked over to the left and there were like these racks and racks and racks of books. And he was like, these are some cool vintage books. And so he was going through them and he was like, hey, I want to buy a couple of these from you. And she's like, no, I don't buy them. You can just take them. And he's like, no, no, I'm going to, I want to pay you for them. What's the deal with these? Why do you have thousands of books here? And she's like, oh, well, my husband had a bookstore and he died or they got divorced. And so we shut down the bookstore. So what are all of those books? Those are assets.

And if they had been thinking about their business as a house, what would she have done? She would have done an appraisal, had somebody come out, look at what the books are worth. She might have had somebody come and look at what the lease was worth for the business. She might have sold the whole business or done an asset sale. And so Sean ended up buying a bunch of one-off books. And then he was laughing. He's like, "God, I felt bad 'cause I went and checked them later." And I'm like, "Totally underpaid for these things." - Wow. - Because they were worth something.

And so people sell their business because they don't understand the value of the business and they don't think it's sellable. And like an example that I would probably give you is like, you've done it. Like you've had a business line before, right? Let's say your education business. And you're like, this isn't serving the current business right now. I'm going to shut it down.

Reasonable. You're like, "I'm the face. It's not set up to sell." You haven't prepped a business that you created to be a business you could sell because most business owners do not know how to do that. So you shut it down because you're like, "Well, reputational risk, all of these things." But let's say that you went through our program that we teach and we talk about prepping a business for sale like a cake.

you would have done all these tasks, which meant that you would have removed yourself as key man and you would have had a business that somebody else could take over.

And the benefit there is somebody else gets to steal your 10,000 hours and you don't have to close a 10-year asset build that you have. Sure. I did that with my first business. What was that? And the person that took it over, it was kind of like all my online courses before I launched School of Greatness. And the person that took it over ran it to the ground. Did you sell it? Yeah, I sold it to him. Yeah.

It was also a sell over like three years. So he ran it to the ground after like four months. Did you get your cash out of it? First few months and that was it. Okay. So that was a challenging thing, but it was a lesson, you know? Yeah, but I think this is a perfect example. So I bet if third party people looked at that, they'd be like, why would Lewis sell this business? He's making, I'm going to make up, making $100,000 a year from the business. That's a great business. Nobody would sell $100,000 a year business. But why would you sell it? Because you had a million dollar opportunity over here.

And so you have opportunity costs. So there's $900,000 that's waiting on Lewis to make a sale, right? - Well, the big lesson was kind of what your biggest mistake was, it sounds like was, it was a partnership that wasn't working out and we weren't seeing eye to eye for like many months, probably six to nine months. And it was exhausting trying to be in partnership with someone where we just didn't have the same vision. I'm not blaming him or myself, we just weren't aligned. And we didn't ask those questions early on. I didn't ask those questions, he didn't ask those questions.

And so we didn't, we had clarity over like, let's go make some money over the next year. But we weren't thinking years in the future. We were assuming the other person wanted the same things. And that created a lot of stress. Yeah. Well, there's a whole chapter in there about partnerships and how to not.

It's not perfect, but I have 12 key lessons about partnerships that are really important in selling it. But I bet, did you do that sale with Seller Financing? Was that largely a percentage of future profits? Yeah, over three years. He sounds like he actually got a pretty good deal out of you. He got a great deal. Yeah, because he was able to talk you into his vision of the future. Because I knew he couldn't pay me up front. He wasn't able to do it. He was like, "I'm going to use this money to do the marketing and the ads."

and then he just ran it to the ground. - And you probably didn't do a real deal process to have multiple people come in and potentially vet your business. - Yeah, exactly. - But why would you? - And I also felt just like exhausted. You know, it's like a lot of people are exhausted running their business for years, but they might sell it on the cheap 'cause they just wanna get out. - That's exactly right. That's the seven Ds, which is, you know, death, divorce, distress. I always forget this. You move, oh, I had to move off. Death, divorce, distress.

You move locations, you have disagreement. So that would be like a business partnership. You have... Debt? Yeah, that's not the exact one, but we could use that one to fill it in since I'm forgetting it. And somebody on the internet will tell me what the seventh is. But for most small business owners, they...

They're in the pain cave when they're looking to sell. In this case, largely retirees, because 60% of all small businesses are owned by people 65 plus in the US, which is wild. So a lot of them just want to retire. And they've been running it for 10, 20, 30 years, maybe some of these businesses. Right. But a lot of these business owners too just have the same thing you have, which is opportunity costs. Like, I'm running this landscaping business, but this roofing business is really taking off. Exactly. So I think that's...

I think that's a beautiful story to share because a lot of people don't think it happens. It happens all around us. And it can be exhausting. And that's, I mean, not to be opportunistic, but that could be the time where you could swoop in and find a business that is distressed, that's struggling or a partnership is falling apart and they need to sell. Yeah. It's one of the seven slash three and a half Ds. Here's a question that I thought would be perfect for you. I was actually getting a coffee last week

And I went to this coffee shop. There was a couple of people sitting there, but no one was in line. It was like at three o'clock, right? So after the kind of the rush of the afternoon. And for whatever reason, I like to talk to a lot of people when I meet them. I like to say hi to people at stores. I'm from the Midwest. So I'm just kind of like welcoming most of the time, not every day, but most of the time I'm just like, hey, what are you grateful for? I just kind of have these questions. And I could tell this woman who was behind the desk making coffee was not having a good day. The energy was low.

She's probably in her mid-20s, maybe late 20s. I'm not sure. Her name was Phoenix. I don't know her last name and I won't say where she was working. But I was just asking her a few questions. I was like, what's going on? And she goes, I'm just tired. I'm not enjoying the job. The pay isn't that good. Things aren't going in my favor in life. There's a lot of stress and it feels hard to get out of it.

For someone like Phoenix, who's listening or watching right now, who is just at a job they're not enjoying, they're not making the money they want, and they don't feel like things are going their way, what's one thing they could do to start shifting their energy and start seeing the world differently so they can have more of a positive experience rather than a soul-sucking experience? So good.

go make something a little bit better at the job you have right now. Like step number one, if that coffee shop isn't giving you what you want out of it, you're not making enough money, you don't love what you're doing,

How can you actually give more to the business, which sounds counterintuitive. But I would come up with every single day, what's a little bit more that you can be doing? Can you be going around and seeing if anybody wants some additional orders? Try to take note how much the business is making each time that you're on shift and then how much it makes after you start making these changes. Create a little list of the things you did to affect your will on the world. Show that, hey, you actually know how a business works and you want it to grow.

Small little changes. Maybe you go outside. You're starting to say hi. You hand out a little coffee sample to people. Think like an owner. Have an ownership mindset. Because when you have an ownership mindset, that transfers to ownership eventually. Then the second that you do that, I want you to go to the owner of the business. And I want you to tell them just a little brief, hey, here's the stuff I've been doing at the business. No ask.

I've been doing this little list of things. It seems to be working. Here's some of the experiments I've been trying. First of all, they're going to be shocked. Nobody's going to ever have done something like that to them. You are already now the 1%. Second step, you do it for a few more weeks. At the end of a few weeks, you go, hey, I've been doing these extra things. I'd love to make some additional money here. Is that possible? Can you show me what a career progression looks like here for me to move to the next step, for me to make additional money?

Here's the thing. If they say, "Nothing. This is Starbucks. We don't hire this way. You're stuck here," then that's a bad company and you need to start looking elsewhere. And you need to, as you're looking for your next thing, not just have a resume, but have some case studies. Here's what I did in my last business that they didn't ask me to do. Here's how I realized that I could provide positive value. I can promise you one thing only. The capability is so

rare and desire is even more rare. And so if you can show those two things in the world, you will go from having an owner's mindset to an owner one day. I think it's 80% of businesses fail within the first five years and the other 20% barely are holding on or struggling. It's really rare to succeed in business in

and it takes a lot of kind of luck and timing and all these different things. But a lot of people, you hear horror stories in the stock market as well as in real estate for people. They went out and bought their first home and they lost all their money or it took so much time and energy, it just exhausted them that they gave up. Maybe they tried to start a business, it failed and they just feel like, "God, every angle I go to try to earn money, I struggle, I spend so much time and I get defeated." What wisdom can you share to someone today

on whichever route they want to take on how to emotionally and mentally overcome the obstacles that may come their way. Don't ever put yourself in a position to have to sell. If you never put yourself in a position to have to sell, you're never losing money on real estate. I haven't sold a house in the last 30 years

that hasn't sold for more if the person was able to wait and sell it when they wanted to. When you put yourself in a position, you over leverage. You buy in an area that is transitioning or that is high crime. That is a gamble. Those people, you're going to lose money. But when you put yourself in a position to never, ever have to sell, you're always going to make money in real estate. Now, I don't know about you, but those people who bought Blockbuster,

It doesn't matter how long they wait. They're never getting that money back, are they? No. And that's the difference between real estate and stock. People say, oh, well, you know, Glenda, if I put $130,000 in this stock, it would be worth a zillion dollars. Correct. But if you put down $6,500 on a $130,000 house...

You only have sixty five hundred dollars in it. Right. If you lost it, you only lost sixty five hundred dollars. You didn't lose one hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. That blockbuster stock, you lost all hundred thirty five thousand. People don't think about it from that perspective. You talk about appreciation. You bought one hundred and fifty thousand dollar house in 1975. That house is now worth a million dollars. Right.

guess what? You also had a place to live. Or you had an income generating asset. So that's the thing is like the last time I checked those stocks aren't doing that for you.

And all I know is real estate. Like, I'm old. I want to see, touch, feel my money. When I want to be able to get my money out, I want to be able to get my money out. I don't want to be at the mercy of the stock market.

So while I have stock market investments, that is not where I keep my money. I keep my money in houses where I can see, touch and feel it. And the worst case scenario is that you have it rented out and it's renting for less than your payment. OK, so this is the worst case scenario. Your payment is two thousand dollars a month and you're only getting fifteen hundred dollars.

That's a $500 savings deposit that you're making per year into that account. And if you keep that house and you sell when the market is high, you're going to make all of the money that you put back in it. Right.

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customers. Right. What about if someone says, well, what if, you know, I've got to fix all these things and there's all these extra costs and expenses that I have in the house over a few years and it's just...

Maybe I chose it wrong or maybe the realtor, I didn't see these things, the inspector missed something, whatever it is. And I got to pay $20,000 for a new AC, the roof, the this, the bathroom and it's like I'm in tens of thousands of dollars more, $100,000 more than I have or wanted to be. And now I've got to hold on to this for 20 years to make a profit. How does someone wrap their mind around that and not feeling like they're losing money, they don't have access to that cash?

And they have energy invested into a house versus kind of just that money in the bank or in an index fund. Right. Exactly. So what happens is it's critical to understand what you're buying. It's critical to do your homework on what you're buying.

Not just having a great real estate agent, not just having a great inspector, but getting in the weeds with it. And what I mean by that is driving through the neighborhood, getting lost in the neighborhood. Did you do your own recon in the neighborhood?

And that's what I want people to do is don't depend on somebody else to tell you everything. I want you to understand how to do it. And so a lot of times when I'm with buyers, I'll put them in the car and we'll just drive around, get lost, turn off the GPS, eat in the restaurants, shop in the grocery stores. Because and this is such this is such a simple thing that a lot of people don't think about. If the grocery store has great produce products.

That means that people are spending money in that grocery store. That means that people are concerned about what they're eating. They're probably going to take care of their house. Nobody ever talks about stuff like that. You probably never thought that if I have good grapes at my grocery store, it probably means I'm living in a neighborhood that's well kept. If you're concerned about the food that you're eating, what you're putting in your body, you're probably concerned about how you're taking care of your house. Wow. Well,

What would you say are five things people should look for when finding a great deal or an investment in real estate? The best investment in real estate, grandma's house. Okay. Something that needs cosmetics, not infrastructure. Infrastructure may not sound sexy, but infrastructure is a wonderful thing to have. Number two, look for an area that is not at the top.

but that is growing, that you can kind of see like, oh, wait a minute, they're doing work here. There's a dumpster in the driveway here. And do that kind of research. Understand like what direction is the neighborhood going in? Number three, I would probably say when you're looking to invest, make sure that you understand what you're buying. A lot of people don't understand like,

Is this house on a two lane street? Is that a problem? Does this back up to the retention pond? Are there mosquitoes? It's Atlanta, Georgia. It's hot as hell. There's all kinds of mosquitoes. Do you understand how much less you're going to take for a house that's on a retention pond? So that's why I always want people to understand exactly what it is that they're buying. I hammer on that a lot.

And again, I don't want you to get caught up in your ego. A lot of people buy for vanity. Really? Oh. What's the ego mean when they invest in ego? Because they want you to drive up, pull in the driveway and say, oh!

What a nice home. Oh, my stars. You don't want that. Literally. Unless you're living in it, maybe. You don't even want to when you're living in it. Literally, you want to live in the house that works the best for you and your family. Like, do you want to like out here in L.A., it's a little bit different. But in regular markets, like, think about it. And I'll talk about Trey Young. I love basketball. Yeah.

Trey Young bought a $20 million house out here in LA, signed a contract for $215 million. Praise the Lord and pass the money, right? Do you know how much the taxes on that house are? $600,000 a year. Okay. Do you know how many houses, investment properties you could buy with $20 million? Wow. So you could have bought a fancy $5 million house in Atlanta, Georgia, which would have been the same as a $20 million house out here for God's sake.

then you could have bought some investment properties and built generational wealth. Not that his $215 million isn't going to be generational, but ask Evander Holyfield how that works out. That's the thing. You look at Evander Holyfield, a fighter who sacrificed his body, his well-being, his quality of life, made hundreds of millions of dollars in his career and loses his house to foreclosure. Wow.

And think about that. So that's when I, when I talk about vanity, anytime that you're trying to impress somebody else with what you have,

I'm just going to ask you, let's just rethink that just for a second. When did you really learn about how to manifest in your life? Was there a time or a season or a decade where you started to think a certain way when it came to either attracting the right clientele as a realtor in terms of attracting the right homes that you wanted to buy and invest in, in terms of business deals that you wanted to do? Was there a season or a time that you learned about manifestation?

Making mistakes was probably the biggest teacher for me. Really? Not just making mistakes in my real estate business, but making mistakes in my personal life cost me so much time and so much money.

Because and I think the reason that I'm passionate about it is because like I went out and bought the Mercedes. I made one hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars on one house.

I went out and bought a Mercedes. I went on a shopping spree. And within 12 months, I was selling my Rolex at a pawn shop. Really? Yes. Really? I was selling my car, my Mercedes. I was selling that Mercedes and buying. No, no, no. I didn't sell it first. I didn't sell it at first. At first, sit down. It was paid off because, you know, I made all that money.

What you really don't realize. That went down in half after a few months. Well, what you don't realize is that you got to pay taxes on all that money. But anyway, so I buy the car and I realize I have a cash flow issue. So what do I do? I go get a TOTE the note at 27%. So you want to talk about, oh, Glenda, what would you do? When I talk to you, I'm just telling you straight from the horse's mouth that

I made this mistake. Don't make the same mistake I did. I went out and bought the fancy Rolex. That's why I have the hundred and thirty dollar ring from Ross Simons. I mean, it looks fancy. It looks nice. It works and matches my outfit today. So that's what I want people to focus on is like is like the mistakes that I made. Don't don't do what I did. Learn, learn from me. And so that I mean,

How do you manifest it? When I see when I never will forget, I saw this agent who sucked as a real estate agent. And that guy was making more money than he could count. Really? What was the secret? He was a good talker, but he was investing in POS houses. He was investing in these little houses and he was fixing them up and selling them and fixing them up and renting them. And I remember thinking to myself, wow.

Somebody that is not as good as I am at real estate is doing a thousand times better than me. And every time I thought about going out and pissing the money away, I thought about that guy and it pissed me off. It made me so mad. It just made me crazy. And every time that I think about

doing something that's probably, you know, impulsive or ego driven. And I think that a lot of times you get caught up in being ego driven because it feels good when everybody looks at you and they think that you're successful. But

For me, every single day I focus on what moves me from here to there. And here is freedom for me. Freedom with my children. Freedom with my family. Freedom with my little grandchildren. My one and only goal is to be able to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. And not have to worry about going up another set of steps. Not worrying about what next house I have to sell. Right.

And what turns me on is helping people, inspiring them. And so I just say to myself every single day, my name is Glenda Baker. Only amazing things happen to me. My name is Glenda Baker. I'm a woman of action. And my name is Glenda Baker. And everybody's going to know my name. And all I want to do is just help people build generational wealth through real estate. Well, that's beautiful. And inspire them through my mistakes. Sure. Because we don't all need to make the same mistake. Let me have been the guinea pig. Hmm.

What would you say the three most painful mistakes in business that you've made over the last 30 plus years that really taught you an important lesson? Maybe you had to learn it over and over again. I didn't pay my taxes. That was probably the most eye-opening thing. Because I grew up with a single mother.

Like I didn't have anybody explained. Like I didn't even know you that when you only got paid, when you sold a house, I'm in real estate school. And the teacher says, now, when you sell a house, you make this much money. And I'm like,

Like, you don't get paid on Friday. You have to sell to make money. I mean, I didn't know that. And I even tried to get a job as an assistant. Nobody would even hire me because, I mean, I'm barely out of high school, didn't go to college. And so, you know, I didn't understand about paying taxes. I mean, I made $137,000 on that one house, for God's sakes. Like, how much could the taxes be, right? A lot. A lot. Had no clue. Yeah.

So the biggest financial mistakes in business I have made have been I didn't pay my taxes. I made purchases based on ego. I let people that didn't matter influence me to make purchases that I shouldn't have. Really? Yeah. Because... You mean people you knew or people you didn't know? I think it was a little bit of both. People that I knew...

And I thought, oh, well, you know, they're they're doing they're doing well and they're putting all of their money in this. Maybe I should do that. Or I believed all of the I believed all of the hype. And I think that that that was a huge mistake. Just just believing all of the hype. That wasn't really the truth. Yeah. Not being able to discern. Yeah.

Well enough. Yeah. But being distracted, probably one of the biggest money sucks of my life. Really? Being distracted. What type of distractions over the last 30 years? All kinds of distractions. But mostly for me, I've been distracted by the shiny penny. I've been distracted by feeling like that I needed to be married to somebody to be somebody. Mm hmm.

For many, I mean, I remember it so like vividly in my head that I wasn't going to be worth anything unless I was married to somebody. Really? Some big person like, you know, like Ted Turner. Like, you know, I'm thinking like, oh, I should be married to some like big shot person. I wouldn't be worth anything without that. Where did that come from? I don't, I don't, you know, I don't know. I think about like.

I think about in my head, I was the only child in my school whose parents were divorced. Really? And I remember like seeing Mr. and Mrs. Myers and Mr. and Mrs. Bourgeois.

And I remember seeing them and thinking, you know, they had the two kids, the three kids, the dog, the house with the swimming pool. Like the mama stayed at home and the daddy took care of everything. And,

I remember thinking to myself that I was so cheated that I didn't have that life. And here was my mother. First off, she was old because she was 44 when I was born. So my mom was the oldest mom. She was the only divorced mom, single mom. My dad wasn't really in my life.

And so here I am. And then on top of that, I have to have this back surgery. I'm in a body cast for a year in seventh grade and just everything. It just I've got this big accent, which I don't think I have, but lots of people think I do. But it just I mean, there was just so many things. And I kept thinking that I was like the odd man out. I was like I was different than everybody else. And rather than appreciating that difference.

I worked so hard to be like everybody else. People pleasing, trying to fit in, doing whatever others do. Oh, yeah. Trying to fit in. I mean, I, you know, here was the last kid picked on the playground and I wanted to fit in so bad. Yeah. And and I couldn't I couldn't ever figure out how to get those pieces of the puzzle together.

And back when I was in school, I mean, I graduated from high school in 1984, you didn't call it bullying. Like today, you would say, oh, she was bullied as a child. She didn't call it that then. You didn't call it anything. Toughen up. Yeah, suck it up, buttercup. And I think that for me, a lot of the distractions were...

just trying to be like everybody else, get somebody's attention and prove that I was worthy. Yeah.

I know that feeling. And you felt like you only had worth based on who you were with, it sounded like. Yeah. Or who you were friends with or who you were dating or who you were married to. Who I was associated with. Who I was attached to was what defined my worth. Wow. And I think that that was huge. Once I realized that my value was determined by me.

was a turning point in my life. When did you learn that? 2017. Really? Yeah. Not that long ago. What made you think that and what made you realize and actually start to, to believe that? Um, I, I stopped, I struggled with drinking. Um, and I stopped drinking, um,

at the end of 2015. And I think that that really started giving me a lot of clarity. I think that alcohol had disguised a lot of issues that I had. But I think that when I stopped drinking and I was focused on being my best self, that helped. And then I went to a Tony Robbins event

And he talked about just being present in these moments, you

just being present and building these moments. And I went with my son. My son was really struggling at that time. How old was he then? He was 16 years old. Wow. And he was really kind of going through a difficult season of his own life. And I took him to the UPW for him. Yeah, right. You got more out of it than he did, probably. And we're there four days. And at the end...

And my son's tall and he puts his arms around me and my ear is right at his heart. And I can hear his heartbeat. And he leans down and he says, I'm never going to forget these four days with you. Wow. And I remembered in that very second, that moment, like here was this child watching me like you. He deserves it. He deserves it.

Your value. He deserves you to be worthy. Wow. And so I left that moment and I said, my life's goal is to string together moments of a lifetime just like that one that I could just feel. And I just everything I do, every single thing I do is built around how I can build a moment in time.

for like my life, my children and the things that the people that I love. That's beautiful. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as

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