From Garage to Greatness: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Tai Lopez | E36
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Mondays. I have a guest here that has had one gazillion views across social media. That is the exact number, actually. It's one gazillion. I actually remember a stat where he had like...

1.4 zillion minutes watched of his commercial that you may have heard of, may remember called here in my garage. You thought you're watching like a 40 or 50 or 60 second commercial and you end up watching it for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Like, Whoa, how am I deep down this rabbit hole watching Tai Lopez walk through his garage and his mansion. Please give a warm round of applause to Mr. Tai Lopez. Thank you for having me, man.

All right. So the way this works is we keep our podcast to under 45 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. So we do these podcasts for just under 45 minutes so that you guys can enjoy the money Mondays. We've been the number one entrepreneur show for almost six months in a row. It was really difficult. So we thank you for your support. Keep continuing to share it, like it and comment about this podcast because it is important for people to talk about money. And that's what we're going to do here today. We do it with three main topics.

how to make money and invest money and give it away to charity. So it's gonna be really easy podcast. I've known Ty for I think 15 years, give or take a few months. It's been about 15 years. Right? So Ty, first off, if you could give us the quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Yeah, we met, I used to do house parties in Hollywood starting at 2009. And I remember somewhere in there you came and somebody was like, I was like, who's this guy? We got, we hit it off right away. Um,

So people know me for different things. I would say, you know, I always say, how would you like to be remembered on your tombstone? I'd like to be remembered as a mad scientist. He tried lots of things, tried lots of things. So I've been a serial entrepreneur, launched my first business as a teenager, grass fed beef business with Joel Salatin when I was 19. Lived with the Amish for two and a half years, no electricity, then moved back to the big city, didn't have anything.

any skills. I know how to milk cows. Wasn't a good skill to translate into city life. And so I was broke sleeping on my couch or on a couch. I remember I didn't have a closet, so I had all my stuff next to me. And I remember thinking, is this it? All my friends had gone to college. I'd gone down this other narrow path. I thought maybe it was the wrong path learning. I had mentors that started to teach me business even on the farm, but I had nothing to show for it. And Tony Robbins book,

you know i read a book people say oh self-help a scam and this and that i say well changed my life one book uh tony robbins it was just one sentence it said when you fail uh when you party sorry when you succeed you party when you succeed you party and when you fail you ponder and all greatness comes out of pondering and it made me realize like maybe this failure that i'm feeling 47 in my bank account no house no job

Maybe this is going to make me ponder a new path. And sure enough, I got a job in sales selling life insurance, but my brain was working in the right. It's like life changes when your brain puts you in the right direction. You can be the smartest person in the world. If you're heading in the wrong direction, you never win. So I started to head in this direction of never give up.

and mentors and i bought an online course a guy named corey rudall rest in peace i never got to meet him and thank him he died in a car crash and um before i got to meet him and it was a three ring is before online courses you know people know me for some online training it's because online training changed my life but it came in a three ring binder raleigh north carolina

I get this three ring binder. I open it up. Internet marketing. And the ad I had clicked on, it was a dude's feet on a beach chair. And he said, how I made $28,000 laying on this chair in Hawaii. And I bought it with all my money. I had saved up a couple hundred bucks. Three ring binder. I said, internet marketing is this new thing.

Google ads you can advertise. And I made my first funnel. People talk about funnels. 2002 from the Corey Rudall instruction, I ran Google ads. Google ads was two months old. I didn't even realize I was catching a trend.

And within nine months, I was making six figures. I was making a year. I was making about eight grand a month on autopilot. And I never looked back. I started creating. I built a nightclub business, another flow of income. Then I got online. I did online social networks, dating, consulting. And then I just expanded into courses, trainings, physical products I do. You know, so.

So that is the, and in 2015, I blew up in kind of the personal brand space. And so that was longer than two minutes. Sorry. So on the SMMA program, you sold tens of thousands of people into this course and you were teaching them how to make money. Yes. Walk us through the general concept of

one how do you get tens of thousands of people to pay a thousand dollars it was a thousand dollars right yep thousand dollars each so that's tens of millions of dollars in revenue to purchase and then i saw so many i still get stopped in the streets by the way of people saying i watched you in that course yeah you were in there yeah people still bring it up yeah five six seven eight years later and they tell me about it changing their lives tell me what were you teaching them for why was it important to you and how did it become so huge

Well, you know, SMMA actually owned the trademark, SMMA, Social Media Marketing Agency in the U.S. And it went so viral because it worked. There you go. And at the end of the day, you try different things to teach people. And sometimes you need two things for anything to work. Number one, you need a willing student. As the old saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So you need willing students. I had built up a big personal brand and people believed me. I had my skeptics and critics, but enough people believed me.

that the impossible. And then number two, you need practical advice. So my advice was social media is relatively new. Go out business owners, average business owners, 60. They're not going to do their Facebook ads. So build funnels for them, email marketing, SMS. And man, it took, I launched that program. I remember it was October, 2016. And I didn't know it would be a hit. I mean, this thing flew out, but more importantly than me making money with the course, because I reinvested a lot of it into marketing. Sure.

I'll go head to head, and this is if I can be so cocky on here, I'll go head to head with any university, any course, on what took more people

from rags to riches. I'm talking about people that the world gave up on. Harvard says, well, we produce the most successful people. Yeah, because you're starting with rich kids, with high IQ, with parents that support them. Bill Gates' dad was a multimillionaire. Mark Zuckerberg. So my SMMA worked for, I remember a valet, a kid. He's like, man, I'm from Brazil. I came here. I got no money. I'm a valet. And your course, I'm making 40 Gs a month. Yeah.

In fact, 80% of the big influencers that you see now, it's pretty insane, have been through my, I mean, you name the biggest of the big, they all went through, it's either 67 Steps or SMMA. And I don't say that for trying to just, you know, blow myself up. There's a whole movement of people that believe in alternative education, which is what this is about.

$5 trillion is spent globally, not just the US, on education. When you count tax dollars, private, $5 trillion. The world only spends $2 trillion on the military. It's a good thing about the world. We're actually spending more on education. $9 trillion, you can Google this. People don't believe me? Google it. It's the first thing that will pop up to confirm this on Google. $9 trillion is spent globally. Trillion, $1,000 billion. $9,000 billion is spent on healthcare.

$5 trillion on education, $2 trillion. But the $5 trillion is being spent incorrectly. You can't force a kid to want to learn business, math, those things. You have to inspire. So a lot of people got butt hurt when I put a Lambo. I put a Lambo first. I put a cool lifestyle, beautiful women, Hollywood. And people were like, oh, this is blah, blah. And I'm going, but this works. Because what's better, telling a kid, learn your math tables first.

So that you can pass a quiz. You're teaching with pain. You can't, you know, you, you ask your first question is how to make more money. Isn't that the question or how to make money? Maybe what I would impart to this audience that's related to my story, but it related to your listener. If you're not making enough money, you're not leading with reward. Either. If you have a nine to five job, you're not getting a raise because your boss doesn't perceive you as rewarding him enough.

Capitalism for good or bad is based on the selfishness of the end user. So if you have a nine to five job and you want to make more money, you have to create whatever triggers reward bias, dopamine released in your boss going, I love this person. I need more. I want them to promote, give them a raise. If you're self-employed or thinking of launching your own business, the biggest mistake

that the school system does, five trillion, is lead with pain. Do this so you don't fail the quiz and I'm your parent or I'm your teacher, I'm putting pressure. Forget the fuck that. Show a land bugle. Show a land bugle. Say, I can't guarantee you'll get this, but I promise you the best chance you get at doing this is learn, read, you know, get mentors.

So that was my message and it was a hypothesis I had in 2013 and I tested it and lo and behold it works. And now so many people are doing it. You did that awesome event yesterday with 7,000 people. You know, I got to be a part of, and I see the movement growing of people who are taking back control of their life from the government saying, ah, let's spend this 5 trillion on our own terms, not on a bureaucratic education system that leads with pain. Do this or I'm mad at you versus,

See this life you want? That guy learned a little math in order to be able to build a business. So study your math. I remember it was funny. I knew it was working. And I still lived in that house up in the Hollywood Hills that I used to come to. I used to do random parties once a month. And this woman comes in. She goes, I'm a school teacher. Are you Ty? I know your brother. She goes, I want to tell you the craziest story. I teach in Compton.

It's like low income, high crime neighborhood. And she said, there's a student who's the biggest troublemaker in and out of juvenile hall. And she goes, I see him walking down the street with like walking down the hall in class with a couple like nonfiction books.

you know, like Gary Keller's The One Thing business book and Dr. David Buss psychology. And I went up to him and I said, you're reading? He said, yeah, that Tai Lopez guy says if I read more, I can get a Lamborghini. I said, that's not exactly what I said, but that was his perception. Yeah, and the kid, she's like the kid that we were spending five trillion on kids like that, that it was just going in one ear out the other ear. This guy was voluntarily,

of his own accord saying i'm ready to learn you know the more you learn the more you earn you built one of the biggest book clubs ever yes mentor box you and oprah yes yeah walk us through that mentor box

yeah i saw you know i saw once again books i read a horrifying stat which is the average person who graduates college i'm a college dropout i didn't have enough money i was a thousand bucks to get my textbooks at nc state and i was like i don't know where my family did not have a thousand bucks i'm going i'm out i started my own consulting business but i had this idea like books are

Oh, the horrifying stat after I didn't go to college was that the average person graduating college doesn't read a nonfiction book.

on their own for the next five years. They're so traumatized from like textbooks, exams, blah, blah, blah. So I said, how do I make books sexy again? And I said, well, one of the pain points of books is they're too long. So I, instead of book summaries, I got the authors to summarize their own book. Cause some of you are subscribed to book summary websites. I got no hate. They're kind of competitors. But the reason I don't like those is

they're hiring random people who don't do great summaries. So with MentorBox, it's like, what if I got the actual author? Yo, can you give me a seven minute summary of your book? So making books simpler, like your podcast being 40 minutes, like simpler is higher reward. You can't sell pain. Hey, anyone want to read this?

War and Peace, 1100 page book. People were like, you know, the average human now has an attention span of a goal lower than a goldfish. Goldfish are like six second attention spans. Humans are coming in about five seconds. Your goldfish running around your kid's little little aquarium has a better attention span than the average human. Pretty shocking. Yeah, it's getting worse. It's getting worse.

so outside of smma obviously that program has done phenomenally well and it's changed a lot of lives i sincerely i get stopped there hasn't been a month in the last basically decade yeah i haven't got stopped when someone's bringing up and with the extreme detail telling me like yeah i make eight grand a month or i make 20 grand a month or i did a million and so it's too much sometimes i hear superhero stories but just i like the real stories like four grand eight grand ten grand like numbers that change their lives not just like the superhero stories yes

I have dozens and dozens and dozens, really I have hundreds of screenshots I could pull up on my phone if I really just took the time of people that show me. They don't just say it, they actually show me screenshots of their bank account or their merchant account. For some reason they wanted the validation to show like, look what happened. - Yeah, because I think people don't believe in themselves sometimes. I remember when I started making money, I was like double logging in and out of my website, Bank of America. I'm like, do I have eight grand that actually went in my bank account? It's like, whoa.

There's a friend of ours, his Instagram is Refresh because that's his nickname because he used to do that. Mark Cuban told me when he became a billionaire, it happened basically overnight because he got paid in Yahoo stock or whatever. And he's like, I sat there and I refreshed. My network's like 100 mil, 200 mil. And he said, when it hit a billion. And I was like, I bet you didn't have... You know how people talk about motivation. People are like, I need my sleep. I need...

I can't stay up all night. If you refresh your screen and you make it 100 mil every refresh, all of a sudden people that don't have energy are like, I feel a lot of energy. I feel a lot of energy. I don't need that. I don't need Red Bull. Okay. The other program you did was also massive with 67 steps. Can you walk us step by step through 67 steps? Yeah, that was a precursor of SMA. I'm actually...

shameless plug i'm a book publisher wants to publish this i'm gonna try to publish a full-on book well you should yeah yeah it's kind of one of the i'm not sure why i haven't um so 67 steps was simple there was a stat that i read they used to say it takes the average human 28 days to change bad habits right like alcoholic depression not that depression's bad habit but that's another subject um

But new science came out. University of London came out. It takes about 66 days for the average person to change anything. So I was like, I told my cousin, I'm like, I'm going to launch the 66 step. She's like, this is America. That sounds too much like 666, the devil. So I'm like, I'm going to add one more for good luck. So that's where the power of one more. So all I said was it was a simple theme. I was like, I'll teach you for a dollar a video.

what my millionaire mentors changed, what changed my life was finding five millionaire mentors. Joel Salatin was first, Alan Nation was second, a guy named Mike Steinbeck was third, Al Howe was fourth, you know, and I had

it's really way more than five. But it kept progressing. Now I've had 50 mentors, but those first four or five, one of them that I considered a mentor that I never met was Warren Buffett. So I, I took these five mentors that I had met in person or in books and, and,

I added my own spin to it and I recorded one video a day that you get. And it's an hour long video. Maybe it's too long after I say this, but it's 67 hours of what my mentors taught me on frameworks. How much was that one? A thousand? It was $67.

It was a dollar a video. $67 for 67 hours? Hours, yeah. In hindsight, it was like I killed myself for that. It's actually, you know, 67 Steps was more mindset. SMMA was like a practical business. You could build a marketing agency. Yeah.

But 67 Steps, boy, I just came back from a late-- I can't go one place where people are like, "Yo, the 67 Steps." And I-- every chapter has a-- it's a pretty unique program. I haven't pushed it for years and my book will be the new updated version. But I always tell people, whether you get my 67 Steps or another one, you need-- I call it the five mentor role. You need five sharp people speaking into your life. It can be a podcast like this.

But I recommend at least two in person.

you know, two in person. One can be a podcast, one can be a book, one can be YouTube, whatever. Sometimes I get flack. It's crazy. People give me flack on books like you don't need books to be successful. I'm like, well, do you need mentors? Very few people are so stupid to say you don't need mentors. I mean, the wealthiest first off, Elon Musk, the richest man in modern history, says what changed his life was a book. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy said it was super depressed at age 12. It gave him the idea that's now SpaceX.

And so a book is his sister recently did articles at all because I say I do read a book a day. I would tell people what I do. People like scam. Nobody reads a book a day. Well, apparently I'm an underachiever because Elon's sister just posted. I remember Elon who used to read two books a day as a teenager. So I'm a slacker. But so 67 steps is just practical. You need those five mentors in your life.

The reason you need books, by the way, is not because books are good, but because the best, some of the best mentors are dead. I want to go up to every dude who's like, you don't need books. I'm like, let me get this straight. Because most people say it's good to have a mentor role model, blah, blah. Half the guys that say you don't need books and mentors are a mentor social media influencer, which kind of boggles. I'm like, bro, you got a YouTube channel with fucking 10 million subscribers. You are the thing you're saying you don't need. But anyway, not to digress.

You need books because the best mentors, 80% of them are dead. You tell me you don't need to learn anything from maybe the smartest human ever to live, Aristotle. You can't learn anything from Shakespeare, Darwin, Freud, Kant, Spinoza. These people are all dead.

Will Durant, probably the wisest guy that I've read in the last 500 years. Now Elon's on a big Will Durant. I'm like, I was telling people first about Will Durant. So books are the quasi simulation of mentors who you can't, unless, by the way, your wife has the alien show. If any of you are aliens, you can travel back in time. You don't need books. Please send me the, I would much rather learn directly from Freud than have to read Civilization is Discontents. But you need those five mentors and 67 steps.

It was the gateway drug. I was a drug dealer. People say, Ty, you sell dreams. I'm like, is that a compliment? When people are mad at me, like you're fucking selling hopes and dreams. I'm going, you're confusing me. Is this a negative or a positive? Are you criticizing me with compliments because I hope I'm selling a dream? What's the alternative to selling a dream? I never tell anybody everybody's going to be able to replicate my life for the life of what. That's not the point.

In fact, if you got, everybody has their dharma. Dharma is, if you're in America, you call it destiny. If you're in India, you call it dharma. And it's an important thing to your first question, how do you make money? You can't chase other people's destiny and dharma because they're making money. Because the ancient Indian principle was, if you're supposed to be a medical doctor,

Yet you see a tech entrepreneur making money. So you chase them. Even if you become a billionaire because you're not doing your destiny, you will be miserable and you've lost. And if your Dharma is to raise a family and have a,

you know, a hundred grand income. Hopefully you have, I think people should try to have slightly above average income at the minimum, but you know, you have a hundred grand, you you're living out your Dharma. You win as much as Elon wins. I I'm in business with multiple Forbes list people. They ain't always the happiest people in the world. So lead with reward, both yourself and others with, with reward, not pain, but also follow your destiny and your Dharma. Don't just chase the accomplishments of others.

So over the years, you've done a lot of live events, some large format events, some smaller events like high-end masterminds, 25K, 50K masterminds. I just bought a company that has two masterminds plus a whole touring company. So together we have four masterminds, live events, tours. We did the arena event last night. Why do you think it's important for entrepreneurs or anyone to go to live events or to masterminds? Yeah. I launched my mastermind event.

Some people call me the OG. I launched my mastermind in 2013 in my living room. I think I'm-- I think Joe Polish may have had one before me. And I remember I charged $25,000 and it got results. At the end of the day, like the simple question is like, "Why should you go to conference?" Well, you reverse engineer success in your own brain. Do you think people going to a big event have ever got inspired to break out of shitty life and transform? Hell yeah!

So why not you? Try it. Why do you go to Mastermind? Well, do you think in the history of mankind, people have ever gone to a group of other like-minded business people who were smart and got any benefit from? Hell yeah, because I can tell you, I was in a Mastermind in 2014, September 2014, before hearing my garage came out.

And that thing printed money. But I can't even take the credit. I was at a dinner. Like, I swear it might have been one of your dinners. You used to throw these dinners. 8-figure dinner. Yeah. That's what it was called. And I went to one and I sat next to a dude. I wish I-- By the way, if that's you from 2014, and you remember telling me that I owe you steak dinner and more. So please reach out to me. I've tried to reach this guy. There's a guy sitting next to me. Turns, he goes, "I think you'd be good on YouTube ads."

And I remember being, look, we all have a little skepticism from life, but I've learned skeptics stay poor. So I was eating and I remember thinking YouTube, cause I was doing Facebook ads. I was in the beta Facebook in like 08, 09.

So I was like, I don't need a new thing. I got email marketing, I've got my word of mouth stuff, I got affiliates. This guy's like, you should try YouTube. So luckily I pushed my skepticism back and about a month later I started testing ads. I made a Lambo ad, my friend Jeremy, we went and drove around, it was called Lamborghini Lessons and I drove around Santa Monica completely bombed. I spent like 20 grand in the month of December 2014 and I was thinking that dude at that mastermind dinner,

I thought he had a good idea, but look at this shit. But I learned, never give up. So January 24th, I kept recording. January like 21st, I was going, this is, I'm failing. My YouTube's failing. And I remember back to being a teenager, Tony Robbins. When you succeed, you party.

when you fail, you ponder, all greatness comes from pondering. And I was supposed to, it was a Sunday night. I think it was like the 21st of January, 2015. I was supposed to go out to a club in Hollywood. You know that temptation in Hollywood. Guys, and I texted him, partying's overrated. I'm going to stay here and work on these YouTube videos this guy told me about. Really, I remember vividly where I was. I texted him. And like, all right, we'll be out clubbing. And I wrote out a couple, just not a full script, like,

uh here's what i'm gonna say and i had zach my friend he sadly died last year cancer for all those you love zach i said that can you come over and set up the sound lights and cameras but leave i i need to be alone to just test this and he's like no problem he came over set it up that sunday night and i sat there and i took my camera and i tried different angles and then one of them was just like here in my garage just got this brand new you know lambo and

Two days later, I launched it. I was giving a seminar conference, speaking of the power conferences, at the Roosevelt. I was there. Yeah, you were there. I was talking. I was talking. And in the back, my marketing guy, Jeremy, I see him laughing during my whole talk. I'm like, did I sound... I got something on my face. I walked to the back. I'm like, bro, what's going on? He goes...

look at these ads. He's like, we're printing money. He's like, we're spending 50 grand making 100 grand back in an hour.

- Oh my God. - There was no one on YouTube. It was like you could spend 50 Gs. People talk about ROAS. This is with no recurring, no phone sales team and no upsell. - It's a straight sell. - You cannot do that and nobody dropping 50 grand and 10 minutes later making 150 grand back. And that, I remember like, "Oh, this is insane." But that was all from five months before being at that mastermind dinner where a smart guy spoke into my life. Don't think you have all the answers.

Narcissism breaks into seven subsets. People think of narcissists as vain people who look in mirrors. No. Narcissism, the seven are authority, superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness, vanity. That's one of them. But self-sufficiency, the top scientists who created the Hexaco score, the NPI, narcissistic personality inventory, they class high levels of self-sufficiency as a mental illness.

Yeah, so when people meet I don't need books. I don't need mentors. I don't need masterminds. I don't need conferences I'm like, oh, let me get this straight Let me get this straight. You are this omnipotent omniscient human you need no help. Actually. You're just a narcissist so the power of masterminds conferences getting out is lit is realizing that

A lot of the answers aren't within. 2013, I got a lot of, I've always been controversial. It's funny. 2006, I did the Millionaire Matchmaker Show. Number one rank episode, but controversial. I have a knack. People either like me or hate me. My mom says it's because I'm a Scorpio rising. That's her astrology explanation. But I realized in 2013, one of the problems in the world is spiritual people are teaching that all the answers are within. Now, let me be clear.

Sometimes the answers are within getting to know yourself, seeing yourself. But if I want to learn Chinese, then am I going to go within? Did you learn language as a one or two year old? No, you you hang out with other people and you learn through osmosis. So conferences, like I came to speak at your conference, you know, even even though it was last minute that I came, it was I learned every time, every time I always do the math is like, OK, it's going to cost me.

this much in travel. I bet you, I will 20 X and I made like three connections there. It's not always what you know, it's who you know. Right. So I'm a big fan of masterminds, not just because I sell, I haven't, my main income hasn't been from events, but I realize I should push them more. Yeah. Yeah. People need it, especially after a couple of years of being hidden at their houses and locked in. Yes. People need it more than ever. Okay.

Along the way, you decided to start buying some household name chain stores. Yes. Walk us through the concept of going from social media icon, tens of millions of dollars a year in courses and training and masterminds, et cetera, live events to going kind of quiet on social media and really heads down traveling the world and finding some of the most household name legacy brands and buying them and taking them and putting them online.

Yeah, I needed a break. I spent a I always everybody wants to be famous until you get when you get well enough known to get weird things. Yeah, like people always like Ty, why is your Uber name your middle name? I'm like, because Uber drivers, I used to call Ubers, they'd all try to come in and get a picture. I had guys going to prison breaking into my house, try to meet me guy broken my I don't know if I ever told you I broke in my house huge guy was out of town.

We have cameras in my house. He made himself sandwiches, by the way. Spent about 45 minutes in my kitchen making sandwiches, packed nuts.

Water bottles found the keys. I had six seven cars. He started all of them Couldn't figure out the Lambo tried to start that but apparently the way the law works That's one count of Grand Theft Auto interesting just trying but he couldn't figure out like a ventador is hard to turn on for most people It's like that so he tried the vent and he figured out the damn stupid Maserati Maserati's not my favorite car and He figured out he put all those sandwiches in the back and

The water bottles, the bags of nuts. Apparently he's going to go on a road trip with my car. What's crazy is I had security, man. And big dogs. He timed it and got in the house. My brothers were staying at the house with their girlfriends. Of course, my brothers are supposed to be their big dudes. They're supposed to be warrior guardians guarding my house. They slept through the whole thing.

My brother's girlfriend woke up, heard a noise downstairs, called the Beverly Hills police and they showed up. They jumped up. I lived on the street with the police department, showed up with guns. I was in San Diego, out of house and lawyer. Call me. Hey, doc. Did you give your business partner permission to take your cars? I'm like, what business partner? I know. We thought it was him. That's what the guy who broke in told the police. They're like, we have him at gunpoint. We're trying to decide. I said, that's not my business partner. Yeah.

Five minutes later, I get a call. Okay, he changed his story. He said, you did a Snapchat social media contest. Who was creative enough to be able to break into your house to meet you? Come on. I shit you not. I told the sheriff. I'm like, or it wasn't a sheriff. It was whatever. I'm like, what do you think? You think I'm going to do a contest? So anyway, I took a couple years off because that guy ended up going to prison for grand theft. Then California let him out in one month because of overcrowding. Nothing makes you feel more secure in life than the California penal system. So,

Took a couple years off. I've always liked Warren Buffett. So like I always, I bought my first business in 2004. I bought a nightclub business. It was a merger acquisition. I took over a nightclub business for George's Garage. It's still there for those of you who live in Durham. So I always, I knew the power of,

You build from scratch when it doesn't exist as an entrepreneur. But if you can buy a business, you know, people know this with real estate, but they don't apply it to business. Like very few people buy a raw piece of land, bulldoze it flat, permit, put in a water sewage. And so, but most entrepreneurs have this perception. I did that. You got to start everything from scratch. So I'm a big fan of buying stuff, bodybuilding, big business.

I'm a big fan of that kind of Pier 1 kind of stuff. It's funny now. This holding company idea is becoming very popular. I see people teaching. Everybody should have their holding company. For me, it's a natural progression for everybody listening that you start out. I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so you do like the belts. When you're a white belt, just try to make money. Actually, as a white belt, try to find a mentor and shadow them.

when you're stuck on the couch with $47 in your bank account, start with a mentor. I got this guy, Mike Steenbeck. When you become a blue belt, you're a little better. You make a little bit of money.

Then you just focus on a service based business is the best basis like a social media marketing agency or any service where you're trading your time for money Then when you become a purple belt you start to build a brand around that service because brands you can resell it then step number four when you become a brown belt you start to think about acquiring your buying your competitors you're doing something and you can do it creative financing seller notes and all this and

Then when you kind of go to black belt, you can just progress up buying bigger things, starting bigger things. So I think it's a natural progression that's not taught enough. It's tricky. I've made mistakes and people can make, you can make mistakes, you know, no risk, no reward. So start out. I'm glad I started small with in 2004. I bought a company. I'll tell you a simple thing people do buy offline businesses.

and turn them online. In 2013, there was these two business partners that were arguing and they actually hired me to consult to be like their therapist. And finally, after a month of realizing these jokers were never going to work together, there was so much bad blood. I said to one of them, I said, I'll just buy you out and I'll become the partner. And the other dude's like, great. I hate this guy. I'd rather have you. But I said, I'm not giving you a lot of money. I'll give you 10,000 down.

And then it was like a 500 grand buyout. I'll pay you for like 50 months, 10,000 a month. Okay. So it's like 500 grand over. It wasn't a huge business. But what I learned is they didn't do email marketing. So by taking one online technique, I made the, it was August, 2013. I said, let's start sending an email every day. They had a list. They never emailed it.

So by using internet marketing skills that I learned back in '01 from Corey Rudall, just turn on email. We made 250 net that month. I paid my-- so I gave the guy 10 grand a month and I paid myself 125,000 within 30 days. Then six months later, I wasn't interested in the business, I sold it back to the other partner. So you can make a million bucks from 10 grand.

So that's when my mind, I was like, more people. And all you got to do is take a simple thing. There's 20 million business owners in the United States alone. Last stat I checked, not even counting globally.

maybe 1 million are doing the internet stuff right. Most of them are not doing email, text messaging, building funnels, autoresponder follow-ups. So a simple way for anyone listening, make more money if you're more advanced. Don't do this if you're a white or blue belt. Buy something that they suck with internet skills, inject some internet marketing,

put little money down. And by the way, it's a win-win for everybody. Right. There's just more money created out of thin air. 3.2 million businesses this year that are being sold by baby boomers. Yes. They're retiring. Yes. And what I've been saying to people is, why don't you go to them and say, hey, you're doing 6 million bucks a year. You own six landscaping businesses in six different counties. I'm going to come in and set up your social media, video content, email marketing, SEO. The person can't even spell SEO. Yes. Right? Right.

And you're just going to take the arbitrage. Everything above is 50-50. Yes. There's no risk to the person. There's no risk. Right? Yes. That person is 78 years old. They want to retire. You're going to say, hey, you do the six landscaping companies. I'm going to take you online, make you more famous, blah, blah, blah.

Yes. And you might be able to do creative finance to buy it and work your way to buy the company because you're probably going to make them double, triple, quadruple in size just by taking them online like Ty just said. Okay. So we talked a bit about making money. We talked a bit about investing money. Last core topic is about giving away money to charity. Yes. Now, it's not only about money. A lot of times you can use your social media power, your energy. You can throw live events. You can support people. You can go in person to –

you know, hospitals, homeless, things like that. Talk to me about why do you think philanthropy should be something that is part of people's lives, whether it's for their personal brand, their lives, their family or their business? Yeah, I believe in the power of science and I believe in the power of ancient wisdom and ancient wisdom was if you give, you will receive.

And modern science is reciprocal altruism. One of my mentors, one of the greatest living scientists nobody knows is Robert Trivers. He's called the founder of modern biology. He's a Harvard professor, more than a professor. He's the genius. He's now senile. So whenever he mentors me, he's like, Ty, I'm going to talk to you. But I want you to know five minutes later after this call, I won't remember a word I told you.

But he coined one of the people who coined this concept of reciprocal altruism. So whether you're scientific, if you're a scientific person, you don't care about spirituality, ancient wisdom. Well, leaders who gave...

the other side, the other tribal alliance gave back. That's reciprocal altruism. So we're hardwired to not be ultra selfish. The genetic pool of those who were extremely selfish, they died because they had no tribal allies.

The Native Americans in Seattle area, Northwest, they used to throw these potlatches, they called them, these huge parties. And to be a chief, the chief who was the most respected gave away everything. I mean, I think they'd give some of their wives away. This is next level. I don't know if you do that. Do that. But they would give, they'd have this party, invite all the tribal, they would actually make war.

by charity. So if I was the big chief and I didn't like that dude, I would out give him at my own party because he, we knew those Indians were smarter than modern, modern humans. They knew I'm planting a seed in his head that he owes me. Hmm.

So I'm saying even the most selfish son of a bitch watching this, you could be like the Native Americans go to war by being charitable. You give some dude, there's an office episode where like Dwight Schrute and Andy are trying to out-compete each other. Like, I will open the door for you. Because they always felt obligated, you know? And so if, but if you believe more in ancient wisdom, it's, there's a spiritual principle. I think it could be explained by parallel universes, which is scientific. When you're stingy,

You live in a stingy parallel universe. And when you become altruistic, you pop into another universe at the blink of an eye. You don't know it. Parallel universe theory is that every possible permutation of everything exists in parallel universe. So there's basically infinity minus one universes. And so that explains the power of prayer, visualization, charity. But for sure, there are some... I told you, you come at it from every angle.

And you can't find a reason to be stingy. Stingy people lose and their genes are eradicated off planet earth. Last question. Are there any specific books that you really liked and involved money or investing?

Yeah. So shameless plug that I don't make any money on tyloopens.com slash books. It's just my book list. It's been changed over the years. I published the top 100 books, but ones that have caught my mind recently. I teach, you know, this, I've got this new concept called the five habits and the five habits to getting health, wealth, love, happiness. Okay. And so you need a good health book.

in a good health book. A great health book is by this guy named Daniel Lieberman from Harvard. And he wrote a book, a new one called Exercised. It's like really good science. He also has the story of the human body. He's a paleoanthropologist. He looks at our bones and can recreate how we should eat, live and move. For example, you've heard 10,000 steps you should walk.

That's not very good science. That's just a make-believe number. Our ancestors and the way our hips bones are built differently than say gorillas and orangutans and chimpanzees, men traditionally walk about eight miles, which is 15,000 steps. Women in hunter gatherer tribes walked about 7,000 step, seven miles, which is about six to seven miles, 12 to 14,000 steps. So if you're a big dude, you should be walking 15,000 steps. Good book on this, "Story of the Human Body or Exercise."

For wealth, specific wealth, one of my mentors, he's a Forbes list guy. His name's Tillman Fertitta. I've learned a lot from him. I helped him blow up his reciprocal altruism. He came to my house years ago and I was like, I'll help you blow up your book for free. In exchange, he gave me his wisdom. And he owns the Houston Rockets for $7 billion. And he wrote a great practical book. Tremendous. It's called Shut Up and Listen. It's just practical business, like nitty gritty stuff.

The second business book, if I could throw out a second one that I think is an important one is, and some people don't perceive it as a business book, but Gary Keller, The One Thing. It's just the power of mindset and focus. Love. The best book on love is Dr. David Buss, Evolutionary Psychology textbook. It's like a hundred bucks.

but it is worth it. Okay. And then for happiness, I think the best book on happiness is probably the happiness hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. Or for those of you who want to, I'll give you two wildcard books. If I may, am I over my 45 minutes? Wildcard book number one is the folly of fools by the scientists. I was talking about Robert Trivers. Now this is a book I give people. They're like, I got one third through that book. I put it down as too traumatic. Okay.

It's how your brain is built to lie to you. So you meet somebody who tells you they're... Run from the person who tells you they know themselves because we're not built to know ourself as well as we do. The second wildcard book is Sigmund Freud, Civilization is Discontents. Now, I know people, this tells you what's the problem with damn modern society. People say, oh, Sigmund Freud's not that smart. Trust me, I've read everybody. Raw Sigmund Freud books, sure, he was wrong on some stuff as the 1800s.

I'm not sure there's ever been a smarter human walk the earth. And he wrote a book. You only got to read the second chapter on what's the purpose of life. And I don't care if you're atheist, religious, it is a mind-blowingly powerful book. Civilization is discontent. I think it's free. Um,

Yeah, go to war with a multitude of counselors. Books, masterminds, conferences, courses, self-education, in-person mentors, podcasts. Like you go to war. And by the way, some people aren't going to believe it. And they're going to say, well, I don't need all this stuff you're saying. Well, you're forgetting what Will Durant says. Lessons of history. The second lesson of biology is that it is competitive. It is competitive. So for those of you that are not going to be like, I don't need to listen to Money Monday or come to...

Dan's conferences. I'll tell you what the great basketball coach told his student, John Calipari, Kentucky, trained the most pro basketball players. He said he had this great natural talent, but every time practice was over, that basketball player, I won't say his name, would go home right away. He wouldn't stay longer, put in any extra effort. John Calipari walked over and said, I got to talk to you for a second, son. He said, son, I want you to know

somewhere in America or the world, when you leave practice, another kid stays and he shoots a little bit longer and he practices a little longer. He said, one day you will meet that kid in a game and you will lose. So for those of you who say, oh, Ty, I don't need all this stuff. I'm overwhelmed. Well, one day you're going to launch a business and you're going to have half the knowledge you should to succeed. And you're going to,

run up against a competitor and he's gonna eat your lunch. So I don't wanna speak that into existence, so let me just speak to the positive. Some of you are gonna take Dan's message and what we've been talking about and you're gonna go, the more you learn, the more you earn. Know thyself, read, mentors, and you're gonna take this and run with it and one day a competitor will come up against you

and you'll brush them off. They won't be able to compete. And that is your only consolation and solace in this world is that the game of this world is built for people who are willing to put in the extra mile and not give up. So...

Ladies and gentlemen, hopefully we'll get Tai Lopez back here on the podcast. He's going to be in California a little more often, so I'll drive the motor home to wherever he is and we'll get him back here on the podcast. But as I always say, we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think most of my guests think it's rude to not talk about money because that's what leads to financial debt, crises, credit card debt, foreclosures. People can't spell foreclosures.

FICO. They don't know what a FICO score is. They don't know how to spell IRS. They don't know what to do with taxes, loans, apartments, or anything between because we just never talked about it because it was rude to talk about it. So please talk with your friends, family, and followers about money, about investing, and all things savings and everything in between. Share the Money Mondays. Follow Tai Lopez on social media and we'll see you guys next Monday.