Why Surrounding Yourself with Different People Changes EVERYTHING

Summary

THE ED MYLETT SHOW

Episode: Why Surrounding Yourself with Different People Changes EVERYTHING

Host: Ed Mylett
Date: September 13, 2025

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Brief Overview

In this inspiring solo episode, Ed Mylett dives deep into the transformative power of diversity in both relationships and experiences. Drawing from emotional personal stories and hard-earned business lessons, he explains why seeking out different people and new experiences is the ultimate key to personal growth, happiness, financial success, and resilience. The episode offers concrete tactics for enriching your network and your mindset, with a strong emphasis on self-belief, delayed gratification, and discipline.

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Main Theme

Diversity is the pathway to richness.
Ed explores two core forms of diversity:

• Diversity in the people you surround yourself with
• Diversity in your life experiences

He argues that intentionally welcoming variety into your life is essential not only for happiness and growth but also for developing resilience, wealth, and brain health.

“Variety is the spice of life... and you can do it for free, on no budget.”
— Ed Mylett [05:25]

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Diversity Matters

• Personal Story: Ed shares the emotional experience of dropping his son off at college, highlighting how the diversity of people and experiences ahead will be transformative for his son—and how adults must pursue the same for ongoing growth.
  • “He’s about to have the most diverse experience of his lifetime...” [06:42]
• Happiness and personal development are strongly linked to exposure to new people, ideas, and environments.
• As we age, we tend to avoid novelty and gravitate toward routine and sameness—a recipe for stagnation.

2. Identity and Decision-Making

• Ed’s advice to his son (and listeners): When faced with new situations, always ask:
  1. Who am I?
  2. What do I stand for?
• Consistently making decisions that align with your core identity and values helps navigate unfamiliar or challenging territory.

“If every decision comes your way, you just remind yourself: Who am I and what do I stand for? ... You’ll make the right decision.”
— Ed Mylett [08:54]

3. Combatting Tribalism and Unconscious Bias

• Ed laments the current state of political and social polarization, urging listeners to intentionally seek out and learn from those on “the other side.”
• Acknowledges the natural human tendency for unconscious bias—liking people who are like us—but warns that this limits our lives and businesses.

“It’s not horrible to have [unconscious bias]. It’s horrible not to be aware of.”
— Ed Mylett [24:12]

4. Diversity in Business and Team-Building

• The exponential growth of Ed’s audience and business is directly attributed to hiring and collaborating with people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives, not just gender or race, but also age, religion, and life experience.
• Cites the structure of his own organizations as proof—a leadership team primarily comprised of women from varied backgrounds, plus cultural and age diversity throughout.

“My podcast... fastest growing show in the world... It’s diverse. Why is that? Because, obviously, I’m that same guy that when I was 25 surrounded himself with sameness. Not anymore.”
— Ed Mylett [26:19]

5. Practical Tips for Pursuing Diversity

• Proactively reach out to colleagues or acquaintances from different backgrounds.
• When in routine settings (e.g., an Uber), engage the driver—people are gifts waiting to be unwrapped.
• Introduce novelty: new music, new hobbies, unfamiliar places, different conversations.
• In relationships: avoid dying routines. Introduce new shared experiences.
• Encourage diverse collaboration within teams; sometimes just pairing unlikely colleagues for lunch can spark growth.

6. Learning from Every Encounter

• Shares illustrative stories from his time at an orphanage, where as a young man, he learned gratitude and perspective from underprivileged children—showing that even those you’re “supposed to teach” can transform you.

“If I could learn from 8- and 9-year-old inner city boys, don’t you think you could learn from someone who thinks completely differently than you?”
— Ed Mylett [31:17]

7. Ed’s Recipe for Resilience and Growth

• Draws from personal and family stories about facing hardship, including a formative tale of wanting to quit college baseball, and his father's powerful advice about staying aligned with identity and values.
• Stresses the importance of perseverance and how diversity in thought made the difference in turning setbacks into success.

8. Diversity and Brain Health

• Ed references scientific research on neuroplasticity, citing Dr. Andrew Huberman—learning new things and having novel experiences literally rewires, strengthens, and protects the brain from decline.
• Boredom and lack of diversity have direct negative health consequences (higher rates of heart disease and even accelerated cognitive decline).

“Turns out this diversity variety thing is the only way you change your brain for the better.”
— Ed Mylett [33:01]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Diversity Bringing Wealth:

  • “There’s a direct correlation between the amount of diversity in our life and how happy we are, how much we’re growing, by the way, how wealthy you’ll get, too.” [07:44]

• On the Power of Diverse Teams:

  • “The reason [my brand] has grown like it has is because of the diversity and the variety and the spice around me.” [27:32]

• On Unconscious Bias:

  • “We like people like us... It’s not horrible to have [the bias]. It’s horrible not to be aware of.” [24:12]

• On Small Graces and Gratitude:

  • “Little Marcus... said, ‘No gunshots on this way to school, Mr. Eddie.’ And I went, yeah, that is cool, Marcus.” [29:45]

• On Handling Hardship:

  • “Is that consistent with who you are as a man? Is that what you stand for? ... You got me.” (Ed recalling his dad’s pivotal question) [32:10]

• On Pushing Past Routine:

  • “If everything in your life is routine... that’s a relationship that’s dying, not growing.” [19:59]

• On Self-Belief:

  • “There’s a disease going around the world right now, which is that people don’t believe they deserve to win.” [36:30]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Main Theme—Diversity as Richness: 03:40–08:12
• Personal College Story & Advice to Son: 06:00–10:00
• Tribalism & Social Commentary: 11:25–14:40
• Business Diversity & Company Structure: 24:50–28:00
• Lessons from the Orphanage: 29:10–32:50
• Brain Plasticity & Science: 33:00–35:00
• Foundational Advice—Self-Belief: 36:10–38:00

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Action Steps & Challenges

• Reflect on the last 90 days: Have you had conversations with people different from yourself?
• Reach out this week to someone who sees the world differently.
• Listen to ideas that oppose your own; aim to learn, not to change your mind, but to grow.
• Infuse your relationships, routines, and work with variety—force yourself into new, diverse settings.
• If you run a business, intentionally build teams that span age, background, and experience.

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Tone & Language

Ed is heartfelt, direct, and motivational. He uses personal stories, practical examples, and a “tough-love” approach—encouraging listeners with a sense of urgency and warmth. Signature Ed: enthusiastic, sincere, sometimes emotional, relentlessly practical.

“You were born to do something great with your life... Max out your life!”
— Ed Mylett [01:00]

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Conclusion

Through honest self-reflection, data, and heartfelt storytelling, Ed Mylett makes a powerful case: living a diverse, varied life isn’t just interesting. It’s essential for happiness, growth, wealth, and resilience—and it’s available to everyone, regardless of budget or background.
His message? Challenge your routines, expand your circle, have new experiences, and believe you deserve all the richness life has to offer.

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This summary covers the main content and wisdom of the episode, omitting advertisements, standard intros/outros, and non-content banter.

Transcript

[A]

Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills and. Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply. Before we get started, I just want to remind you of something, my friend, and that is this. You were born to do something great with your life. I just had that on my heart today. Before we get going. I just feel like maybe there's an awful lot of you during this time right now that wonder whether that's true and maybe you need to be reminded of it. Maybe you're not even sure how you're going to do it again. And I'm here to help you with all of that. But I just want to begin by telling you you're special. You were born to do something awesome with your life in big ways and in small ways. And that's the whole purpose of this show, is for me to help you max out your life. And so you're stuck with me this week. If you listen to the show or watch the show for a long time, you know, kind of, you're old school. It used to be that every other week I would do a lesson teach on something like spirituality, fitness, life, strategy, influence, relationships, whatever it might be. Then the next week I have a guest on that's an expert that's maxed out a particular area of their life. Well, recently, the last eight months to a year, I've mainly done interviews with experts in different fields. But I had an experience myself yesterday that I've just felt compelled to share with all my brothers and sisters out there that I think might make a difference in your life, might change your life like it changed mine. And so I am so glad you decided to join me again this week. But I didn't want to start without telling you from my heart. I love you, I believe in you, and greatness is coming your way. I know that. And I do this show not just to inspire you and to motivate you, but as many of you know, to give you the tactics and the strategies and the tools to make that a reality in your life. And so today, I'm going to give you another one And I want you to write this down if you can, if you're YouTube or you're not driving your car right now. And that is this. Today's theme is very simple. Diversity is the pathway to richness. Diversity is the pathway to richness. And I mean diversity in two forms. The people in your life and the experiences of your life. And without that diversity, I'm so concerned in our culture today that I see us become more and more tribal, less and less diverse, both in our friendships and our relationship. We don't talk to each other, we talk at each other. And more and more we hang around people just like us, don't we? And they kind of reinforce our beliefs and our way of living. And we just kind of go in this circle. It feels good. It's like eating cake, you know, it feels really good, but it doesn't grow us. And then the second thing is the lack of diverse experiences that we're giving ourself access to. And so I looked up diversity, by the way, in the dictionary, and basically it means variety. We've all heard the saying that variety is the spice of life. And I know during this time with COVID and the global pandemic and high unemployment and political polarization and all the things that are happening, most people say, hey, life ain't so spicy right now, and I want to bring some spice back to your life, and you can do it for free on no budget. That spice, that variety, comes through diversity. So the experience that I had this week that I wanted to share with you, and I can only talk about it for a few minutes because every time I get going, I can't finish sentences. But I dropped my son off at college yesterday and can't do it. Sorry. I just. My boy left me yesterday. It hit me much harder than I thought it would, and it's hitting me even harder again today. And I think one of the reasons is that I liked our kind of lack of variety, our lack of diversity. I had them under my roof every single day. But what I keep reminding myself of is how amazing these next four years can be for my son. Why? Because he's about to have the most diverse experience of his lifetime, isn't he? He's already meeting people that he didn't grow up around. People from different backgrounds, different countries, different economic situations, different religions. He's going to be introduced to different ways of thinking. He's going to have decisions and choices to make, good and bad, isn't he, during these years? But any of you that went to college or have sent a child off to college. It's four of the best years of most people's lives. Why, it's the most diverse years of their life. So if that's true for Max, I got to be excited for him, don't I? As emotional as I am for myself. But it's also true for you. It's true for me. There's a direct correlation and connection between the amount of diversity in our life variety and how happy we are, how much we're growing, by the way, how wealthy you'll get, too. And so when I dropped Max off, I want to tell you first about making decisions. I said, max, you're going to have a lot of decisions. You're going to have to make your life when you're here for the first time. And when I say diversity and variety and chase diversity, right? I don't mean things that you are knowingly aware of could be harmful to you. So when you're offered a drug or a particular drink or some situation or decisions you got to make, Max, there's only two things you need to remember. So this is the next thing I'd have you. All right now, I said, max, you need to remember who you are as a man, your identity, and number two, what you stand for. And if every decision comes your way, you just remind yourself, who am I and what do I stand for? And is this choice, this decision consistent with that? Then you'll make the right decision. And I know that for a fact, by the way, for you, in your life, who are you and what do you stand for? And have you been living that way recently? Because I think you love all people. I think you want to chase experiences. I think you want memories and moments in your life, and you want to be happier when you. All of that is in this place that most of us avoid as we get older, which is new things, diverse things, different people, different ways of thinking. You're taught in the world right now, aren't you, man? These people are different. They're your enemy. Everybody in the world, both the left political party and the right political party, I'll tell you, your life's messed up because of these people. It's not your fault. It's their fault. Both parties do it, right? It's interesting. So many people say you don't know what it's like to be me, but they seem to be an expert on what it's like to be you. Maybe those of you that think you're an expert on what it's like to be somebody else. Or you've got an opinion about somebody's life, ask yourself if you've walked in their shoes. Ask yourself if you've had their experiences. And if you haven't, why don't you start to get to know people like that? And maybe your opinion could evolve or change, or at least you'd have an experience, wouldn't you, that's unique and different than the one you're having with the same three, four, five people you talk to that go to the same three, four, five places. And so you can have diversity right now on no budget. And I'm going to talk about those things with you today. And I'm excited for my son that he's going to have this diverse and amazing variety in his life, going for different golf courses, different places he'll go, different things. He's going to have to learn tools and skills that he didn't have to learn when his mom was caring for him. By the way, a lot of you say to me, you know, you talk about your family, but not all the time. Not as often as some people might. That's because, just to be candid with you, they deserve their privacy. They want their privacy. And you'd be surprised, when you're a public person, some of the scary things that happen when you expose your family quite too much. But I felt compelled to share that experience with you because it was life changing for him and it's life changing for me. And the lesson there is it can be life changing for you as well. So diversity in all forms. Remember I said diversity in people in your life. And I want you to really evaluate that the last 90 days or so, how many diverse conversations you have with people that grew up completely differently than you. Different background, different race, different religion. Right? Different experience, your business, how many people that are around you are very different than you. They look different, they talk different, they come from somewhere different. They bring different experiences, perspectives, thoughts, opinions, nuances to the table that are beautiful. See, as a country, we are better together. We're not all the same. People say we're all the same. No, we're not all the same. And that's what makes it so beautiful. We're not all the same, but together we're stronger. Some people ask me if I'm going to run for office. I don't know, but I doubt it. But one of the only reasons I would is I would do it to bring people together. I'm so tired of these political parties, the media, everybody, social media, putting us against each other. And the other well, we're not the same. We're beautiful. Combined. Our combined experience, our combined skills, our combined thoughts, our combined lives, our combined souls are better. Together are better. I'm not saying everybody's good. I don't believe that. I don't believe everybody should be in your circle. But one of the things that's confusing to a lot of people, they say, well, wait a minute. I listen to you. I listen to social media. It says, hey, keep your circle small. Only have people there that support your way of thinking. You're not understanding what that means, so let me clarify it for you. I mean, people that support your dreams, that support you, that support who you are and what you stand for. To go back to my conversation with Max. I don't want anybody in my life who doesn't support who I am and what I stand for, Right? But I want them to express it. I want them to challenge me. I don't want everybody to think politically the same as me. I don't ever have the same personality as me. If you're a really serious person, wouldn't it be more spicy, more diverse to have some hilarious people around you? If you're a complete right winger, wouldn't it be just more diverse and interesting at lunch, at dinner, with someone who's on the left? Or vice versa? Man, have some women friends, women. Hey, guys, how about have some conversations with some ladies that you're not just dating? Just get to know their experience, what they're thinking about, what they fear, what they worry, what they want, what they chase, what, what their anxieties are, what their dreams are, what their insecurities are, and vice versa. That's how we get better. And so your life, right, if you go, I want to be happier. One of the ways is more diversity. And so if you haven't had a lot of that lately, chase it. There's someone at work that you could reach out to. You don't know, say, I want to get to know you better. Let's have a conversation. Let's have a zoom. If you can get together, have a cup of coffee, depending on where you live, tell me about your life I see at the office, when we were there, I don't know anything about you. One of the things that drives my friends crazy is that if they get in an Uber with me or a limo, they know I'm not talking to them. I'm talking to the driver, anybody who drives me or anything like that. Because I believe human beings are gifts and only is that revealed to you when you Open them up. And so I know I interview. Kind of one of the things I do here is I interview. But I get to know people. I love people. It drives my friends crazy because they know we get in a car, if it's an hour. Eddie's talking to the driver the whole time. I want to know where you from? What's your upbringing? Right? Because they're diverse. That's spice. I already know these other three. I could talk to them later. I want to talk to this person I was driving last week. Example. A guy picked me up from Lebanon. I said, hey, man, what's it like there? Take me through it. And I learned a lot. My life's better because I'm not from Lebanon. I've never been to Lebanon. But I had this picture, what it was like. And he's like, actually, where I grew up, man, gated community, middle class, Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostic, all on my street. And we had street parties and we all got along great. I said, you're kidding me. That wasn't kind of my image. He goes, well, there's places where it's not like that, but where I lived, just like where you would live here. I said, you're kidding me. No way. And we had a great conversation. He's got three children. One of this guy's from Lebanon. One of his kids that immigrated here. One of his kids is at Harvard. He's kicking butt, man. He's driving Uber to help support tuition. My life was richer because of that experience. Didn't cost me any money. My life got better. So were yours. If you chase diversity, by the way, so are your business. So I want to talk to you entrepreneurs for a minute. Diversity is the key. I don't believe, by the way, hiring on skin color one way or the other, I don't go, well, your skin's darker, I'm hiring you. Or your skin's lighter, I'm hiring you. I don't hire on genitalia or gender either. I hire the person that's the best for the job. Like for the presidential race. Right now, I'm not going to tell you who I'm voting for, but I can tell you this. Their gender has nothing to do with who I'm voting for. Pro or con. Who's the best person for the job. Having said that, one of the mistakes entrepreneurs make and we make in our lives that I made when I was young is I started to look at my business when I was younger. Everyone around me, my clients, the people that work with me were all just like me. You looked around my business when I was 25, 26 years old. They're all guys, all former athletes or military or police, all kind of the testosterone, masculine crowd. They loved my messages. They loved how I talked, the veins sticking out, getting all fired up, yelling and screaming. And I'd get this reinforcement. So I thought I was doing it right. One of the mistakes you entrepreneurs make is you keep getting reinforced. Your way of thinking, you do it in politics, too, don't you? You watch on TV exactly what you already believe, right? Your phone's programmed. Now that what you've clicked on, they're gonna feed you more of what you like. And in work, we do it, too. Why? Why is it that those guys all were like me? You know why? Because we like people that are like us. We just do. It's an unconscious bias. Everybody has it. Black people have it. White people have it. Old people have it. Young people have. It's an unconscious bias. We like people like us. It's not horrible to have. It's horrible not to be aware of. And so you have unconscious bias in your friendships, in your politics, and in your hiring and training and work. And so I had all these guys, they love what I talked about. It was great. You're great, Ed. Thank you. And we were all fired up all the time about how supposedly great our company was. But guess what? That's a limited segment of the world. So is people just like you. You have a limited slice of life. If everyone around you looks like you. My white friends, how many conversations you had in the last 90 days with a really good friend of yours that's Latin or Chinese or black? My Black friends, last 10 phone calls, you've had last conversations. How many of them were with a white guy or a white girl? And I hate skin color. I hate judging that. I'm talking about diversity of experience. Unfortunately, we live in a world where this has become. You better pick a tribe. It's terrible. The truth is, most of us are mixed with something drives me nuts that we even have to have this conversation. But the truth is, we have become tribal. And the truth is, you got to get to know people that are different than you. And so I started to evaluate that. So stay with me on this. And I started to realize I needed to bring more people to the table that could express who I was and what I stood for. Their unique way I can express it my way. I need people's experiences, backgrounds, memories, nuances, personalities, ways of thinking that I don't have. And so let me Give you a couple examples of what my business life looks like. I've been named one of the 50th wealthiest men in the world under 50 years old. That's pretty cool. My podcast and my show that you're watching, if it's on YouTube, fastest growing show in the world. Couple different magazines picked me. The fastest growing businessman in the history of social media. That's pretty cool. In just three years, millions of people around the world listen to my content and my audience is unbelievably. What? Diverse. 52% women, 48% men. 48% of my audience is under 35 years old. 52% of my audience is over global and in the United States. I have entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs. I have Christians, Muslims, Jews, agnostics. I have people that are, you know, trying to win financially in life and people that want to win spiritually in life. It's diverse. Why is that? Because obviously I'm that same guy that when I was 25, that's who I've surrounded myself with. So many of you may not know this, but I want you to think about something. I'd love to tell you that all that stuff's grown because I'm so incredible and so wonderful, but that's just not the case. The reason it's grown like it has is because of the diversity and the variety and the spice around me. Not only do I enjoy it, but it's tremendously changed my financial situation. By the way, I do all the social media stuff for free, as you know, but it's grown my brand. So let me give you an example. This social media, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you're listening to me, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of that enterprise of mine, my public reputation and brand. The CEO and president of that company, the leader of that company is a woman, young woman, a young black woman, and one of my dearest friends whom I love, named Trevi. So yeah, this entire thing you're consuming for me, turns out it's driven by someone different than me, someone better than me, someone who brings experiences and thoughts. So it's my message, it's my brand. It's what I stand for. I hire for people who understand who I am and what I stand for, but can help me express it differently. Maybe in your case, get to markets differently. And so everything I do, I've trusted my entire public reputation and content with Trevi, and I wouldn't have anybody else to do it. I hope she stays forever. I love her. So that's who leads that part of my Organization. The person who creates the content that you see on social media. Also a woman. Athena. The person who handles all my personal finances, my bookkeeping, my accounting, my taxes, everything. A woman. Sue. The person who runs my new financial venture that I have. A woman. She's Greek and Latin. Her name's Nicole. She's awesome. The person who runs my entire enterprise for the last two decades, all of my companies, handles all my financial, my money, 25 something different corporations runs my world. A woman. She's also my sister for two decades. She's my sister all her life, but she's been my CEO for two decades. Erica. Turns out I have a really diverse team. Mike, my videographer, he's been with me forever. He looks like me, but I'm also loyal. So I've got a very diverse team. These women, these people bring to bear all kinds. That's just one example. My financial company has people from many different East Indian, Muslims, Christian, Mormon. We have Chinese folks, Indian folks, black folks, white folks, Latino folks, old people, young people, all winning. Variety is the spice of life. I'm a better businessman. I'm a richer financially and richer emotionally and spiritually because of the diversity in my life. We can learn from everybody. So my challenge to you is take a look at your hiring. If you're running a company, maybe you need to get people together that are there, that are very different. Why don't you encourage people that don't know each other to get on a zoom or to have lunch this week and just get to know one another, collaborate, connect, get to understand each other's backgrounds and nuances? I would challenge you to do that. I hope that's a breakthrough for you, by the way, on how to lead your company and in your life. Maybe reach out to somebody that's different than you this week, politically, maybe for 20 minutes, listen to something that's not exactly what you already believe, by the way. Well, hey, no, I am. I AM All Trump, 100%. I don't want to hear anything from these liberal wackos or, you know what? Trump is a racist, crazy person. I'm not interested in talking to anybody who supports anything that guy stands for. Cool. So that's how you're going to live your life. You're not going to learn anything from their perspective. They're just evil if they disagree with you. Is that what you're saying? Or are you afraid that your beliefs are so weak that one conversation with them you may get impacted and change? Which is it? Because if you believe it so strongly, they can't change your mind. Just have a conversation, have the experience and learn. You, you know what you might find out. There might be something they believe you ought to consider, maybe one little part of it. And you know what the worst thing that would happen is? You go, you know what? I just, I listened to them, I totally disagree with them. I feel stronger about how I feel. Great. That's an experience. But I can guarantee if you had 10, 12, 20, 30 of these, your life would change. How about this? What could you do that's new? For the first time, think about your life. All the things that have been the greatest moments of your life were new in the first time and diverse, weren't they? But maybe the last 90 days because we've been locked in our houses or there's no financial means, so what could you do? Could there be a new hobby you could pick up, new music, you listen, maybe you're a country music fan, Listen to something else for a while. I'm listening to Sinatra right now. There's no new music out, so I'm going back all the way to Sinatra just to get some variety, just to get some spice in my life. I'm tired of listening the same songs over and over again, Same conversations, right? The second thing we teach in personal development is man, you better have habits, rituals and routines. I teach this. People take that to an extreme. That's a foundational thing you should have. That gives you the anchor so you can go have variety and diversity and keep your life under control. If everything in your life is routine, if you and your spouse watch the same shows together, go to the same restaurants, order the same food, have the same conversations every single day. That's a relationship that's dying, not growing. Why don't you do something new and innovative? Walk somewhere different, work out together, try a different restaurant, have a different conversation, watch a different movie. Heck, do something that's just diverse. Don't sleep in your bed tonight. Grab a couple sleeping bags and have a camp out in the living room and a picnic and do something romantic, something diverse. Get creative. It's the spice of life. Your ability to create diverse and variety based experiences will be the juice of your life, your relationships and your business. But you can't go through the motions. You've got to force diversity, force yourself into variety. New conversations, new experiences, a new place you hike. I don't know, something new that's diverse and variety we avoided as adults. And it kills me. You know, you can learn from everybody. Let me share this with you. You'd say, well, everybody, yeah, you may not agree, but you can learn. You can learn. That grows you. You know, many of you know that. My first job out of college, I worked at McKinley Home for Boys, which basically was an orphanage. My boys were all 8 to 10 years old. My boys grew up in some ways like me, in some ways different. And so it changed my life because I got so much diversity in my life. My boys were wards of the court. So my boys, most of them, were either molested by their family, their parents were incarcerated, or dead. And so, by the way, most of my boys were inner city boys, and most of my boys were minority of some type. Okay. They changed my life. You say, well, they must have learned a great deal from you, Ed. I mean, you're mentoring and your way of living. They did, and I learned a ton from them. So if I could learn from 8 and 9 year old inner city boys, don't you think you could learn from someone who thinks completely differently than you? Wouldn't that be interesting? By the way, it's one of the great experiences in my life. I still talk about it all the time. Well, what did I learn from those guys? Well, I'll tell you what I learned. I didn't grow up around guys. I grew up middle class. I say lower middle class. My mom and dad keep telling me we were middle class, so I'll default to, we were middle class. But I didn't grow up around guys like them. But you know what I learned? I learned to be grateful for the most simple things in my life from them. I remember one day, I would walk the boys to school every day, and little Marcus every day would start skipping. We always walked in a line and he would start skipping. I say, marcus, get back in line, brother. Okay, Eddie. And he would do it every day. So finally one day he skipped again. I said, marcus, you need to get back in line, man. I'm not going to tell you three times. And he looks at me with this beautiful little face. Marcus was an African American little boy. And he goes, eddie, okay. I said, what are you so damn excited about, man? He goes, no gunshots on this way to school every day. There's no gunshots, Mr. Eddie. And I went, yeah, that is cool, Marcus. That is pretty awesome. And I thought, something that simple, he was grateful for what a lesson for me. We're always grateful for the biggest things in our lives. The biggest things in our lives. What about the small things that we take for granted every single day that someone from a different background can teach? Us is so special. I remember one morning I came in to wake up Jose and little Jose woke up and I said, jose, let's go, brother. It's time to get up, man. And he gets out of bed and he says, Mr. Eddie, he gives me this big hug in the morning, little eight year old at the time, and he goes, I love you. I love you. Thank you. I said, for what? He goes, for getting me up every morning. I said, of course, brother. We got to get to school. And I later found out that his parents never woke him up for school. He'd miss school all the time. He'd sleep in till 10 or 11. No one would get him up, no one would make him breakfast, no one would talk to him about school. No one asked him about his report card, no one asked him about his grades. He just wanted somebody to care. And I thought these things that I took for granted with my mom growing up were so simple. See, when you begin to get diverse experiences, you begin to get insights into life, changing variety in your life. It's also the key to making a comeback. If you're going to change things right now, make a comeback, you need to start to think different and act different and feel different about yourself. And that comes from all of these experiences. You know, I told Max, I said, max, listen, there's going to be choices for you at college, man, that are going to be very difficult. This is not going to be all sunsets and rainbows, right? I said, my freshman year of college, man, I had some decisions to make. I said, I said, let me tell you about my freshman year. I went away to college, which is already scary. So I know you're a little bit scared. I said, I went away. I get there and my girlfriend breaks up with me back home. That one hurt. Then my teammates didn't like me. I'm super introverted and shy. I was from California. Most of those guys weren't. They thought I was arrogant and cocky because I was quiet. But it wasn't. I was just super introverted. They actually nicknamed me Eddie myself instead of Eddie Mylett because I was alone so often. And so my girlfriend breaks up with me. My teammates don't like me. Two months after I got there, the coach who recruited me quit and took a scouting job. So now the reason I went there is gone. I said, max. Then the game started and I was overmatched. I wasn't Good enough. I hit 220 my freshman year. I sucked. I played every game because the guy behind me was even worse than Me and I said, we went 15 and 45 that year. 15 wins, 45 losses, and a bunch of other crap happened that wasn't good that year as well. I said, when it was over, I wanted to quit. And I called my dad, which is his grandfather. We call him Gump. I said, gump came up. And I said, dad, this didn't work out. Look, the guy who recruited me quit. The teammates don't like me. I'm not good enough to play here. You know, we're terrible. I just want to come home and I'll go to another school back home. And my dad said, well, you could do that. You got a decision to make. And guess what my dad said to me? He probably doesn't remember this. He goes, is that consistent with who you are as a man? Is that what you stand for? Same two questions I asked you earlier. I said, what do you mean? He said, Is that. Is that who you are? You a quitter? When it gets really difficult, you run. I said, dad, that's not what happened. The coach quit. He goes, oh, so what you stand for as long as people around you quit and give up, make mistakes, that gives you permission to do it. That's what you're saying. And when it gets really difficult, you just run and you really believe you're not any good. That's why you hit.220 and you can't help the team get any better. It's fine. You can leave. I just want to make sure that that's who you are and what you stand for. You got me. And I thought about it really hard, Max. I thought, that's not who I am. I don't run when it gets tough. And you know what? Maybe I could outwork these guys this summer and get a little bit better, and maybe I won't hit.220 next year. Maybe we could win a few more games. And the fact that the coach quit, that doesn't give me permission to get weak and quit either. My dad was a diverse thinker, and I stayed. And you know what? Worked out pretty well next year. I hit like 360, was a defensive player of the year. We won some more games. My coach is a friend of mine to this day. So is my pitching coach. Both Quincy and Stan are both friends of mine, and I'm really glad that I made that decision. Max, you're going to be faced with those decisions as well. My. My thinking is, maybe some of you listening to this day are being faced with those decisions, aren't you? Just remember, is it who you are, Is it consistent with who you are and what you stand for? And do you have enough diversity in your life? This is how we're going to make a comeback. The last thing I want to talk about on this, too is, by the way, it's good for your brain. Turns out diversity and new experiences are great for your brain. So let me prove it to you, ok? I want to prove it to you scientifically. I had Dr. Andrew Huberman on last week. He told us that it turns out that you get more of a dopamine hit. You're happier when you're under stress and pursuing a dream and a goal than when you actually achieve it. Is that not crazy that that's how the brain works? So I'm like, I want to check into this brain on this diversity thing because I got a feeling that this society, this culture, could come together in a way it's never come together before. We'd have a richer experience as a world, as a country, in our companies, and in our lives if we would seek diversity. Learning a new skill at any age has a specific and definite impact on your brain that scientists now know a lot about. After you learn something new, your brain is never the same again. You here are some of the ways it can change, which, by the way, is new neurons and connections. So turns out this diversity variety thing is the only way you change your brain for the better. So it's not just better for you in the ways I've described. It's better for your brain, your mental health, your smarts, your ability to function and process information grows when you have these diverse experiences. Each and every time we learn something, our brain firm, forms new connections and neurons, making existing neural pathways either stronger or weaker. Some experts call this plasticity, which we've talked a lot about on the show. Myelin makes the signals in our neurons move faster. And when you learn new things, especially at older ages, it helps more myelin get out into our nerve axons so that our brain is more connected and feels like it works faster and better. Myelin works especially well with when a new experience is repeated multiple times. Huh? Like when we practice something repeated every day or for a few days. So a British study recently showed that being bored, which occurs when you don't learn new things, can be dangerous to your health. So the lack of diversity and variety is dangerous to your health. Listen to this. People in the study who reported being bored over a long period of time had heart disease rates more than twice as high. Those who did not report boredom not Having new experiences and learning new things will slow your brain down and make it less responsive. Adult learning is good for your health and has been shown to slow the onset and progression of Alzheimer's and dementia as well as preventing general slowing of your mental faculties. So we now know that if we're bored, which so many people are messing me, I'm bored, I'm in the house. Then you've got to force these new diverse experiences. New hobby, new thought, new book, new music, new way of relationship. You know, you can be in the same, you can be dating the same person and be in a new relationship. You can be married to the same person and have a new relationship with new experiences, with new breakthroughs, new conversations. Babies and children undergo massive brain structuring when they're maturing. Why? Because they're experiencing new things all the time. So our growth is only limited by our lack of experience and our lack of diversity. So why do I cover all these things with you? Because I want to remind you of something I keep telling you, which is that you were born to do something great with your life and that's not going to happen if you keep doing the same things. Even those of you that say, hey, I'm achieving at a pretty high level right now. Your limitations will be the amount of diversity you can take on at any given time. Said another way, the quality of our life is actually the amount of uncertainty that we can deal with at any given time. Uncertainty is correlated to diversity and variety. Doing something new. The caliber of our lives is actually, as it turns out, comprised of how much diversity we can take at any given time. And I'm not suggesting that you go to change your mind. I say you go to expand your mind, to grow your mind. Changing it is something altogether different. I don't agree with everybody on my team. Here's what I know. If you know who you are and you know what you stand for, you go into those experiences strong, ready equipped. Here's the truth. You know why I struggled my freshman year. You know why I worry about college for all of you youngsters going out there? You know why I worry about all of you listening to this? I didn't believe in myself. That's at the root of it. I didn't believe I deserved to win. I didn't believe I was good enough. You know what those parents of my boys at McKinley had in common with me? They didn't believe they deserved to be happy. They didn't believe they deserved to win. There's a disease going around the world Right now, which is that people don't believe they deserve to win. Hopefully when you were a little boy or a little girl, somebody made you feel special. Somebody. A grandpa, a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, your mom, dad, a teacher, a coach that just. You can't even explain it, but they just made you feel a certain way. Like, I'm going to be somebody. Right. I'm here to tell you they were right. And if you've never had that person in your life, I'll be it. You were born to do something awesome and great with your life. And not all of them are going to be in big ways. Not all of you. It's not a big jet, a house, or millions of dollars. It might be that you just have an amazing conversation with someone and you change their life because they're like, I don't know anybody like you. What a great experience this was. Or maybe you reach out in a time of need for someone. Maybe you believe in them, encourage them, love on them. Many of you listen to this. You're not going to make millions of dollars. You're a nurse right now, saving lives. You're making a difference in the world. You're a school teacher who's back right now teaching school with your own kids at home and teaching other kids. You're changing the world. You're a startup entrepreneur, and no one's in your business, and you're bleeding money right now, but you want to be somebody. You're inspiring someone somewhere. You're a great father, you're a great mother. And I want to challenge you to step up in all of those areas. And the way you step up is you must chase variety, chase the spice, because you deserve it. So if anything comes out of today's show, it's that you know you can do something special with your life. And you know that our show is here to help you do it. I know how you grew up. You were kind of an athlete guy, but you were kind of. Did you grow up, like, wealthy, poor, middle class? How'd you grow up?

[B]

We, I went. I was very fortunate. I grew up a little bit of everything. So my parents were divorced when I was about 5 years old, and they were both entrepreneurs. My mom owned a VCR repair shop. Okay. So, like, they took people's VC and, you know, obviously it's not a very lucrative business. My dad owned a pretty large company, an electrical distributor that he started when he was. He was 18 years old by buying the spare parts out of a. Out of an old guy's garage. He Started a business out of that. So I, my dad became very successful financially, but you would have never know it and you still wouldn't know it. He was, he's a regular dude. You know, if you see, if you saw him walking down the street, he's wearing a Harley Davidson shirt and jean shorts and you're like, you know, here's this crazy old dude. But he's a really smart guy and he's been very successful. My mom and stepdad, we grew up and that's where I lived. We lived on a gravel road in south county here in Missouri.

[A]

It's pretty small house, like a typical midwest upbringing.

[B]

Yeah. Nothing, nothing crazy. And they ended up becoming very successful. And then when I say very successful, very, very successful nine figure company. Yeah. And then they ended up losing it all. So they went from very poor to very, very wealthy to very, very poor in a very short amount of time, in a span of about 10 years. And it was extremely valuable upbringing because my dad, I never knew my dad was successful because he's very like modest type guy. He lives in a regular house still to this day. He never drove like crazy cars or had all the, what you see on Instagram or any of this stuff, you know. Yeah, maybe I'm overcompensating, I don't know.

[A]

You know, dude, you were compensating because this is unbelievable, just so you know.

[B]

But you know, we, we grew up in a, in a situation where I was able to experience a lot of things. I was able to, I was able to see what it was like to be very poor. I was able to observe what it took to become wealthy and I was able to observe what happens when you don't keep your eye on the ball.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I saw a lot. I saw a nine figure company go to a zero figure company within a matter of 18 months.

[A]

But you were always around entrepreneurs though.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. So you knew that.

[B]

That's all I ever knew.

[A]

Yeah. You and I were talking earlier. We're both at baseball company card businesses and. No, we're both started really young. Probably a lot of you have had that bug too, or should have that bug. But so you, this is. It just blows my mind, especially what's happened to you the last five or seven years. But I think people see that Ford gts, they see the Lambos, they see this first form brand you guys have built, which is just unbelievable.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

I mean it really is, man. But I'm proud of you. I love seeing young stud entrepreneurs, but.

[B]

That means a lot, man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Especially from you.

[A]

Thank you, brother. And. But you start out. So let's go right to the business part because this is the part that I think people like, they've heard some of this, but not all of it. And I hope today we're going to get some stuff they haven't heard too. But so you start. You and your. It's your brother, right? You guys start your first. You do a.

[B]

So Chris, who you met, my business partner. That's not my brother.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He's my brother.

[A]

Yeah, but another mother. But another.

[B]

But. And then my actual brother works with us to.

[A]

Your actual brother works too.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay, so you're. How old are you when you open your first year up in a supplement? Super 19.

[B]

Yeah. Supplement store. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. And how'd that go on the very beginning? I know a little bit of this.

[B]

Well, you know, like most of you guys, I wanted to be rich. And I said I was looking for all these things of how to, you know, become wealthy. And so me and Chris, like, hey, let's start selling vitamins. We both like to work out. It seemed like it made sense, you know, so we, we decided we're going to start a business.

[A]

How'd you get the money to open the first store?

[B]

We bought both painted parking lot stripes at night and it paid like 20 bucks an hour. And back then, like in 1999. 20 bucks an hour for painting those. Dude, that was like 100 bucks an hour. You know what I mean?

[A]

So you did that on purpose to accumulate the deposit or whatever to start your first visit?

[B]

Basically, yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And then. And then to. So we had 12 grand. Nobody would rent to us because we were just kids. We had no credit. So we had to pay our year's rent up front, which was a thousand bucks a month. So that took up all our capital. So to finance the build out and then to finance the inventory, we ran it up on credit cards.

[A]

Well, because you couldn't get a loan.

[B]

Right. So.

[A]

So you open the store, you've paid the rent, by the way, I did that too. Which is a blessing because it didn't let me back out.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, and that was the thing. We had nowhere to live. We didn't have anything. We had to live in the store.

[A]

You lived in the store?

[B]

Yeah. So we had. We had a couch that we got from my dad, which was a loveseat. And then we had a mattress that we got from a Salvation army that was in the same center. A Salvation army retail store. And we slept at the back of the Store. And, and we thought it was cool. You know, we thought it was fun. Like, it was. We were 19, we had a business, you know, we freaking. Awesome. Yeah, we thought it was cool. Like, everybody's like, oh, man, that must have sucked. No, honestly, like, it was some of the best times.

[A]

You know what's funny? Because I was. You and I were walking around here, I was looking at your cars and we're talking about our lives now and stuff. And like, honestly, I mean, it sounds like I'm going back. Like, you know, I'm an old man time of the old days. But I'm. I loved those times. I love those hard times. I love the obsession. I loved the struggle with it. Did you? So you're living in the store, so that means that tells me probably you didn't have like a monster first year.

[B]

Our first day, we had our first day, we sold seven bucks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Our second day, we sold zero. Our third day, we sold 22 bucks and went like that for, for literally years where we would have days of no sales. We didn't have money to advertise. So the only way we could get people in was literally one at a time and then help create the word of mouth off of those one off transactions.

[A]

Did you make any money the first year?

[B]

Oh, no, I didn't make any money. It took me the first three years. I got zero pay. Zero. Zero pay.

[A]

Not three years.

[B]

Three years.

[A]

So how'd you. I mean, I know you're living there, but how do you eat?

[B]

Well, we worked other jobs, so we both bartended at night and worked security at bars at night and then worked at gyms. So we've worked other jobs. So one of us work at the store and the other one will go work at the other job and this and that. And then we kind of just pulled the money. And Chris and I are partners on every business that, that we own still because of this dude.

[A]

I met him.

[B]

Yeah, he's awesome.

[A]

You know what? That's a lesson, though. Like so many young people out there that are entrepreneurs is like, what sacrifices are you willing to make? It's almost like the first thing you sacrifice is your dream. So when it's not working, you're broke, you sacrifice your dream. And I worked extra jobs too. It's like didn't even occur to you that that was a big of a deal. Like, I'm going to make this thing work.

[B]

Yeah, it's. I call it zero option mentality. You know, you should always try to cultivate, like in that time, I Literally had zero options. I didn't have a degree, which, you know, I feel is less important now for people. Yeah, it's less important now, but 15, 20 years ago, it was still a big deal. So I didn't have a degree. I didn't have any place to go work. You know, my. My dad didn't have his company anymore. I didn't have a. I didn't have a backup plan. I had to make it work, or otherwise I was going to be digging ditches, and I didn't want to dig ditches. Know, and if you're out there digging ditches, I feel you're paying because I've done that before, you know, and if I had to do it, I would do it again, but I don't want to go back. And That's.

[A]

You went three years, no money, though?

[B]

Yeah. The last. The next seven years, the most I made in a month was $695. So for 10 years, I never made more than $695 in a month.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Ten years of doing the business, you're. You're making $700 a month? Is that what you just said?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

11Th. The 11th year, I made 45 grand. The 12th year, I made 180. And then it went up.

[A]

Then it went up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's interesting. Most people, their businesses, they make all these deposits, you know, they start and then they withdraw all of it too soon. They never get to class.

[B]

Well, and that's the thing, you know, Chris and I kind of got in that routine of living below our means.

[A]

Me, too.

[B]

So we were able to continually put money in and put money in and put money in and put money in. There was a number of years where we had employees that made much more money than us. You know, we were paying other people in our company way more than we were paying ourselves. And that's what you have to do. It's. It's, what do you want to invest and what are you willing to give? And. And I agree with you people. People want to get paid too soon. They want to. They want to live the life too soon. Way too soon, you know, And. And like, this is. This is why I stopped posting a lot of my personal. Like, I used to post all my cars on Instagram. Yeah, I stopped posting it, and I still post them sometimes. But the reason I stopped was because I started realizing that I'm hurting younger entrepreneurs, and in a way where they think they need to be living that now, man, when in reality, they should be pulling in the expenses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, battening the hatches, so to speak.

[A]

Well, here's how true that is. So both of us. So the first thing I asked him, because here's how much I believe that, too. It's like, oh, I did when I was young. I sacrificed, by the way, 10 years is awesome, because most people don't have that in them. They don't have that sacrifice work. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what? I didn't either, now that I think about it. But the first thing I asked him, as I walked in here and I was looking through all these cars with the first thing I asked you, I said, do you own these?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he said, yeah, I do. I got titled all of them. Right. And that's a big deal to me because we both. Same model, right? Same struggle, same young, same extra jobs. But what we were both doing, we weren't interested when we were young at looking like we were rich when we weren't. We just stacked it away. Stacked it away. Stacked it away. You see, my house is my cars. All of them are paid for. My jet, paid for. All of them paid for. So I'm trying to get on that.

[B]

Level, that jet level.

[A]

You're on that level. You're on that level. So you got the business. It finally turns around. But during that time, I just want people to hear the backstory, too. So during that time, you and I were just talking, too. He has a real life. Like, we both have real lives. So stuff happened. Right. And you struggle with different things, too. But tell them a little bit about. So you're a young dude, you got this business, you're working multiple jobs, you're living at your place of business. Right. Probably everyone in your family thinks you're out of your mind, dude.

[B]

Yeah. Trust me. My dad was the. The only person in my life that has never told me. Not, not. Not the only person that believed in me. He's the only person that never told me I was wrong, like, for doing it.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

Yeah. And. And people. And that's why I don't have a lot of sympathy for people when they're like, oh, my so and so is telling me this and that. I said, look, dude, nobody's going to believe in you until you've done something that's right. Have you done anything to make people believe in you? You know that you don't just get people to believe in you. You got to do, you know, and.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And, you know, that's the way it is. And. And my dad. My dad had Done that. So he knew that.

[A]

He knew the grind. He knew.

[B]

And.

[A]

But 10 years, a long grind, you know what I mean? Like, it's totally worth it, right? But like, what do you have? Like, I always say this all the time, is your will to win for sale, right? Like, most people can be bought. Like, enough failure, they'll buy their dream out. They'll buy them out, they'll quit you, you, you couldn't have been bought all those years and no money being made.

[B]

No, and I still couldn't. I mean, I've had, I, I've had nine figure buyout offers on our companies, three of them. And I won't do it because I, I know what we can do. And now, like I said before, my purpose has changed. My purpose isn't now, you know, let's buy all this cool shit and be a baller like it used to be when I was younger. Now it's, I wanted my guys, I want my team, I want my people to succeed. And I know what we can create on the, on the back end. And so I don't want to sell that out.

[A]

Yeah, we both want you to stack a bunch of money away. Yeah, we both want you to have great stuff like this and live all that. But we both are just literally talking off camera, saying, what endures is when you shift from that stuff to wanting to serve other people because that, that like never burns out.

[B]

And you know what's funny about that too is I, I found that when you switch your focus to other people, your income goes up anyway, big time.

[A]

Yeah, right. Actually, it takes some pressure off you, oddly. Right. It's like, I don't know how to explain. It takes pressure off you. Go back a little bit in the beginning. Just want to talk about this because we were talking about, I didn't even notice it, but you pointed to your face, to me, said, hey, I've had stuff happen, man. Like, not all this was just business grind. Because a lot of you that are watching too, your business isn't where you'd like it to be, maybe, or your life isn't. Like stuff happens outside of business that can distract us too. Right? There's, there's issues with your family, there's health, there's, you know, all kinds of stuff that happens outside your business too. So tell them how'd you get these scars?

[B]

What happened? So when I was in college, like we said, we had to work other jobs while we, and we were also going to school, by the way, I did all this, but I was walking home from one of my jobs. And I was walking home with girl that. That. That I was good friends with. And I ended up getting stabbed is the long story, the short story of it. I got an altercation. This dude, she was. She was Mexican, and this guy was calling her some racial slurs. And I'm a young, testosterone filled dude. You know I'm not going to deal with that, right? It's not my personality to deal with that kind of shit anyway. You know, I'm an athlete like you, and you know how athletes are. Like, dude, we're going to. It's going to get physical.

[A]

It's about to be physical.

[B]

Yeah. And we got an argument and I turned my back. And when I turned my back, he stabbed me and he stabbed me here. He stabbed me here, here and in my back. And I had 160 stitches in my face. Still no feeling in this side of my face at all. The last thing I remember on the way to the hospital was the EMT on the radio saying, I don't know how to stop the bleeding. And I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna die for sure. Because, like, it was like what you see in the movie. Like, blood was squirting out, like. And. Yeah, so. So basically.

[A]

That's incredible.

[B]

Yeah, so. So that was like. That was the easy part of it. The hard part of it was what happened after that. My face was very swollen. It was very deformed. It looks really good now because it's been 15 years since it happened. But I worked retail, and I had people coming in to the retail store every day, and they. And they would do one of two things. They would either look at the floor when they talked to me because they didn't want to stare at my face, or they would say, dude, what happened to your fucking face? And I'm like. I'm like, you know, I'm getting this all the time. And really, honestly, I would have people, Other people say that to me than look at the floor. Like, you know how, like.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, when you see someone who's got a handicap or they have a disability, our tendency is to not want to stare. So we overcompensate my. By looking away.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

Don't do that, because it makes people feel really shitty.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And I know that from experience. And. But anyway, I went through very bad depression. You know, my face was messed up. I went. I was a young man, you know, I thought my life was over. I thought my. My business wasn't succeeding. I started thinking about, like, you know, no woman's going to ever want to date me, you know, my life is over type of stuff. And, you know, I built it into this big deal. I became very depressed, depressed and to a level of suicidal on a regular basis. And I actually was able to come out of that in about 10 minutes time. I was walking through a grocery store and I was pushing my car down the aisle, and I came to the end of the aisle and I hit another car. And I looked over at the person who ran in the cart and I looked at him and I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman because they were so badly burned. Like, their hands, their face completely unrecognizable of a man or a woman. And I looked up and it was a woman, by the way. And she looked at me and she looked right at my face. She goes, man, what the fuck happened to your face, dude? I, like, start dying laughing, like, because she knows what I've been through through, and I know what she's been through. And it turns out what happened was she had been in a plane crash and her whole family had been killed in plane crash, and she was the only person to survive. And we sat there and we Talked for like 10, 15 minutes, you know, about what had happened to her and what had happened to me. And we had a good laugh about it. We, like, laughed at other people, like how they were so dumb for, like, looking at the floor, like, all the stuff we just talked about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it. And it changed my perspective immediately. I. I went from feeling bad, I went from being depressed, I went from having all these struggles to saying, you know what? This is not bad. Like, this is not even. This is. This is. This is a good thing. And so I chose.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I chose to start seeing it as something that would.

[A]

Would.

[B]

Would eventually teach me something. And it turns out it ended up being really good for business. Because back then when Chris and I would go to trade shows, nobody knew who we were. All right? After I got stabbed and my face was swollen, I had scars all over it, I would talk to people and they would remember me. Yeah. So. So I would go to these trade shows and people would be like. They'd be like, oh, hey, you know those guys from Supplement Superstore? And they'd be like, no, we don't know those. No, no. You know Andy, the dude with the scars on his face?

[A]

No way.

[B]

Yeah. And so what happened was people started remembering us because of it.

[A]

Yeah. Now they know Andy the multimillionaire. But then it was Andy the dude with the scars on his face.

[B]

But you know what? When you try so hard to stand out, and it's important in business to stand out and be memorable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was blessed with an opportunity to make me naturally memorable. And so it ended up serving me. And that's how I see it now. I see it. I actually see it as one of the best things that ever happened.

[A]

I believe that too. Like, by the way, that's probably my favorite story I've ever had on the show. Right there. That's probably my favorite story. And let me tell you the reason why. First off, it's not the events that happen to us, it's the meaning we attach to the events. Right. Because events happen to everybody. And so eventually what you did, eventually is you attached a new meaning to the event. It served you. It happened for you, not to you.

[B]

Yes. And it took that. It took that interaction, and I believe God put that interaction in play. I mean, there was no. That was not a coincidence. Like, no way, dude.

[A]

Of all the people walking in the world, your cart bumps into someone that saved me, man. Crazy.

[B]

And. And dude, I, you know, you. We have. You and I, we have literally millions of conversations with. Right. Over the course of your career, you've had a million conversations with a million different people. I can definitively say that that conversation was the most impactful conversation and it was a random, you know, chance encounter, and it was the most powerful conversation that I've ever had in my life just because it made me understand that, A, things could be way worse.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Okay. And B, no matter how bad things are, there's always good that can come of that.

[A]

And amen, I believe. Yeah, totally.

[B]

Totally, dude. And like, people will, like, when I say that I always get a lot of pushback. They'll be like, well, what about these kids that die from cancer? Well, yeah, that's terrible. And I agree there's not much good that comes from that. But the one thing that is good that comes from those kind of situations is that we can choose to appreciate our own mortality and, and. And learn how to appreciate the people in our lives while we have them. Because I feel like so many people, they live for this thing that doesn't exist because we're ambitious, right? We're always want more, we're always want to do more. We always want to accomplish more. And so for that reason, and I know you've probably had this situation before, you start neglecting the now for this later, right?

[A]

All the time. I struggle with that now. Yeah, I still do it. It's one of the things I'm so ambitious. I'm so driven. It's like, hey, be present right now.

[B]

But. But I promise, and I think you'll agree with me that being able to be ambitious and also be present is extremely important. Because if you're always ambitious and you're not approved, like, you can't. You guys who are, like, young right now and you're not where you want to be, and you think, you know, oh, I want to be a millionaire, and my life, whenever I make this much money, I'll be this. You won't. That's not what's going to define you. What's going to define you is the relationships that you're having now, and appreciating those, and those will help build. Build you into that. But you know, you know how people like dude used to think before you had any money or you had any success, you probably thought, man, once. Once I get here, it'll be different. Once you get here, it'll be this.

[A]

Yep. That was my constant conversation. Once I get there, then I'll relax, enjoy. Once I get there, then I'll have. And then I'm like, there was never this place. There's never. And that's the difference. You and I were talking earlier. I'm really enjoying this. It's the difference for me of being successful and being fulfilled. Right. You can have all the success and not be fulfilled, but if you can be present now, you can be fulfilled. And here's the one thing I'll tell you. If you can be happy where you are now, you're really going to be happy once these other things come. But if you're not happy now, it's only going to.

[B]

It's going to accelerate the problem.

[A]

It does.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We have friends that we see that's like, they're more unhappy, they're more stressed, they're more depressed. It's funny that we're talking about this, because people that knew you and I were meeting, right, they're like, oh, it's. It's the clash of the alpha males, you know, and that's. And then you and I meet each other. And it's interesting because I think when you see someone who's built a great life, or like, in your case, like, they built a big dude, strong dude, lots of confidence, we're giving people advice. I think they go, these are super confident people. Right? And the truth is, I think when you see someone like us, that way. I think when you look at us now, you know, these are people that come from a further place. Like, we're both introverted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're both shy. We both probably have. I bet you that both of us have a more natural dose of insecurity than a normal. A normal person.

[B]

There's no question, like, that's why we're so driven.

[A]

That's why we're driven. I had to figure out. And I want those of you that hear this. I had to figure out young. I was like, okay, I know how insecure. Not at all.

[B]

People here. Insecure. And they automatically attach. Like, they. They take it as a dig because they've heard it, like, in dating. Oh, you're. You're jealous because you're insecure, right? Well, yeah, maybe. But I'm also driven, and I'm also wanting to win. And I also have something to prove.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's a great thing. That's another example of taking something that would normally. Normally being negative and turning. It's alchemy. Right. It's taking something and turning it into something that is valuable.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

And. And you know, being insecure. And I say this a lot on my podcast, because people don't like to talk about it because, like, a lot of people in our position who are out there making content for people, their egos are too big to admit it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm not. Dude. I'll tell you right now, I got a ton of. To prove.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

And I'm gonna prove it.

[A]

Me too.

[B]

You know, and if that's how you feel, you've got all your family, you've got all your friends, you've got. And they're make. And they're telling you you can't do it. You can't do this, and you want to prove them wrong. Good.

[A]

That's right. That is good.

[B]

That's a good thing. Good. That's good.

[A]

Don't you think? My insecurities. Because I'm so wanting to be this other version of me, the best version of me, and I compare it to who I am now. That makes me insecure. Like, I don't want to be comfortable with me. I don't want to think I've got it all figured out. Of course. What's.

[B]

What's good about comfort? We were just talking about this over here. You know, you. You accomplish this. This. This. You. You get the houses, you get the jet, you get the cars, you get the life, you get the. The company. And then what?

[A]

And then what?

[B]

And.

[A]

And so and what have you and I both determined the then what is.

[B]

To serve other people?

[A]

You got it right.

[B]

And that's. People are always like. And I'm sure they're asking you, they're like, why are you doing all this? Why are you making this content? You're a multi millionaire. You've got all these things. You don't have to do that because it's a call. It's a calling. Like people say in faith. Right, Vaughn and faith. All right. It's a calling. Like, I have a. I have. I feel an obligation to. So I grew up with an extremely intelligent, driven, amazing father.

[A]

And like, dude, me too.

[B]

And if people would have seen how he raised me, they would have said that he's probably abusive because, dude, he was hard, man. But here's the deal. I want people to. My dad prepared me for the reality, and I want people to be prepared, too, because I feel like the younger generation, a lot of the people watching right now are not taught the truth. They're taught that everybody wins, everybody's special, Everybody, you know, is probably going to end up being a multi millionaire. Everybody loves you. And that's not. That's not the truth.

[A]

It's the furthest from the truth.

[B]

Yeah. So they get taught this thing. They get taught this thing. I mean, they only keep score now in kids games. They get taught this thing up until they're 20 years old and they're kicked out in the real world. And then what happens?

[A]

The real world stops them more and more. I think that's why this generation's having a harder time. There's more and more people that want to be entrepreneurs, that want to be successful, that see it more than ever. Yeah, but their wiring needs to change. Yes. You need to be a little harder, a little tougher, a little more in love with the grind, a little bit harder working on yourself. And also you got to work like it's going to happen now, but you got to be patient as hell. Like, it took you 10 years. Right. I didn't really make any real money. Save any real money for over a decade either. Right. Like, by the way, on that. So. Just reminded me of something. You see this big old buff stud dude here. But you've written a couple. I just want to throw this out there. You've written a couple children's books. And what we were just talking about, I was reading. It's Otis and Charlie Play to Win. Right. Part of that book is it's about competing and it's teaching kids that not everybody gets a Trophy. Right. Isn't that part of that book? So those of you that have young kids, you should get them involved with some of the books this kid's written. This dude.

[B]

That's why we. That's why we wrote the books we wrote. I wrote them with Vaughn, who's my co host on the podcast. And he. We. Our purpose of what we do. And while we do monetize some things.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Our purpose of doing this was not to, oh, let's just make more money. Our purpose of doing this was to help reverse the. What is being taught to this generation. When you and I grew up, we were both athletes. We were taught to win.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And I don't even know if I can curse on the show. Okay. But we were taught to win. We were taught to. To go out, do our best, and win and not feel bad about it. Be a good sport, but don't feel bad about it. Now these kids are taught that winning is wrong and it's not okay. And if you win, you should feel bad. Like, that's not. You could. You could paint the ideal picture all you want, but that's not reality.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And my goal with the books, and this is why I haven't written an adult book, my goal is to make an impact. And I feel like if we're gonna make an impact, we've gotta start with the youngest generation, you know, and how.

[A]

Do they get the books? They go to Amazon.

[B]

Yeah, it's Amazon.

[A]

It's Otis and Charlie's we were both talking about. Just occurred to me when you said, it's like you're talking about all this rewiring. You know, people in their 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s need to go through. I think it's awesome that you're starting to grab them when they're 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years old.

[B]

And a lot of parents would DM me and they'd say, man, I wish I could teach my kids all this stuff. They. They want their kids to know this stuff, but they don't know how to teach them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that was the book. The book is a tool for parents, okay. That want to teach their kids the reality but don't know exactly how. They realize something is off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

With what they've been taught and it's not the actual truth. I mean, what's. What are we. What are we taught? We're taught this. Go to school, get a degree, get a job, and, you know, and eventually you'll have enough money to retire, which you won't by the way.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you know, they don't tell you that you're going to be in debt your whole life, and they don't. The real truth is this. Go to school, get a degree, get a job, get yourself in debt so that you're required to work for somebody your whole life.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

You have to work.

[A]

They ought to tell you the first day of college.

[B]

It's a human resource that the system is designed to squeeze the juice out of.

[A]

That's exactly. And by the way, that's why one of my goals is that we start to get more entrepreneurship in colleges. Right. So if they're going to have to go because the first day of college, they ought to go, hey, look, here's what your life is likely to be. You're going to come out here with a couple hundred grand of debt. You're up at 50 years old. You're not going to have 50,000 bucks saved. You're going to be in debt and divorced at least once. That's literally the program you're on, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like someone ought to tell you that up front. So when you sign up for it, I'd rather sign up for the program where I go through 4, 5, 10 years of struggle as an entrepreneur, and on the other side, I'm in my man cave like this and helping other people. Right. That's the program I want to be on.

[B]

Even if you. Even if you. Even if you work inside of a company, the values of being an entrepreneur still will help you become successful and valuable because there's a lot of people out there watching that might not ever own their own company, but maybe they work inside of a company that has a nice upside.

[A]

You got it. There's some equity in there, something you could do.

[B]

So. So those people still, if they learn the skills of entrepreneurship, they can become valuable within a system.

[A]

100%.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

By the way, eventually have your eye on starting your own deal, right? If there's my advice, people say, do I have to start a business? No, but you better be somewhere where there's equity or ownership for you. Eventually.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there's no play for that. I don't have any wealthy friends who get a W2 for 50 years of their life. Eventually you got to get a 1099. Eventually you got to be able to sell something, make something, or earn something. That's at least how I feel.

[B]

No, I agree. I agree. I think that, you know, it's a. There's there. I do believe and some people don't believe this, but I do believe that entrepreneurship as somewhat a skill. I feel like. So do I. I feel like certain people have it.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And not everybody can have it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Now that makes people upset when I say that because I always get bad emails. They say, oh, well, I could be an entrepreneur.

[A]

Maybe you can, Right?

[B]

But like my friend Gary, Gary Vaynerchuk, he, He puts it this way. Everybody can go play basketball.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But not everybody's going to be LeBron James.

[A]

I agree with that.

[B]

Okay. And, and I do too. I agree with that too. So.

[A]

Because I think it's the. I don't think it's a. In my mind.

[B]

So what do you say to people who, who may not be entrepreneurs but have they work within a company that has opportunity?

[A]

I think that's what I'm saying. I think as long as you work within a company where there's a chance for you to have some equity, some ownership, something that's your own, your own space, that, that doesn't require that. Right. Another part of it is too is like, you have to be honest with yourself. I don't think it's a capacity issue. I think it's a threshold of pain issue, a desire issue, a work ethic issue. And not everybody is wired for that because they're passionate about other things. They're more passionate about, you know, being charitable or they're more passionate about, you know, doing stuff with kids. There may be just things you do that your passion isn't being an entrepreneur. I think you, I think if your passion is to be an entrepreneur, like, you and I had this calling.

[B]

Oh. I was like, I was selling. I. I sold baseball cards, sold snow cones, I sold light bulbs door to door, dude. I, I mean.

[A]

And you're an athlete like you always wanted to be. Here's what I just really think. I think I just always wanted to be free. Yeah, I always wanted to. You and I just talking, we literally cut each other off for like, it's not about the money about this. I want it. We said at the same time when. Yeah, we literally said the same thing. There's this edge, this compete, this desire level. Right. And like, if you feel that, I think you can be an entrepreneur if you want to go through heat, time, pain, I think you have to.

[B]

I think you have to. I don't think you even have to endure it. I think you have to fucking want it.

[A]

I think you have to want it.

[B]

Yeah, like, like, I want.

[A]

This is good.

[B]

Look, people don't get people People think this is wrong, but it's not wrong. It's right. I want to wipe the earth of my competition.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I want their houses to burn down. I want them to do zero sales. I want to win.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And not just win, but dominate. And when I say that, do I literally want their houses to burn down? Of course not.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But that's a metaphor for how bad I want to win.

[A]

You want to dominate.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You don't want to just win. You want to dominate.

[B]

And if you don't have that, that killer instinct in you to where, like, when somebody competes with you, it makes you angry and you're like, like, I get offended. Like, how dare you think you're going to compete with me.

[A]

Yeah, I can feel it.

[B]

You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Like, you just switched again and you're scaring me.

[B]

Yeah, no, I think. I think I'm one of the old. I think you feel that and I think other people feel that, but I don't think they say it. And so, like, for that reason, when I say it, it sounds crazy.

[A]

It doesn't sound crazy. It doesn't sound crazy. Someone like me. But I want to say one thing about it. I think you have this capacity, and I'm not just bragging on you here. I think you have this capacity which is, I don't know anybody else in this space that does this. You have this way of saying. Because I have also one. Right. Like, one rare thing about both of us is we that are in this space, like, we both have real businesses, are really wealthy and have really done the stuff we're telling you we're not.

[B]

And we're still doing it.

[A]

And we're still doing it. Right. Like, we're not making this up as we go along.

[B]

This isn't a make money quick scheme for us.

[A]

No, no, no, no. This is a. This is a. This is our lifestyle. Today we're going to talk about money. So many have been emailing and DMing the show saying, would you please ed discuss budgeting and finances a little bit more? Saving, retirement and debt. So that's what we're going to cover today. We're going to talk about savings, retirement and debt. And it's something I'm very concerned about. It's very much on my heart. Before I get into some of the things I'm going to cover, let me just say I'm not coming to you on some soapbox, some guru or expert on a high horse, you know, thinking I have everything figured out or that I'm Perfect. I'm actually today coming to you. You're listening to somebody who understands. I've had cars repossessed, unfortunately. I know what it's like to be behind on your credit cards and have them taken from you. I know what it's like to have a house foreclosed on. I know what it's like to really consider bankruptcy. I've had my power turned off. I've had my mobile phone turned off before. This is not stuff I'm proud of. I've had the water turned off, man. You don't want that to happen. And most of that stuff was self inflicted for mistakes that I made. And so I don't want you to make those mistakes. And I see so much terrible advice on podcasts from these gurus, social media, the different examples that are held out there about what wealth looks like and what being rich looks like and what the right things are to do financially. And so we're going to talk about some of those mistakes I've made and that I see being made in the world today. And it pains me. Let me give you some statistics. First, if you make $80,000 a year, do you know about how much money you have to have saved in order to retire just at the same standard of living? And when I say same standard of living, I'm not talking about now you're retired. You get to take extravagant vacations or anything like that. I mean just to live the same as you live right now with your job. If you make $80,000 a year, how much money you think you have to have saved? Well, the data tells us you need about $2 million saved after taxes. So what that means is a lot of you say, well, I've got money in my 401k. You do understand you haven't paid your taxes yet when that money comes out of that 401k or that IRA. So after taxes you need about $2 million saved. If you make $80,000 a year to provide the same standard of living. How do we know that? Well, at a 2 million dollar amount of money, 4% interest on that would spit off about $80,000 a year. You could live at about the same standard of living that you currently live at now. Are you on pace to do that? Because let me tell you what the average American, the median American has saved in the median $5,000. 5,000 bucks is the median. There's a difference between the median and the average. The median is the person in the middle. The average is when you take all of the affluent People, wealthy people, and all the people that have nothing. The average savings is about $100,000. Currently, the median is five grand. That's a problem because when you look at debt, the average American has $114,000 of consumer debt. 114,000. That doesn't count their home loan. That's college loans, car loans, credit card debt. Average person carries about $10,000 on a credit card. Average interest rate about 15%. Can you see there's a problem? We are in a consumer culture. We're in a culture that tells us to spend, spend, spend to keep up with people. We've also got a lot of influencers out there telling you to get rid of all of your money, that you should just. Every dollar you get, you should get rid of it. Spend it somehow, or invest it and stay broke so you stay hungry. Let me say something to you about that. First of all, that's terrible advice. This idea that the only way you can stay driven and hungry is to remain broke or to get rid of all of your money is insane. If your motivation level is so low that you need to deplete all of your cash in order to stay hungry and motivated, you don't need to check your bank account. You need to check your actual inspiration level. That's insane. And so the other thing that's in our culture today, and I'm giving you some of the keys, is that we're trying to keep up with the Joneses. We're trying to impress people by buying really expensive things. Let me say something to you. I've been very fortunate. I've had, you know, like I said, I've been. You're listening to somebody who said their car repossessed, home foreclosed on, power turned off, water turned off. None of those are things that I'm very proud of, okay? But I've also been blessed to become very wealthy. I've been blessed to, you know, I've driven every car you could possibly ever have. I've owned them all, basically, most all of them. I've had six different jets, including a Global Express that I bought from Oracle. I own my own island, right? I've owned multiple oceanfront homes. My studio right now is in one of them. I've owned some of the homes in the nicest neighborhoods in the world. I've had, you know, all the material things you could possibly want. And let me tell you something. They're really nice to have, but you can't enjoy them if you're broke, living in a really nice house that you can't afford and that you're sweating the payment on all the time is no way to live. And trying to keep up with people to impress people who don't care by buying stuff you don't need is insane. And I see it happening. And so striving to impress people with material things, let me just say this to you up front, doesn't work. It doesn't impress them. And for the few that it does impress, those are the wrong types of people. You want people to be impressed with the content of your character, with the way you live your life, the way you treat your family and other people. And if to get them to be impressed by you, you need a particular purse or a particular jacket or pair of shoes. Those are people whose approval you don't want anyway. Yet we seek it, don't we, to keep up with people. We're in a consumer culture, which is why consumer debt is so high relative to savings. And so, and by the way, if you're a young person listening as you go, well, I don't care about retirement. That's 30, 40 years away. First off, it's going to happen faster than you think. Let me ask you this. Do you want to be in control of your life? Do you want to be able to call the shots and not have the world dictate shots to you? Do you want to be able to help your parents or your siblings or your friends at any time you want to? Do you want to be able to take advantage of opportunities when they come along? And be able to write a check at any time you want to buy something on discount, that's an asset as opposed to a liability. So at any age you should be saving money. I figured this out by the time I was about 23. I had made some money. And like I said, I had a house foreclose, a car repoed. And I started to change the way I viewed things. I found out most of these people I was impressing with, these cars that I had, they weren't around once I didn't have them. They weren't impressed with me. They were impressed with the car. And you know the other thing about nice stuff? It's out of style in like two or three years anyway, right? Like, the truth is, even a nice house you have, stylistically, in 10 or 12 years, it's dated. It just is. What I started to get addicted to was watching my savings account grow, watching my investments grow, watching my assets grow. I got more fired up every month saving money stacking paper than I did with What I was buying to impress people. And then I'm gonna give you the keys in a minute. I'm 52 years old. I'm worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I've made hundreds of millions of dollars, and I've only bought two new cars in my entire life. Because buying a new car is one of the dumbest things you could do. You should be either leasing your cars or buying them used. Let someone else pay all that depreciation. You let that thing drive off the car lot, let them drive it for a year or two, and then you buy that thing at a discount. It's still going to drop after you buy it, but you. But not at the same rate as the dummy who buys the new car. So let's go through a few things here that can help you. Number one, by the way, that stat I gave you earlier, if you make $80,000 a year, you need $2 million. That's if you're retiring today. If you make $80,000 A YEAR and you're retiring 30 years from now, if you factor in inflation, you'll need $5 million. So you have to start to ask yourself, are you on pace? Are you doing the things that will get you wealthy? And that's where I want to begin. The first thing you have to do when it comes to money is get some goals and some outcomes. And this is for everybody who makes minimum wage, all the way up to those of you that are making six or seven and even eight figures, you need to have financial outcomes, a financial focus. If you don't invest or save money when you're making very little, you will not invest or save money when you're making a lot. That's one of the great fallacies and lies about money is that people think, well, I'm on this limited amount of income, so once I make more, I'll save more. That's not what I see happen. I see someone making $40,000 a year living paycheck to paycheck. And then when they're making 70,000 now, instead of driving a Honda, maybe they got a Lexus. Instead of having a so so apartment, they got a nice apartment. And then when they go from 70,000 to 100,000, then they upgrade from the Lexus to the Mercedes and they buy a house and they deplete their savings buying a house. And then when they go from 100 if they do to 150,000, they get rid of that house, they get a more expensive house, and then they got a second car and a second house. And they never get around to really accumulating any savings. In other words, they upgrade their lifestyle as they make more money. Smart people don't change their lifestyle for a long, long time when they begin to make more money and they begin to build the habits and disciplines of a wealthy person when. When they're a broke person. I was saving money. See, here's how old I am. I was making minimum wage, working McKinley Home for Boys, working at an orphanage that I worked at. And I was making minimum wage, which back then was $8 an hour. And I was still finding a way to save $50 a month in a savings, in a forced savings because I wasn't going to Starbucks, I didn't have cable tv. I eliminated basic things because I wanted to build. And I started to get excited. Wow. I got $300 saved. I've got $1,500 saved. I've got $6,000 saved. As my friends were buying expensive cars. In fact, there's a great story I tell often that even when I started to make money, I wanted to buy a Mercedes. I bought a fake one. I bought a kit car. I bought a Chrysler LeBaron with a Mercedes body on it because I wanted to look like I was driving a Mercedes. But I want to spend the money. That's a true story, by the way. I had a kit car, it was a LeBaron with a Mercedes body on it because I was so addicted to saving and accumulating money. So first things first. Let me give you some keys. Number one is you need to decide what your outcomes are, what your goals are financially. Do you want to have financial freedom and independence, right, that's one level of wealth. Or do you want to be like stone ass wealthy? Those are two totally different things. And for a lot of people the answer is I just like some financial peace and independence. I don't have to have Lamborghinis and Jets and islands and all these other things. But I sure would like to live financially, peacefully. I'd like to someday not have to work. I'd like to pay off my house. I'd like to have a bunch of money saved, whatever that is for you. I want some element. I don't want debt. The scriptures tell us, oh no man, nothing. I'd like some financial peace in my life. And the truth is, I think most people see the wealthy thing on Instagram all the time and think that's what they want. But maybe it's not what you want. Maybe the truth is you just like more time. If you could Save enough money to pay all your bills and have your house taken care of and some basic stuff. Maybe you'd like to take more time off. And if you're one of those, people say money's not that big of a deal to me. I get that. And the truth of the matter is that's how I started out. It was not that big of a deal to me. But I knew the lack of money, man, I knew that was a real big deal. I didn't want to be broke. I don't want to be stressed. I did not want to be in a position my life where I couldn't help my family if I needed to. And so my first goals were not to be super wealthy. They were to get financially independent. The first step in doing that is you need to know your financial independence number, your fin number. Your fin number is the amount of money you need saved so that living off the interest on that money, you no longer need to work anymore. The next thing is this. You got to stop going into debt. You got to stop spending money to impress people. You got to stop it. You got to stop buying meals on credit. Stay out of malls. Frankly, I've been to a Mall maybe five times in 15 years. You know what? Monitor and really be smart about your Amazon account. Don't have people shipping you stuff you don't need to your house. Take a look at all your subscriptions. Do you need all of them? Do you need every single one of those subscriptions? Or could you eliminate some of those things? If you're on a budget and start to put that money into savings, the next thing is to understand the distinction between three separate things. You need an emergency fund. Set up an emergency fund is three to six months of your current expenses accessible at any given time. You need that money set aside. That's in case of a job loss, car breaks down, somebody needs some help, emergency. Quite frankly, life's just going to happen. So the first things first is you need three to six months of money set aside in an emergency fund. You should start to make that your goal and your ambition and start chipping away at doing that. If you're someone making a lot of money right now, carve that amount out and put it to the side. The second thing that you need to do is you need to have savings. Savings is just money that you're accumulating that in case you need it. It's there for a rainy day. You should have some savings. Anybody who tells you you shouldn't is wrong. Okay? Should have some measure of savings. And then the third thing is investing. That's money you're going to take that has some risk to it that you're going to try to get rates of return on. And I'm not going to tell you where to put that money today, but I can tell you that you need emergency fund savings and then investments. The only advice I'll give you on saving money, because I'm licensed, I'm not. I can't recommend particular investments. What I will say to you is this. If you can't explain it to me, you shouldn't be putting your money in it. If you can't understand it and explain it back to me. It's not the place for you to be putting your money yet. And if you don't have a financial professional in your life who can explain things to you in a basic way so that you can understand them, you have to ask yourself why they're confusing you. You have to ask yourself that, right? Sometimes people like to make things seem very sophisticated and complex so that you think you need them and that maybe potentially you make a bad decision. You ought to be able to explain to me why your money's in there and how it works and what it's doing. And anybody can do it. Even somebody who doesn't want to know a lot about financial education doesn't matter. You should be able to do that. Okay? So that's number one. The next thing is, as soon as you can afford it, make sure you have a competent tax person and CPA in your life. Life. If you're someone making a lot of money, you really need a good tax person in your life, a professional, competent tax or cpa. And you probably ought to be working with somebody who can help you with your money as well. Make sure you have a financial game plan and direct it. And make sure you're running a budget. Now, in my budget recommendations, here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to ask you to take the first 30% of your money if you can afford it, 30% of your money and give it to your tithing. And to pay yourself first. If you can't do 30%, if it's down to even 10%, carve something out that you're going to give away and carve something out because of the law of reciprocity. And carve something out that you pay yourself first every month. Take it off the top, don't pay yourself last because you're never going to get paid. If you make $3,000 a month, take $50 and pay yourself first. And now you make 2950amonth. You say, ed, that sounds good. You're a rich guy. Listen, I spend every single dollar I do every month. I understand it. I've lived on minimum wage. And I'm telling you that even when I lived on minimum wage, I found a way to pay myself first. You need to get in control of your life. And the way you get in control of your life is you first control your spending, you control your budgeting, you control your financial discipline. You begin to make this a massive priority in your life, that you're going to become somebody who is financially in control. Because if you start the habits of being financially in control, eventually you will be in control and you will call the shots in your life. So please budget and begin to save your money. And don't invest in something you can't get clear on what you want. And if you're younger, start saving money now. You'll build the habits of a trust. Me, I'm 52 years old. I started doing this in my early 20s. And I really believe that's why I'm wealthy. Stay with me on this. There's a bunch of people you see on social media that won't be rich someday that look rich right now. I have more friends in my life. Listen to me, those of you that are making a little bit of money that used to be rich than that currently are. I've watched them go seasons of 5 or 8 or 10 years where they were ballin', they were making real money, they were driving the nice car, the nice vacation, they bought this or that, and then bam, things changed. They got caught with their pants down financially. They had no money saved, no cash, dead up to their eyeballs, you're not. And so I have more friends that used to be rich than currently are because they weren't in control of themselves. They didn't have delayed gratification, they had no financial discipline, no budget, no game plan, no goals, no outcome. Now, when it comes to your investments, let me just say this to you, there's lots of places to save money. I can't recommend it. I know. Kind of the cool thing right now. And I've made a lot of money in real estate. That's a great place, you know, start flipping houses. That's one of the real vogue things. That's great. And you should. Maybe that is what you should be doing. But you're one bad flip away from being broke, too, which is why you still need cash. Saved. How about having a plan in your life where if it goes bad, you're still okay? And I'm not talking about, I know you, maybe you listen, you go, well, Ed, that's just a luxury I don't have. Of course you do. You can save some money. There are ways to do it. And if you're not making enough money, then you need to get a second job. Work a second job. I've had multiple jobs at any given time. Many times when I was an entrepreneur, many times I had to go back and get a night job to support my entrepreneurial hustle. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. You entrepreneurs listen to this. Maybe you're going behind for you, maybe you need to get a job two days a week or stocking shelves at night or I stock shelves at a grocery store for two years while I was building my business because my business wasn't keeping my family afloat and I still had to save money. So some of you that are entrepreneurs, maybe it's getting a, maybe it's a second job. So some of you that have a full time job, maybe it's starting a second business. Maybe you need a second income stream. The truth is that in this day and age, with how crazy things cost and how out of control taxes are, you may need secondary income. So if you have a job, maybe it's starting a side hustle on the side or a second job. If you're an entrepreneur, maybe it's having a second job on the side that's part time to support your business. It's okay to work a lot. It's okay to have financial discipline. It's okay to go through a season of your life where you sacrifice lots of things, including time in order to get wealthy. But the hardest thing that I see, the most heartbreaking thing, are those people doing the grind, making the sacrifice, doing all the things to make money. And then they have no game plan, no financial discipline, and they watch all these idiots on Instagram or social media go, man, I got to have the car, I got to have the house, I got to, got to have the nightclub, I got to have the steak, man, sometimes even me, when I show the things I have I've got, you know, I'm lucky now in this video, I got a stupid expensive watch on, right? I didn't start buying expensive watches or cars until I could write checks for them. And not just write checks for them, not sweat the check where it didn't make a dent in my savings. Can you imagine saving up $200,000 and dropping 130,000 on a stupid watch. Now you got 70 grand? I didn't start writing checks for watches like that. I had millions of dollars saved. And sometimes I think that's a bad example. Because the truth of the matter is, this watch is great. And you know what? I barely ever look at it. And I got a couple other ones. They're stupid. I've had a lot of nice cars. And you know what? The minute you drive by somebody, they're not impressed anymore. And if I am impressing them, it's probably the wrong person. That's not to say part of getting wealthy isn't to have nice stuff. I get that. I like nice stuff. I've become accustomed to it. But I didn't start partaking in it until I had earned it. And I had earned it with the work I did and all of the savings and investing I had done. And then if it's 1% of my money, okay, who cares? That's play money. But if it's 20, 30, 40% of your cash and you're spending it on stupid stuff like cars and clothes and steaks and wine, that's dumb, right? And trust me, I've had every car you could possibly almost think of Lambos, Ferraris, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, whatever. I've had six jets. Like I said, the last jet I bought from Oracle, a Global Express jet. I've had all those things. They're amazing. They're not amazing if you have debt on them. They're not. They're not amazing if you have to worry about paying for them. They're not amazing if they're a major chunk of your cash. They're not. Remember that the average American has $100,000 in consumer debt and $5,000 of savings. The average American needs $2 million to retire, and they got five grand. Is that sad or what? And so we need to budget. We need to save money. Why saving money matter, Ed? It gives you control. And whether we like it or not, in this lifetime, we need to be able to protect our families and protect ourselves and make decisions. As an entrepreneur, one of the reasons you need to have financial discipline is that lack of financial discipline will cause you to make bad decisions. As a business person, you'll make decisions based on money or pressure because you haven't saved money. As a friend, let me say this to you. You just remember this. Your lack of financial discipline as an entrepreneur will eventually affect your business. It'll eventually affect your business. What's the number one mistake I See, entrepreneurs do, they don't pay their taxes, they get behind on taxes. They say, wow, I made $30,000 last month. No you didn't. You made $30,000. If you're a 1099, you're self employed, you're 1099. Retail, real estate agent, insurance agent, business owner. You made $30,000 last month. Before taxes, you probably made more like 18,000, but you're living like you made 30. Those of you that are employees that have a job, it's your lack of discipline, saving money, it's your lack of having a game plan, it's running up debt that you don't need. And again, I'm not trying to be insensitive to anybody who doesn't have, you know, a lot of income coming in. I've lived that way. I lived in a single parent, I lived in a family where my mother stayed home and raised our family the most important job on the planet. And we had one income which was my dad's. And I know what that can look like. I know when my, I remember one time when my dad lost his job and how absolutely destroyed our family was and worried about what was going to come when my dad was unemployed for a while and thank God my dad had an emergency fund and we had money to live off for those months where he was finding work. And so this stuff matters. It has ramifications. Begin to educate yourself, evaluate what you drive. If you're on a budget, do you need to drive that car or could you get something less expensive, reduce the payment or actually cash something out and do something with that savings. Evaluate what you subscribe to your subscriptions, get serious and get focused and stop caring what people think about what your stuff is. I promise you nobody cares that matters. Nobody does. And I want to say this to you about real estate. A lot of you asked me about real estate. I think that's a great place. I do not believe it's the only place though. And so begin to educate yourself about the different places you could put money. But the most important thing is to begin to build the habits so that you become long term financially independent and maybe stone ass wealthy. And for those of you that are making money, please don't be one of these people that was rich just for a little while or successful just for a little while that you had this tremendous blessing of making some money, maybe more than you've ever made for a little window of time and you blew it on stuff and you didn't save and accumulate and invest. Don't go into debt that you don't need to. Some debt is good debt. We all know this. Debt on liabilities is terrible. Debt on cars, debt on clothes, debt on food, debt on stuff you don't need, that's terrible. Debt on assets, everyone says, well, that's great. Well, maybe. I mean, sometimes it's great. You still got to buy the right property at the right price. It's still got to be something you can afford and handle, right? Just because it's debt on a. On an asset doesn't make it good debt. It just means it's definitely not stupid. Right? I've had so many friends that were doing pretty well for a while, and now they're not. And they're not because their lack of savings created pressure in the bad times. And when the bad times came because they were under pressure unnecessarily, they should have had money saved and invested. But because they didn't, they made bad decisions under pressure. And ultimately those decisions were made because of financial pressure. And that financial pressure ruined their businesses. Had they just saved money in the good times, they could have wrote out the bad times. And so this is the same whether you have a business or a family. You've got a plan for winter. Listen to me. Winter comes in everyone's life. There's four seasons for a reason. There's summer, spring, winter, and fall. And that, metaphorically is true in our lives. You're going to have a spring in your life probably at some point where you've got some financial opportunities. It's going to be sunny out in the summer, and then there's going to be a time where you start to have anxiety and things begin to change. The leaves of your life begin to change. And you can feel it, maybe not the way you want it to, which is. And ultimately there's going to be a winter. And all of our lives, there's a financial winter, There's a winter where we lose our job or our car breaks down, or there's a disaster or a family need, or our income in our business drops, or we just have massive expenses in a short window of time that we have to make so that winter is going to come. Please prepare for winter. Whether you don't make a lot of money or you do make a lot of money, I can tell you this. If you begin to develop the habits of budgeting and have an emergency fund and saving money and staying out of stupid debt, right? And investing after your savings wherever you believe that that's appropriate, when you have those habits and you make good choices and you begin to live in some financial harmony and peace, consistent with your values that when winter comes, you can ride it out. I've had probably four or five winters since my mid-20s, and I've been able to ride them out. And if I can be really candid with you, because I had saved a lot of cash, I was able to make a lot of money during other people's winters when they had to sell their house or their business or their asset. I could buy them at a discount because I had cash or I had investments. Sa.