← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Fan Favorite: Jay Samit on The 2 Core Principles for Success in a Globalized World
00:52:17
Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:01]
Grainger Commercial Announcer
This summer, don't squeeze in. Spread out. Find homes big enough for your whole guest list on vrbo. From family reunions to trips with friends, VRBO has spacious summer stays for every group size and budget. That's vacation rentals done right. Start exploring on VRBO and book your next day. Now.
- [00:30]
Grainger University Maintenance Announcer
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:00]
Jay Samit
If you're going to do something that somebody else already does, you're going to have competition and you got to be really, really good. And I hate competition. I guarantee you on any day there is somebody smarter than me, better looking, better connected, wealthier, I don't care. So if you find a void, something that no one's doing, if you're the only one doing it, by definition you are the best in the world. And if you're the best in the world, you have no competition. So now hold on to that turf as long as you can.
- [01:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with a return guest who I think you guys are going to love. The one, the only Jay Samet. Welcome Jay.
- [01:48]
Jay Samit
Good morning Tom.
- [01:49]
Tom Bilyeu
So crazy successful entrepreneur, best selling author, and you've got a new book out called Future Proofing youg. And there it is. It's blurry. You're going to want to move it right in front of your face. There it is. Dude, this book is amazing. So much so it is the only book that I've ever written the foreword to. I've been asked a lot and I want to start with the dedication at least as it appeared in the version that I got. Hopefully this is what you kept. But here's what I saw. To the reader of Disrupt you who emailed me saying that he didn't believe anyone could become a millionaire, you're wrong. Nice and simple. So Jay, walk us through. What is the book like? What was the format you did? Something pretty unique that I happened to be fortunate enough to follow along with.
- [02:41]
Jay Samit
So again, 1000 thanks for writing the forward. It was a magnificent forward and I was humbled by your words. But disrupt you really was the most fun. Greatest thing I've done in my Life in the fact that when you write a book to help people and they email you and you get what I call love letters from all over the world, heard from people in 140 countries, I don't mean that to brag. I'm just like, how is that possible? But occasionally you get an email from someone that says, this was all motivational, but I could never do it. And it turns out Jay has very thin skin that would eat at me. Like, how am I not reaching this person? What could I do more? So I came up with this crazy idea. If you read Greek literature, Pygmalion or My Fair lady, where could I just take somebody? And I want to take somebody with the least amount of advantages. So anybody reading his story will say, well, I'm starting off equal or better. So could I find somebody that grew up on welfare, a millennial, and mentor him one day a week for a year? And would it be possible to take somebody with no capital? Ground rules where I gave no money, I made no introductions, and I didn't tell him what business to do. Could I get him from basically homeless to self made millionaire in 12 months? And I wrecked the ending. 11 months we sat down. I introduced you to Vin before I did the experiment and to document it. And you have that footage, hopefully. And Vin worked hard. So the last thing I want to do is tell anybody that it's easy, right? Vin was willing to work harder in one year than most people are willing to work so he could live the rest of his life in a manner that most people don't. And he sacrificed and he learned. And I tried to take all that mentoring and bring it down to, first of all, detailed steps to follow and consolidate it down to what I call 12 truths. If you follow these 12 truths, you will be successful. These aren't crazy rocket science. Vin's not an engineer. I'm not an engineer. Steve Jobs was an engineer. I mean, you don't need any college degree. You don't have to be in a first world nation. You don't have to be in a big city. You're one click away from 7 billion people. So you only have to figure out how to reach them once. And if you can figure out that process, you can do it again and again and be what I call future proof. I used to talk about when last time we were on the show, I said, whether by choice or circumstance, everyone's job will be disruptive. And some people go, nah, not me. I don't have to make that case anymore. Post pandemic I mean, every month got disrupted. But did that mean that was a bad thing or a good thing? I mean, health wise, it's a horrible thing. God forbid you got affected. But every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise. You saw some people made huge fortunes during this. You saw other people wiped out. And so all that I'm trying to do is pay it forward and teach people how they can take control of their own destiny.
- [05:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that to me is such an important question right now. And one thing I think you and I have bonded over is so something happened generationally between you and I and then the generation that's coming up now where they feel sort of defeated before they even begin and I'll even grant them, okay, cool. Maybe it's harder than it was. It certainly is not impossible. You've given some stats about how frequently self made millionaires and billionaires are still coming online right now. Again, that's self made. This is not people that have been handed something. And what I love is that you really did put your money where your mouth is to see if this stuff would work and if people get the motivation behind it, which I'll say in my language and you tell me if this is spot on. I've dedicated the entire rest of my life to, to making sure that people have an empowering mindset so they'll at least try. So I cannot guarantee their success, but I can guarantee that really going for something and believing it's possible gives you an advantage that's a thousand fold over. Somebody who just acquiesces and says, well, this is too hard, so I'm not even going to try.
- [07:09]
Jay Samit
I agree 100% and I'll even take it one step further. I only believe you need two things for success. Insight and perseverance.
- [07:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Even in today's marketplace, in any marketplace,
- [07:20]
Jay Samit
okay, I can teach people insight. I've taught it at the college level. I had students on first semester that made $150 million and dropped out of school. Probably a good choice, but you really help people in the persistence because motivation, just like a shower, doesn't last forever. Okay? You need it again and again. And that's what's so great about your show and what you do and why I so look up to the leadership you bring. But for those people feeling left out and left behind and think that life's just about leftovers, I mean, it's not your fault. That's the first message. Okay, the bottom 1%. 140 million Americans own less than 1% of this country. 140 million Americans. With 120 million Americans at or below the poverty line, wages for workers haven't gone up since 1982. And so it is much harder. And much like when you watch sports on television, you see that best of reel when they catch the ball and hit the ball and it just looks amazing. You don't see a full baseball game where nothing happens for a whole long time. Well, social media does the same thing to people. They see everybody's life in the highlights reel. Oh, it's so great. I must be doing something wrong. And it's not that I would have never understood what a billionaire was, okay, Growing up, I didn't know a millionaire. I came from working class family. And if you would have told me dozens of people that I know became billionaires, I'd go like, what are you smoking? This is insane. And yet every 48 hours, as you said, there's a new billionaire created. How is that possible? And so I tried to break down in the book what we learned. That was wrong. It doesn't work. You talk a lot about having a growth mindset. Key absolutely important, but actually, our educational system stifles the mindset. And the example that I talk about in the book is if we go back to elementary school math, they tell you, if I buy an apple for $1 and I sell it to Tom for $2, I make a dollar. That's how business works. Nothing could be further than the truth, because that implies what game theory is called zero sum game. The only way I get money is by taking your money. Well, if you have that mindset, well, either Tom has the money or I have the money. If they get a raise, I don't get it. If they get a promotion, I don't get it. Foreigners are taking my jobs. Immigrants are taking my jobs. Other countries are taking my jobs. Robots. It's me versus the world. It becomes this great grind up of hatred. On the other hand, I go, tom, I'm starting this business. I'll sell you 10% for $10,000. How much am I now worth? Well, I own 90%, so I now have $90,000. It wasn't created by the Federal Reserve. It didn't come from a bank. I made it out of thin air. But I can buy things with that. I can sell things. I can hire people. I can do all kinds of stuff. And that is how Jeff Bezos could lose money year after year after year for 10 years and come out the other side as the richest man in the world. He didn't take money. He created Money. Elon Musk. It's funny, from the last time we sat down together, I was updating my first book. Elon Musk was worth $7 billion. Very impressive. He's an impressive guy. I love Elon. He's not worth $200 billion. What did he do in five years that the rest of us were asleep? And by the way, he made it all.
- [11:00]
Grainger Commercial Announcer
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [11:30]
Grainger University Maintenance Announcer
If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [12:00]
Jay Samit
Things that were public, so we all could have participated. So you don't need capital, you don't need connections, you don't need a fancy degree. I'm not saying not to go to college. There's pros and cons of everything, but you can do it. And the secret is this. If you're going to do something that somebody else already does, you're going to have competition. And you got to be really, really good. And I hate competition. I guarantee you, on any day there is somebody smarter than me, better looking, better connected, wealthier. I don't care. I hate that. So if you find a void, something that no one's doing, if you're the only one doing it, by definition, you are the best in the world. And if you're the best in the world, you have no competition. So now hold on to that turf as long as you can. So when I sat down with Vin, Vin came to me with an idea that probably half the people watching the show already have, which is, I understand social media. I can help people through social media. I'm like, yes, so can 50 million other people. And his problem was that he's probably good at it. I'm not finding fault with his thoughts. And Skill set is the people that he knew in his circle didn't have any money to pay him. And their Coca Colas and Sylvester Stallone's of the world don't need to hire him. There's whole agencies. So he's floundering. But what if he just focused and said, I do social media for this and find one thing that nobody else is touting as their specialty. Could you get clients? Well, if you pick something that really needs help, yes. And then the second you do great for that first client, you now own the world. Cause now you have this case study and say you're not just saying you're the best in the world. You are the best in the world. And that's all Ben had to do. No capital, nothing.
- [14:05]
Tom Bilyeu
So Vin is the example of just how much of this is possible. I think it's really intriguing. I think it's worth going into his story. So when I met him, I trusted your opinion, but didn't look at him and go, oh, that's the obvious choice of the person to choose. He was pretty outlandish. He, you know, dressed very garishly. He was like, had no professionalism about him. Nice guy. I am not in any way, shape, or form saying he was unpleasant. I'm just saying he was very rough, very unpolished. Had a bit of a sort of deer in headlights effect. When I met him, he seemed unconventional, convinced of what you guys were doing, and was hopeful to be sure, but wasn't like, it's not like you took a kid that had just graduated with a Harvard MBA and said, okay, hey, I'm going to show that this works. In the book, you reveal this, and even I didn't know this. So in the book, you pull Vin aside and you say, hey, Vin, look, I have done an exhaustive search for somebody that I think has the mental fortitude, the skill set, the talents to pull this off so that I know I'm dealing with a good foundation, because I don't. I have the chills because I know the punchline to this story. And I want to make sure that you're primed. You know, if I just picked anybody, this could be a real disaster. So my reputation on the line here, I needed to make sure that I had the right person. And I have come to you. So I need you to know that you've got something that other people don't have. And what we're going to do is we're going to leverage that, right? And then what's the punchline? How many people did you interview
- [15:41]
Jay Samit
just then? So I started off this relationship with a lot. And there's a psychological tool that you can use called the Pygmalion effect. And the history of it was a professor went to an elementary school and had all the kids take the test at the beginning of the year. And he looked at the test and told the teacher, these three students were going to be super achievers this year. They were going to grow. And at the end of the year, they measured the whole class. And what those three kids, super achievers. Turns out the professor lied. He never looked at the test, picked three names at random, but knew if you treated people differently than they thought that they were smart, they would become smart. So by telling Vin that he had something special, that I, coming from a position of power and authority, a very successful guy, saw something in him. He had to internalize that. So that gave him that push at the beginning. The funny thing that I also was a shock to me. So he didn't find out, by the way, that I lied to him until he read the book. I never told him. I never let on after the whole thing. But when I was writing the book, he also led on to something. Six months in, he's now made $600,000. This is a kid who grew up in public housing, his parents home welfare. I mean, he's mind blown that this could happen. And by that point, there was a trust between the mentor and the mentee. And he handed me a piece of paper, said, when we first met, I took him out, bought him a pizza. So the only money I ever gave him was I bought him three pizzas. He wrote down a note after our first meeting, and he wrote in his own words that basically he thought I was full of it, this old guy. But he has nothing else going for him. And he'll go along and he'll play along because he wants it so bad. I mean, it can't be real, but he'll hate anybody else if they get the opportunity. So the seed was planted. And he gave me this because he wanted me to know that he didn't believe the advice in the beginning, but he went along with it because I said so. And what he would find out is, and what he would say later is some of the best advice possible. And the reason is most of us don't have the experience to know many things in business, things that might seem counterintuitive, how the world works, as opposed to how you were taught how it works. And that's why mentors are so important. I Mean, it's One of the 12 truths that you can't do it on your own. There's this myth of the self made man. It doesn't exist. Okay? Everybody got there on the shoulders of those who came before. And I try to teach people the tools of how to find the right mentors. And it's not email somebody out of the blue like I'm sure you get every day, and I get thousands of them. Will you be my mentor? The best mentors, you never use the M word. You start a relationship. I teach you how to look through their LinkedIn profile and figure out who would be right for you at that stage. You know, the richest man in the world, who's your mentor right now? The difference between where you are and where they are, the skills might not translate. There's people in your field that would love to help you. The world isn't out to compete. The world is really there to help. And the second you get that growth mindset and find other people with that mindset, and there's tons of organizations like SCORE in the US or EO or wpo, I mean, the help is there. There's no one standing between you and raising capital. That has never been easier. You don't need special skills. Anything other than insight and persistence you can hire. So then what comes down to is, what's your insight? What problem are you going to solve? And the second you go on that journey, you're accomplishing two things. One, you'll make money. But two, since you're solving a problem, you're helping people. And joy doesn't come from money. Satisfaction doesn't come from money. Purpose doesn't come from money. Purpose comes from doing something that makes the world better. So we have a lot of problems. If you're listening to my voice and you have problems, congratulations, you're halfway there. But imagine how great it feels to solve a major issue. And I don't mean day one. You have to do climate change and world hunger, a basic problem.
- [20:12]
Tom Bilyeu
So I want to really nail some things home for people in terms of what you did with Vin. So you said it, but sort of off the cuff. You never gave him any money. You didn't even introduce him to people, which that would have been. I think the one thing people would have nailed you for is, yeah, sure, like he's now meeting this ultra successful guy who's incredibly connected, knows everybody. So of course this kid has been successful. But you didn't do that.
- [20:38]
Jay Samit
No, that's like the CEO's kid who sells the most Girl Scout cookies. Right. You know, 20,000 employees have to buy a box. Yeah. No, I wanted this to be completely fair, transparent, other than the fact that I liked it, and repeatable if it can't be repeated. What's the point? One of the things I always hate about successful biographies is if you go back in time and do what I did. Well, I can't go back in time. I'm living now. So you have to give people tools to work in the future. That's why it's called future proof.
- [21:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so now let's start taking it step by step. So you have the 12 truths in the book. Truth number one. Where you start, which I think is incredibly important, is sort of where I spend my entire life, is you have to have a growth mindset. So you have to believe this is possible. What were some of the other key things specifically that you wanted to get VIN on in the early days so you knew he'd be primed to achieve what he ended up achieving.
- [21:36]
Jay Samit
So one of the things that was key to him, I think generationally, was he really wanted to be famous. Fame to him was recognition, achievement, all the things that come from social media and that presence in people's lives today. And so he wanted to name his company Ben Clancy Such and such. And the very first argument that we had was that in today's world, you're not necessarily going to have a company your entire life. This isn't like Ford Motor Company, which now 100 plus years is still in the Ford family. You need a separate identity so that you can sell what you create and wasn't getting through to it. So he grew up in London and I worked with Sir Richard Branson. So it suddenly dawned on me, here's the role model to bring up. Richard Branson created the Virgin brand. Still in my mind, the most brilliant brand in the world with the basic reason, what is a virgin? A virgin is someone that's new and doesn't know what they're doing. So if he starts a company like Virgin Cola and it flops because he can't compete against Pepsi and Coke, it actually makes the Virgin brand stronger. It proves that he's a virgin and he's trying new things. He's had 300 companies, he's had eight multibillion dollar companies in eight different fields. Not a college graduate when I did a very sophisticated deal with him, doesn't know how to read a spreadsheet, doesn't need to. You can hire people to do that. So the second I could separate from Vin that Richard Branson and Virgin were definite identities, then Vin could create two different identities. I also had to explain, you have to look like your customer. It's not selling out, it's saving time. If you have this really unique look. He had long hair, he had gold wings on his shoes, he had a coat made out of feathers. I mean, he was out there.
- [23:42]
Tom Bilyeu
You have no idea how accurate that is. That's the kid that I met. I was like, wow.
- [23:48]
Jay Samit
I posted a picture, you know, from, from that before time and, and all great, but I'll give my own side of it. So it's not like here's the old guy picking on the new thing. I was suddenly brought in. I was a digital guy from the earliest days on the Internet at 78, you know, did the first music on a computer, first video. And one day I wake up and I'm head of the world's largest music company because the music world went digital and I'm still corporate guy wearing suit and tie and nobody's relating to me. And the head of Virgin Music says to me, jake, you see anybody else with a tie? See anybody else with a jacket? I'm like, oh yeah, I need to relate. Went out and bought all black wardrobes. And for five years I was in the music business. I only had black head to toe. But I didn't have that barrier when people go, oh, this guy, I can't relate and talk to him. So Ben got a haircut, okay. Even though 90% of what he did was virtual. And that's the other big thing. Ben didn't have to rent an office. Ben didn't have to hire tons of people. Ben didn't have to buy equipment. You can create an international successful company remotely and virtually. And if you didn't believe that before the pandemic, I don't have to convince anybody. Now the biggest corporations in the world realize they don't need the overhead anymore. You don't want to be owning a lot of high rise buildings in dense cities because they want to be sitting empty. So Ben and I clashed on a lot of stuff. But here's to Ben's credit. Ben's superpower was he knew what he didn't know. He knew that he didn't have the instincts. So whenever he viscerally was opposed to something, he would pause and say, am I against this out of pride or out of fact? And if he didn't have a fact for his argument, he would go along. And that served him unbelievably well. It's not that I'm a right and I know it all. I've just run so many companies, little companies, big companies. I've been through this, that it doesn't matter what your business is. All businesses share a number of key steps and key problems. I mean, every business has to grow. Every business has to figure out how to attract employees and keep employees. Everybody has to manage cash flow. All these issues you may not have the background for, and you may not have learned the shortcuts to success in each of those problems.
- [26:25]
Tom Bilyeu
How did you help Vin get the first customer? Because that's really like when you're starting a business, man, that is the thing that's really daunting.
- [26:34]
Jay Samit
So one of the things that I told him, and he did start on this, but it didn't happen to be where he got the first customer, was find a charity where you can use your skills for. Okay? Because when you get involved with the committees and doing all that stuff, the other people volunteering aren't just volunteers and they go back in a cave. They're executives at different companies. They have different connections. And if you're showing your skills in that world, somebody will notice and say, oh, I've got a project for you. So that's a great, you know, to do stuff that nonprofits. I had a digital ad agency that was acquired by News Corp. For $200 million. How do we get client number one? We did PSAs, public service announcements for different charities, and my first one went so viral and so insane that of course everybody in the ad world noticed and go, oh, let's go there. It's that easy, really fast.
- [27:33]
Tom Bilyeu
I want to push on that. So you say a lot the phrase it's that easy. And what I like about that is, hopefully it shakes people out because you'll give example after example after example after examp of like, hey, I had an insight and I put it to use. And look, it built this huge thing, or this person had an insight, and, you know, it ends up being a billion dollar exit. So in the context of getting your first customer that psa, you actually had to be good. Like, your PSA had to outperform Vin
- [28:05]
Jay Samit
ended up, oh, absolutely.
- [28:06]
Tom Bilyeu
VIN had to be good. And so as you think about mentoring somebody or having taken one shot to find this one kid and help him become something, how much of the process
- [28:18]
Jay Samit
is learn your craft 100% so you don't have to know every aspect of your business. And you talk about this all the time. Sweat equity overcomes intellect. 10 out of 10 times there's lots of smart people that aren't doing anything and aren't achieving. Like, the world doesn't go, ooh, you're magna cum laude. Here's a million bucks. It doesn't work that way. And yet, when you look at universities, C students donate the most money back to universities. That's interesting. They're the most successful, okay? And it is the work that you put in and the continual work. And one of the things that I try to also stress with people is pretty much everything we do nowadays can be measured. And if you can measure it, you can improve upon it. So you can ab test ads very cheaply. If you're doing an ad, okay, we'll run it 100 times. It'll cost you less than a dollar. How many people click through this one? How many click through that one? Oh, this one got more clicks. Go with this now. We'll make this bigger, make it lower. And in my ad agency example, we did this testing, so much so that we got to the point where we get the average person to interact with an ad that's interrupting you on the Internet for 70 seconds. Unheard of. You're gonna stop what you're doing and spend 70 seconds with her app. That was the average. Then you start getting clients, and then it's, how do I motivate? I paid my salesforce more than I paid myself. I had contests where you could get a car. We used to put the logos up on the wall. I wanted a logo for each letter of the Alphabet. If you get a client that begins with some letter that we don't have already, here's $10,000. Whatever it would take to get people to be more motivated that are in sales, that's their job. In Vince Case, he was self motivated after the first month. And again, we're talking about one mentor session a week. This isn't, I'm holding hands and secretly running enterprise. Not at all. But once he saw what he had within him, because he did the work, he got the results. The results were spectacular. Now, here's the other thing about a void. If there's something new, if there's something hot, if there's something that the world suddenly pays attention to, that any work you do in that space will be magnified. Okay? I was no computer genius. I'm not an engineer. But the mere fact I was on a computer before anybody was like, you know about computers? Tell us. You know, and so each one of the things that I did, you know, 10 years ago, I was the first app that Created video chat for multiple people on a computer or on a phone. What we do with Zoom and everything else nowadays, we were too early, but you can't control timing. So Vin just applied the same things he would have done, you know, to help a restaurant open or help anybody. You just happen to find a client with a big need and a real short window. And that's where I was focusing on who. Who needs you today? Who. Who can't survive without this today, and how do you get in front of them so that they discover you?
- [31:45]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so I want to start putting these pieces together for people. So, okay, Vin needed a growth mindset. You planted a seed in his mind that he was special. That in the beginning probably took the place of a growth mindset. It was like, oh, okay, cool, I've got something special. This guy is going to give me the information to make me in particular blossom. He's looked at all these people, which of course, was a lie. But Vin believes that the first month, we're sort of pushing, pushing, pushing. But what we're trying to get him to see is, hey, Vin, you need to find that void. So there's a lot of people that can do the social media thing, but if you pick one, like, hardcore niche in there and find somebody that has a very immediate need, now you can get your first customer, you can get moving. We're making sure that he understands you have to be very good at your craft, that you actually have to go out there and deliver results for people that then you can sort of snowball. Having read the book, I know sort of where this goes. So, okay, cool. He's getting the early traction. He's doing the. He's living your. It really is that simple line. He's just doing the things, finding the void, executing, being good at delivering results and those things. But not too long into this process, it stops being fun. And it's like, this shit is hard.
- [33:02]
Jay Samit
How?
- [33:03]
Tom Bilyeu
I've often said boredom kills more entrepreneurs than failure because you just realize, oh, my God, to get to a million dollars, like, I'm really grinding here. How did you help him through that process? We've got the growth mindset, we've got the skills, we've got the customers, and now we're kind of tempted to stop.
- [33:21]
Jay Samit
So there's a number of truths. One of them is the gap to embrace failure. Everybody thinks failure is some shame. And yet if you play a video game, you don't suddenly sit down and play to the end. You die. Figure out what you did wrong, do it again. You constantly course correct until you fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. Who? I won. It's identical to business. You're going to make lots of mistakes. In Ben's case, what was. Anybody that thinks you're going to know what a year of mentoring somebody and could this possibly happen to be like? It was a nail biter. From where I'm sitting, all of a sudden, okay, he's on the right path, he's doing good. And because of algorithms and policy that had nothing to do with him or anything that he was doing, he wasn't doing anything wrong. All of a sudden, Google and Facebook make it impossible for him to run his business. I mean, it was a punch in the gut that would have leveled me. I would have gone like, oh my God, what do you do? But one of the things that I also taught him was that you need more than one revenue stream because you never know when something, some beaver blocks that river and makes a dam. You never know what's going to happen. And so coincidentally, he suddenly got just killed out in left field. But he was working on this other revenue stream and he suddenly realized, I could take the tools that I built for here and use it for my client over here and suddenly piece it back together. The other thing people have to understand is there's going to be hardship, there's going to be obstacles, it's not going to go smoothly. But you either earn or you learn so you don't fall backwards. He kept on learning new ways and with that growth mindset, and you can't underestimate that, you don't go, oh my God, I failed. You go, okay, that didn't work. What else can I try? You look at it as, okay, I learned what? This doesn't work. The old Thomas Edison with 1000 tries at the light bulb. Vin was constantly trying new things that definitely didn't work, but you don't know unless you try and developing more and more revenue streams. I mean, one of the ones that he came up with on his own, which was genius, is suddenly when he suddenly had some success, a whole lot of work comes his way. Little piddly work that doesn't have the upside and return clients and things worth his time. But rather than just say he was too busy, he would farm them out to people for commission and then just check in to make sure they're doing it up because his name's associated. And now his referral business was minting money. So by the end of the day,
- [36:07]
Tom Bilyeu
did you teach him that? Because one of the things that I Find most. Like, if I could steal your brain and put it in a jar, I would. You have this ability to look at deal structure and see an opportunity that other people don't see. And there were a few times in the book where I thought, oh, man, that is like a J. Samit Classic move that he just did. And, like, because when you talk about an algorithm shifting, most people collapse. Like, they just stop at that point. It's too daunting. Everything feels so far out of your control. It's kind of like you've just spent the last four years building a house, and then a tornado comes along and wipes it out, and you are back to the stud. Not even the studs. The studs are gone. All you have is foundation. And most people then stop. Whereas I've seen you in your career time and time again go, oh, this could actually be turned into a sculpture. And now, like, what was meant to be house is a sculpture.
- [36:59]
Jay Samit
And.
- [36:59]
Tom Bilyeu
And people are paying $10 a pop, and millions of people come from around the world. And I'm like, how the fuck did this become this much bigger opportunity than the thing that just got knocked down by the hurricane? So had you prepped Vin for that moment? Like, how did he. Because you give people Vin's income month by month by month. And so did you warn him ahead of time? Like, how did you shape his mind?
- [37:23]
Jay Samit
The obstacles that leveled him, to use your metaphor? I didn't see that coming. I mean, no one did. That was, like, unheard of. Unprecedented in the history of Google and Facebook. Never happened before. Hasn't happened since. It was horrible. But to use your metaphor, when that house gets tumbled down, you still have a good, solid foundation. With a good, solid foundation, you can build anything. So deal structure is so important. And yes, you cannot stand on one foot and teach people every form of deal structure. But at least in this book, I'm trying to show them how most of the wealth that you see in the world wasn't created by hard work and saving. It was created by deal structure. Spielberg didn't become a billionaire by making movies, okay? It was the deal structure. So many of these things.
- [38:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I'll give an example from Spielberg. What did he do?
- [38:20]
Jay Samit
So Spielberg was making good movies. Great director, making top money, living a rich life. But his lawyer realized that Universal Studios was constantly turning his movies into rides. He got the Jaws ride. He got this ride. And the lawyer goes, no, Steven should get a piece of that. Where he's never making movies for you again. And so his lawyer negotiated. I'm not allowed to say what the amount is, but X amount of dollars per ticket for every ticket ever sold at the theme park. Then Universal decides to open a second theme park.
- [38:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, my God.
- [38:56]
Jay Samit
And an international theme park. Okay, George Lucas. Nobody wanted to make a cowboy movie in space. It was the worst idea. This thing's not gonna make anything. George Lucas's first sci fi movie went nowhere. Okay, American Graffiti hadn't come out yet. So the most that he would give them was the standard minimum for a writer, director, producer. And he said, you know what? Then let me have the sequel rights. We're not making a sequel to this. Sure, kid, take it for free. Turns out to be Star Wars. The studio comes back, oh, yeah, please, we'll pay you. We want the sequel. We want the sequel. Well, and this was again his lawyer. Well, let's have the sequel. George can have the toy rights free and clear. No royalty paid to Fox, no likeness rights paid to the other stars. $12 billion worth of toys later, who's laughing? And I can go on and on. McDonald's didn't make their money. Ray Kroft didn't make his money from hamburgers. Made his money from the real estate deal of every franchisee buying real estate that they made per location. You can structure this. What does this have to do with me and my regular self? If you're going to be hired to do work for a company, if it's a small little company and you can figure out how you can make them worth a lot, you can negotiate equity, you can negotiate a percentage of what you make for them. You can make a stretch goal in the contract that they don't believe in, that if you hit the stretch goal, you get a huge pay. I was working in a company once, and there were hard times, financial times, and the CEO was like, we have to find a way to make the numbers. I said, okay, if my division does 2x of what it's supposed to make, can everybody in the division get twice their salary? Sure. Never going to happen. So I sat down, everybody who worked for me, a ton of people, and I made a cut out of the cfo and I put them on top of one of those charity thermometers, you know, fill in as you're raising money. And every week we started the meeting with, you know, where are we on this number? And everybody got it. I had another. Another guy that I used to work with that if the whole division hit their numbers, you, your spouse and your kids, everybody, the whole company goes to Hawaii each year for Vacation. So think of how you structure things. At the minimum, say if I hit my target for this contract, I get renewed. Because if you build a company and you do all this great stuff, they can later hire somebody, go work for less than you once you've already made them. So deal structure is so important. And so in future proofing you, I really try to go through a bunch of deal structure examples and why you may need to bring in and spend the money to have an expert to help you structure certain types of deals at certain times in your life.
- [41:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so here's my takeaway from you as a human. Certainly the thing that I take away from your books which are so important, I cannot stress how much I consider your books important for anybody who's trying to accomplish something in their lives. But the punchline is you can learn this. The way you think about deal structure, all the stuff you walk people through and disrupt you, all the stuff you watch people walk people through. And future proof you is you can learn it. Maybe it's even. It's not like physics hard, but sure. It doesn't come naturally to people. I don't care. It's like if you want to own your life, if you want to take your time, turn it into usable skill set and have the kind of extraordinary outcome that you had with Vin, who again, you picked a random ass kid who grew up on welfare. You didn't give him any connections, no money, nothing. You taught him a certain way to think. You taught him how to think about deal structure, how to be impervious to changes. And it's like it fucking worked. The kid hit a million dollars in revenue in 11 months. It's so crazy. And when you're reading the book, you're
- [42:56]
Jay Samit
like, oh my God, is this going to work? Was there anything put you on the spot? Was there anything in either of these two books that you go, wow, that's rocket science. That's complicated. That's, you know, I have to learn. Pythagoras is theorem. Or was it all common sense where you kind of go, huh, and it's just common sense.
- [43:18]
Tom Bilyeu
We need to give you a new word. Because it isn't common sense, but it is. Once you have been introduced to it, it suddenly seems self evident. But it is not the thing that I would ever expect people to have sort of on average, across the board. It's one of those things where there are certain types of minds that see that just like it, it becomes apparent to them they are, they are the people that can pull themselves out of the Matrix. Okay, I'm fascinated by people that can do that. I'm not a person that can pull myself out of the Matrix. But once somebody presents to me the path out, I'm willing to do the fucking work to get out, right? So we all have our thing. You're able to pull yourself out of the Matrix. Now you've actually packaged. Hey everybody, here's how you do it. This is something. It is a process. And here is the process. And now it's up to you to go learn. What I am so desperate for people to understand is what you teach is a process. It is not rocket science, it is not Pythagorean theorem. But it does require the cultivation of your will, your purpose, your ability to fall and get back up you. Even one of the subjects headings of one of the chapters of one of the sections in one of the chapters is cultivating purpose. And I thought I want it. Literally. If I could put my finger on one thing in the table of contents that proves you know what the you were talking about. It doesn't say find your purpose. It says cultivate your purpose. So talk to me about cultivation like, hey, people aren't going to be born with this. They don't need to be born with this. How do they cultivate something like purpose?
- [45:00]
Jay Samit
So we all have our unique life's journey and life is hard. I mean for everybody. There's different levels of hard. I'm not third world country, where do I get clean water hard. But everybody has their own, their own pains and stuff. And when you see and experience pain or see injustice or things that get to you, each one of us would like to fix something to make the world better. And as you can start aligning what you do to helping others, the greatest joy you'll ever get is when you help someone else. And the more you're helping others, the more you end up helping yourself. I mean, I got very little joy, zero joy out of running big time.
- [45:49]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, out of running what?
- [45:50]
Jay Samit
That's big companies. I've run companies with 200, 300, 400,000 employees. There is a reason why they pay you a ton of money to do that. Your inbox is filled with hate every morning. Hate your company, suing your company, hate you. Why is this everything sucks. Shareholders, I mean the whole world, it's miserable. Then I dedicated my life to teaching people how to achieve their dreams. And my inbox is filled with, on my lowest day, a random note that comes in from somebody. I shared one in this book that I Asked her permission because I was so moved by it. But a woman about 50 years old decided she was going to take all her money and go into the Airbnb, rent some places and be in the property business. And she lost everything. And she was planning to kill herself. And she called her daughter to say goodbye before she killed herself. And her daughter goes, you're killing yourself because she lost money. That's the stupidest thing in the world. And her daughter gave this woman my book, and this woman wrote me to thank me, that it got her out of that darkness. And now she has a successful business and she's moved on. So I found my purpose. We all have it. When I was young, my purpose wasn't, I want to be rich and I want a yacht. It was, I had two small children, and how can I give them a better life? And for so many people, they think a better life means buying your kids the things you didn't have. A better life is teaching them the things you didn't know so that they don't have to make your same mistakes. But that's been my life's work. And now that they have their own lives, I had a void to fill. I was, you know, lost. I was offered tons more jobs and, you know, been there, done that, don't need the money. There's no motivation to put up with the aggravation. But I did have an engineer who worked for me decades ago who reached out to me, and he had a solution for climate change. Poisons in our foods. And he needed to get his company off the ground. So I said, I have a moral obligation to go on as chairman. And so I'm chairman of Greenfield Robotics, which, instead of putting poison on our food to grow food, let's just think that for a second. How's that rational? All of our crops are grown with tons of herbicides and pesticides. We put enough stuff to kill them, but it's not going to hurt us. But now we find out it gives us cancer. So we have little robots that go up and down the fields, take care of the weeds, or 300 million acres of corn and cotton. Dicamba. You don't need dicamba anymore. But that also means you don't have to till the soil. And the number one source of greenhouse gases is not cars and factories, it's farming. So if we don't till the soil, we sequester carbon. We take poisons out of our soil so it doesn't go down the Mississippi and kill all the fish. And we take poisons out of our diet so we don't die. How can I not join on to that purpose if I have the skill set to help? It'd be morally wrong not to. So you can find purpose in any job. And the proof of it is, let's look at immigrants. I don't care from what country to what country. An immigrant made a choice to go from point A to point B. Point B may have been really horrible, but they're now on a mission and they have a purpose to their life. You may see them sweeping up or you may see them at an entry level job. That's not their destination and that propels them. That's why one third of Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or the first generation child of an immigrant. They're on a mission to do something. And so how can people make that
- [49:50]
Tom Bilyeu
more robust in themselves? So you get a spark of something nobody's born with a purpose. How do you fan those flames and turn it into something that will sustain you when the job is getting hard, when you're bored out of your mind, when you want to give up? How can you make that a strong enough thing to carry you through?
- [50:08]
Jay Samit
So to find the purpose and all that, I put in a bunch of questions to ask yourself. And as you answer these questions, it will become obvious what that is. You set goals along your purpose. You know, if it can be measured, then it can be improved. How can you, what can you, what impact can you have to use your language this year? How do you do it? Fear is a tool. Fear is good. You're not going to overcome your fear. That's another big one of the truths in this book that most people don't talk about. It's good to be fearful. That's why we're here. Your great, great great great great grandfather wasn't afraid of that saber toothed tiger. You wouldn't be here. And you're not going to change that. But maybe you're afraid of the wrong things. You're afraid of losing money, you're afraid of being embarrassed. You're afraid of what your friends or parents will say if you start a company and it fails. Shouldn't you be more fearful that you're trading away a year of your life, 10 years of your life, your entire life, for a job that's unfulfilling, for a job that will never give you the lifestyle that you want? I'd be afraid of wasting the one life I get. The one time I'm on this planet. That's the big Driving fear. How do I make today count? How can I start my dream today? And a lot of what I write about isn't about. Here's your five year plan. What are your five goals for tomorrow? And you and I share that approach. Every study shows if you write down your goals, you have a much better chance of making them happen because you're focusing. And if you do it the night before, you no longer have worries keeping you up all night because you got the ideas down. And when you're sleeping, those solutions will come. You're freeing your subconscious, you're freeing everything that blocks you. And so a lot of things that may sound to people that haven't read my books, like tree hugging hippie, you know, sit under the pyramid stuff, that's not me. There's actual biological science on how we work, how our fear response works, how all these things work. So if you can leverage the science of what makes your body function to help empower you, athletes do it. Athletes have to get in that mode so that they get adrenaline to run. Yes, they work out hard at exercising to make their meat muscle. You know what, they are as good as biologically possible. But that won't get them those reflexes, that won't get them across the finish line. That's the same thing. And by the way, these same techniques will work in finding a partner in life, finding, dating. I mean, it's all straightforward and doable. And that's my message with future. But when I realized I'd left some people behind that didn't believe they could do it, I was willing to bet my entire reputation that they can. I was worried and I was fearful, but it worked. Yeah.
- [53:19]
Tom Bilyeu
Jay, thank you so much, man. Where can people find you? Obviously go to Amazon, wherever books are sold kind of thing. But how can people connect?
- [53:28]
Jay Samit
So as I did with the first book, I made a workbook. So there's more exercises that's all free. It's 32 pages and you can get that at my website, jsammit.com, j a Y-S-A-M-I-T.com and you can follow me on social media, LinkedIn, anywhere. Love to hear from you. Love to hear the how you feel about the book and hope that everybody, you know gets their journey made a little bit easier. Thank you so much again, thank you for writing the forward for Tom Baloo.
- [54:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Truly, truly my pleasure. Guys. I will just say this, read it. It is a game changer. Walks you step by step, exactly what you need to do. There are no gatekeepers. And speaking of things that will move you forward, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.
- [54:18]
Grainger Commercial Announcer
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products and fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.