The Exchanges

Q the spider and that's, you know, that's where he got his powers from. I think your origin story is amazing and not, not a lot of people know the full story. Can you take me back? You're 17 years old. I think you're a part-time janitor and you'd never been to a seminar in your life. How did you, what was your spider bite? How did you stumble into this?

A Well, it's an interesting question. I was already interested in personal development because I had a kind of a rough background. I have four different fathers. We had no money for food. I had to work two jobs, work as a janitor. And my mom had a friend and dad had a friend that had been my, my dad, my dad's description was he used to be such a loser and now he's really successful. And so he called and said, listen, I hear your son's gotten big. I was, I was five one in high school and I was six two by my senior year. I grew 10 inches in a year. I tell people the difference is personal growth, by the way. But the bottom line is he said, you know, I, I gotta move some furniture and things. I heard he's big, you know, could he come work for the weekend for some extra money? So. I did. I worked really hard and the guy really was impressed by my work ethic. So he said, I'm gonna take you to lunch. And we'll go to this lunch and you know, and he's saying, you know, I, I really think you go places. You got a lot of drive. And I said, well, I'd like to ask you some questions. And he said, okay. And I said, my dad used to say you used to be such a loser and now you're so successful. How'd you do that? You know, only a kid can say this, right? I wasn't trying to be cute. I just literally repeated it. He goes, you never said what? And then he's like, well, it's kind of true. And he said, …

AI assessment note: “he said, well, I went to this seminar and I said, what is this seminar?”

Q Going to a salad bar. You're 24 years old. You're broke. And you had a giving moment that sort of shifted you. Would you please just tell that one? Because I think giving is not something you got to wait till you're rich to do, which is I think the common misconception.

A I tell people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, you're not going to give ten million out of a hundred million or a hundred million out of a billion. Don't kid yourself. Right. And also the value of giving Transforms you out of scarcity, but the background on it is I was working for Jim Rohn, this personal development speaker, and I really did well, and then I did poorly for a while, and I was really frustrated. I was working hard. I wasn't getting the return. I was totally broke. You know, you're in business. You make some mistakes, and I found myself totally broke again, and I'm in this 400 square foot bachelor apartment in Venice, California, feeling sorry for myself, and watching Luke and Laura on General Hospital. It was just terrible. And, um, I'm down to my final, you know, 1920, 21, 22 dollars. I know it wasn't some change. I haven't paid my rent, and I gotta figure out what to do and what to eat, so my focus was, okay, I'm gonna go to this all-you-can-eat salad bar, taco bar, and I'm gonna load up for the winter, um, and, you know, spend five bucks, and then, you know, and then I didn't drive there because it was only about three miles, but I couldn't pay three bucks for parking, too. It was just, I couldn't do that, so Anyway, long story short, I get to the place. It's on the water in Marina del Rey. It's why I went there. There's boats going by, and I, I can'…

AI assessment note: “the background on it is I was working for Jim Rohn”

Q I think that's an amazing strategy. Is that, is that your method to kind of learning in general? How do you think about that?

A I think of learning at two levels. I think of learning as immersion. The reason I do 12 hours a day for three or four days in a row, most people wouldn't sit for a three hour movie. Someone spent three and a million dollars to make. I can do it because I know how to engage people in all their senses. In other words, how much is a long time? Some people say, 10 minutes. Some people say 10 years, right? But really a long time is when you're not enjoying yourself. You know, a minute can feel like eternity if you're in pain. But if you're enjoying yourself, time flies. And so my whole mindset was, I gotta immerse people because that's how we learn. If you learn a language and you learn a little bit at a time in high school and college, most people don't speak the language. But if I took you to Italy and dropped you in Rome and said, I'll pick you up in 90 days with no teacher, you're gonna be speaking Italian by the time I pick you up because of the immersion. So I like to immerse myself, but immerse myself with someone who is the best in the world at something, someone who's already done it, not somebody who's teaching me intellectually. I go into a university where somebody understands it, but has never done it. I wanted to model the very best in the world. So I, I would go interview with, I'd go to work for people in the very early days as a janitor, so I could get around them s…

AI assessment note: “I think of learning at two levels. I think of learning as immersion.”

Q Right. You said something about the 90 seconds of suffering. Can you explain this concept? Because I stole this, I stole this like it's Ocean's 11. And I came into, I stole this framework from you and I have been using it since then. Why'd you stole it?

A That's, that's the only thing I stole stealing. Life is too short to suffer. I'm not going to suffer. I know how to change my state, but I want to create a rule that within 90 seconds, if I start to suffer, I'm going to snap out of it. Now, don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean you don't get angry or frustrated or pissed off or worried or any of those things. I can have all those feelings, but if you train yourself to snap out of it in 90 seconds, and by the way, in the beginning, no problem, 90 seconds and easy things, but then life gives you some big tests, right? You get something that feels more like 90 days than 90 seconds. But you get, it's like any skill, like, like shooting the basket. You do it again and again and again, you get better and better and better. And it's changed my life because no matter what's going on, I can still find the beauty in that. And in a beautiful state of mind, you'll come up with the answers much quicker than a pissed off state or a fearful state or a lousy state. Plus it gives a gift to everybody else. Who wants to be around somebody who's in a crappy state? Right. Think about it like this. You know, if you have a, if you have cable or you have satellite and you turn the channel, there are certain channels where it's all comedy. Other ones, all drama. Other ones, it's all horror, right? Other ones, it's, you know, romance. Well, the channel ch…

AI assessment note: “within 90 seconds, if I start to suffer, I'm going to snap out of it.”

Q What's it like? I mean, hearing your mentor, you know, somebody who became a friend, but, but started off as a, you were the student, he was a teacher in a way. How does it feel hearing that?

A Oh, he was a teacher for sure. He taught me some of the most important things. I think the most important thing he taught me, um, was when I was, you know, I had all these different fathers and we're always broke. And so he said, change your mindset, change it from can I earn twice as much in the same amount of time, 10 times as much, 50 times, a hundred times, a thousand times. Yes. If you become more valuable, so you have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. And he said, you've got to understand whatever you do, do add more value than anybody else in the marketplace of what you do. And that really, it's sung to me because I always try to over deliver in anything I did, even at that stage of my life. And, um, that's been the basis of every company that I built across all these different industries. I mean, there's no way I'd be who I am without that piece. So I'm indebted to Jim as my first mentor.

AI assessment note: “So I'm indebted to Jim as my first mentor.”

Q You wanted to be a baseball player, right?

A That's right. You got a good memory. I used to go to Dodger Stadium every once in a real moon, way off in the deep, far seats in right field, the cheapest seats you could buy. And I bled Dodger blue, found a piece of the Dodgers. But to get to that point, the first team I was able to make a purchase of and be a partner in was the LAFC football club, the soccer team there. We built the stadium. I got to help design it. It was fun. I got to it. My friend, Peter Gruber is just a genius. But the amount of money, time and energy, and the amount of like a microscope in your bum that they do to qualify you, it is mind boggling, right? To do it. So, but now in all these sports teams, I even have competing teams because a rule was changed three years ago. And this is amazing. Only a few firms have been able to do it. And the rule allows you to buy a small sliver of teams. And why would you want a sports team? Because they're not correlated to the stock market. In inflationary times, sports teams do well. They've done extremely well. They raise the price. The odd dog people pay it. Doesn't matter. And they used to be just putting butts in seats. That's not true anymore. So I'll give you an example. You know, this, if you read the book, um, my partner, Peter, who bought the Dodgers with a group of people, magic Johnson, all group people. I'm part of it now too. And when they bought it, th…

AI assessment note: “That's right. You got a good memory.”