Ep. 150 – Ramit Sethi: The (Stupid) Money Mistake Everyone’s Making

I was always good at making money.

I was also good at losing it instantly. I always went broke… Now I know why.

What was I was doing wrong? I’ll tell you. Because I bet you’re making the same mistake.

But first, I’ll tell you how to make money. More money than you thought was possible.

Listen to this episode. You’ll hear tested and proven strategies to get rich from Ramit Sethi, the NewYork Times bestselling author and founder of iwillteachyoutoberich.com.

He grew his business from a dorm-room blog into a multi-million dollar online business.

And now he started a new company, GrowthLab, to teach you how to do the same thing—start and grow an online business.

Ramit is a trainer. He’ll make you hustle.

“It’s like looking up at a skyscraper and saying ‘How am I going to build one of those?’ Well you’re not. You’re going to start by walking in the lobby,” Ramit says, “That’s what you’re going to do on day one.”

You can’t get rich without putting in the work.

I’ve set goals. None of them came true. But five or six other amazing things that I never could have predicted happened instead.

Goals require plans.

You’re going to get rich. How?

You want to lose weight or start a business. How?

Ramit will tell you. He’ll turn your goals into achievements.

Actually, you’ll do it, with his help.

Consider taking his courses… One teaches you how to triple your salary. Which is like heroin. According to one of my other podcast guests, Nassim Taleb.

Taleb said the three deadliest addictions are 1) heroin, I don’t remember the second one, and 3) a steady salary. How can you feel motivated when you’re prostituting yourself everyday?

What did I learn from Ramit? It’s less about what I learned, and more about what I feel capable of doing every time I listen to him.

Fear is a debilitating idea. Replace fear with motivation. You’ll be amazed at the results.

I need motivation to eat well, write everyday, do the daily practice. And I start over everyday. Because motivation isn’t as constant as your to-do list.

But with Ramit’s plan, you’ll get systems in place. Systems that manage your money and organize your time, and take care of all the things draining you dry.

“If you’re going to put in work, why not be positive, try to improve yourself, improve your relationship, make more money,” Ramit says.

I haven’t taken his courses. But strangers email me saying they’re great. That they’ve tripled their income. I don’t know why they tell me that. I get a lot of strange emails from strangers. Skip to 40:12 on my podcast. You’ll laugh. Trust me.

You shouldn’t go a day without laughing anyway.

I’m going to tell you why I went broke. You’ll hear it in this episode. And you’ll learn how to clean up your life.

You’ll get systems… you’ll get a plan.

And, thanks to Ramit, you’ll learn how to be rich.

Listen now.

Resources and Links:

• Ramit is giving away his Ultimate Guide to  Making More Money on his website
• If you’re looking to start and grow your online business, go to GrowthLab.com 
• Hear my last interview with Ramit Sethi here and watch this video from 3 years ago where we talk about our hate mail
• Follow Ramit on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram and follow I Will Teach You To Be Rich on Facebook
• Read Ramit Sethi’s New York Times bestselling book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich

 

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Daymond John Schools Me on “The Power of Broke”

I was starving all the time. I lived in one room, had one futon and had a three inch screen on the floor next to the futon. But the TV didn’t work because you needed cable and I couldn’t afford that.

So I started a business. Many people think, “I have an idea” and then they want to raise $10,000,000 or something outrageous.

I didn’t have any ideas. But I was good at this new thing, the Internet, and I convinced people they needed to build websites.

Was I right or wrong: Does a company need a website?

Who knew back then. Nobody knew.

But I was broke and hungry and wanted money to purchase some small piece of freedom so I could do what I loved – write.

So I sold the few skills I had to masters who would pay me and I got to work.

Which is why I was excited to read Daymond John’s book (founder of FUBU and $6 billion in sales later, a star from the ABC show “Shark Tank” along with Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, etc) — “The Power of Broke“.

Daymond came on my podcast. He told me first about a time when he was no longer broke and why NOT being broke got him in trouble.

I started a record label, he said. We made the fanciest videos, the best ads, we got the best artists, we made an album.

We spent $3 million on ads and videos and we sold $1 million worth of records.

This reminded me, he said, about how I should always get back to that feeling of being broke. That feeling of taking care of risk, of struggling to maximize every strength. That feeling of hustle that puts you back on the street.

He got the entrepreneurial bug when his mom taught him how to sew wool caps and he sewed 80 of them out of fabric he bought for almost nothing and sold them for $10 each and made $800.

“Did you go back the next day and sew more?” I asked him.

“No,” he said and he paused, “I went back THE NEXT HOUR and sewed more.”

Within a few years his FUBU line had $350 million in sales. Within a decade or so he had sold $6 billion worth of clothes.

In his book he tells story after story of people who went from broke to wealth.

“People always say you need money to make money,” he said to me. “This is wrong. If it were true why would half the Forbes 500 of the richest people in the world start with nothing?”

“In fact if I had ZERO money when I started that record label, it probably would’ve worked. Instead, I went in there with the wrong mindset and I failed. I wasn’t hungry enough.”

We talked for an hour. He told me lots of stories from the book.

I was trying to write down notes of what he said so could I learn. No matter how many businesses I’ve started and failed at (with a success here or there) I always want to learn more.

I took out the paper this morning and here is what I can read from what he said:

Community

Find your community or your following. He talked about a teenager who had 15 million followers on Instagram and was now building a business around it. She’s mentioned in his book.

He talked about himself. FUBU stands for “For us, By us”. He sold clothes into the burgeoning hip-hop community that he had been so passionate about.

Network

LL Cool J lived down the street but he didn’t know him. So he showed up at his house every day and begged him to wear FUBU clothes.

Finally LL did, even wearing one on a Gap video and in the $30 million video said the phrase, “For us, by us” while wearing the cap.

“If I had millions of dollars, I would not have begged LL and slowly won him over. I probably would have just paid him and then lost him. Money would’ve cost me rather than having a mission around what I was doing. I had to get down and BEG LL until it worked.”

OPM

Sometimes it means “other people’s money” but sometimes it might mean “Other people’s mistakes” or “Other people’s momentum” (the way LL piggybacked FUBU on the momentum he had from The Gap ads).

Learn from other people, Mistakes, money, momentum, motivations, whatever it takes. Fill in the M.

Affordable Steps Forward

If you sell 800 hats, don’t try to sell a million the next day. Sell 1000. Always take affordable steps forward so you aren’t at risk of going out of business. “Don’t take a $200,000 loan out on day one.”

But I challenged him on that, which led to this.

Always Manage Risk

I said, “But your mom mortgaged her house to give you $100,000 for the business. How does that match up?”

He said, “Yeah, but I had an order for $300,000 from Macy’s that I had to fill.

“As soon as I had the $100,000, I made the clothes, Macy’s paid me, and I paid back the bank. I never would have taken out the loan without knowing in advance how I would pay it back.”

Whenever I have loaned out money I don’t think I’ve ever gotten paid back once. I guess this is why I have gone broke so many times.

People think entrepreneurs take risks. This is not true. Entrepreneurs want to make more money than they spend. Period.

This means ALL of the time is spent on managing risks and costs.

Testing

“We were out on the streets selling hats and every day we’d try new prices, new styles, new sizes. We’d see what would work and then double down on what worked and stop doing what didn’t work.”

Later on I asked him about some of the businesses he invested in with Shark Tank.

He told me the story of one company and how they would constantly do ads on Facebook for $100 to see what products people would click on. “We would do up to 5 ads simultaneously and we’d have ads running all of the time.”

Whatever people clicked on, those are the products they would sell.

ABT – Always Be Testing.

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We talked about jobs. How a job is like running a very small business with one source of revenue.

How the fact that people live paycheck to paycheck because that “personal business” is usually just breakeven or even loses money.

“Even when i was starting FUBU I had two different jobs. I had to make more money than I was spending or it wasn’t worth it. We shut down FUBU twice during those first few years but people kept calling us back for bigger and bigger orders and then it was making money.”

I asked him what he looked for in a company he invests in Shark Tank. He’s put almost $8,000,000 into companies on Shark Tank.

“I look at the number of times the entrepreneur has failed,” he said. “I don’t want them to have their learning experiences on my dime.”

“I have to like the person,” he said.

This to me is the most important. I’ve invested in many companies and have had many failures and some successes.

The only successes were when I really liked the entrepreneur. And all of the failures came when I thought the idea was more important than the person.

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I asked him, “I can relate to the ‘Power of Broke – the grit, the hustle, and so on – but doesn’t this glamorize being broke a bit? When I was broke, it was really painful. I felt like I would never get up again. Never live.”

He said, “Being broke is temporary but poverty of mind is permanent. You have to avoid poverty of mind.”

You can always learn from failures. Take affordable risks. Start fresh even stronger and get back to that hustle.

He said, “I apply the Power of Broke every single day of my life.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, “what did you today that was the Power of Broke?”

“Well,” he said, “Today I wanted to promote my book as cheaply and powerfully as possible.”

“What did you do?”

“I called you.”

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Read More: The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur 

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Financial Fridays: The Stock Market is Bullshit

It’s not Friday but who cares. The stock market is lying to you.

This is the worst open of a year since 1932, the middle of the Great Depression, when there was 20%+ unemployment and it was only going to get worse.

Banks were about to get all shut down. People were on soup lines. And another eight years of hell were in store for people.

This is not happening now. Let’s look at what is happening in reality:

China’s Manufacturing Growth Went Negative

This is the main reason the stock market has been falling.

How do I know this? I don’t read any of the news but this morning I looked at all the headlines and this is what they said. “CHINA MANUFACTURING DECLINE CAUSES U.S. STOCKS TO PLUNGE”.

Bullshit.

Let’s look at reality:

– China manufacturing growth has been slowing for the past six years in a row. So this is no surprise.

– China manufacturing has a tiny effect on the US economy.

I’d be more worried if the Chinese service economy was slipping. That’s the part of the economy that spends tourism and consumer dollars in the US.

Instead, the service part of the Chinese economy (like any developing economy, including the US, when manufacturing slows) is hitting an all-time high.

– Chinese manufacturing plus new tensions in the middle east, helps keep a cap on oil prices which are ready to explode upwards. Low oil prices are effectively the same as having lower taxes. This leads to higher stock prices.

“But China is the second largest economy!”

Bullshit.

This is a great pundit argument ready to go for TV and for academics.

Who cares.

In the 1990s both the Soviet economy and the Japanese economy (the two other largest economies back then) totally collapsed and never returned. NEVER.

What happened to the US economy? It became larger than ever. Economies are linked….until they aren’t.

A Famous Bet that Explains What Is Happening

In 1980, Julian Simon bet the economist Paul Ehrlich that no matter what basket of commodities Ehrlich picked, prices would be lower ten years later.

Ehrlich, a decently smart guy, laughed at how easy it would be to win this bet.

Ehrlich picked nickel, copper, chromium, tin, and tungsten.

Julian Simon won the bet.

Why did he win? Because he knew that no matter what materials the US economy depended on, we would innovate faster than the costs would rise.

New inventions and technologies would outpace the demand for those commodities so that as we needed their functionality more, the prices would fall.

Think about computers: your price per speed and functionality in your computer has gone down every year since they’ve been invented.

Another Great Example of Innovation and Deflation

Think about lighting your house. In the 1880s you would have to work for 15 minutes to pay for an hour of kerosene lamp usage.

Today you have to work for 1/2 a second to get an hour of reading light.

Ditto for cars. For clothing (as a percentage of your income) and even for food (as a percentage of your income – food costs have gone from about 20% of your income in 1969 to about 3% of your income. )

The same as true for the linking between world economies. When Russia and Japan collapsed, we found new sources of commerce that linked the US to the rest of the world (the Internet, for instance).

Where is the U.S. Innovating

Robotics, biotech, energy, 3D printing, shared economy business models that help families make money on any excess capacity they have (e.g. extra rooms? Rent them on Airbnb).

And probably many other areas that I don’t even think of (Chemistry improving various metals and food production, etc).

It’s even interesting to look at where we are stagnating. Education and healthcare. Prices are going up while quality is either staying flat or going down.

And yet… someone wrote me the other day about a website he used to get a doctor’s house call and a complete medical procedure. Total cost to him was $50 instead of $500 in a hospital.

And sites like Coursera, lynda.com, Khan Academy, Udemy, and more are quickly replacing the automatic reflex to send kids to over-priced colleges and schools.

Are We Heading Into a Great Depression?

Someone asked me if prices are too high and about to collapse.

What prices are too high? Housing, while recovering, is still not as high as 2006.

What about stocks? I doubt it. Apple, one of the fastest growing companies ever, is trading at just five times cash flow.

Imagine a bond that you buy that gives you $20 (20%) for every $100 you buy of it.

That’s what investing in Apple is like right now. Investing in T-bills, by comparison, gives you 2.25% for every $100 you put into it. That sucks compared to Apple. .

Can Apple go lower? Sure. But then it’s more of a buy. Anything can go lower in the short term.

But where is the cash to buy these things.

In 2009, banks were about to go bankrupt. They had no money.

Now banks have an extra $2.4 TRILLION sitting around doing nothing. Meanwhile, commercial and industrial loans were up over 10% last year.

Businesses grow faster when they can borrow to finance their inventories.

Then they can sell out faster, pay more wages, and the people who are paid those wages can buy TVs and houses, and the people building houses can buy new cars, and so on.

In 1933, 4000 banks collapsed. How many banks collapsed in 2015? I think less than ten.

What About Rate Hikes?

What about them? In 2006, rates were at 6%. Now they are less than 1%. That’s a lot of hiking that has to happen.

The only reason the Federal Reserve is slowing bring up rates is because the economy is crushing it.

AND, unlike the uncertainty we have had all 2014 and 2015, the Federal Reserve has now been very transparent about how fast they will raise rates. i.e. Not fast at all.

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I don’t want to say buy stocks now. I don’t like to predict the future.

But the reason we are alive as a species is because our ancestors who paid attention to bad news (a Lion running at you is very bad news) lived and the people who didn’t pay attention…died.

The news knows this. So they put bad news in front of you all the time to scare you so they can sell subscriptions. Bad news and porn.

The people who are happier and more successful, know that we are no longer in the jungle.

Every day is a day to create and innovate. To start a business or to help make other businesses better. That’s where you tap into the flow of success.

You don’t have to fly to Mars. Or make a cure for cancer. You just have to always ask yourself, how can I help in some small way today?

This is success.

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Read More: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Investing All of Your Money

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The Force Will Awaken in 2016

This has been the worst year of my life. So bad I thought I would die, over and over.

But then wonderful things happened. Things that will change me forever. 

And nobody really knew because I practiced my own daily practice throughout.

I say this not because I want sympathy. I say it because I’m proud.

I trusted The Force.

Let’s not forget what happens to the people in Star Wars who believe in The Force.

– Luke watches Obi-Wan get killed by Luke’s father
– Luke’s uncle and aunt are killed by The Empire and burned to ashes.
– Luke loses his hand in a fight with his father
– Obi-Wan lives for 20 years by himself. No sex.
– Yoda is exiled after basically ruling the galaxy.
– Obi-wan watches his teacher killed by Darth Maul.
– Obi-wan gets killed by the student he trained. The same student he cut the arms off of and left to die.
– Anakin can’t save his wife
– Princess Leia’s home world gets blown up.
– Rey (the Force Awakens) lives in total poverty after being abandoned by her parents.

In all seven movies nobody has regrets after any of these bad things. Nor do they seem to think good things will automatically happen to them because they “have faith”.

There is simply no other way to live for them. As Yoda says to Luke, “Luminous being are we…not this crude matter.”

So why worry about this crude matter when you can live a life of surrendering to whatever the current moment delivers up to you?

Are we here to always have good things happen? Or to explore the wide spectrum of what life delivers?

So my theme for 2016 is to be a Jedi Knight, as corny as that sounds. What does it mean for me?

SURRENDER TO THE MOMENT

I am always anxious about the future. Or I regret the past. It’s hard not to regret losing lifetimes worth of money.

It’s hard not to feel anxious about the future for me, my family, my loved ones, my friends, because everything is so frustratingly uncertain.

But recognize when those worries come up, and bring it back to right now. What can I do now to best serve the cards dealt me this moment?

Anxiety will only take away energy (the Force) from the current moment and never solve the problems of the future.

I saw this again and again this past year. What a waste it was to ask “Why?” about moments already gone, instead of trusting my own resources for the next moments.

TRUST IN A WORLD BIGGER THAN YOU

The universe , then the Earth, then our species, evolved for 13 billion years to produce you.

And then it’s so easy to think, “thanks guys. I’ll take over from here.”

Trusting that nature, that the work you’ve already put in in life., that the people around you are all your allies (Yoda again: “The Force is my ally”) doesn’t mean that everything will be good.

It just means that everything will be enough. What more do you need if you can then appreciate the subtle beauty that interweaves everything around you. The beauty of coincidence that filters all of the events in your life.

How do you create more coincidences in life? It’s two simple tricks:

BE AROUND GOOD PEOPLE

When I am around people not so good for me, I feel drained. I feel more anxious and upset.

When I am around (for months or years) people who are good for me, I suddenly have more opportunities. I help them and they help me. Over and over. It multiplies in the first year. it compounds in later years.

I never knew this. But now I do.

Now after so many years of being around people who were not so good for me, I see the compounding that happens when I am around people who I respect and love and support and they feel the same as me.

It becomes like my “Justice League”. People I can rely on and who can rely on me to help me change myself and change the world.

It’s ok to make this change slowly. You can’t change all the people around you overnight. I aim for 1% a day improvement.

CREATIVITY EVERY DAY

When Obi-wan was exiled he basically came up with a very complex 20 year plan to bring down the Empire.

You can’t come up with that without practicing your creativity every day.

So every day I do four things:

– I write down ten ideas a day
– I read so that the ideas from one person can mate with ideas I have to create baby ideas that live and thrive. Ideas are the fastest evolving species.
– I try to write or podcast every single day. To stretch out and use my creativity.
– I try to do at least one thing that makes me uncomfortable. Yoda tries to get Luke to lift his X-Wing from the water. Rey finally uses the light saber that scares her.

In the very beginning of the entire series Luke looks up into the stars and is curious about what he will find there, as scary as it can be to go against his uncle, to go against his upbringing.

Curiosity and a wish to expand beyond his horizons takes him on an incredible journey that shapes the seven movies of the series.

Sometimes talking to a random stranger or hitting “publish” at the same second you think “What will people think?” is the way to channel that uncomfortable feeling and make yourself stronger.

Keep a calendar every day. At the end of each day I try to think, “what made me uncomfortable today?” Sometimes I will do nothing. But just asking the question forces my body to recognize those potentially uncomfortable moments when they arise.

And when I feel like the creativity “clicks” I feel it deep inside of me. Like something connected with the world. I feel pleasure in my chest and I feel my brain get a tiny bit bigger.

Improving your creativity 1% each day is what makes a person larger than life. This is my theme for 2016. It’s not a goal, it’s a theme.

For each thing that happens, will it fit my theme? I hope so.

HAVE A SENSE OF WONDER

At the beginning of the entire series, one of the first things we see is Luke staring at the stars, wondering what is out there, what experiences he can have.

Having a sense of wonder, with no regret and often no answers, is the key to exploration and growth.

Often there are no answers. I look out at the future and have no idea what next year will bring. I know that at the end of 2014, I could never have guessed the catastrophes (and good things) that 2015 would bring.

Nor can I have a “goal” and try to control the mammoth complexity of what 2016 will bring.

I can just approach each day with that sense of wonder. That looking at the stars and excited to wait and see how each of them will connect for me.

PATIENCE

The Emperor guides Darth Vader to be patient in his search for Luke. Yoda guides Luke to be patient in his desire to learn The Force.

Both the Dark Side and the Light Side emphasize patience.

Too often people say, “I’m 25 and want to be rich by the time I’m 30.”

Why is there so much rush? To buy a bigger car? To buy a more expensive house or watch?

Cultivating patience and a sense of “this is enough” frees up the brain to really explore the beauty around us each moment. Not forcing the future allows us to be more curious about the present.

I never would have guessed all the amazingly good things that also happened to me in 2015. None of them were goals. They were all products of patience.

In February of this year, I was on the board of a company that fell apart due to scandal. I lost more money in a day than ever before.

I found out about it when I was having the great experience of being on the set of the upcoming show “Billions” and watching how such shows were made.

Instead of going home crying when I found out, I stayed and kept trying to learn the artistry of the directors, writers, actors on the show.

And it’s that feeling and that experience that guided my year much more than any money lost.

“We had no idea what you were going through. All we noticed is that you disappeared for an hour and then you were back,” was what one the writers (Brian Koppelman) told me.

Let the moment deliver the experience. Not your much weaker brain that seeks to interpret and get scared and to punish.

I’VE GOT A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS

There is one quote that exists in all seven Star Wars movies.

Someone eventually says once in every movie, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”.

Why this quote?

Because bad stuff happens. No matter how much the universe is your ally. No matter how many good things happen in your life.

Life is up and down. And it is so easy to be disappointed and scared and frustrated when the bad things happen.

“Why is this happening to me?” I asked at least twice this year .And sometimes more than twice as I tried to figure it out.

But I learned only late this year, when really bad things happened, that the key is to not ask “why?”

There is no answer to that question. In relationships, in business, in nature.

“Why?” will seldom solve the problem. And often the answer is so complex that there is no response. Or nobody will want to tell you the answer.

I had to learn each step of the way this past year to keep my expectations as low as possible. And then, no matter what hardship happened…they were always exceeded.

This didn’t mean I had faith they would be exceeded. It simply meant that my expectations were always so low I could always look with wonder at what the next second would bring.

And then inevitably, that wonder by itself would give me a feeling exceeding all expectations.

It’s not bad to have “a bad feeling” if you keep that sense of wonder.

– (from The Force Awakens)

– REY: IS THAT POSSIBLE?
– HAN: I NEVER ASK THAT QUESTION UNTIL AFTER WE’VE DONE IT

Someone who chooses himself doesn’t let the world tell him or her what is possible.

It doesn’t mean to take risks. It means don’t let others dictate what is right or wrong to you.

Every major discovery in life is really a pair. The discovery paired with someone who didn’t listen to everyone who thought that discovery was impossible.

There is not a single exception to this. In arts, science, and business.

Learn from everything. But don’t take a command from anyone. Even Buddha said, “Don’t listen to me. Try this for yourself” about an entire philosophy that billions of people ended up following.

– FEAR LEADS TO ANGER, ANGER LEADS TO AGGRESSION (Yoda) and I will add: Leads to suffering.

Fear has often been useful. It tells you what to avoid. When a tiger is about to eat you. When a person is about to do something bad to you. When you might be making a mistake.

But just using it as a split second tool to avoid the worse things (anger, aggression) by recognizing it and then turning to gratitude or creativity, is the key to surviving the fear. Not the aggression.

– THE LIGHT – IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THERE – IT WILL GUIDE YOU (Maz Kanata to Rey in The Force Awakens).

The one thing that has saved me this year is knowing if I stay healthy, be around good friends, be creative, and be grateful, then each day will be more successful than the last.

Didn’t matter what was happening to me financially. Didn’t matter what was happening to the people around me. I just had to trust my own daily practice each day.

For me, that was “the light”.

Failure is painful. There really isn’t anything good about it.

But realizing it will happen, and then as quickly as possible getting back to “The Light”, has been the only way for me to survive.

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When I was a kid I skipped school and waited three hours for “Return of the Jedi” to open up. I then watched it that day three times in a row.

I then had endless conversations with my friends about The Force. I bored them to death.

I’m going to do the same thing about The Force Awakens with anyone who makes the mistake of talking to me about it.

My daughters are with me right now. I’m going to inflict The Force Awakens on them. The main character is a strong young woman so that might entice them to go to the movie.

it sounds stupid, loving the philosophy of a movie this way.

But I do. And it works. And it’s helped me a hundred times or more in my life.

And tomorrow it will help me again. And maybe this year. Because I have a bad feeling about this coming year. But maybe also…there has been an awakening.

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Read More: How To Be The Luckiest Guy On the Planet in 4 Easy Steps. 

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Ep. 149 – David Levien & Brian Koppelman: How to Get Inside The Mind of Billionaires

For billionaires, every exchange has a winner and a loser.

That’s what producers David Levien and Brian Koppelman tell me. They’ve made some of my favorite movies: Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen, Solitary Man. Now, they’re coming out with 2016’s most talked about show: Billions on Showtime.

You can learn a lot from them. David and Brian are producers, creators and risk takers.

If you want to create, listen to today’s episode. You’ll see how important it is to follow your curiosity.

That’s what David and Brian did. Sometimes starting something is that simple.

Since they were kids, David and Brian were fascinated by two things: power and wealth. They wondered, “What makes a billionaire unique?”

They had a question, an idea, and conviction. “We were all the f-ck in,” Brian says.

They had dinner with billionaires. Sounds fun. But it wasn’t.

They were manipulated, belittled, and snubbed, and sometimes mesmerized.

I’ll give you one story. It’s to tempt you to download this episode. Because I really think you’re going to get a lot out of the interview. You’ll hear their stories – the behind-the-scenes of 2016’s most talked about show.

You’ll get motivation to write, build, and be creative. You’ll hear about how a partnership is born.

And you’ll learn why people knowingly make the wrong choices.

And maybe, you’ll make the right ones. Whatever those are… the right choices for you.

Ok so one story before you press play:

Over dinner, David and Brian met with their first billionaire. It cost more than $2,000.

He racked up the price and made them suffer.

“There was clearly a power dynamic,” David says.

He acted like he wasn’t thinking, but “billionaires don’t just accidentally stumble along and amass great fortunes,” David says, “He was showing us that he was no sucker. And we were.”

Before that night, “I’ve never thought, ‘Who’s gonna win the dinner?’” Brian said.

If you’ve watched the trailer, you know what this guy did – “What’s the point of having f-ck you money if you never say f-ck you.”

And they felt it.

Morally, David and Brian believe in loyalty, honor, and ambition. And that you can balance these things. But not everyone does.

Some people believe nice guys finish last.

This interview reveals how to get inside the mind of billionaires. It might make you sick. Or it might make you hungry.

Listen now.

Resources and Links:

• Watch the trailer for Showtime’s Billions here
• Check out my last interview with Bryan Koppelman here
• I also highly recommend Bryan’s podcast The Moment
• Follow Bryan on Twitter and visit his website
• Also check out David Levien’s book, Signature Kill and read an excerpt here
• Get my favorite movies: Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen, Solitary Man and The Girlfriend Experience

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I Lived Nowhere and With Nothing For the Past Year – This Is What Happened…

A little over a year ago I threw out almost everything I owned. Since then I’ve been living out of a single bag.

And then I took off.

I live in random places through airbnb or other house or room sharing services.

I don’t have a car, I don’t even have a driver’s license. I don’t have any physical books. All of the books are on my kindle.

I take it back. I stole one book. “Life of Pi”. I started reading it in one place I was staying and didn’t finish so I wanted to keep it until I finished. I stopped reading it and haven’t finished it yet.

I don’t have medical insurance. I haven’t been for a regular doctor’s visit in maybe 30 years. So why pay for medical insurance?

Someone told me that is against the law. Ok…Find me.

I have two sweaters. I buy t-shirts or underwear at the pharmacy every few days. I have two pairs of pants. I have two wrinkled button down shirts.

Sometimes my clothes get dirty. I’m a bit disgusting.

When I stay at a place, it’s always furnished. So I don’t need sheets, beds, furniture. I just borrow the accumulations of others.

I sometimes order food by delivery and sometimes get food from the store on a daily basis. I don’t buy any junk food so there’s not any extra food lying around. I’ve lost 10-15 pounds in the past six months.

That’s the only diet that works for me. Don’t eat junk food. Try to stick to two meals. When I say “diet” I don’t mean “lose weight” but just eat healthy. Don’t carry around extra food in the stomach and intestines.

I have a small laptop to write with. If I didn’t write I would have no laptop. I’d just use my phone.

I talk on the phone maybe once or twice a day. I sometimes respond to texts. My phone number is 203-512-2161.

Because I have no address, nobody knows where I am.

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I’ve learned some good things and some bad things by doing this.

A) OBJECTS

My relationships with objects has changed. I see how other people mold their lives around their objects.

Their art, their furniture, their decorations. The way they treat their photographs and their books.

People staple their personalities to their objects. Sometimes they staple a personality they want to be. And sometimes they staple who they are. Or in between.

I don’t do any of that. I have no objects. I just borrow the objects and personalities of others for a short time and then I move.

Moving every few weeks means I can’t buy anything new. I only get new skylines.

B) MINIMALISM IS NOT CHEAP

People think if they go totally minimalist they save money.

Maybe this is true in the long run because (as above) I don’t buy the things that many householders buy.

But sometimes it costs to move. And sometimes it costs to buy new shirts and food.

But food and clothing costs and costs of entrepreneurship have gone down over the past 40 years. And insurance and education and owning houses have gone up.

My main expenses are when I buy experiences.

Everything else I can’t buy because I can’t move extra things around when I move from place to place.

C) NO PEOPLE TO DEAL WITH

Because I use platforms like Airbnb, I don’t ever have to deal with humans. No landlords, no boards, no sellers, no real estate agents.

Usually there is a key hidden someplace. I find it, and move in, then leave it where I found it when it’s time to move again.

D) FRIENDS ARE REAL

Nothing in the place I’m staying in right now is real. I don’t own any of the objects (there is a photo of a nude Naomi Campbell facing me right now. It’s not mine but I look at it),

I don’t even use most of the objects since I didn’t pick them out and I don’t even know what a lot of them are for.

But when I invite friends over, I can have a real experience. We’re all in a new place. We can talk.

In the past few months I’ve tried many ways to have experiences with my friends. I rented out a room in a bookstore and spent time with some friends. I invited friends over for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

I visit people although for some reasons I’ve been afraid to fly for the past three months.

I’m going to try and change that.

I have more and more experiences but fewer objects. I give my friends experiences.

E). EXPLORE

I like to get lost. I like to feel, this is the first day I am on this planet.

When I am in a new place, I explore their life. I see their books, the garbage they let lie around. The photos of the past thirty years. Or the telling lack of.

When I walk outside, it’s a new skyline. A new set of places. New people walking around. I take a deep breath. I can explore like when I was a little kid.

I walk around and everything is new.

F) MY NUMBER

Everyone figures out their number. How much they need to retire. Or to live. Or to say “F You” to a boss.

I don’t know what my number is. But it’s less than just about everyone I know. Because I want nothing. I don’t want anything new other than the lifestyle I have.

If I wanted to scale down my lifestyle, I could. If I wanted to ramp up, I could. But I don’t want to.

I will never own a house. I don’t want to send my kids to college for all the reasons I’ve discussed before. I don’t think entrepreneurship should cost any money in today’s world of quick entrepreneurship.

I can write and work and live and love from anywhere. Every day I try to reach out to people in order to have new experiences. But that’s it.

If I look back at the past few months, the only money spent has been on experiences and food. Experiences are always more valuable than objects.

People value experiences at almost zero and objects at too much. When, in fact, experiences are the only things that are valuable and objects will fade in your life and eventually become unwanted and boring.

An experience is a story. An object becomes a forgotten memory.

So I like to buy low and sell high.

G) ROOTS

I don’t have roots. I don’t have a place where I can say “this is home”.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

So I decided to change 100%. Why not?

I saw a place that I liked. A new experience for me is to live in a place for more than a few weeks.

The landlord is a well known musician. She is moving to Nashville to pursue her art and leaving behind her apartment completely furnished. Three pianos.

I had to staple myself back to the world.

I had to get two personal references. Two business references. A reference from a prior landlord. Two years of tax returns. Two bank statements. A letter from my accountant.

I had to give not only two months rent in advance but two months security deposit because my credit score is so low.

I had to write a letter explaining why I liked the place. I had to write another letter explaining why I have never owned a credit card. I had to meet the other people in the building (they were all nice so I was happy).

And now I’m scared. I’m scared to commit to a place for a year.

To have a place called home. To start buying things for it. Maybe even some books. Maybe more clothes. Maybe I will identify with the neighborhood too much and be afraid to ever move from there.

I don’t know. Every time I have ever put down “roots” my entire life has changed. To be honest, I am terrified. I’ve always experienced great anxiety when I moved into a place for longer than a week.

I move in on January 5.

And if I know you and you are in the area, please stop by. I miss you.

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Read More: How To Be The Luckiest Guy On the Planet in 4 Easy Steps. 

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