best quote on making money best quarter making money you get paid in proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve so you know solve a simple problem you're going to get a simple paycheck solve a hard enough problem and the world will give you all our money you know that's that that's Elon musk's quote or so they say and uh look at what he's doing that's the game he's playing solving the hardest problems in the world Interstellar you know travel colonization the issues with traffic the issues with Wi-Fi he's got Tesla that's you know working
on climate and transportation and so at the end of the day when I see people who say to me Ty it ain't working out for me financially I'm like well you there's no money and easy there's no money in easy but always the question is what's the easiest way for me to get started what's the three things what's the one book I should read Tai I'm like there's no money in easy the money comes from the progression your progression through the skill set there's a great book called uh deep work by Cal Newport those people
who are able to focus when the whole world has an attention span they say now that's shorter than the average goldfish an average goldfish scientists say has a six second attention span what do you think that is now on the social media world where people can flip through and get a new hit of dopamine non-stop day after day moment after moment right that's the easy thing to do be hypnotized by mass media but to go your own path this is difficult you know it's like Aristotle said about anger he said to be angry is easy
but to be angry at the right person at the right time for the right reason with the right intensity for the right duration that's difficult and you know the question your question when it comes to making money should never be what's the easy way to get started ask what's the hard way to get started that not many people will do if you talk to a Nobel Prize winner they call this a barrier to entry they call this a moat they call this a sort of network effect that Silicon Valley esteemed so highly something that keeps
most people out what is money money is simple I often ask people I give talks and I've asked this question I want to ask a professor whose specialty was in the definitions of money and even he couldn't give me the right answer I say give me the definition of money in three words all encompassing and accurate you know people kind of get it right but scarce in-demand resources they have to be all three so if you know how to serve someone coffee is that scarce do a lot of people have that skill and this is
no hate I'm not looking down upon anybody's station in life you know I melt the cows by hand on a farm I sheared sheep I lived in a mobile home growing up this is not a deprecation of anybody's life and where they find themselves now but I will tell you the truth that not many people will tell you that they wouldn't tell you in school that they wouldn't tell you in college that your mom and dad probably wouldn't tell you which is there's no money in that easy thing you get paid in proportion to the
difficulty of problems you solve if you know how to hand somebody a cup of coffee is that a scarce in-demand resource well it's in demand but it's not scarce therefore it violates the universal laws of wealth or maybe not Universal but we could say planet Earth's modern capitalistic laws of wealth and maybe you'll come up with a better system I live in Sweden part-time it's a little more socialist you know but even there you find these rules applying these are some sort these go beyond these are evolutionary biology at play in wealth you know Karl
Marx was a great thinker in a sense but he got it wrong because he didn't understand that Evolution and DNA trumps even the wise's smartest person's attempt to unravel an economy for the last 10 000 generations of homo sapiens you're a great great great great great grandmother and grandfather have all been seeking scarce in-demand resources and the people who did survived and you all you are The Offspring of those people they weren't just people who knew how to hand somebody a cup of coffee or do the lowest common denominator skill set they were people who
figured out the hard things your great great grandfather figured out how to you know spear a mammoth elephant and therefore they survived in that cold winter in one of the past ice ages when everybody else died because they had a scarce in demand resource back then it wasn't some fiat currency or some crypto digital currency they had in their possession a skill set hunting and it was the great hunters and the great gatherers who have survived and so when I'm talking about money I'm not just talking about okay a Lambo and a cool house and
a private jet I'm talking about the very roots of what makes us survive and that's resource acquisition and so there's a there's something called ESS evolutionary stable strategies so to the extent that other people become good at things it no longer works right that's why for example there's one to five percent of planet Earth is Psychopaths if there was too many Psychopaths Game Theory basically says the system falls apart there's too many people trying to kill each other screw each other over if there's too few modern Game Theory says then it will pay to be
a little bit Psychopathic so there's an example in the psychometric social side where you see an ESS and evolutionary stable stable strategy being formed you see the same thing in making money right if a whole bunch of people go to college and get a bachelor's degree in English because in the 1960s that was rare that was scarce and was an in-demand resource a diploma it worked but as more and more people did that so that they could earn above average money AKA Hunt and Gather above average resources that stopped working it stopped working and so
now you find people uh going the opposite path and now what's common places for people to have a college degree and now you see people who do the opposite Peter teal paid a whole bunch of people under the age of 21 to not go to college and just to start to build something that's where you see vitalik buterin built ethereum and became you know a billionaire under 25 years old or even younger because when everybody else was competing in the old ESS evolutionary stable strategy he broke out of it and Peter Thiel encouraged people to
break out of it so you are constantly in a game and you may not realize it and may nobody might want to admit this to you because most people are lost but I am telling you how the game works you know I run I own a large holding company I buy things for a living I buy things that broke I bought Pier One Imports big furniture home good brand in the United States one of the biggest ever 60 year old brand 1200 stores 1.7 billion dollars in the year that I bought them that's their revenue
I bought this now I own it because they didn't evolve and they were doing what was easy for them which was to stay in the holding powder of what used to work but it didn't work anymore and they didn't evolve and that ESS set in and other competitors came in you see this with clothing lines and all of a sudden a young upstart like a fashion Nova comes in and because the innovate on top of the entrance competition and do what is now rare and scarce and in demand which is to be able to win
at the game of econ my econ Brands did you know the brand I just bought bodybuilding.com nine-figure e-commerce business you know my my uh different brands that I owned did 160 million visits in the United States last year it is a nine figure businesses 100 million I manage over 400 people I'm the CEO for and I'm continuing to acquire and buy up because I understand the ESS not many people know how to do M A merger and acquisition transactions I have mentors that taught me how to do them some of them billionaires 363 sales you
know which is a form of bankruptcy liquidation that uses the court system in America not many entrepreneurs know it therefore I want to do it I go where the masses don't go I was focused on being a social media influencer back in 2012 2013 to about 2018 because nobody was doing it now that everybody does it I've moved on to the next thing some people are like I don't see on social media as much did you fall off I'm like no I fell up I don't fall off I fell up doing bigger and badder things
than you can even fathom but sometimes I'm making war and silence you know and then people see and get surprised now I own you know eight or ten major brands big Brands these are the smallest brands that I've been buying uh really we're doing about 500 million in Revenue I've gone down and bought companies smaller that we're doing 100 million in Revenue but I'm playing a game that's my mode that's my mode while everybody competes in the dog eat dog world of who's going to get the most clicks likes follows on social media I'm out
here buying companies and building Empires and that's not because even per se I want to be the richest person in the world I don't I seek the good life you know what's the good life it's the Balanced Life balancing the four pillars health wealth love happiness I break the four pillars into three subsets called the 12 foundations I break those uh 12 subsets into three further subsets those are the 36 principles that I live my life and they're only you know only nine of them are related to making money but that is an important part
and it is part of you learning a game that's important everybody will play it at different levels some people will play pay it at the very highest level that's the Revolutionary stable strategy is to be one of the big whales and other people will do it just to have enough just enough to be financially independent to be able to have that four pillar of The Good Life so I hope you figure it out but I hope you always remember you will not break this immutable law of wealth or financial Independence you must seek out to
do what's hard doesn't have to be the hardest thing but he don't seek what's easy because what's easy always stops working and you saw this throughout time I would be you know if you read Financial history 1800s the United States what happened things begin to automate Industrial Revolution you know 1500 1600s 1700s 1800s you see the steel the steam engine you know the rise of automation Henry Ford and what happens sadly and this happened to my I grew up with a single mom you know my dad was from Harlem basically a street kid ended up
in prison Long Beach California when I was born and what somebody never told my dad was you know my dad sold cocaine and sold it to an FBI undercover agent that's how he got put in terminal island off Long Beach and he didn't understand that you can't make money in that street game of drugs because scarce in-demand resources yeah cocaine's an in-demand resource but the ability to sell is not scarce everybody's going to be your competitor there is no moat even Pablo Escobar eventually lost because new blood came in and so you want to play
a game that not only you're impervious to the new blood but the new blood's afraid to go where you're going and that's all if you want to make a lot of money but this also applies to other areas whether you're in science whether you're in agriculture whether you're an intellectual whether you're an artist a musician a dancer whatever it is that you're doing this is the game and you know I like that quote I don't know who said it don't pray for it to be easy or something like that um it's okay to have a
challenge your greatest memories and the happiness that you find therein will have come from the struggle hopefully your struggle's not too hard you don't want to push yourself to the extreme forever or that stress level will also destroy you you want to find that nice balance where you're challenged and where you're challenging yourself more than the masses so good luck out there [Music]
