Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
money is the end result of what we get
after serving the world
so instead of focusing on what you get
you have to really focus on what you
give there are people who are successful
who come from wealthy families but mega
mega wealthy families the wealthiest
families in the in the country in any
given country in any given time
generally they don't produce the the the
superstars we grow up with these things
i call invisible scripts and these are
the scripts that are beliefs that are so
powerful we don't even realize that
they're they're around us that's why
they're invisible everybody should
always ask themselves if they want to
grow and they just don't want to just
whatever is is say where can i be in
five years if i can't be at this
position in five years then this isn't a
good career path for me the
fascinating opportunity that we have now
is that the the ability to define new
values to distribute goods to make
decisions has has never been greater
[Music]
western people tend to think that i need
more money to be happy but instead then
approach is how can you find
satisfaction in what you have
so it's not a matter of how much money
you make or how much money you have it's
more about your attitude toward money
and the relationship
you have with money
gives you happiness or miserable life so
you really have to be careful with what
you have
what are some of the tenets of zen so i
studied zen i got really hardcore into
taoism when i was younger like way
hardcore
which led me then to studying buddhism i
would definitely never claim to say that
i practiced it but studied buddhism
a fair amount
zen i found maybe the most intriguing
but confusing what are some of the like
core tenants of zen
so um i had this opportunity to meet my
mentor um later on uh his name is wahed
takeda
so when i asked him to teach about money
he said his first lesson is forget about
money so i'm so confused yeah one of the
things that i found super
confusing and people so the where i was
going is the notion of a zen cohen and
this is something that people probably
in the us anyway be tangentially
familiar with the most famous one we
talk about is what is the sound of one
hand clapping
um and there are many zen cones which
are like beyond confusing and of course
the idea is once you understand sort of
the absurdity of the question itself
and of course i'm i'm doing this from a
logical perspective and zen is i think
meant to be very different than that but
um just to give people an anchor point
once you understand the absurdity of the
question then it's like you're a step
closer to enlightenment um
so when he said forget about money what
was he
what was he trying to get you to like
what does that mean because obviously
it's not truly forget that it exists yes
so what does he mean so i think he meant
about where i focus
because if you want money you have to
forget about money you have to forget
about what you can give to other people
how much service you can give out to the
world and then you receive money
so he was telling me not to focus on
money because money is the end result of
what we get after serving the world
so instead of focusing on what you get
you have to really focus on what you
give
and and and our life is in the middle of
giving and receiving
so unless we receive well unless we we
give well we can receive
so we are in the cycle of appreciation
or or resentment
either cycle you're in
your life exists
so if you start appreciating your life
about everything including money your
life will be filled with money and
appreciation if your life will be filled
with resentment anger and fear
around money and also around life your
life will be also surrounded by life
fear and resentment and anxiety so he
taught me
how to focus instead of uh just getting
the end result of money and he was very
well respected because he was talking
about philanthropy so i'm teaching uh
about happiness and money ever since
yeah that the idea that he's been so
incredibly successful obviously lends a
lot of credence um to the things that he
says and one of the things that i wanted
to understand better about his teachings
to you and your teachings you've written
so prolifically
what what is it like
how does it get that big how does the
topic sort of expand so far what is it
that people are getting wrong and what
are some of the like universal
principles that are going to lead people
to
i'll say wealth and it's probably worth
defining how would you define wealth and
then we'll go back to those two
questions
in my mind wealth is uh an emotion
you know it doesn't really matter how
much you have how much you make
because i've interviewed over the course
of my career i've interviewed many
millionaires and billionaires
and some of them are very unhappy and
very upset with everything i'm sure
you've met some happy ones and very
unhappy ones
so
and also among the people
who are struggling with life there are
also happy people and unhappy people so
i think wealth is an attitude if you
feel like you're so happy and so content
with what you have you are already
wealthy but if you have uh
uh you have if you have to struggle
every day
and you cannot find happiness
either in your business or in personal
life i think you're not wealthy even if
you have billions in your bank account
but that doesn't mean that you don't
have to have money
that's what i like about your approach
is there there is a recognition
so part of the reason that i think that
people continue to strive for money um i
live the nightmare of money can't buy
you happiness i had heard a thousand
people tell me that money wasn't gonna
buy me happiness that you know pursuing
money outright was going to end up being
a problem and i still had to do it and
when i ran into the wall of oh really
truly money cannot buy you happiness how
is it that i ended up here when all the
people told me that this was going to be
the outcome why did i have to walk this
path like why couldn't i just accept
their wisdom and i realized that one of
the things that people don't talk about
is that money really is powerful money
is you call it energy
i'll call it power like money gives you
the ability to close your eyes
imagine something that you want to
create and then open your eyes and
actually be able to do it and if you
have the skill set of course and so
there there's real utility in money and
when people talk about and and i've
heard you say before i don't want to get
too spiritual like i want to keep this
grounded and i think that that's really
important because if you tell people hey
forget about money because money doesn't
matter there's going to be a turn off
but if you tell people hey forget about
money because it's going to reorient
your mindset it's going to change your
behaviors
it's going to align your behaviors to
something that's actually going to
allow you to generate actual money
then i think that it draws people in a
little bit more so with that context i
want to go back to the two questions so
what are the mistakes that people make
and what are some universal things
people need to understand if they
actually want to
be wealthy in the way that you just
defined
so i think most of us
the biggest problem i think especially
today is that we are so afraid of money
and so as much as we want money we are
so scared of it so uh why do you say
that i think that that hit me is very
counterintuitive why why do you think
people are scared of money it's because
of a money trauma i call it money wounds
that we we've had since our childhood we
used to have some
uh unless your parents are perfect and
unfortunately it's not the case in in
any any culture
so we've been scolded about money you
know we spend too much we wasted the
money or we denied a corrected lesson or
soccer lesson or a ballet lesson or
piano lessons because it's expensive
some of my friends were taught you are
not worth it well that's like that's a
big blow so uh we've been denied so many
times around money so that's why as much
as we want money because when we feel
money can buy happiness so money money
can buy at least freedom but at the same
times money uh have been abused abused
us for so many ways so as much as we
want to get close to it but if we get
too close to it we get burns or like
hurt so
for a lot of people money is a mystery
person
[Music]
i attribute a lot of my success to luck
and a lot of that uh to also coming from
modest means if you grow up in an
extremely wealthy family if your father
is worth 10 billion dollars you might
not have the drive to do the kind of
things you need to do to win a nobel
prize or a pulitzer prize or something
else if you grew up in a modest family
uh you know if you're going to get
anywhere in life you got to do it on
your own and so when you're growing up
and not a wealthy family you might not
think it's an advantage but actually is
a big advantage because you know if
you're going to get anywhere you've got
to do it on your own and when you get to
do it on your own and you do succeed
people are going to say well you did it
on your own not because your father your
mother
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but so i've heard you in interviews talk
about that before
and
what is it about growing up wealthy that
placates people and what is it growing
up because i don't you've always said
that one of the greatest things ever
happened to you is having two parents
that loved you unconditionally so you
had that which i'm sure would have been
incredibly beautiful
um so
what was missing that made you so hungry
and then
if money isn't the sort of end-all
be-all it doesn't deliver happiness why
aren't people hungry when they have
wealth
well on that question i think if you
know that you are not going to starve or
you're not going to be on the street
because your father or mother is very
wealthy i don't think you have quite the
drive now obviously there are exceptions
there are people who are successful who
come from wealthy families but mega mega
wealthy families the wealthiest families
in the in the country in any given
country in any given time
generally they don't produce the the the
superstars so look at the people who are
the most successful people today in our
society in politics or business
athletics whatever it might be usually
they didn't come from a forbes 400
family as a general rule of thumb so in
in my own case i came from modest means
as you as you alluded to my father
wasn't a high school graduate or nor was
my mother um
bill gates is gonna has three children
they all seem to be well adjusted they
all seem to be doing well whether they
can produce the kind of great success
that he produced who knows but if they
they do people will say well sure his
father was bill gates so my own case i
have three children they're all
extremely well educated in the best
schools harvard duke stanford and so
forth but you know whatever they achieve
sometimes people will say well maybe
it's because their father was helpful or
your father was wealthy now they
wouldn't say that's really fair and
maybe they're right but there's no doubt
that people will think that
do you think that deflates them because
i would think well now they have
something to push back on to achieve at
a level to show people i got out from
under my dad's shadow um why doesn't
that drive them to do even more
well i think it's complicated for
less complicated for a girl than a boy i
think if you're a man and you have a son
um the son probably is going to be seen
as more in the shadow of a very
prominent father um i think it's a
little bit different for daughters for
lots of reasons i could explain so maybe
it's not quite as challenging but you
know of course you've seen many times
where famous men have children who say
or sons and daughters who i say i don't
want anything with a family business i
want to be on my own i don't want
anything to do with the family's wealth
and sometimes these people have nice
lives they don't generally don't change
the world in quite the way that maybe
the father the mother did
did you think about when you were
raising your kids this is one of the
reasons i don't have kids by the way was
so growing up um
my parents couldn't give me all the
things that i wanted but i always had
food my parents loved me to death so i'm
beyond fortunate with how i grew up but
there was something about not being able
to have the things that i wanted
that really pushed me to achieve more
than anybody in my family had achieved
and so when i generated wealth in my own
life and thought about raising kids that
grew up in a family that would have been
affluent
i really worried about
having to artificially create an
environment that was difficult for them
in order for them to succeed i wasn't
sure that i had the fortitude if i'm
honest to create hardships for them
where i didn't need to did you think
about that like have you done things to
sort of make it quote unquote difficult
on your kids
well uh i wasn't quite as wealthy as i
later became when i was having my
children i was reasonably wealthy by
normal human sinners but not by the
standards of today so i tried very much
to shield them from the wealth but
eventually they figured it out and you
know they you know they kind of accepted
it they know i wasn't giving them
gigantic trust funds or buying them lots
of things that they really didn't need
so i think they got a good education and
that's probably the best you can do but
as you suggest raising children is
complicated as you may have heard me say
raising children is a complicated thing
and if you mess up raising your children
nothing else in life really matters and
it's true your ultimate legacy is not a
building named after you or a
scholarship named after you or but it's
your children in many ways and so
they're going to be around a lot longer
than you are in most cases and you know
raising children is challenging for
wealthy people as we have seen many
people uh you live in california uh many
people are very famous hollywood types
they have famously had some let's say
less successful children than they might
have wanted in some cases because they
have a lot of wealth a lot of uh things
that that are not necessarily conducive
to great success
out of curiosity what are the things
that are conducive to great success
beyond money because you've talked very
eloquently about you know billionaires
being some of the most tortured people
that you've met
what what are those things that lead
somebody to be quote unquote successful
well in my view success is happiness the
most elusive thing in life is personal
happiness thomas jefferson wrote about
the pursuit of happiness he never told
us how to actually get it but
finding somebody that's happy with their
life is really really good so if you
ever meet a poor person and they are
very happy with what they're doing why
should you say your life isn't
successful they're very happy with what
they're doing if you meet a very wealthy
person and he or she is tortured with
their money and they don't know what to
do with it their children hate them
everybody hates them is that person
successful i don't really think so i
think success comes about when you're
happy because that's the point of life
to some extent is being happy that's why
we're all here i guess to some extent we
want to make the life better for other
people but to some extent if you are
making life better for other people
you're going to be happy in my view how
do you deal with the transient nature of
happiness and do you distinguish between
happiness and say fulfillment
well sure happiness can be a momentary
thing in some cases you're happy that
something happened uh big success
happened here you did something you got
an award or something your children call
you up and say they're proud of you if
that ever happens but fulfillment means
that you're content
and contentment really is a more
long-lasting kind of thing you know to
be fulfilled i think is being uh
something that can goes on for quite
some time happiness can be more
transitory you're happy one day you're
unhappy the next day but when you're
fulfilled i think it's more long-lasting
and probably a better thing
so
how did you craft that message for your
kids one thing that seems like you've
really established yourself as in your
career somebody who's deeply persuasive
able to like you said a good leader get
people to go somewhere that's going to
be good for them how did you set your
kids up for that for pursuing happiness
or fulfillment
there was a famous book that was written
called presidential power and in it it
was written by a man named richard
neustadt and he said look president
doesn't have that much power he only has
the power to persuade and as i thought
about it that's what life is all about
persuading somebody to do something go
on your show read your book uh greeted
with your theories life is all about
persuading people even albert einstein
couldn't come up with e equals m c
squared and everybody said you're right
he had to go persuade people that he was
correct about that so persuasion is very
important so there are three ways to
persuade and communicate one
orally you're a good talker you're
martin luther king you're abraham
lincoln a good writer you're mark twain
you write very well
but the most powerful way is by
leading by example persuading by example
so with my kids i was a hard worker and
i tried to educate them about the value
of hard work i read a lot i try to
educate them about the value of reading
uh treating other people well i try to
educate them but children learn by
seeing what their parents do if your
parents are are doing certain things and
they're telling kids to do the opposite
that's probably not going to work so you
have to kind of do what you're you're
trying to get your kids to do and lead
by example now nobody's a perfect parent
i'm certainly not but um you know trying
to lead by example is probably what i
tried to do and and to some extent uh it
worked and you know my kids are not
perfect i'm not perfect and everybody
has their flaws but i think generally
they're reasonably happy and generally
they're reasonably successful by normal
human standards at this stage in their
life
[Music]
we grow up with these things i call
invisible scripts and these are the
scripts that are beliefs that are so
powerful
we don't even realize that they're
they're around us that's why they're
invisible so a classic one in america is
the american dream is
buying a house
where did that come from and in fact
there's all these phrases that people
use like
you're throwing money away on rent they
don't make more land you know and on and
on
if you really deconstruct that and you
actually run the numbers you might
discover that actually buying a house is
often not the best investment and this
is super counter-intuitive people get
really mad because real estate is
religion in america but if you actually
dive in deep you might discover wow
there's a lot of parties who want me to
spend a ton of money that's why for
example i could buy today but i rent and
when people hear it they're like wait i
thought i will teach you to be rich guys
rich so why is he renting they get very
confused because real estate is religion
you know another thing that is um really
common today for people is there's no
way to get ahead right especially for
young people social security won't be
around et cetera et cetera
and i just don't believe in that i think
if you go on to reddit or you go on to
these places where it's a
it's a lot of people who are
disaffected young people they create an
echo chamber of other people who want to
victimize themselves then you have a
choice do you want to be reading those
threads or like i was reading the
comments on your youtube videos i was
like these are the best youtube comments
i've ever seen people are positive
constructive they're pointing out things
they saw in the 32nd minute of the video
meaning they actually watched the whole
thing
those are the kind of people that i want
people to be around so it's not
impossible to make money there's
actually a lot of people making money
it's not impossible to get ahead pay off
debt even invest and grow there's a lot
of people doing it but if you're
surrounded by people who constantly
complain about how difficult it is and
it's impossible guess what you're going
to absorb those invisible scripts
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i was just talking to a good friend of
mine who i grew up with and he was like
oh i knew you'd be rich one day and i
grew up teetering white color blue color
so like i was definitely not set up to
be wealthy i didn't know anybody who was
wealthy didn't know anybody who'd been
successful
and he was like oh i knew you're going
to be rich and i was like why and he
said because you get what you believe in
and he said you believed money was like
a thing that it was super powerful he
said you used to talk about all the
[ __ ] time interesting and of course i
anybody that knows my story knows for
decades i chased money it was my stated
goal i wasn't that didn't feel weird to
me i was just like yeah i want to be
rich and i was pursuing that doggedly
yeah and of course only end up getting
rich once i let go of like understanding
that that wasn't going to make me happy
so i set that aside but because i had
all these positive beliefs about that it
was possible that it could happen to
anybody i never thought to not chase it
yeah and so the company that my partners
and i built that ended up being the
billion dollar success and just like
crazy
we started it in 2009 at like the height
of the recession and so it's like
it just never occurred to me to to think
that way and you said something one of
your talks in the book i can't remember
which place but was like
even in those moments
people can be successful but if you're
telling yourself that you're not going
to be successful then you don't take the
actions yeah walk me through like how do
you get through to people who have these
scripts they're shutting down they're
not taking those steps like do you have
sort of entry-level movements for them
for sure many of us if if you take
somebody and you just talk i do this a
lot they'll be at one of my talks or
they are on my newsletter or following
me on instagram and uh i'll give you an
amazing example that just happened
recently i had a woman who wrote me and
she said ramit can you help me convince
my husband not to waste money
and i go okay what what's going on she
goes he spends so much money on iced tea
and i was like here we go
i go how much money and she goes he buys
iced tea 20 times a month like almost
every day i said how much is this iced
tea she said it's a dollar fifty each
time so in my head i'm like this is
insane like why are we even talking
about this but i knew there's something
here so i want to unpack it i said out
of curiosity what's your household
income
no response for 20 minutes okay and then
finally she comes back she goes i'm not
comfortable sharing that
i said just give me a range okay what do
you think her her and her husband's
household income is i know the story i
i would have guessed otherwise
80 000 100 000 like a nice
six hundred thousand
and the this is a perfect example like
rationally and logically we should
literally not be talking about this
because it's a rounding error but
there's something going on in her belief
system
that made her
fixate on iced tea
and so for anybody whether it's iced tea
or whether it's you know lattes is a
classic example everybody tells you not
to spend money i'm like that's the worst
advice ever buy as many lattes as you
want or some people they just love
for example clothes right i like clothes
they love it
but everybody around them has told them
things like that's shallow that's a
waste of money you should invest in your
roth ira and so what do they do all of
us we're torn apart because we live in a
paradoxical society that is both
puritanical telling us we should retreat
into a cave and do nothing but then we
go on instagram and everyone's in bora
bora where it's ridiculous and so what
do we do we just buy everything and then
we feel guilty it's the worst
possible response so what i do is first
i say
what do you love spending money on love
and nobody talks about this they always
say oh let me see your budget you're
overspinning and everyone's just like ah
forget this i'll never come on here and
berate someone for their spending
because i've seen it all
when they talk about what they love then
i say what would it feel like to be able
to spend two times or four times as much
on them people have never thought like
that
then once we start from a place of
aspiration of what do we want
let's work through the mechanics of how
to get there dude i love that so much
and in in your book you talk about like
starting with what you want instead of
what you don't want you also talk about
like what's that money dial what's the
thing like for you that you really get
amped up about and i was like the funny
thing is i'm doing this research you
have to imagine this i'm doing this
research in a room that i like don't
usually let people go into
and it's known as the comic room okay
and if you go in the comic book room you
will see there it's just like stacked
comics everywhere okay and that's my my
iced tea like if my wife were going to
complain about what does tom spend his
money on outside of the business of
course it's that like now why do you
love those comic books well that's
that's a very involved story but i will
say that there's something unique about
comic books that give you um these
really big ideas very rapidly okay love
it and then let me let me share this
story that just happened a couple days
ago here in l.a um i was giving a talk
and i asked somebody what what they love
spending on and she said clothes she
said she loves buying clothes i said she
was so excited i love just whenever you
ask people their eyes light up and i
asked her what would it look like uh if
you quadrupled your spending and she
said i would have clothes everywhere
like all day long i'd be ordering online
i'd be sending half of them back
and i said where do you shop and she
said topshop and i said okay so you
quadrupled your spending where would you
shop she said topshop i just have a lot
more.
and it was fascinating because when you
ask people what they love spending on
and what if they could spend more what
would they do most people have never
thought about it she had limited herself
into the box of topshop now i don't know
topshop's perfectly fine that's fine but
i guarantee you if you quadrupled or
10xed your spending on the thing you
love your money dial
you might shop at a different brand you
might even
fly to the
factory that makes them and get a
behind-the-scenes tour as i did when we
went on our honeymoon so
why i'm sharing this is that
so many of us operate in a linear way oh
if i have this thing i like i like
coffee i might get two coffees a day but
what if you actually truly love it you
might go to the coffee factory and bring
your family with you so there's this
whole idea of what you can do with a
rich life and it doesn't just mean more
stuff
it could be experiences it could be
security like buying a house in a place
that keeps you safe or staying in a
hotel where you're around things that
are comfortable for you there's so many
different ways to look at a rich life
and most people i want to challenge them
to really think what it would feel like
to spend more on the thing they love of
course if they cut costs mercilessly on
the things they don't
[Music]
everybody should always ask themselves
if they want to grow and they just don't
want to just
whatever is is say where can i be in
five years if i can't be at this
position in five years then this isn't a
good career path for me i think
everything is career path i'd love to
talk about that so your career path is
crazy
and awe inspiring so how much of that
was mapped out like when you had that
single restaurant in texas how big were
you dreaming we already think in
aquariums like how much of this is
you're just going and you're taking a
deal as it comes how much of it is you
discovered as you went let's do it
another way let's go back to
10 years old i walked around with my my
business my briefcase
full of business there was no business
in it but i wanted to be a business guy
but you really didn't know what it was
by junior high i was buying candy and
reselling it at school by high school i
was already trading on the stock market
so let's take these one at a time so the
candy sales
who gave you that idea did you just
understand oh if i can buy it for less
and i sell it then i can make money
that's just hey doing whatever it took
to make money i always wanted to make
money i always had money even when i was
a kid because i always worked whatever
job i could find whether it was
mowing somebody's yard or washing cars
or selling lemonade to the construction
workers
it was just always about making money
what made you good at selling that is a
very particular skill you know
i'm
even today
it's it's all about somebody said why
are you so successful because i sell and
even when you go out and you raise
billions of dollars in debt
and you're meeting with debt holders
you're still selling yourself that's
what it's all about you're not just
selling the deal when i was public for
18 years okay and you're selling equity
i did five follow-on offerings the most
a restaurant company ever did when i was
public
and
and you're selling yourself and and and
you know you know your numbers you know
your business and you make yourself that
you know more than everybody else even
if you don't
to dig beyond the sort of mythology of
just the kid carrying the briefcase and
oh this comes naturally at some point
this becomes somewhat systematic so if
you're going to be a sponge you have to
put yourself in a position to be a
sponge you have to know who to listen to
who to ignore how did you begin to
formulate that and
what does that process look like now
well i knew how to make money and so at
21 i sold bottoms i start building homes
building shopping centers
by the time i was 26 i built my first
hotel by the time i was 25 i told myself
i'll have my first jet at 35
and i did
so
i was an investor in a restaurant and
then when the world collapsed in the
late 80s
you couldn't develop anything in texas
for the next 10 years that's when every
snl failed like i said every bank failed
and i just started opening restaurants
and did that between like 86 and 92 and
then 93. i said well you know what i'll
just build restaurants because i
understand this business
since you can't develop anymore and i'll
take it public because that's when the
whole big thing of restaurant chains
going public did that for the next 17
years
and uh then was an opportunist which i
always talk about is that my stock
crashed with everybody else in 0.809
when i took it public i owned 100 in 93
you wake up you're worth 100 million
dollars i took it private in 09 and
you're worth 500 million dollars it was
very successful bought it right and then
you know i could really grow then
because i didn't have the handcuffs of
being a public company and when you
think about the fundamentals of a
business when you're going into evaluate
a deal or whatever
what like key things do you look for
well everything is uh
occupancy cost uh term of lease do they
own any real estate
what are their margins i'm not real
smart but i know how to do that okay i
can analyze the numbers of any business
and tell you what your margin should be
or whatever because my production cost
is this i have this many subscribers you
should be doing this or that and i don't
care what the business is so that's what
i know how to do
and so
if i try to make the right deal and i do
heavy due diligence and and then
hopefully you can
continue to grow your net worth
and if somebody wanted to get good at
what you're good at what would you
recommend they do you know i think you
know if you know business or not and
people ask me should i go get my mba and
you know what i usually tell them you
know if you need to go get your mba if
you don't have it inside of you and you
understand economics and finance and
and operations of business then you need
to go get it i knew that i didn't need
it it was just a god-given gift but also
remember i didn't get a lot of those
other gifts don't ask me to play that
guitar don't ask me to sing you a song
and don't ask me to draw you anything
but but you've got to know your
god-given gifts and everybody has it
everybody in this room has it right here
so do what you know was your god-given
gift and find a way to use that as your
path
so when you think about
somebody stepping into career and
building something obviously there's an
element of okay you need to figure out
what you're good at what you're not good
at
do you believe that people can improve
the things that they're not good at
should they just entirely not think
about that and partner with people that
have a different skill set um you've
said do not partner with somebody that
has the same skills you read the book
you read the book
absolutely but at the same time uh i've
made myself you know understand uh i.t
information technology and if you talk
to any ceo of any company they'll tell
you that's the one department that you
do not want to uh because no matter who
you bring in everybody has their own way
of doing it and and i've just still made
myself
uh understand technology even though i'm
not a millennial i try to at least know
a little bit about every single
department even if i don't know it a lot
and so walk me through you want to learn
about i.t what do you do you googling it
or do you go sit down with the head of
i.t and say teach me everything no i
just i i want to i want to know
everything i want to understand this you
know you know malware how people are are
getting into all of our systems and
hackiness and
and uh that's a process for learning
though just sitting down and saying you
got to make me smarter on this you got
to you got to help me through these
steps because i don't get it don't go
into too much minutia because you'll
lose me because i'm not that smart but
you've got to give me the steps of why
this is happening or not happening and
that's something that everybody should
do you don't have to understand you know
that i'm going to go and be able to
program something or or write something
but but we should all if we're running a
company understand some portion of it uh
when i'm shooting billion dollar buyer i
know what all these different people do
and exactly what they're doing and how
important you know each person is and
and uh it's just trying to understand
what you do and it makes you appreciate
that person and how smart they are at
that job too and how important they are
to your company all right let's say i'm
one of your kids i want to
take over the business one day what how
are you going to help me absorb the
business fundamentals does it just
follow you around is it you're going to
hand me a list of tillman-isms like what
does that process this this is this is a
really great question that you just
asked because i've had people say to me
why don't you let your kids work for me
for a while instead of just working for
you and then other people said you
should put them in one department and
let them learn that department
and and uh
and
you know what i've said and i really
think i'm doing it right and we'll see
only time will tell there's so many
departments you're talking about
a four billion dollar revenue company
with 60 000 employees and 700 million in
ebitda that does everything from you
know i have 25 biologists that work for
me at aquariums so everything from
aquariums to amusement parks to five
casinos to restaurants to
an nba basketball team okay just
everything you can think of
i'm teaching them
to make decisions
because that's really what it's all
about
is learn how to make decisions
see how
i make decisions every day about
everything whether it's a little
decision
or a big decision
and they've been doing that with me
and they and they're pretty smart
we don't know that we could run this
without you
so it's kind of interesting because it's
just it's them sitting in meetings and
seeing how i make decisions is the best
thing i can do for them
[Music]
i think that um
over the last 50 years we've become
obsessed with um financial growth and it
and as a country or as a globe i would
say the west primarily i would say the
west and that and that has had a lot of
power it began in the us
um
and and this belief that all decisions
uh like
i believe there's an implicit belief
that the
the correct choice in any decision is
whichever option makes the most money
and i've been in enough executive
meetings at kickstarter and other
companies where routinely you face 50 50
decisions where option a has a
clear financial outcome and then there's
some downsides that are hard to quantify
but like they're there and there's
option b that has a lesser financial
outcome and less of those and also less
of those downsides and nine times out of
ten they're going to choose option name
because it's justifiable you can only
defend option b in a crisis where you
feel like you have to apologize that's
the only time you generally go for the
one that's not maxing out for that and
it sounds innocent enough it sounds
innocent enough but when that happens
repeatedly you see a decay in in other
spaces but
i think our focus on financial value has
been has been perfectly rational you
know there's like a keynesian like
economic argument milton friedman
argument for like the rationality of
financial value gdp does correlate to
many positive things about society
there's a lot there for sure it's not
like we've been off the rails wrong
uh but it's gotten out of control and
the the fascinating opportunity that we
have now is that the the ability to
define new values to distribute goods to
make decisions has has never been
greater right technology technology
allows us to measure things in such more
intricate ways like if you can imagine
in the past someone says let's let's
make a decision other than money it's
like okay well what what are we looking
at what are we counting here it's hard
to say but in the book i give an example
of adele the pop star adele
she goes on tour uh when her tickets go
on sale they immediately get bought by
scalpers and then people have to pay
hundreds or thousands of dollars more
adele found this startup that had built
an algorithm that would measure how
loyal a fan was to her as an artist it
analyzed their listening data whatever
and allowed her to invite the top 20
percentile adele fans in each market
offer them a ticket for 50 bucks
they could resell the ticket if they
want but and the show's still adele made
money but the idea was that for
maximizing for this loyal communal value
set that there would be a different kind
of experience one thing that i think is
important to note about that story is
that when you talk about this in the
book that
artists can actually cooperate with
ticketmaster maybe others to actually
get a portion of the scalped price so
it's not like for adele it didn't matter
she actually could have benefited
benefited from that which i i found it
made the argument even more compelling
to me yeah and so for adele adele is
just looking at this with a a different
value set right she's still thinking of
her self-interest like she's playing
shows she's like making money um but yet
what she is optimizing for is not her
own take she's optimizing for a fan's
experience and and again it's that's
very basic but like to do this in a way
that's mathematical that's replicable
that's scalable
to me suggests a different kind of
transaction and a different kind of
decision where
it is building on top of that financial
value like this wouldn't work for adele
she was losing money every show right
like that wouldn't work she's satisfying
a threshold but the point is that she's
only trying to satisfy that threshold
and the opportunities she sees as a
layer above that now what's interesting
is that this is self-interested for
adele right if she does this she creates
more loyalty and that probably creates
even longer term fans and you could very
easily argue well this works out better
for adele in the long run and that's
exactly it that's exactly it it could
work out better for the long run for all
of us too right this same the same kind
of thinking um and the same way of
approaching our goals of not just
maximizing for now me
uh is
that's that's the secret that's the
secret that's the secret to more
meaningful success that's the secret to
to be meaningful in culture um and so
adele's choice is yes it's it's easier
for someone like her or taylor swift to
give up some of the money right but we
also all know that there are moments
where you don't take the job at the
higher salary because the commute's too
long basically it requires too many
other sacrifices right we as individuals
i think know how to navigate those kinds
of situations they're hard they're hard
they're especially hard if we're in a
place of desperation
but collectively collectively it's like
we've given up we aren't even trying to
make decisions for anything other than
financial outcomes in part because we've
lacked the language or the justification
and so i believe my my book is a part of
a
uh not this is not i mean i'm the only
person making this argument um but i
think that this is the trend that's
happening now and and i think in in this
idea propose a bentoism i think i have a
a practical way for us to get that
brings us to bento-ism the bento box the
thing now i'm dying i needed people to
understand all of that so that we can
get into this um it's a really
interesting concept lay that out for
people and then know that i'm gonna
press you until i understand oh you use
my bento box
to get to decision making well i
um
you know i just uh i'm a curious person
i love to read i love to understand and
i'm like
i'm very non-judgmental like i really i
i
there's a i learned a phrase recently of
meta-modernism after post-modernism is
meta-modernism and meta-modernism is to
look at things without judgment and
simply look for what's useful
and the idea is that like this is this
is the this is the current view is that
like you can hate
amazon while also reading like bezos
shareholder letter every year because
he's like brilliant right you know what
it's like there's this you're just
simply looking for the utility of things
and that this is like this emergent
mindset so i i again i'm like i'm not a
i'm not a bomb thrower i'm a reformer
i'm like uh dude i love that about your
book honestly i wasn't um i'm never sure
when people have sort of this grand idea
of where we're gonna go if it's just a
reaction against what we have or if it's
like you said finding the utility um and
that comes across in every every
interview i've heard with you certainly
in the book
it's very even-handed like you said it's
not like capitalism is some evil thing
it's just incomplete and so you know
where do we go what do we take that's
working what do we discard that's not i
find that very useful i started giving
talks while i was ceo about this idea of
like there's this value system that's
running away
i first started talking about it when i
saw my neighborhood in new york city uh
the lower east side flipped from
gentrification and just like
watching this insanity of every
storefront around me turning into a bank
and being like what how does this make
sense and um and just started talking
about this in a way that
it was like people could feel it
um
so i spent i spent a couple years or
many years just trying to understand
this reading a lot of philosophy a lot
of economics like kind of going to the
sources like what is the
what is the argument for utilitarianism
why is money the most utilitarian value
what is the how have we defended other
values
and my belief my assumption was always
that financial value is simply the first
value we've learned to rationally
express that financial value is a proxy
for goodness
that is mathematical and that is
tradable and that is universal and that
that process can be repeated for other
values