773 Take Your Business to a New Level with the Shark Tank Masters

PRESSURE ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. What makes one business succeed and another fail? The most important element is the entrepreneur. If you watch the show Shark Tank, you know that people get investments from sharks just by being a passionate salesperson. It’s about going all in. So how can we ensure that what we put our time and money into will be unstoppable? We have to learn from the people who are at the top of their game. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I’ve combined great advice from past conversations with five Shark Tank masters: Barbara Corcoran, Matt Higgins, Daymond John, Sara Blakely, and Kevin Harrington. Shark Tank is a critically acclaimed and Emmy Award-winning reality show on ABC. Now on its 10th season, Shark Tank continues to inspire a nation to dream bigger and has offered more than $100 million in deals to entrepreneurs. These investors come from some of the top companies in the world. They started from nothing and made their dreams come true. So get ready to learn how to get your business off the ground and make it a force to be reckoned with on Episode 773. In This Episode You Will Learn: The hardest part of getting Spanx off the ground (8:00) How Kevin Harrington's business model has evolved since Shark Tank (15:00) The big things people taught Daymond John about mastering his skills (25:00) What to do when you go all in but fail (29:00) What to do with the profit you make in your business (30:59) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 773 with the Shark Tank Masters.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  Theodore Isaac Rubin said, happiness does not come from doing easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. Welcome to this special edition with the Shark Tank Masters. Now, if you're an entrepreneur, or you just like the show Shark Tank, we've had a number of the Sharks on this podcast, on the School of Greatness, and they've been some of our biggest interviews, some of the most inspiring stories come from entrepreneurs who've had nothing, who've been through so many extreme challenges in their life, and yet they went on to become billionaires, famous inventors, successful entrepreneurs,

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  and they've gone on Shark Tank to share their stories and help other young entrepreneurs grow their businesses and brand. And in this interview, we've got Sarah Blakely, who is an American billionaire businesswoman, founder of Spanx, super inspiring, one of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World list. We've got Kevin Harrington, who's an entrepreneur and business executive. He's the founder of As Seen on TV. He's been on Shark Tank and a massive keynote speaker and author. We've got Daymond John, my friend, who is a bestselling author. Inventor, investor, personality and motivational speaker.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  We've got him in the house. We've got Matt Higgins, who is co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures, a private investment firm that focuses on sports and entertainment, media and marketing, food and lifestyle and technology. And we've got Barbara Corcoran, who is an investor, speaker, consultant, and massive TV personality. Began her career in the seventies with real estate and just blew up in the NYC real estate industry. And in this episode, we talk about what the hardest part of getting a company off the ground is for entrepreneurs. How to evolve your business model and reinvent. This is something that keeps coming up for me is in the industry of social media and digital marketing and people's attention spans constantly getting smaller and smaller. How do

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  we reinvent to build businesses? How to continue to master your skills and sales and marketing and branding? What to do when you go all in and you fail? That's a common question. And what to do with profit when you make it in your business? How do you spend your money so that you grow and protect yourself? Super pumped about this one. Powerful episode. Make sure to share with your friends, lewishouse.com/773 and let me know at Lewis Howes on Instagram, what you think when you're sharing it out. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors and I am so excited about this interview with the one and only Shark Tank Masters.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  Did you wake up every morning and say, this is my dream to sell fax machines door to door? Were you thinking, what am I doing in my life?

• 3:34Sara Blakely?

  Exactly. So what happened was, a lot of people think that Spanx started when I cut the feet out of my pantyhose, but actually it started long before that. It started when I was selling fax machines door to door and getting my car, business card ripped up in my face, being escorted out of buildings all day, every day. Then I woke up one day and just thought, I'm in the wrong movie. Like, how did this happen? This is not my life.

• 3:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Sara Blakely?

  Cut scene, director, like, call the producer. And I got out a piece of paper and I wrote down, what am I good at? And the only thing in the good column was sales. And I thought, okay, what am I gonna do with that? And I ended up writing in my journal, I'm going to invent a product and sell it to millions of people that will make them feel good. And then I asked the universe for an idea. And I was very specific. And it took two years. And I only cut the feet out of my pantyhose one time. And I was not gonna squander any idea the universe gave me because I had really asked for it. And then the minute I cut the feet out, I started trying to make it. I started looking up manufacturers on the internet.

• 4:35Lewis Howes?

  How did you find a manufacturer at that time?

• 4:37Sara Blakely?

  A website called Thomas Registry dot com. And it lists all the manufacturers in the country, based on category. And that's when I found out that a lot of hosiery and undergarments were being made in North Carolina.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh, really?

• 4:49Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so you got a local?

• 4:50Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 4:51Lewis Howes?

  I mean, US, yeah.

• 4:52Sara Blakely?

  So I called and called and no one would take my call. And they'd either hang up on me or say they weren't interested. So I took a week off of work and drove around in person.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  And just showed up and said?

• 5:03Sara Blakely?

  I just showed up.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  Hey, I wanna create a sample?

• 5:05Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 5:06Lewis Howes?

  Cause if they weren't gonna get a big order for something, they're probably like, what's, I gotta do a little sample for you.

• 5:10Sara Blakely?

  Right.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah.

• 5:11Sara Blakely?

  I showed up with my lucky red backpack from college, always with me.

• 5:15Lewis Howes?

  You still have it?

• 5:16Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, of course. So, anyway, I went into the manufacturing plants and they asked me the same three questions. And you are, let's say, Sarah Blakely? And you're with?

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  Uh, myself.

• 5:28Sara Blakely?

  Sarah Blakely? And you're financially backed by? And I was like, Sarah Blakely! So you can imagine how those went. It was like, well, have a nice day, honey, and good luck. And about, you know, a few weeks after I made all those rounds, I got a call from a guy in North Carolina who had took pity on me and said, Sarah, I've decided to make your crazy idea. I'm gonna ask him why the change of heart? He said, I have three daughters. Yeah, so he ran the idea by them. And they're like, Dad, that sounds interesting. You gotta give that girl a chance.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. So he called you back. You didn't follow up with these people?

• 6:03Sara Blakely?

  Oh, yeah, I was following up, but to no avail.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  But he he followed up and said,

• 6:07Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  We'll give it a shot.

• 6:08Sara Blakely?

  Yes.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  We'll make this. So what was the next step? Was he just making a sample for you or testing different models or sizes or?

• 6:14Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, so it just set up to make the garment. While I was making it with his manufacturing plant, I was also wanting to patent the idea and I was also trying to come up with the name for the invention. So I was doing those three things simultaneously, driving up on the weekends and working with Ted in the back of the manufacturing plant that I'd become very close with and

• 6:35Lewis Howes?

  Driving to North Carolina from Florida.

• 6:37Sara Blakely?

  No, from Atlanta. I was living in Atlanta at the time. Ted Ted became my buddy and I went to get it patented, but all the patent lawyers wanted between three and $5,000 and I had $5,000 set aside to do this.

• 6:49Lewis Howes?

  That's it, yeah.

• 6:50Sara Blakely?

  So I wrote my own patent. I went to Barnes and Noble.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 6:54Sara Blakely?

  And I bought a book called Patents and Trademarks. And I wrote the patent and then I called one of the patent lawyers that was the nicest to me and said, please, please, please, will you write the claims over the weekend for a discounted price? I've done all the other rest of the patent.

• 7:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the legwork you'd done.

• 7:10Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Lewis Howes?

  You just kind of needed to button it up and

• 7:11Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, he needed to do the legal part. And so he did. He actually admitted to me that when I came to visit him, he thought I'd been sent by Candid Camera. Which, let me put it in your words.

• 7:21Lewis Howes?

  I know Candid Camera. I know.

• 7:22Sara Blakely?

  He thought he was being punked.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course. Wow.

• 7:27Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, he thought he was being punked, okay? And he thought

• 7:30Lewis Howes?

  Where's Ashton? Where's Ashton?

• 7:31Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, exactly. He thought that his friends were playing a joke on him.

• 7:36Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 7:36Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, he goes,

• 7:37Lewis Howes?

  Who's this girl?

• 7:38Sara Blakely?

  Sarah. I mean, like, you're not the typical person who walks in the door saying, I've got a product and I want to patent it. So anyway, he did that. Then at the same time, I'm trying to think of the name. I had horrible names written on scrap pieces of paper all over the place in my apartment, in my car, in rental cars on the back of like Avis agreements. And you want to hear how bad the runner up name to Spanx was?

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Sara Blakely?

  Open Toad Delilah's.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 8:02Sara Blakely?

  Yes.

• 8:02Lewis Howes?

  I cannot believe that was even an option.

• 8:04Sara Blakely?

  It was, it was a runner up. Like, how bad is that?

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  Open Toad Delilah?

• 8:08Sara Blakely?

  I so wouldn't be sitting here with you right now if I named it that.

• 8:11Lewis Howes?

  That is the horrible, yeah.

• 8:12Sara Blakely?

  It's so bad.

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:14Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, so anyway, okay, so.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  What does Spanx stand for?

• 8:17Sara Blakely?

  Well, it's all about the butt. It makes your mind wander a little bit. Nobody ever forgets it. I had no money to advertise. It was risky. It was fun. At the time, listen, now it's become a household name. But when I first invented it, I would call people and say, hi, I'm Sarah from Spanx, and they would hang up.

• 8:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, because it felt like a porn.

• 8:32Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, they thought I was pranking them. I'm called, I'm like, no, really, I'm Sarah, and my company really is called Spanx. And I had department stores across the country that wouldn't sell it. They thought it was too risque of a name. Yep. And my mom sent her whole lunch into the wrong website when I first started. I was like, Mom, it's with an X. It's super important. It's with an X. So, yeah, anyway. I ended up buying the word Spanx from a man who said he was holding out from the porn industry. Funny enough that you say that.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  I bet, yeah.

• 9:04Sara Blakely?

  I paid.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  Spanx with an X.

• 9:06Sara Blakely?

  I paid some money for that. But, um, anyway, yes, so.

• 9:11Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 9:11Sara Blakely?

  Named it Spanx. It came to me because I narrowed down my thinking. I knew that Kodak and Coca-Cola were the two most recognized names in the world at the time. And I thought, what do they have in common? I like to think about words and phrases a lot. They both had a strong K sound in them. And the man that created Kodak liked the K sound so much, he took a K and put it in the beginning and the end of the word and played with letters in the alphabet. So, and I also had a bunch of friends who did stand-up comedy, and it's this weird trade secret among comedians that the K sound will make your audience laugh. So I put all that together and I'm like, okay, I want my product name to have the K sound in it for good luck. And literally, Spanx came across my dashboard in my car in my mind, and I pulled off the side of the road. I wrote it down. I went home that night. I typed it in my computer for $150 with my credit card.

• 9:56Sara Blakely?

  And at the last second, I backspaced the K and the S and put in an X and hit send.

• 10:01Lewis Howes?

  So it was an accident? Kind of with the X.

• 10:03Sara Blakely?

  No, I know.

• 10:04Lewis Howes?

  You backspaced, gotcha.

• 10:05Sara Blakely?

  I backspaced because I stared at it for a while and I had done research that made up words do better for product than real words and they're easier to trademark.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Sara Blakely?

  So then, then I had the name and I had the, the, the, um, patent in the works. Got my prototype and my patent lawyer said, Sarah, I need to know what's in this garment in order to write the patent. I said, okay, no problem. We'll call Ted. So I get Ted on the phone. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to?

• 10:31Lewis Howes?

  Manufacturer.

• 10:32Sara Blakely?

  Yeah, like in the back, in the back. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to my patent lawyer? He's like, yeah. So we're all talking and he goes, I go, can you tell him what's in it? He's like, yeah, well, it's 70% nylon and 30% lacquer. And I'm like, all right. And so I'm taking notes, my patent lawyer's taking notes and that night I could not sleep. I'm up all night and the next morning I wake up, I'm like, how is there lacquer in this product?

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  What is lacquer just, I'm aware of?

• 10:58Sara Blakely?

  It's like paint thinner or something.

• 10:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:59Sara Blakely?

  So I called.

• 11:00Lewis Howes?

  30% paint thinner?

• 11:02Sara Blakely?

  So I called Ted, I go, Ted, can you spell lacquer? He's like, yeah, L Y C R A. I'm like, oh my God, Lycra.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 11:13Sara Blakely?

  Okay, got it. Do an all change on lacquer immediately.

• 11:16Lewis Howes?

  An all change.

• 11:18Sara Blakely?

  My patent lawyer was laughing. He's like, you know how fast you would have gotten a patent if you, um, tried to make this out of paint thinner? He's like, they would be like, sure.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  So was it challenging to get it? Did you get it the first try?

• 11:30Sara Blakely?

  The patent? I did.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Usually it takes a few turns, doesn't it?

• 11:33Sara Blakely?

  I got the patent the first try and I got the, um, trademark name Spanx.

• 11:38Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 11:39Sara Blakely?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Lewis Howes?

  So it didn't seem like there was that many challenges. Once you submitted it or whatever, you kind of got the things you needed in place. You got the, the orders in. Was, was there a lot of challenges after that? Once you got the patent, the trademark?

• 11:52Sara Blakely?

  That was a really hard part. It's just, I heard the word no for two years. Yeah. All the manufacturers, nobody thought it was a good idea.

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:59Sara Blakely?

  And, um, and also when you're just yourself trying to break into an industry, like you mentioned, the manufacturers, it's not really in their best interest to slow down machines or try to give a girl with a couple of grand a chance.

• 12:11Lewis Howes?

  Unless you're gonna give them a bunch of money for a big order of something. It's like, what's the point?

• 12:14Sara Blakely?

  Right.

• 12:20Lewis Howes?

  What's the proven model that everyone needs? Whether it's gonna be a mega hit, or maybe it's not gonna work, but it needs it either way.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  The formula.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  My business model, coming off Shark Tank, is, people would see me on Shark Tank, and they're like, "I wonder, what do people really want when they go on Shark Tank?" They want money. But, then they, people would come to me off of the show, and like, email me, and say, "Look, "I do want money, and I need money, but if I could just do a deal with you, you open up your Rolodex, maybe we can go raise money together." So, so that is sort of my new model over the last, um, about four or five years, is, I, what I do is I take strategic, um, uh, kind of, um, advisory positions, board positions, public companies, as well as startups.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And, um, and so that really has been really fun, because I've got equity, and a little company that started at 10 cents a share, it's now $3.60.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And, you know, what could be so bad to get a lot of shares in those kind of deals, right? So, I have tens of millions of, of shares of public companies. You know, I think Tim Ferriss is kind of doing this kind of stuff. Get in on the ground floor, and take a little equity, and, and open up the Rolodex and all that. So, I, I, I really love, and, and I'm, and I'll bring some capital to the table if it's needed, but if somebody's like, "Hey, I need a million dollars," I can't just fund every deal that needs a million dollars, because eventually you run out of money, right? You know, and, um, plus, I'm, I have a, I'm, I'm, I'm married now twice, and my new wife, and, you know, we've been together 14 years, so, that's new, because I have a 28-year-old

• 14:02Speaker 02

  son from my first marriage, and 19-year-old boy also, but, she's like, you know, you can't be everything to everybody, so, you have to kind of pick and choose what you want to do, and focus on the winners, and the winning people with a winning business.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's really, you know, because the assing the TV businesses, they're in the middle of disruption, because it's no secret, there's a lot less people watching TV today than there was five years ago. In fact, it's fifty percent less than it was ten years ago. No way. Yeah. Cause everyone's online. Yeah, they're online. They're on, I mean, I'll give you a great example. My nineteen year old started college, went over, got his apartment for him, and the furniture's being delivered. The cable guy shows up, and I said, great, what, you know, what cable package did you get, Nick? And he said, oh, um, sorry to tell you, Dad, but he's just putting in internet. Just to watch Apple TV or Netflix or whatever. I don't watch TV. I'm like, how do you think we're paying for your college education?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  And, you know, you're getting at least a basic channel package. See an infomercial. I need to be able to watch some shows when I'm over here hanging out at your place. So we, you know, so we got cable. But, I mean, I'm like, I was almost, I mean, he knew he was gonna offend me by not getting something, but he wasn't telling me till I got there. So, kids don't watch TV like, like, you know? I mean, I, I, I used to, you know, in the very beginning, I had five channels. Then we got, then I had the thirty channel package. And that's how I created this whole infomercial space. Is one day I'm watching TV, and the screen went dark, and then it put bars up, and that was Discovery Channel. It was dark for six hours. And, uh, yeah, with bars on the screen. And you're like, I should buy that every time.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I said, yeah, I said, Discovery, for the first five years of its existence, was an eighteen hour a day network. Shut up. And I bought the six hours nationwide from Discovery. Yeah, back in the, back in the, in the mid eighties. And by the way, we paid them a thousand dollars a day for six hours. And that's three hundred sixty-five thousand dollars a year. And that was generating tens of millions of dollars in sales. That was a great media buy. So that was an extremely good media buy, and that was the early, early days, so. Before everyone got in and got competitive. And then, when that contract expired. That time block went from 365, it was a multi-year contract, for 28 million dollars.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  That's how beautiful. Twenty eight. Twenty eight. Three years for a thousand bucks a day? Yes, thousand bucks a day, yes. You got it. And it went for 28 million because it was generating tens of millions of dollars in sales. So, that's when I said, I gotta go to Europe, I gotta go to Asia, I gotta go to Latin America and start picking up these, all this downtime. Wow. So, that's. It's back in the eighties. This was in the eighties, so we went to Europe and Latin America, et cetera. Just bought it all up. Every, every place we could, we'd sign long-term contracts. How much does the media right now to buy on TV? It's outrageous. I mean, Discovery, what, what we were buying for a thousand a day, they'll, they have slots to go for $20,000 for 30 minutes now. Discovery. Is it worth it to buy this media? It's, it's becoming so difficult to make money off of, but our strategy's changed.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Billboard, right? It's like a billboard, but what we've had to do is tie it into Amazon and social media. And so, anymore today, if you just go on TV, you're not gonna make money. Just like call the phone and yeah. Yeah, you gotta go on TV and then have all the other elements around it. Ready. Ready to go. And, and then also pricing protected, because what do most people do now? They, they see it on TV, they actually. Go online. Go online to see if they can find it cheaper, and then there's knockoff guys that actually take out, hey, you've seen the new wave? Click here. Well, they've got something similar for half the price. Yeah, whatever.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Or whatever, right? So, it's a, it's a cutthroat business and, and we drive other people's sales with TV, for sure. Yeah. In fact, we, you know, like I said, when there was 20 resellers of that hair-growing helmet on Amazon, we had to clean them up. Cause what am, why am I gonna go on TV? No. And drive their sales? No. No, can't afford it. So, so it's a, it's a more sophisticated business today. But you're still active and aggressively buying media on TV? Yes, oh yeah. Even today, 30 years later? Oh yeah, absolutely. Even how competitive it is, how more expensive, it still works. Yeah, but we start on social media, actually. Wow. We start on Facebook, or Pinterest, or Instagram, or one of the social media channels, test it, and. See to get a few sales, then, okay. We call it test before we invest. That's it. Yeah, it's a focus group.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Proof of concept, yeah.

• 18:50Daymond John?

  I really mentally said to myself, "I'll get to know my daughters when they're 10 or 15 years old, because there is no time now. I have to be in Asia for six months at a time. I have to be doing this and that." And I questioned if it was the smartest move to do, but I said to myself, "You know what? If I was a sanitation worker, I would still..." Or, nothing wrong with that, but if I worked a city job, I would still work every overtime I could, because I need to be able to provide for them. Yeah. And now, I have my beautiful little two-year-old, and it's a different way of life now. Now, and going back to this, as we'll talk about the book, Rise and Grind, now, my theory is, "How much love can I give to this little being?" Yeah, because it has changed. Now, in my life, obviously, I am in a better place,

• 19:35Daymond John?

  and I have the opportunity to be able to give as much love as I can to her. Not that I don't give as much love as I can to my other daughters. They're my driving force as well. Right. So, do you feel like you have a little bit more balance now? Even you're working just as hard, but you feel like you take that time to... I do, but that's exactly how the theory for the book came around. I was... Because I don't see you slowing down, really. Right, so what was happening was, I looked at it and I said, "You know, I'm going on nine years of Shark Tank. I have hundreds of companies I work with and/or deal with, and I'm investing in a bunch of them. I have a new two-year-old. I have work-life balance. I want to get home to my lady. You know, I want to do the things I love to do:

• 20:19Daymond John?

  fish, or archery, or whatever, snowboard. I'm really good on the board, baby. But I want to do all those things." Yeah. How do I do it? And I went and I would go in to speak to other people that I respect, and I would say, "What's the tricks or the techniques you do to have work-life balance?" They all told me the same exact thing. But in different forms. Hmm. And I started to notice that I can improve in certain areas. Again, like you and I were talking, I don't know if it was on camera, off camera, but there is no one area of success or mastery you get to and you go, I'm done. Right? You know, you can, you can be somebody who's a master at juditsu or karate or something like that.

• 21:02Daymond John?

  And, you know, at 40 years old or 25 years old, you're a certain master. But at 80 years old, you don't have the same muscle retention or the same speed. So you have to learn to master it a different way. Kind of like when Ali came out of jail and they had stripped him of his prime, he had to learn the rope dope to beat George Foreman and he had to fight a different way. Can't just sit in the pocket and just grind it all day. Yeah, you can't, you can't do that, right? So I had to start figuring out how to master my grind today. Cause the Daymond John at 48 years old is not the grind that the Daymond John at 28 years old had. And I learned all these techniques from the book, from asking these people. Right, right. So what were the big things that people taught you then about this? How to navigate? So the theory in the book is I studied these 15 subjects in there and they have

• 21:45Daymond John?

  success from all various ways of life, whether it's Santana or Tyler, the creator, the Grammy award winning kid, or, you know, our buddy Kyle Maynor, who army crawled Mount Kilimanjaro with no arms and no legs, right? One of the most inspiring guys ever. He is, he, I mean, he made me feel like an absolute loser, right? And they all told me the same thing, but they told me in different ways and different formulas. And what I found, the takeaway is that everybody is extremely selfish. All successful people are extremely selfish in a very good way. Like Chris Sackel always says, you know, and a lot of these people here will not answer any emails for the first hour of the day because they believe that you give up all your power if you're answering everybody else's problems when you wake up.

• 22:28Daymond John?

  They'll send out emails and like Chris Sackel always says, his inbox is his defense, his outbox is his offense. They won't look at Instagram when they first wake up or anything else because they don't want to hear about how everybody else on the gram is looking beautiful, they're shorter, skinnier, whatever. They all got problems, right?

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  What would you say to anyone who's been playing small? When they maybe think they're playing big, they're listening or they're watching right now, but you know that we're all capable for more. What advice would you have for people playing small?

• 23:01Speaker 04

  I would say, take that boulder that you're chained to instead of behind you and throw it in front of you. Let it pull you forward. Like, do not, playing small is the best way to ensure that you won't ever achieve big dreams, right? That you have to, don't get comfortable where you're staying right now. Get uncomfortable right away and press ahead. Because you probably know that you, inside yourself, that you have more to give this world. And it's gonna haunt you one day when you look back. So, I do think there's something to be said for spending a little time, right? Look around, assess yourself, but quickly move off the dime and, and press ahead.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  In fact, my biggest regrets in business so far have been the times I've played small.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's true. Like, I, I don't regret the misses, and I understand why I did them. I don't understand why I played small. Right, there's no great excuse for playing small in retrospect.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean playing small? Is that like, I made a small investment in this, where I could've gone bigger?

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Exactly. I think mostly playing small for me looks like, I know I'm right. I'm nervous about optics. I'm nervous about being judged for being wrong, just in case. Or I'm insecure, whatever it is.

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  So we only put a hundred K in as opposed to a million?

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Exactly, or, or something's teetering, and I know I'm right, and I don't double down.

• 24:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Like, that is, now, I haven't made a lot of those, but those are the ones that I, that I regret. Because, and this is Steve's, my partner's point. Like, when you have a winner and you know it, those are hard to come by. Go all in, right? Like, we, and the spray and pray is nonsense. Spray and pray to me is the playground of people who wanna hedge all day long, and are afraid to be wrong, afraid to be wrong, right? I'd rather, and I'm sure there's investing index funds. Well, as I'm saying, right, right, then you'll do better anyway. Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. Get your annualized yield and you'll be fine. So I think when you have a winner, and your hands, doesn't matter if anybody else knows, you gotta press it. And that's, those are my biggest regrets.

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  Now, what happens when you press it and you go all in, big, and then you lose?

• 24:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  And you lose. All your money and all your time and energy, how do you look at those deals?

• 25:00Speaker 04

  Those are tough.

• 25:01Lewis Howes?

  And you felt like, well, I thought I was right and I knew it, but the market or this, the person, whatever.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Those are painful, but what I say is when you dissect it, you put the, you know, the patient on the table and you sort of do your postmortem, you will quickly find out the thing you missed. And the thing you missed is usually related to some misalignment in your character, your personality, right? Like, there was some, you were worried about the downside. You were worried about acknowledging that they needed to pivot. You didn't confront the CEO because you were, you didn't want to offend them. Like, you, you, I have not had a situation like that where I was not able to dissect what I could have.

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  Where you missed it.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Where I missed it. It's never, that's what's great about life. It's, we're all playing the same multiple, you know, patterns. Maybe there are like seven, you know, allegorical patterns playing out. There aren't new ones being created. So if you spend enough time paying attention, you can dissect it. So I'd much rather have gone all in and be wrong than have never gone in all in at all on the winners. Because you don't get many winners.

• 25:54Lewis Howes?

  Don't.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Right?

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  Big winners. You might get small winners, like, yeah, we made some money there that did well and we exited, but the big ones, there's like, how many of those every few years are the big winners?

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Well, I think for one, you have to see so many deals to spot a winner.

• 26:12Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious. You talked about the first year you made a profit, forty thousand dollars, I think you said.

• 26:18Barbara Corcoran?

  Forty-seven, I think.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  Forty-seven thousand, five hundred and sixty-two.

• 26:21Barbara Corcoran?

  Well, I know about that.

• 26:22Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. If someone is an entrepreneur right now, let's just say they had their biggest year ever and they had a bunch of extra cash later on. It's just like, wow, we finally made some money, an extra hundred grand, an extra three hundred grand, whatever it is, a million bucks. What should they do with that extra money? How should they reinvest it to continue to grow?

• 26:40Barbara Corcoran?

  Two things I thought of right away. Number one, they shouldn't have that money. Okay? If you're really serious about building a business, you're putting the pedal to the metal, you're spending the money and putting the bets down long before it comes in. So the idea, like, I made a mistake that one year I had a profit. Shame on me. I mean, I made some good of it, of course. But you should really have any money coming in over aggressively, targeted towards something that you do well. And I think the best place to put the money, and I work with my entrepreneurs all the time on this, and they're not so inclined. Most people want to put the money in on a new idea, a new version, or a new this. No, the best place to put the money is what has worked. Where have you gotten your sales?

• 27:25Barbara Corcoran?

  Give me the sources, what has worked? That's where you put your money, all it, put it piled up until it stopped working, then you move to something else. But people don't do that. People was like the new stuff, like, oh, but if we hire a PR company, you know, we'll really get... No, no, no, the trade show has produced 80% of your money.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  Right, showing up and building those relationships yourself, yeah.

• 27:45Barbara Corcoran?

  Whatever has worked for you before, keep repeating, repeating, repeating. And I just think the money shouldn't be there in the first place. Do you know, my whole life, I opened offices much bigger than I had any business doing. If the minute I had sales in a company and started seeing that we were doing well, and I started smelling a profit, like we might get a profit, this thing might really start kicking in, I was out looking for office space. And if I needed, if I thought I needed 18 desks, I'd go out looking for 36.

• 28:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:13Barbara Corcoran?

  And I plunked the money down, start... Because I found that when you threw the money onto your bet in advance, you find a way to make it work. If you wait till the time is right, and wait till you have the profit, guess what? There's a smarter guy out there that's already put the money, your competitor, and he's already ahead of you. And it's such a quick market when you're competing. You've got to like, like there's a timer on you, you know, get it going. You have to have it done early, I think.

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  So invest it back in the thing that's worked before for you until it doesn't work anymore.

• 28:45Barbara Corcoran?

  And more than you think you could handle. Because human beings who are talented, especially entrepreneurs, are remarkable on making things work when the gun's against their head and they're under fire. But gives them a lot of leeway and have them plot out, they start to go to sleep. It's really, it's really not healthy for a business.

• 29:02Lewis Howes?

  It's that pressure that allows you to really kind of have more urgency and make it happen.

• 29:06Barbara Corcoran?

  Well, you're a football player. Did you play better in a game or in practice?

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Game.

• 29:10Barbara Corcoran?

  Yeah, same difference, same old thing.

• 29:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay, so you said that was the first thing. You said there was two things potentially.

• 29:16Barbara Corcoran?

  The two things that I wanted to say was, you shouldn't have the money. It should be spent way in advance. And the second thing is spend it on stuff that's worked before.

• 29:30Lewis Howes?

  There you have it my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode with the Shark Tank Masters. If you're looking to build your business, start your entrepreneurial dream, or just get a side hustle off the ground, then this is the episode for you. And if you know someone, if you've got a friend who's a business owner, who's a coach, a consultant, or starting to get a side hustle idea off the ground, send them this episode right now. Spread the message of greatness to them. Help a friend in need. Text them this link. Message them on Facebook. Send them a DM on Instagram. Wherever it may be that you like to connect, send them a message to the link lewishouse.com/773.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  Again, lewishouse.com/773. I'm so excited about this episode and all the interviews we did here in the Shark Tank Masters mashup. And we've got some big guests coming up, guys. Get pumped. If this is your first time here, please subscribe to the podcast over on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on SoundCloud, everywhere podcasts are at. Subscribe. Leave us a review. The more reviews we get, the more people learn about the message of greatness, and we can spread this message far and wide. Very excited about everything we are doing as a community and a movement together on the School of Greatness. And as Theodore Isaac Rubin said, "Happiness did not come from doing

• 30:50Lewis Howes?

  easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demands our best." There is no easy path to building your brand and building your business and building financial freedom. There's no simple, easy path, as you saw from all these entrepreneurs on Shark Tank. They've all gone through different challenges and adversities along the way. It's the afterglow of satisfaction that comes once you take on the difficult task. That's part of it. It's part of the journey. It's part of the ups and downs. Life would be boring if it was always easy getting to the top. Find fulfillment in the path.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  Find fulfillment in the journey and in those little moments every single day. Find the little moments of victories that you can celebrate and keep moving forward. As always, I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.