How To Build Wealth & Create An Abundant Financial Future

In this powerful masterclass on building wealth, I brought together leading financial experts Jaspreet Singh, Vivian Tu, and Mark Matson to dive deep into the psychology of money and reveal the hidden truths about creating lasting wealth. We explore how your money mindset shapes your financial future, why most people struggle to build wealth despite making good money, and what separates those who achieve financial freedom from those who remain stuck. From breaking free of limiting money beliefs to understanding the surprising truth about happiness and wealth, this episode delivers game-changing insights that will transform how you think about and handle money. Whether you're just starting your wealth-building journey or looking to take your finances to the next level, this masterclass provides the blueprint for moving from scarcity to abundance. Get Vivian's book Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life Grab Mark’s book, Experiencing The American DreamIN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARNWhy your beliefs about money are more important than your income and how to transform a scarcity mindset into an abundance mindsetThe five critical steps to building wealth, regardless of your starting point or current income levelHow to advance in your career and increase your income by mastering both technical skills and relationship buildingThe truth about why money alone can't make you happy and how to find fulfillment while building wealthThe destructive cycle of wealth that keeps people trapped and unhappy despite high incomesFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1691For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jaspreet Singh – greatness.lnk.to/1644SCVivian Tu – greatness.lnk.to/1551SCMark Matson – greatness.lnk.to/1675SC 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?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 0:18Jaspreet Singh?

  The first step to building wealth is to start with the money mindset. The beliefs that you have around money and understand, number one, that you can become wealthy. Not just that you can become wealthy, you will become wealthy. And that money is abundant. There's a lot of money in the world, right? When people start to enter this financial education space, we start to assume that if you're rich, I can't be rich. If you have money, I can't have money. So it starts to create that jealousy or just this negative association with, oh my God, I don't want to tell you my business idea because what if you steal it and take my money? Well, both of us can have money because there's a lot of money in the world.

• 0:59Jaspreet Singh?

  If you look at it from a financial perspective, the better reserve bank is printing trillions and trillions of dollars. There's a lot of money out there. You just eat a small sliver of it and you can have millions and live a life of true financial freedom. And not just that, understanding that money is a tool. Because the reason why we put these smokescreens around money, that money is bad, it's taboo, it's evil, is because many times people are insecure about their own money. And so when I can't go out and buy the nice vacation for my kids, I can't buy my husband that thing that he wants, I can't buy my wife that YSL or Gucci purse that she wants, I can't go on the nice vacations. Well, you know, money is bad. We shouldn't stress about money. It's these stupid vacations.

• 1:42Jaspreet Singh?

  We don't need those. We can enjoy our time here. It's such a scam to go out there and sit on an all-inclusive beach and have food delivered to you, right? I mean, we start to create these smokescreens where, oh, why would, why would anybody want to have an expensive car like that? Why would anybody want to have these nice and expensive things?

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  Judging people about money, yeah.

• 2:01Jaspreet Singh?

  And so now it's, you know what, if you don't want it, that's completely fine, but make sure you can afford it. And understanding now, money is not gonna make you a good person. It's also not gonna make you a bad person. It's just a piece of paper. It's fuel. It amplifies who you are. When you have more of that money, you can do more of the things that money can buy. One of those things is have freedom, have options. Options to choose what you wanna buy, options to choose where you wanna eat, options to choose when you wanna go on vacation, not just can you go on vacation, and options to choose how you wanna live your life. And not just that unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it also can influence what type of healthcare you can get, what type of healthcare your parents can get, what type of healthcare your kids can get,

• 2:45Jaspreet Singh?

  what type of college your kids can go to, what type of education your kids can go to. It, it matters. And so now at the end of the day, you can hate it, or you can understand it. And so we create these smokescreens without really understanding how money plays a part in our life, because at the end of the day, money talks. And the people who have money will get to be able to live their freedom, and the people who don't, you become subservient to the people who have money. And I don't say that to be mean, I say this to be factual.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  The facts, yeah. What I'm hearing you say is if every individual watching or listening does not take one hundred percent responsibility for their beliefs around money, they will pass on generational money traumas to their children or the people around them, because they'll be speaking beliefs that are limiting instead of abundant.

• 3:42Jaspreet Singh?

  Absolutely.

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  And so how does someone who has been conditioned for decades around certain money beliefs, all of a sudden, educate themselves, get the tools, get the information, and say, no, everything I've been taught for the last twenty, thirty years of my life is a lie around money.

• 4:01Jaspreet Singh?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Lewis Howes?

  And therefore...

• 4:04Lewis Howes?

  You know, have I been living a lie myself? Am I a fraud? Are these people that I've been telling me this? Can I trust them? My parents, like, your whole world blows up, essentially.

• 4:14Jaspreet Singh?

  It does.

• 4:14Lewis Howes?

  It blows up. And so, how does someone navigate the emotions of, oh, all these things, my parents, who I love, who are well-intended, have taught me around money, have kind of been holding me back? And I understand they tried to protect me, but it's really limited me? How do we deal with that? And then start edging your kitting ourselves to break free of money limits, of money scarcity, of money insecurity, so that we can have more financial peace and emotional peace around money?

• 4:47Jaspreet Singh?

  I think you got to start with this. Understanding if somebody doesn't have what it is that you want, you probably shouldn't listen to them on how to get where you want to go. And your parents might have the best intentions. Your family might have the best intentions, but they might not know how to get to where you want to go. Right? The common saying is, don't listen to a fat person on how to lose weight. Take that for whatever it's worth.

• 5:12Lewis Howes?

  Or a broke person on how to make money.

• 5:14Jaspreet Singh?

  Yeah, yeah. You know, my parents and a lot of traditional Indian immigrants. You come to a new country like America with very little. You work very hard. Now, you want your kids to have a better life. And if you don't have financial education, you're going to say that the best way to do that is go and become a doctor. That's why you see so many Indian people become doctors is because your parents beat it into you since the day you're one. I'm speaking from 100% experience here. Because since I was young, my parents said that I need to go and become a doctor because if you become a doctor, you're going to, number one, have that doctor title, so you're going to have the status. Someone's going to want to marry you. And you're going to be able to make a lot of money and be rich.

• 5:59Jaspreet Singh?

  But what I learned was there's a disconnect between being a doctor and being financially wealthy. Those are two different things because we assume that if you go to school, get good grades, you make more money and you become more wealthy. But there's also a difference between making more money and building wealth.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, what's the difference between making money and building wealth?

• 6:21Jaspreet Singh?

  Well, some people who have made millions and millions of dollars died with nothing in their name, died being broke and lived broke. Building wealth is really a matter of time and freedom. And what I mean by that is I can make a million dollars a year and be broke, which a lot of people actually are. We're out here not far from Beverly Hills. And a lot of people are making a lot of money but are broke. And I see this all the time because I work in this financial education space where I have met countless doctors, because I talk about this a lot. People who are making three, four, five, six hundred thousand dollars a year, they have no savings, no investments and no idea where to start. Because when you start to make more money,

• 7:04Jaspreet Singh?

  you first think if I had an additional hundred thousand dollars a year, oh my God, I could do so many things. We, because we think in terms of spending. If I had ten thousand dollars a month, what would I do? Well, I would first go to Cancun. I'd buy myself a nicer car. I'd go on a nicer, you know, whatever. And that's

• 7:21Lewis Howes?

  We consume.

• 7:21Jaspreet Singh?

  We consume. That's how we think. We're, we're conditioned to think that way, that America is a consumer nation. We are the largest consumers of things in the world. I like to say that Americans make a dollar to spend two dollars. Traditional Indian mindset people make a dollar to spend twenty cents.

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 7:39Jaspreet Singh?

  Because they're conditioned to save. Not saying either one of these is right, they're both wrong. But when most people are conditioned to consume and spend, you make more and you spend more. And you might think, well, how can you spend a million dollars a year? It's very easy. It is very easy to spend a million dollars a year. You start buying some nice homes, start going on some expensive vacations, you start buying some expensive clothes and there goes a million dollars a year.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  Gone.

• 8:02Jaspreet Singh?

  And that's what happens to a lot of people. So we talk about the difference between building wealth and making a lot of money. You gotta take the money that you earn and not spend it. And you gotta put this to work. And so let me, let me break this down this way. Becoming wealthy comes down to five steps. And I've talked about it in many different forms, but I'm gonna break it down into the simplest root thing you have to understand. Number one is you gotta earn money. And if people say, how do I earn money? It doesn't matter. Could be a side hustle, could be a business, could be a job. You could have some money coming in. Once you make some money, number two is you don't spend all of your money. And that means when you make a thousand dollars, you don't spend all thousand dollars. How much do you spend? Let's not worry about the nitty gritty yet. Just don't spend all of your money.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  Well, most people make a thousand dollars and they spend fifteen hundred.

• 8:48Jaspreet Singh?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  They, they use their credit card to spend more than what they have because they think, well, I'll, I'll be able to pay this off next month because I have another thousand dollars coming in.

• 8:56Jaspreet Singh?

  Exactly.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  And then they get into more and more debt because they're over consuming.

• 8:59Jaspreet Singh?

  You'll never build wealth. You'll never get rich. You'll never have any freedom. And so you can't spend all of your money. Which is why number three is you take the money you don't spend and you go out and you buy an investment. We'll call it the middleman. And you'll see why I call it the middleman. Is you wanna take this money, don't spend it, you wanna essentially throw it into this thing on the side that will hopefully make you some more money in the long term.

• 9:23Jaspreet Singh?

  Then number four, when your investment makes money, take the money that your investments make and dump it back into your investments.

• 9:33Jaspreet Singh?

  And then number five is work to make more money. And the reason why you're working to make more money is so you can have more investments. And let me explain why this is so difficult because it makes sense in theory, right?

• 9:45Jaspreet Singh?

  You're never gonna become wealthy if every time you make a dollar, you give it to somebody else. If you wanna become wealthy, you have to keep more money for yourself. The way that our economic system works is the more money you spend, the richer somebody else gets. It's, you know, hated or loved, that's the reality. When you go to Chipotle and you buy that extra guac, Chipotle is making more money. When you go to Amazon, you spend more money, Amazon's making money. Now, this can make some people extremely wealthy, but it also keeps the majority of people broke financially. And so this is where, if you want to make yourself rich, you gotta stop making everybody else rich. Right now, you gotta first make yourself rich. And that means stop giving other people your money. And there are so many extremes to how you can do this, right?

• 10:30Jaspreet Singh?

  I mean, you could go to that, that one extreme where I am not gonna spend anything. I'm gonna live in a shoebox and I'm gonna eat nothing but rice and beans. And I'm going to stack all my money. Fine. Other people will find a more balanced approach and you gotta find what's right for you.

• 10:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I'll spend a certain amount of the things I like, but I'm not gonna overspend. Or I like it where you just say, I'm going to reinvest a certain amount of my money every single month.

• 10:55Jaspreet Singh?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  Of the money that's coming in, whether it's a paycheck or your business. I'm gonna take that money. This much is going every month into my investments, whatever that might be. And then if I wanna spend the rest on a vacation or, you know, extra guacamole or whatever it is, cool. Enjoy your life as well.

• 11:12Jaspreet Singh?

  Right.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to live the most frugal life as well. You don't have to be so extreme, but I think first, take your money to invest.

• 11:19Jaspreet Singh?

  Yep.

• 11:20Lewis Howes?

  Then spend on some activities and events and go to concerts. Cool, I get it.

• 11:25Jaspreet Singh?

  And you gotta find your balance. For me, I was on an extreme. When I first learned about this, I went extreme because I first, when I was making money first, I was running an event planning company. I didn't know anything about money. I took my money and I bought nice watches and I dumped it back into my car. I mean, that's what I thought was normal. But as you start to learn, you realize, or if you start to become more financially educated, you realize that that doesn't do anything for your wealth. Right? There's, there's no wealth built into tricking out your car. There's no wealth built into just spending money on nice things. It looks nice and it's nice if you wanna have it, it's fine, but that's not gonna make you wealthy and you gotta decide what's more important to you. So then I completely tipped the scale and I started not spending any money. So I'd have more money to invest.

• 12:09Jaspreet Singh?

  For me, it started off in real estate and now it's this slow process. The reason why it's so difficult is because if you make ten thousand dollars, it's a lot of money to put aside, right? You have a work to make ten grand. But you can't show off a $10,000 stock market portfolio the way you can a $10,000 watch. Or a $10,000 vacation, because I can take those things and I could put it on my Instagram. I could put it on my Facebook. I could put it on TikTok and I can show these things off and they get a lot of likes and they get a lot of oohs and ahs. But my stock market portfolio just sits there. Slowly, you'll start to generate a little bit of income and I think understanding you're gonna make a lot of money in your lifetime.

• 12:51Jaspreet Singh?

  I don't care how much money you're making. If you make 50 grand a year, in the next 10 years, you're gonna make half a million dollars. In the next two decades, you're gonna make a million dollars.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:00Jaspreet Singh?

  Assuming you never get another raise. Which means you're gonna make millions of dollars over the course of your career and most people will have nothing.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:08Jaspreet Singh?

  To show for it. And when I say most people, I don't say this generally, I mean statistically, most people will have nothing to show for it. Which means now, as you go through life earning this money, what are you doing it for? Are you doing it to look rich or are you doing it to actually build wealth? And you gotta decide that for you, right? I can't come here and tell you, oh, it's important for you to build wealth and then you listen to me. You gotta decide that for yourself because you wanna take better care of yourself, your wife, your husband and your kids and your parents and you wanna have a better future than today. And that's what investing is really for.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  What would you say if someone is making between 50,000 to 100,000 dollars a year? And they want to break free of the system. They want to overcome the urges and desires and temptations of society where they have to show off to please people that don't care about them and they don't care about. And they wanna start setting themselves up for a greater future. It's gonna take time, but over 10, 20, 30 years, they could potentially have a million dollars worth of investments or beyond.

• 14:15Jaspreet Singh?

  Or more.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  Or more. So if someone's making between 50,000 and 100,000 dollars right now. 2024. What should they be thinking about in terms of building wealth? What's a couple of steps or a system they can put in place if they have zero financial education? If they haven't, they didn't even have the right beliefs, but they could start setting themselves up for five, 10, 20 years in the future where they're gonna say, wow, I'm so glad I made those those few steps that Jaspreet told me to do back in the day. What would those steps be?

• 14:45Jaspreet Singh?

  Well, the first thing is understanding that even if you make a 50 grand a year, you can retire a millionaire and live a life of financial freedom. If you start taking action. Now, the, the, the thing that everybody likes to talk about, I'll give the, the end goal and I'll show how to actually do it. Because everybody says if you invest a hundred dollars a month from age 21 to 65, you'll have over a million dollars when it comes time for you to retire. Okay, how, where, when, and you know, what do I do? So number one, understanding the numbers, the math will show you that you can become a millionaire. Now you gotta dissect the how do I actually go about doing it? Because everybody says invest your money, but what does that mean? So.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  And where do I invest it? The stock market, individual stocks, funds, real estate, real estate funds, apartments, you know, it's crypto, gold, like what am I supposed to do?

• 15:32Jaspreet Singh?

  So you start by not spending all their money. A simple thing that I talked about is my 75, 15, 10 plan, which means for every dollar that I earn, 75 cents is the maximum that I can spend. 15 cents is the minimum I'm putting aside to invest. 10 cents is the minimum I'm putting aside to save. Now, the first thing everybody says when I say that is Jaspreet, how in the world am I gonna live off of three quarters of every dollar that I earn? I'm already struggling to survive. Well, you gotta make this decision right now, which is what's more important to you right now? Do you wanna build your future wealth? Or do you wanna continue having the nice things? Then everybody says Jaspreet, I'm already living tight. Like I, what do you mean? I'm already living paycheck to paycheck, things are already tough.

• 16:16Jaspreet Singh?

  Well, I'm gonna just, all I can do is give you the reality and the reality is it's gonna be harder next year. It's gonna be even more difficult the year after that and it's gonna get even more difficult the year after that. The path to building wealth is not that complicated. You have to have some money. You have to put this money aside for investments. If you're spending all of your money, you're never gonna build wealth. And now you gotta figure out what are you gonna cut out?

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  But just breathe. I've got my parents who need support. I've got family members who are struggling. I've got my friends that wanna go out on the bars three times a week and concerts and activities. And I gotta buy nice clothes for my job. And I've gotta commute to work. And I've gotta do all these things that cost a lot of money. Just breathe. What do I do?

• 16:59Jaspreet Singh?

  Where you put your focus, you're gonna see the biggest results. If you wanna lose weight, you gotta put your exercise and your focus in the gym. You gotta put your focus on your diet. If you wanna advance in your career, you gotta put more focus on your job and learning how do you advance in your career. If you wanna build more wealth, you gotta put your focus on learning how to do that and changing the way you spend your money. And it's really just a matter of priorities. I used to guest teach in Detroit Public Schools. Obviously, our office is in Detroit, but I used to guest teach in Detroit Public Schools in some really rough school districts. And these kids were smart, hard workers, but many of them grew up in troubled homes. Most of the kids did not have two parents in the home. The vast majority of kids did not have two parents in the home.

• 17:44Jaspreet Singh?

  The vast majority of kids had no guidance or leadership. Some of the kids were already affiliated with gangs in high school because they didn't have anywhere else to go. And the gangs literally provided them food. So now when you're quote unquote-

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  And community.

• 17:57Jaspreet Singh?

  And community. When your brothers are providing you food, they're trying to take care of you. You don't think of it as a bad thing. Now, here's the interesting part. If you focus on the financial side, I came in as a guest teacher just to talk about life. And I would talk about, you know, just general motivation and you can become successful, starting with that mindset side of things. But also getting a little bit into the financial side because- The kids there wanted nice things like every other high school kid in the world does. You want cool sneakers and clothes and whatever, yeah. And which is no different than any other high school kid. The difference is many of these kids here were also working jobs. They were working to earn money while going to school.

• 18:37Jaspreet Singh?

  And so we talked to the kids about money like, okay, you're working, earn money. Great. What are you doing with this money? I get paid. I go to the local liquor store. I cash in my check. The liquor store owner takes one to 10% of the check. I buy a bunch of things and I walk out and then I have half of my paycheck left. Okay. Well, what about these new Jordans that you got? Because that was a big thing in the school that I'm talking about particularly where the kids were really minded up to buy the Jays, the Jordans. And I remember this so vividly because I remember kids would saying, I'm not going to eat because I want to save the eight bucks. So I can buy these shoes. It's a matter of priorities where, true story. Some kids are prioritizing the Jordans over the food that I eat. Wow.

• 19:22Jaspreet Singh?

  And so life is really a matter of priorities now. If building wealth is really a priority, that means you're going to have to de-prioritize some other things that you're spending money on. Now, this is where people get into those arguments of, does that mean I should stop buying Starbucks? Look, Starbucks is five dollars a day, so whatever it might be. More than enough. Whatever it is, right? Which, you know, if you put that in a compound interest calculator, yeah, it could be worth a million dollars. But now let's, let's take a step back and look at some of the biggest purchases, the, the number one largest expense for most people besides taxes. Car? Your own, where you live. Yeah, yeah. And then your car. And so now let's start with those two things. Can you live somewhere smaller and save a few hundred bucks a month? I still rent today. Yes.

• 20:03Jaspreet Singh?

  I own a portfolio of rental properties. I invest in stocks. I invest in startups. I run Briefs Media, my company. We have an office, an expensive office in downtown Detroit. But I also rent where I live. Yes. Are you going to feel bad for me because I rent? No. I hope not. You know, it's, it's. We demonize the wrong things. Let's stop normalizing buying BMWs in our twenties and start normalizing buying assets. Because it's very easy to demonize, oh, you're renting. You're paying somebody else's mortgage. You're making somebody else rich. Why not build your own equity? Well, let's actually dissect the financial argument here because it has good merits, right?

• 20:46Jaspreet Singh?

  People coming at this from a good perspective that you have to own a home to build wealth. That's what people have made the American dream to own a home. When reality, the American dream is the ability to build wealth. People just assume building wealth means buying a home. Who did that? Well, none other than the bankers and the realtors. I used to be, well, I still am a licensed realtor. And one of the things they teach you when you become a realtor, especially if you're learning how to sell, is you talk to people about buying their biggest investment ever. And if you're buying your biggest investment, keyword investment, ever, it's a little bit easier to get you to think about buying a little bit bigger and a little bit nicer. Because now you're buying for your kids. You're buying to build a generational wealth. You're buying something that you can build equity in.

• 21:31Jaspreet Singh?

  But let's talk about this for a second. When you go and rent, the thing everybody says is you're going and paying your landlord's mortgage. Yes. When you go and buy something on Amazon, did anybody ever say you're paying Jeff Bezos mortgage? Whoever the other owners are, the CEOs. You're paying Starbucks mortgage, yeah. Because you are. Yeah. When you go and eat at a nice restaurant, did you ever think that you're paying the chef's mortgage? Because you are. When you go and get a drink from Starbucks, do you ever think that I'm paying for that barista's mortgage? Because you are. So you're getting a value. Now, let's talk about, okay, well, I'm building equity in your home. Yeah, that's great. Nothing wrong with that. But banks are also smart and they front load their mortgages. What does that mean? That means for the first, if you get a 30-year mortgage,

• 22:16Jaspreet Singh?

  for the first 14 and a half years out of a 30-year mortgage. Paying interest. The majority of your payment is going directly to interest. Which means for the first year, almost all of your monthly payment is going in interest. So if I'm making a thousand dollars a month in my mortgage, year one, I have built essentially zero equity. Because all that money I paid in year one, or almost all of it, is going directly to my banker's pockets. And it's not until year 15 that half of my mortgage payment is going to build equity. So yeah, you are building equity, but it takes a long time. And what ends up happening before year fifteen is people go and refinance. And when you refinance, you're starting that process all over again.

• 22:59Jaspreet Singh?

  And so this is where, again, I'm not against homeownership. I think it's a great thing for the right person at the right time. Just make sure you can afford it. Yes. And at the end of the day, the way you build wealth is not by buying a home. The way you build wealth is not by becoming a doctor. The way you build wealth is not by becoming a NBA player. The way you build wealth is by using your money to buy investments. I called it the middleman a little bit earlier. The reason why I call it a middleman is because it's so difficult. And you really have to think of it as like a delayed process. I make, when I make ten thousand dollars, it takes a lot of time and effort and energy to make the ten thousand dollars, right? Well, what do you want to do when you make this? You want to show it off. But instead, if I take the ten thousand dollars and I put it in an investment, I don't see anything of it.

• 23:43Jaspreet Singh?

  A ten percent return on a thousand dollars is a hundred bucks. A ten percent return on ten thousand dollars is a thousand dollars. And it might take a year to get the ten percent return. It could take two years. Well, if you keep doing that, though, what you'll start to realize is that a ten percent return on a hundred grand is ten thousand dollars. And a ten percent return on a million dollars is a hundred thousand dollars. Right? It takes time to grow and build. But you gotta get started. It starts with one, right? People say, oh, I got, I can't see any real returns, real money until I invest a million dollars. Well, the way you get to that million dollars is you start with one. Yes. Right? You're from Ohio, right? In the Midwest, it gets colder during the winter times, okay? Detroit's a little better than Ohio, but what happens is

• 24:27Jaspreet Singh?

  when the winter time comes and you want to build a snowman, you start with a small snowball. It's this big, okay? You put it on the ground, and if you want to build a snowman, you start to roll it. In the beginning, you're not seeing any growth. The snowball stays small. But if you keep rolling, you stick with it, you keep rolling, it starts to get a little bigger. And then a little while by, it goes a little bigger. And then, once it gets bigger, every time you turn the snowball, it gets a lot bigger, a lot quicker. Yeah. Because there's so much more surface area. And that's what you're doing when you're investing your money is you are working to build. The beginning part sucks. There's no way around it. You gotta start by spending less money. You gotta start by investing your money and you see no returns. Because the markets might be going up, they might be going down.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  You might lose money.

• 25:13Jaspreet Singh?

  You might be seeing, I mean, that's a part of the process. And you're like, what? I, I'm investing my money for six months and I haven't seen, where are my millions of dollars? Right? But you gotta stay consistent. The beginning part sucks and it's tough and it's not attractive. But you gotta keep going and that's why people get so attracted to. How can I get rich quicker? Right? The next meme stock, the next crypto, hot crypto. I'm not saying all Bitcoin or blockchain is bad, but you get caught into this. How can I 10x my money in 10 months? How can I double my money in 10 months? How can I get this, this quick outcome? Which ends up becoming gambling, which is why most people who do that end up losing their money. I read a statistic the other day that said that 90% of people lose money in the stock market.

• 25:57Jaspreet Singh?

  Over the last century, the stock market has gone up by an average of 10% a year. Yet, most people are losing money.

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 26:05Jaspreet Singh?

  The reason why is, and if you're watching this video, you might relate to this. You go and find a nice stock. You put your money in. Three weeks later, the stock is lower. Every, and you feel like every time you buy a stock, the stock market goes down right after you buy. That happens to a lot of people. And then what ends up happening is a lot of people end up selling because they don't start to see that return in three weeks or three months or even three years. And so now you sell. But this is where now it's the financial education. Which means the psychological education, but also which investment am I buying? Psychological investment means understanding there's ups and downs. I gotta be able to ride through them and keep investing my money. The education or financial education is what am I actually buying?

• 26:50Jaspreet Singh?

  Because I don't think 98% of America should be trying to pick the right stock.

• 26:54Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 26:54Jaspreet Singh?

  Invest your money in a fund. Because you don't know if you're investing into the next Amazon or the next Bed Bath and Beyond.

• 27:04Lewis Howes?

  Because. But if you invest in a decent index fund or the S and P 500, you're going to, and you keep it in there, you're gonna make money.

• 27:11Jaspreet Singh?

  If you believe, well, as long as America keeps growing, you're gonna keep making money. Because at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is you're essentially trying to invest in the American economy. And if you believe that the future of America is gonna continue to be bright and it's gonna continue to be better. Then you want to own a piece of that today.

• 27:34Lewis Howes?

  For people that don't have money or feel like money is out of reach for them. Is it possible for anyone to become wealthy or to become rich? Or is it only for a certain mindset or a certain demographic of people?

• 27:46Vivian Tu?

  Yeah, I think anybody who wants to have money, anybody who wants to have richness can get there. But it certainly is not as easy as everyone on the internet makes it seem. It's not rah rah, Amazon dropshipping, rah rah, wholesale real estate, rah rah, buy some life insurance and you're good to go. Like, that's just not it.

• 28:10Vivian Tu?

  And I think a big conversation that like, we don't talk about is like proximity, right? So like, in my life now, I have many rich friends. And those rich friends provide me additional rich opportunities. So I got to go to the US Open on a bank's dime. Because my fiance worked with a guy who is at an investment bank. And he had four tickets, took him, his wife, my fiance and myself. Those tickets are thousands of dollars, like they're very, very expensive. I have friends who had incredible, an incredible accountant, had, you know,

• 28:55Vivian Tu?

  great team in terms of financials for business. And they were like, you should talk to my team. That's how I got hooked up with my business manager. If you don't have that proximity to people who have money, who've done it, who played the playbook, how are you going to learn it? Because sure, if you are a young person, growing up low income, and you want to make smart money decisions, work very hard in school, get good grades, do the American dream thing. And you go, you get to Harvard, okay? You get to Harvard, the rich kids still don't want to be friends with you. Because you can't afford to split the table at the club on Friday night. You can't afford to pay for the dues for your finals club or whatever they call it. Like, you don't have that money to get you there.

• 29:41Vivian Tu?

  So I think the process of becoming wealthy and becoming rich and having money. It's available to anyone, but the trajectory and the timeline is very, very different.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 29:52Vivian Tu?

  Where you start.

• 29:53Lewis Howes?

  So proximity alone isn't enough is what I'm hearing you say because you could have the, the grades or the skills and the proximity, but if you don't have the money still, then people may not, what are you, what are you saying?

• 30:04Vivian Tu?

  So I'm saying that proximity makes it easier.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:07Vivian Tu?

  So if you grow up rich and your parents are, you know, very, very tough and they're like, we're not leaving a penny to you guys, you still grew up around all those rich people.

• 30:20Lewis Howes?

  You still have access, contacts, information.

• 30:22Vivian Tu?

  Exactly. And you still got all those soft skills. Whereas someone whose parents are like, I will leave you every dollar I have, but they grow up lower middle class, they don't have that proximity that you had.

• 30:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:36Vivian Tu?

  Growing up.

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  It's like a language. You didn't get to hear the language, see how things were done, see how deals were talked about, even if you weren't involved in doing the deals or paying for the things, you witnessed and experienced it over a decade or two.

• 30:49Vivian Tu?

  So on Wall Street, we call them execution or knife and fork guys. So execution guys are the technical ones. They're like act, the ones that are actually good at the job, right? And then you got knife and fork guys. And the reason they're called knife and fork is because they know, they have all of those elegances that if you don't grow up watching that day in, day out, you don't know. They know that the littlest utensils here and the biggest one comes in closer to your plate. They know how to take the napkin and fold it politely over their seat or like over their lap. They know that the dessert spoon goes this way and they have those soft

• 31:33Vivian Tu?

  skills that are kind of like the tell of how you can kind of spot another rich person.

• 31:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 31:41Vivian Tu?

  Like I can smell the rich on someone.

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:43Vivian Tu?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  But there's a lot of like fake rich also.

• 31:46Vivian Tu?

  Oh, tons.

• 31:47Lewis Howes?

  So can you smell

• 31:49Vivian Tu?

  100%.

• 31:49Lewis Howes?

  the rich and the fake rich?

• 31:50Vivian Tu?

  Yes.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between people who are actually rich and those who are acting like they're rich?

• 31:55Vivian Tu?

  People who are actually rich, like you rich. And sorry, guys.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  That's good, that's good.

• 32:01Vivian Tu?

  They're not concerned about impressing you.

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 32:05Vivian Tu?

  They're, they are, I talk about this in my book, they are apex predators. They do not worry about what you think about them.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:12Vivian Tu?

  That, but it is the guy that you see walking into a three Michelin star restaurant in a quiet, normal looking outfit sweater vest situation. Eats his meal, leaves a 50% tip because they can. That's true wealth. Then you've got the wannabe wealth that goes to that same restaurant, dripped out in a designer label. Is, you know, making a scene. Why isn't this water sparkling? This is still, I don't like that. And then like, just, you know, really, really new to the experience and then leaves a 10% tip.

• 32:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:54Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. So do you, is there, what are the other soft skills that you can tell between someone who's actually rich and someone who's faking it or trying to be rich or maybe has some money, but they're trying to show it off too much?

• 33:06Vivian Tu?

  Mm hmm. So I would say that people who want to look rich brag about things. Look at my new bag, look at my new car. Really rich people, they don't brag, they talk about experiences that they have. So

• 33:24Vivian Tu?

  this is another experience and like one that I frankly couldn't really relate to when I first started in my career because I didn't come from that kind of money. But when it was around vacation season and people were talking about going to Italy.

• 33:37Lewis Howes?

  And the yachts and the.

• 33:38Vivian Tu?

  Not even the yachts, but everybody had a restaurant in Capri that you had to try. Everyone had their favorite place for gelato, you know, in Venice, whatever, like whatever it was.

• 33:55Vivian Tu?

  You could tell that person had lived life in a way that someone who doesn't have that kind of access, who doesn't have that kind of money, doesn't have because they can't take the time off, they don't have the money to go to those places. And even if they did, they would be doing things on the path versus stuff off the beaten path that lets them live like a local.

• 34:12Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are a few practical things if people are like, you know, I'm just kind of, I don't have money for the next few months. I don't have an emergency fund. I don't have, I've got debts I'm still paying off. If someone is financially sick and unwell, and their financial health is unstable, what are a few strategies they can do to either increase their income or get back to financial wholeness?

• 34:37Vivian Tu?

  I would say something that people struggle with realizing is that these changes you'll have to make, they're not permanent. They're only temporary.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 34:46Vivian Tu?

  And you are going to be uncomfortable. It's not going to be fun. And I am very anti, cut out the avocado toast, don't buy the coffee, rah rah. Okay, I am.

• 34:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Vivian Tu?

  But if you are in a truly a dark, dark hole, and there's no ladder to crawl out.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  Cut it out.

• 35:07Vivian Tu?

  Like, you literally have to cut it out. You have to make some temporary changes that are very uncomfortable. And to your point, like, we focus so much on cutting out every single little discretionary cost. Do you know how hard it is to cut out $5,000 worth of expenses? Do you know how easy it is to ask for a $5,000 raise? A $5,000 raise happens every single day. Like, that is par for the course. That's not anything special. Cutting out $5,000, how many coffees you have to cut out? You know how many meals you can't go out to? Do you know how many friends you might lose in that process? So, again, I think it's really, really important to be asking for that raise. And I mean 10%, 15% every single year. Are you gonna get it every year? Probably not. But you get 7%?

• 35:51Vivian Tu?

  Great. You get 8%? Great. You gotta ask. And you gotta remind them, pretty much for six months out of the year. That you deserve that raise and that you want money, that you are money motivated. Because if you ask in December, when everybody else is asking for money, you're at the back of the list.

• 36:10Lewis Howes?

  Good luck. Yeah, yeah.

• 36:11Vivian Tu?

  You want to be on top of the pile when your boss starts thinking about who's getting a raise this year.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  What can someone do who's an employee to be really smart and intentional about getting a raise?

• 36:27Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  How can they show their value, their work ethic, that they're getting the results that's going to increase revenue in the business? As opposed to just saying, give me a 20% raise or a 10% raise because I deserve it.

• 36:39Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  How do they enroll through actual results as opposed to, I just want a raise?

• 36:46Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Give it to me. Otherwise, I'm not happy.

• 36:48Vivian Tu?

  Yeah. So you remember those two guys on Wall Street? You've got the executioners and then you've got the knife and fork guys? So on the execution side, make yourself a brag book. So it's a literal folder.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  A brag book.

• 37:01Vivian Tu?

  A brag book, razor seats, promo pitch, whatever you want to call it. Just make one. It's a folder in your email. And every time something good happens to you, every time you get a pat on the back from another team member from your company, put it, forward it to that folder. A client says, wow, you know, you did such a great job, whatever, put it in that folder. Anything that good, good that happens to you, put it in that folder. Because that way, when you go and you have to write those really annoying self-assessments, you can go back and literally look through those emails and be like, oh, remember that time I did that one thing and that thing and that thing? And now you have quantifiable results that you can point to. The second piece is the knife and fork piece.

• 37:43Vivian Tu?

  There's a study and it shows that the smartest person is not the one that gets paid the most.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:49Vivian Tu?

  They're like second most paid, second or third most paid. Yeah. You, it, being smart and being the best employee gets you to a certain point. But the person that is paid the most is the person that is essentially Mr. or Mrs. Congeniality.

• 38:05Vivian Tu?

  You need to be liked. You need, and not so much like you have to be agreeable and likeable, but like, people have to think of you. Like,

• 38:15Lewis Howes?

  You gotta be top of mind.

• 38:16Vivian Tu?

  You gotta be top of mind. And you have to be, unfortunately, popular around the office. So, that happens by not skipping the company happy hour. That happens by joining your stupid, wreck pickleball league with your boss. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you have to do those things, if you really want that. And I know people listening to this might think like, well, I have kids. I don't, I can't do the pickleball league. I can't go to the happy hour. Okay? Ask your boss to go to lunch, once every three weeks. Make that time. Force that time. Do the water cooler thing.

• 38:58Vivian Tu?

  Cause it might cause you fifteen minutes, it might cost you fifteen minutes of your day, and it might cost you that fifteen minutes of productivity. I guarantee you, nobody is going to miss that fifteen minutes of your work product, but they'll remember when you told that funny joke. They'll remember that story you told about, you know, the one, you know, funny thing that happened that weekend, because that is how people remember you. It's not about like, oh, do you remember who closed that amazing deal last quarter? Nobody says that.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  Right. You know, what I think about is like, who is, who is able to show up with just consistent, good attitude, energy and effort consistently? Who, who creates the least amount of stress?

• 39:38Vivian Tu?

  Yes.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  You know, that I'm, I don't, I don't want to think about the challenges and the stress that is being brought to the team or to myself, but that you're just consistent. Not that you can't have a challenging day or bad stuff happens, but just, overall, you got a pretty good attitude.

• 39:52Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Lewis Howes?

  Pretty good energy. You're willing to show up and work hard consistently. It's like, all right, cool, you're gonna get rewarded.

• 39:57Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 39:58Lewis Howes?

  But go ahead.

• 39:59Vivian Tu?

  No, I was gonna say, it's also like, doing an elevator test, or a airport test, when you're looking at a resume. How many times has someone asked you about your past job experience in detail? Frankly, not that many times. You know what everybody beelines to on my resume?

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 40:16Vivian Tu?

  They look at the very bottom and they're like interests, activities. And they're like, oh, that's weird. I see you were a, literally, that's weird. You were a cheerleader in college? And I'm like, yes. And they're like, really? And I'm like, yeah, why? Don't I seem so fun and bubbly? And like, you know, it's the same day that I'm wearing all black and I look so like depressed. Or they'll look at the bottom of my resume and they're like, interests, mob movies. What's your favorite one? And I'm like, Goodfellas, obviously. And then we get into a 20 minute debate and I waste 20 minutes in our interview. But you only now have 10 minutes to ask me technical questions. And if I ace those 10 minutes of questions instead of 30 minutes, I now look like a genius because every question you ask me, I got right.

• 40:59Vivian Tu?

  And then even better, like the fact that you and I now have something in common. Because you know that Goodfellas is my favorite movie. I know that The Godfather is your favorite movie. So now we're friends.

• 41:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're more likeable.

• 41:15Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 41:15Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like people hire or they give raises or opportunities to people they like more.

• 41:21Vivian Tu?

  It's been shown time and time again.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  It's not about being the smartest or the most technical. It's about, you want to have technical skills and be smart.

• 41:29Vivian Tu?

  You gotta be a B plus student with an A plus personality. And that'll get you farther than being an A plus student with a B plus personality.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. It's more about personality than your technical skills. That's what it sounds like. Interesting. But you gotta be competent as well.

• 41:44Vivian Tu?

  Yeah. You can't be completely incompetent. You can't have an A plus personality and just be like a D minus. Like you're still bad at the job. They don't want you around.

• 41:51Lewis Howes?

  Man, I don't know how I got here then. I was like barely passed school, you know? So that's what I'm hearing you say around if you wanted to increase your income is some practical things. Why do people expect to get big raises or big, you know, pay increases by just doing the bare minimum? Why do you think people think they deserve a 10% raise for just doing the job minimum?

• 42:18Vivian Tu?

  Well, in recent years, because of how the job market's been, it's been a employees market. Meaning, there was always another company that was willing to hire. Like, there was this massive COVID boom, actually, where it was the great resignation. People were leaving jobs, left, right, and center, because they could get paid more somewhere else. And now...

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it's gonna go back to the way?

• 42:44Vivian Tu?

  Right now, it's doing this. It's coming, it's coming back in. And you have to be good at your job. Let me be clear. Again, those A-plus, A-plus employees, they're still leaving jobs. They're still going to new places. They're still getting paid. And they always will be. Because if you're really good, there will always be some, somewhere, and somebody who wants you. But for people who are doing the bare minimum, it's harder to hide now. Because when things at the top and, you know, the bottom line revenue is not so frothy, they have to trim fat.

• 43:18Vivian Tu?

  And if you're doing the bare minimum, you're gonna be the first on the chopping block.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Vivian Tu?

  So I think it's important about making yourself indispensable and actually doing good work.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:26Vivian Tu?

  But in terms of, like, prepping for a layoff, again, I think it's important to have that emergency fund. I've made content about this, but, just, you know, check those warn notices every so often. Basically, if you just Google your state and warn notice.

• 43:42Lewis Howes?

  Warn?

• 43:43Vivian Tu?

  W A R N.

• 43:44Lewis Howes?

  Warn notice.

• 43:45Vivian Tu?

  A warn notice, warn act. It is, basically, any corporation with over a certain number of employees needs to give notice when they're doing a mass layoff.

• 43:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 44:00Vivian Tu?

  Lots of companies try and skirt this by getting rid of, like, a slightly odd number below the threshold, or, you know, giving just enough time, whatever. But, just check. I think it's important just to have an eye out. And you're like, oh, wow, okay. Like, a lot of companies in the hotel and hospitality space are laying off a bunch of employees. My employer's not on this list, but I might be soon.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  Who knows, yeah. What skills should employees be developing throughout the year, or years, at, you know, a career or multiple careers? What, what can they develop to make themselves more indispensable? Besides just like, okay, I'm doing the job, and I'm showing up and doing it, but... Should I be taking classes? Should I be learning public speaking? Should I be some other skills?

• 44:43Vivian Tu?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  Learning to make myself more desirable at the current job or on another place?

• 44:49Vivian Tu?

  Yeah, um, I think every job, being good at your technical skills is great. But you want to have transferable skills and these are the soft skills.

• 44:58Lewis Howes?

  Bring it.

• 44:59Vivian Tu?

  The, you know.

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  What is it? Tell me.

• 45:01Vivian Tu?

  Just, again, it goes back to those fork and knife skills.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:05Vivian Tu?

  You want to be able to have a conversation with just about anyone.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:07Vivian Tu?

  You want to be able to make someone feel special. And I feel so lucky because after my stint on Wall Street, I went and worked at a media company in strategy sales. And let me tell you, sales, that is another beast.

• 45:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:26Vivian Tu?

  Because you eat what you kill.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Vivian Tu?

  And I got some sales training that, you know, my company obviously paid thousands and thousands of dollars for. And I don't remember any of it, except for one thing. W I I F M. So you guess what that means?

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  W I.

• 45:44Vivian Tu?

  I.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  F.

• 45:45Vivian Tu?

  Oh, two I's. F M.

• 45:47Lewis Howes?

  F M.

• 45:54Lewis Howes?

  I was thinking what if something, but I'm not sure.

• 45:57Vivian Tu?

  Okay, so you got the W.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 45:59Vivian Tu?

  What's in it for me?

• 46:00Lewis Howes?

  Ah, yeah.

• 46:01Vivian Tu?

  So we always know what we want, what's in it for us. But what's in it for me for, for the other person? Why do they need to help you do that thing? And this is how I always get what I want. I, no, no, think about it. I always think at the other end of the table, what's in it for that person?

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Like, it's like the prenup.

• 46:23Vivian Tu?

  It's a prenup.

• 46:24Lewis Howes?

  What was in it for your, your fiance?

• 46:25Vivian Tu?

  For my fiance. Um, what's in it for, you know, I'll talk about you. I know that you have, you know, a very, very successful podcast. But what's in it for you interviewing me? You want a lot of people to listen to this. You want to get those, you know, chartable numbers up. You want to be up the ranks. You want a big social splash. You want all of these things. And I.

• 46:50Vivian Tu?

  Position myself in a certain way to make those things happen. If I go to the car dealership, I'm like, okay, it's the end of the month. It's the end of October. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna ask for the floor mats. I'm gonna do all of these things. But I'm like, but what's in it for that guy? That guy's getting a commission because it's the end of the month and they need to make their number. They want to hit their quota. They want to get the kicker and they get paid upon delivery. So I'm gonna go four days before the end of the month and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna have to buy, you know, an Aziz car on the lot, blah, blah, blah. But I think about what's in it for them.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 47:19Vivian Tu?

  When I'm at a gate and my flight's been delayed and I'm mad and I'm angry. I'm like, this gate agent wants to kill me. She does not like me. She doesn't want to help me. What can I say that is going to make her want to help me? So maybe it's, hey, I know you've got a crazy crowd control thing happening going on. When do you think we are going to have an answer? If not, I would like to just rebook my flight. That way I can get out of your hair. And then they're like, oh, okay. This person has already thought through solutions.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Vivian Tu?

  I can just A, B, C, pick one for them. Whichever one that I think is going to make the most sense, based on when I think the plane's gonna arrive to the gate.

• 48:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:02Vivian Tu?

  Versus what's going on? No gate agent wants to answer that question because it's always bad news. You're always gonna be mad.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 48:09Vivian Tu?

  So think about what's in it for me. What's in it for them?

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  You've got a book called Experiencing the American Dream. How to Invest Your Time, Energy and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life. And there's a few things I want to talk about really quick. One is you, you shared a quote off, off camera that said, our brains are not wired for investing. Our brains are not wired for investing. That's one thing you said. That's right. And I saw a quote online, a statistic online says, according to LendingTree, 64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Many people view money as a source of survival and struggle with a scarcity mindset. So what I'm curious about is you've done so much, you know, three, four decades of research around the neuroscience of investing, but also the data and the the facts of investing

• 49:01Lewis Howes?

  as well, and how not to use feelings when it comes to investing. How can people start to shift out of a scarcity mindset into abundance thinking when they're just fight or flight survival mode daily?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  This is, this is a great question. And I'm so glad you asked it early on in our time together. I was very lucky to have a dad that believed in the American dream. He built into me my psychologically, the ideals of the American dream. He gave me thinking grow rich when I was 10 years old and said, read this at least one time every year of your life. But we came from the hills of West Virginia and the hollers. And my grandfather did not believe in the American dream. He worked in the coal mines. He worked in the factories, the chemical factories. He basically believed that money was a source of evil. He believed people that had it were greedy. He believed he was entitled to money that

• 49:57Speaker 03

  he didn't create. And he always, he always viewed it as anybody that had money was a crook. And my dad rejected that. My dad, by the time he was 10 years old, was an entrepreneur three times over. He sold newspapers. He sold cloverine salve to the miners where their hands were cracked, and he signed shoes. So he believed that if you created value for other people, that you would be rewarded with wealth and prosperity, and that people that had money weren't crooks, but they actually were really hardworking and dedicated. And he loved this country and the values that it stood for. So the minds, every summer, we'd go back to West Virginia, and I'd see the people living in the poverty. And they

• 50:42Speaker 03

  didn't have physical shackles. It was, it was a mindset, well, I call it a screen, by which they saw themselves as victims.

• 50:51Lewis Howes?

  Screen?

• 50:52Speaker 03

  A screen, a psychological screen made out of language, language that you're taught.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  And then there's, and then there's the, the language or the screen of the American dream. And that, and most people do look at money as a form of survival. And that is largely in our DNA too. I mean, for thousands of years, people had a real hard time surviving. And so money was in property was a form of survival. But now we live in a relative world of abundance and creativity. And if you can get that screen of the American dream, you can start to escape that, that, that terrible bonds that, that really imprison you almost in a, in a world of scarcity.

• 51:34Lewis Howes?

  Two things here. One, can you explain what the screen is? Is it a, a framework of thinking and language around what money is?

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yes. So it's, it's, it's language in some, the way that people can think about it. Sometimes you create that language on purpose. Like if I'm going to go be a doctor, I spent many, many years developing language around what a doctor is. So they see the human body as very different to someone who doesn't have that language. Well, we have all kinds of conversations in our lives about money, about the world, about how money works, how money is created, our place in the world and our relationship to money. And money, ironically, having a lot of money doesn't mean you're going to be happy.

• 52:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  As a matter of fact, I've seen a lot of really, really wealthy people, tens, twenties, thirties, millions of dollars. And history is rife with people like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes, Prince, people with a lot of money, power, fame, but it didn't do them any good. It actually helped seal their fate in the end and became very destructive.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  And there's another thing that you mentioned just before this was, you know, there's kind of two different mindsets. Your grandfather, who worked in the coal mines, who worked really hard, it sounds like on a daily basis, but didn't understand how to create more value, whether in his coal mine or somewhere else, and therefore was given what he received, correct?

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  Versus your dad, where it sounds like, how did your dad break that mindset from his father, who he saw probably miserable or unhappy in the mines, dirty every night and sick and coughing? How did he say, I want to change this without a model of someone showing him abundance?

• 53:16Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's great. And, and go back to my grandfather once, his screen was so strong.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  It was like they lived in two different worlds. It was how the two different dimensions of reality. His screen was so strong. When he was offered an opportunity to grow at Union Carbide, he was offered to be a foreman and have a crew underneath him. He told them no.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Because he didn't want to be part of the machine.

• 53:44Lewis Howes?

  But that's evil and bad.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  He didn't want to be evil and bad in his eyes. So he proved it to himself that he was doomed to be. Our money, I call these money demons. These money demons, which we all have at various times in our life. They take us over and preclude us from doing things that could actually save us. So he never took that race. He never took that opportunity to save his family, even when it was offered to him. And I've, I've asked my dad, I said, what? How did you? I mean, this poverty, this abject poverty, they, they, those, they would cut the tops off of instant carnation milk cans and they would hammer it to the baseboards in their shack by the railroad so that the rats wouldn't come in their house in the wintertime.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  That's how, that's how much poverty my dad came from. He only had one pair of shoes a year right before school started and then they were barefoot all summer long. I mean, this was true abject poverty. He said, he said, he said, I, I saw a couple of examples of people that did have a little bit of money and they were nice and they helped me. And I went to work for them. And I noticed that my dad was wrong, that people that had money weren't evil and they weren't bad and they were, and they were actually willing to help. And I had a couple of good teachers in school that taught me about that. But deep down, my dad had, and I don't know where he got it. He, he had a deep seated belief in capitalism.

• 55:11Lewis Howes?

  And entrepreneurism. Yeah. So what, you, you mentioned money demons. What are money demons? And do we all have them?

• 55:18Speaker 03

  We, we all do to a greater or lesser extent.

• 55:21Lewis Howes?

  What, what is, what is a money demon?

• 55:22Speaker 03

  So I'll, so I'll give you an example. So when I started my company, I wanted to help a lot of people. You know, we managed 11 billion dollars for people all over North America, 500 advisors.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  But when I started, I only had three employees. And I had a demon belief, it's a belief created in language, that then we don't realize that it's only just a screen. We take it one as reality, and that reality was that employees suck. And they're too expensive, and when you hire them, they don't do a good job. And the other money demon I had was that I'm not a good manager, and I don't know how to manage people, so I'll just do it myself.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Now, money demons are so pervasive, because when we have them, we make their self fulfilling prophecies, and we make them come true. And we don't look for opportunities that violate our screen. So I had to look at what I was getting out of it. What was I getting out of that screen? Well, I got to play small, didn't have to hire people, I got to be self righteous, I got to be condemning. You were right all the time. I'm right and righteous. Yeah, yeah. I got to gossip about other people, character assassinate, I got to be a victim.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  I mean, it was juicy psychological payoff. Right, right. But I also had to realize that if I was gonna, if I couldn't change those screens about the world, that I was gonna be doomed, never to fulfill my mission, which was to help more people stop speculating with their money and fulfill their American dream. Wow. And then you have to do a cost benefit analysis and say, okay, am I going to keep that demon belief, because there is payoff? Yes. I can live a normal, ordinary life, not full of greatness.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Thorough said it the best, you know, quiet desperation. Or am I going to break that belief? And I actually call it do violence to the belief. Interesting. I have to actually kill it. Yes. I have to kill that belief. But the thing about money demons is when you kill them and have more money, they don't disappear, they often morph. How so? Well, so after I became successful, then I went through a divorce. And then I started eventually dating after some therapy and counseling. And I started dating and I started getting one string of really painful relationships after another. And I developed a belief based on the divorce and dating that what that I'm not really that attractive.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  I'm not really that sexy. I got a lot of money and that's what women really went from me. And so that I'll never really, you know, have someone I really truly love and really truly loves me. And then I had a, you know, string of dating examples that created that. And so I had to do violence to that belief.

• 58:13Lewis Howes?

  So how does, how does that look like?

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  In your mind, how do you kill off the old limiting belief? Or the demons that keep you small or hold you back?

• 58:23Speaker 03

  So you're good. So you have to look at the, you have to look at the benefits you're getting out of it.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  You, the benefits, and I know it doesn't seem like there are benefits, but there are benefits to being right and playing small and not taking risks.

• 58:35Lewis Howes?

  And being a victim.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  And being a victim of being the martyr, getting to set, setting my own, if you would.

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest benefit? What, what would you, yeah, right. What would you say? What would you say is the biggest benefit of being a victim?

• 58:48Speaker 03

  You don't have to take risk in life.

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  Or responsibility.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  You don't have to be responsibly for your own results in life. You get to blame others. Well, it's not me, it's the government, or it's not me, it's the, these employees, or it's not me, that's this girl, or this not me, it's somebody else. I'm, I'm just fine the way I am. I don't have to change. I don't have to grow. I don't have to do anything. So it just takes you off the hook and lets you complain about other people. Behind every complaint is a demon belief.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  And so I've, I eventually, the way I did, and then the second part of doing, doing battle with it is to realize it's not true. You just made it up. There's no tablet that said employees suck from the mountaintop.

• 59:34Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  I just made it up. So if I made it up, I can make up something else. And I can start looking for evidence that it's not true. Look, there's companies with 10,000, 20,000 employees. So it can be that all employees are bad. Well, that's just silly. And I've known people about the money demon with the relationships. I knew people that had great relationships where it wasn't about money. So that couldn't be true either. I need to just slow down and actually take my time and, you know, find someone that's caring, loving and kind.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Which was funny because then when I met Melissa, she had a money demon, which was guys that had money are jerks.

• 1:00:13Lewis Howes?

  So she saw that right away with you. It was like repelling you, right?

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, she almost didn't say yes to that date at Starbucks. Cause she thought, oh, I must be a jerk. Yeah, I must be a total jerk.

• 1:00:25Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. In the book, which I love, you talked about this, but you have this part of the book, page 73, that called the destructive cycle of wealth. And you say, yes, it's cliche that money can't make you happy. Songs have been written about it, but why can't money make you happy? Shouldn't it make you a little bit happier if you suddenly stumble into, say, a hundred million dollars? You say the answer is no, and it sounds counterintuitive, but I firmly believe that to be true. And if money isn't making us any happier, and most of us have much more than what we need, why do we work so hard to make more of it? Why do we spend so much of our lives thinking about money without even realizing it? We are stuck in the destructive cycle of wealth.

• 1:01:07Lewis Howes?

  And learning about this cycle can help you better understand some of your decisions about money. And you say it has five phases, beginning with our most basic human needs. Can you talk about what this destructive cycle of wealth is?

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Why it's important for us to understand it? And what we can do to make sure we don't stay in it?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, so when I realized that I had clients with a lot of money that were very unhappy, that was my next question. My dad, one of the key strategies in the book is to ask a good question.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  And don't try to rush to get the answer. Take your time and really let it work on you and your subconscious and really think about it. So it took me years to come to think about this and that. The reason it can't make you happy is because it doesn't feel anything in your spiritual nature that can bring happiness.

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

  But it fulfills the survival nature, right?

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so. We all want things and we want things for our survival. That's instincts. Food, clothing, shelter, love, that kind of stuff. And then we go out and we obtain things and we obtain those things, most of us. But then we want more. Toyota even had that commercial, what a feeling, you know, when you get to Toyota. So you don't just want a new car, you want a really nice car. You don't want a new house, you want a really nice house. You don't so and then when you do get something, whether it's the computer or golf clubs or a purse or whatever it is, you have it for a while. You obtained it, you felt good about it for a little while. Then you start comparing it to what everybody else has.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  I had a boat I bought in Florida when we had a house down there and it was a 37 footer, 300 Yamaha motors. I loved that boat, had tons of fun on that boat. It was adventurous, really great. And then one day there was 180 foot yacht and their dinghy was bigger than my boat. And I'm like, this ain't no boat. I gotta get me a bigger boat.

• 1:03:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And but whether it's the size of your portfolio, the size of your house, you buy the perfect house, you think it's perfect, then six months later, you're looking at the kitchen going, these cabinets really suck, we really need to rip these out. It's just human nature. And and then so then it brings us around to comparing it to other things. Sometimes in technologies this way, they always come out with bigger, better, faster, cooler technology we want. And then you can lead you back up to this topic, wanting stuff. So it can't, it doesn't fulfill at a deep, meaningful purpose. And that leads you back to what you mentioned earlier, which is survival. It's about survival.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  So if I'm getting this right, we go through the cycle. And you know, a lot of people who are mega millionaires, maybe even billionaires, who are unhappy still.

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:03:58Lewis Howes?

  Would you say the majority of millionaires or billionaires are unhappy? The ones that you've been around or experienced?

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  I don't know about the majority, but I do know there is no correlation. And I know it from my personal life, too, because-

• 1:04:11Lewis Howes?

  Happiness and having money.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Right, because there's been times where I had a lot of money, was very unhappy. I had no money and was pretty happy.

• 1:04:20Lewis Howes?

  So you've also had a lot of money and been happy, too?

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  I would take the latter, the money and the happiness at the same time.

• 1:04:26Lewis Howes?

  Of course, you've experienced that, too.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  And I have.

• 1:04:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  But if it's not the money, then what is? And what I've found is it's having a purpose in life that's greater than money itself. Something, and if you think throughout history, the people that have changed the world, whether it's Ronald Reagan, or whether it's Martin Luther King, or whether it's JFK, or whether it's Walt Disney, or the Wright Brothers, or you think about these people that have changed the world, they've all had this deep sense of purpose and value in their life, so much so that they've even laid their life- Dr. Martin Luther King laid down his life for his purpose. And that's how strong purpose can be.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  And if you'll have a purpose first, then use it to create value for other people and align with their purpose, and then the more money you have, great. Because then I can align how I use that money with my purpose in life. And I can do great things with my money. That brings me joy and happiness and freedom and fulfillment with other people. But if I have the money without the purpose, it just becomes a burden.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  Really? It becomes empty.

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  It's so empty.

• 1:05:41Lewis Howes?

  I need more money, more money, more money, for what?

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  It's an addiction of itself.

• 1:05:47Lewis Howes?

  So it sounds like the greater the purpose you have, the more fulfilled you'll be with or without money?

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Because in fact, if you have a strong enough purpose, you don't even need money. You know, like Mother Teresa, saints.

• 1:06:01Lewis Howes?

  Well, because they feel taken care of by the community, or they know they're going to be provided for. They're happy with whatever they receive each day.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  There is, it's about their purpose in life. If I don't have, look, you can live in America for for very little money, even if you only have forty, fifty thousand dollars a year, you live better than the King of England did five hundred years ago. You have chocolate, you have air conditioning, you have food, you have

• 1:06:24Lewis Howes?

  Running water.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Running water, you have

• 1:06:26Lewis Howes?

  Healthcare.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, it's, it's a miracle. You should, everybody should wake up every morning in America going, it's a miracle, it's a miracle. I can't believe I live here. Of course they don't. But, but it's a miracle that what we have. And if you only have a little bit of money and you have a friend in the hospital, you can make the card with a crayon or a pen, you could go to the hospital, you could sit by their, by them and hold their hand. You could express your love and affection.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  And that's going to be more fulfilling than a Ferrari. I'm not anti Ferrari, you got one, but.

• 1:07:00Lewis Howes?

  It's funny for an hour, but it's not, you know, it's.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  I call them cookies and toys.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  You say you got these toys, they're, and they're fun. Okay, fine, great. I'm not saying that they're bad, but they won't make me happy. And then food, it's anything you ingest that try to change your mood about yourself and feel better temporarily. But they're not, they're not permanent.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  This is powerful, man. I love this.

• 1:07:27Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.