Everybody Wants... But Not Everybody Gets
A friend is visiting me in Hollywood from Sweden. She has an amazing voice and her dream is to be a rock star. She asked if I can get her signed by a big music label. Everybody wants....but not everybody gets. The world's not fair like that. It doesn't care about what we want. Go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up and you will eventually get what you deserve.
Tai Lopez Apr 18, 2014


Everybody Wants...

I was thinking of the wise words of Charlie Munger:

"I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve."

That's the trick. Not everyone gets because not everyone deserves. And I know this girl. She is good. She has an amazing voice. 

But...

I get about 50 emails a day with people asking me to invest in them, to help them.

A few months ago this guy emailed me and said, "Tai I know you are an investor. Can I take you out to lunch and tell you my idea? I have the next BILLION dollar idea."

I wrote him back and said, "I have a question for you. If you answer this correctly I'll agree to sit down with you and maybe even invest in your idea."

I asked him, "Have you ever started a million dollar company?" He said, "no"...

I then asked, "Have you ever started a six figure company?" He said, "no"...

Turns out he hadn't even started any company before. 

I wrote back and said, "Then why are you starting with a billion dollar idea?"  Too cocky for my tastes.


First Base First...

This is the problem. Everyone wants to start with a home run. Why not just start with a base hit?

There was this famous baseball player, Manny Ramirez. He played here in LA for the Dodgers. I read that one reason he was hated was because he always wanted the glory. Even if the team didn't need a home run to win (the bases were loaded), Manny would come looking to hit a grand slam. 

You know who is smarter and a hell of a lot richer than Manny? Warren Buffett.

In an interview for Forbes with Jay-Z, Warren says something like:

"I have these rules. First rule is don't lose, and the second rule is never forget the first rule. It really isn't so much having a lot of brilliant decisions. It's just not having terrible ones. I learned from Benjamin Graham [his mentor] how to avoid ever have any big disasters as an investor. It wasn't that you were ever going to come up with the very smartest thing. But if never have any significant losses... some singles and doubles will produce a lot of runs before you get through."

This is coming from a man with a 155 IQ who made $40 billion dollars and started a company with $147 billion in revenue.

If he says he doesn't really rely on brilliant ideas who are you and I to be so cocky as to think we will come up with the next 'billion dollar idea?'

Forget the billion dollar idea. That is for suckers. I mean, yes, if you have already made a million dollars then sure, swing for a home run. You earned it. You already have made it to 2nd or 3rd base.

But if you are just starting out, you better humble yourself. Joel Salatin used to tell me back on the farm, "Tai, Nature laughs last."

If you step out of bounds of the natural patterns of success you are dead before you start.

This is real life. When you are talking business you are now playing with the big boys. Your mom and dad aren't there to make everything ok. 

In the real world it's hard enough to get to first base. 

Be humble. It's like the wise teacher said, "It's it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom..."

You can interpret that however you want. To me the lesson is that people who are 'rich in spirit', cocky, or arrogant never get the reward, the 'kingdom.'

You don't want to be one of those people. Remember everyone wants... But not everyone gets.

We have been tricked by the media. They are trying to sell something. Like Munger says, "Beware of perverse incentives."

The media isn't incentivized to tell you the truth.


Your Eyeballs...

What's worse is your eyeballs are not designed to be able to tell fact from fiction. This is due to two factors:

1. The availability cognitive bias
2. The media cognitive bias

Whatever info comes from a media source like TV, movies, radio, magazines, news, etc. is instantly available to our brain and forces a reaction.

It's why you jump when you watch a horror movie. Your conscious, logical mind know it's not real. You know you are safe in the theater. But your primitive, subconscious brain doesn't know it's fake.

Freud said, "The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water."

Most of our action emanates from thoughts deep within. And like it or not, our ideas on success, down deep within, have been manipulated by journalists who never have made a million dollars themselves.

They are selling ratings. They sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder.

Boring doesn't sell. Hype sells. The overnight success of the Instagram guy, or the Whatsapp guys, or Mark Zuckerberg. That sells. 

So we all grow up thinking the normative pattern is a quick path to a billion dollars. 

Or like my friend, if you want to be a singer you think it will be like Justin Bieber and discovered by Scooter Braun at age 12 and a star before he was even legal. 

Forget about that. Get on first base first. 

Don't tell me about your next billion dollar idea. Tell me about your $10,000 idea. That gets me excited.

Don't tell me about getting signed by Sony Music. Show me your song on your YouTube channel with 100 loyal followers.

That is what works my friend. It's the pattern that Bill Gates followed. He got into computers at age 12. Only after 19 years of struggle did he become a billionaire at 31. 

You might have heard of Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" talking about how mastery takes 10,000 hours. The truth is it's more like 13,000 or 14,000 hours. 

They call this the '10 dark years.' The years of struggle that the media forgets to write about.

Bill Gates said, "From age 20 to age 30 I never took a day off. Not one.” 

I went to the famous Laugh Factory on Sunset Blvd. last Saturday. Dane Cook was performing. He started at 18 or 19 and hit it big in his late 30's.

The rapper '2 Chainz' wasn't huge until almost 40. 

Warren Buffett was born August 30, 1930. He started reading about investing at age 7. He made his first investment at age 12. He made his first million in 1962 (at age 32 - 25 years after he started). He made his billion on May 29, 1990 (at age 60 - 53 years after he started).

That's the normative pattern. Everything else is for suckers.


The Lottery Ticket...

You have a choice. You can try the "lottery ticket" approach and see if you are smarter than Dane Cook, 2 Chainz, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. 

When I was 10 I was at a Ralphs grocery store with my grandma. I said, "Grandma buy a lottery ticket, I have a good feeling."

Sure enough I scratched off the card and won $100. Back then my monthly allowance for washing the dishes was $10/month. So I had just doubled my annual income.

I bought a Huffy mountain bike the next day. Unfortunately it was stolen three days later.

Or maybe that was lucky. 

Like David Klein, the Amish farmer told me, "A fence that gets built fast falls down fast. A fence that goes up slow stays up a long time."

My bike was easy come, easy go.

I didn't know yet that Munger said to get what I wanted (a Huffy mountain bike), I had to deserve it. Winning a lottery ticket doesn't make anyone deserve anything. 

That same Christmas my parents said, "Tai we will buy you $200 worth of presents. What do you want?"

I was a sucker for punishment. I hadn't learned my lesson. I said, "I want 200 lottery tickets."

My plan was simple. If just a few of them won me $100 bucks each, I would be rich. 

It was a sad day that Christmas morning when after scratching off all 200 lottery tickets I had made exactly $12. 

I remember thinking, "I could have had so many Transformers instead of these stupid, worthless lottery tickets."

The "lottery ticket" approach fails, my friend.

Capitalism is designed to move money from the hands of the 'sucker' into the hands of the savvy - the ones savvy enough to read the obvious signs of Nature and change, adapt...

It's not even capitalism. It's Darwinian. Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

I was 10. I had an idea in my head. I didn't want to change. I had not yet fully developed the 'theory of the mind.' I was the center of the universe in my own imagination.

It was Christmas. Of course the world owed me lots of money, right?

Entitlement is a nasty thing...

Think of your life.

Ever gone to the gym to get back in shape? You last a month going regularly because when you don't see quick results you give up. 

You forget what Munger says. Go to bed just a little wiser. A little healthier.

Forget what the 4 Hour Body book says. You have to exercise and eat right for 1 year not 1 month. 

You have to build your business for 1 year not 1 month to see your income change. 

That's nature laughing last. The weak aren't supposed to get anything substantive. I don't mean you have to be a bodybuilder. I don't mean you have to be a genius.

I mean you have to have CHARACTER. You have to love the burn and embrace the difficult.

Everyone wants, but not everyone gets...

If you want, here is something that works.


Mental Frameworks...

Fill up your brain with new mental frameworks. This is what my TED talk is about.

Be humble. Bow your knee to Nature. She will win anyway. Avoid the pain of fighting a battle you can't win.

Find the patterns that work. 

Like Jim Rohn says, "The world does not respond to need, it responds to seed."

If you want to be the farmer in September who harvests his corn then you better have planted seeds in April.

You can't forget to plant and then stand weeping over your empty fields wondering where you food will come from.

I was lucky enough to spend 10 years on a farm when I was growing up. It taught me things about life.

(If you grew up in the city make sure you spend some time on a farm every year. It will teach you things you can never learn from any book or teacher).

Studying nature is the best mentorship ever offered. 

Don't be the moron wondering where his harvest is when seeds were never planted, weeds were never pulled, and fertilizer was never applied. 

To get what you want find the rules. 

You want to live in a world with rules. It wouldn't be fair any other way. 

Without rules we would be just left with fate and magic. That's how the world was in the 1700's. Doctors couldn't figure out why so many women died during childbirth. 

One doctor was smart enough to find the pattern. Wash hands - women live. Don't wash hands - women die.

Boom. No magic. Just rules... Patterns to live by...

Nature laughs last. We live in the modern world. We don't know everything but we know a hell of a lot more than we did 100 years ago. 

So break out the flash cards.

Yes I mean literally buy 3 x 5 note cards and write things on them worth memorizing. Last year a business partner was out visiting me in Hollywood. We were playing basketball in my front yard. I asked him an accounting question about our partnership.

He looked at me embarrassed. I realized he had no idea. I dropped the subject.

Three months later he was back visiting. We were playing basketball again. I had to bring up the same accounting questions. All of a sudden he knew everything.

I said, "How in the world do you know so much now."

He said, "Flash cards."

Let me add, this guy pays himself a salary of $1 million a month from his business.

He is a baller. He makes the same income as Mitt Romney.

But he was humble enough to buy some accounting books and write out flash cards. None of my broke friends will do that. And that's why they are broke and he is rich. 


Mind of An Investor...

He has the mind of an investor. He invests in his brain. Even if means less time driving his Ferrari. 

A good farmer invests in April to get something in Fall.

The corn grows to 6 inches and the good farmer cultivates it, removes the weeds, waters it. Then one day it feeds him. 

If your bank account is empty I can bet what you didn't do 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 10 years ago.

Inch by inch you will get what you want. First base before second...

The media doesn't like that story. They just skip to the September harvesting story. 

Joel Salatin tells me, "Tai everyone wants to be like me NOW. No one wants to be like me and my wife when we lived in our parents attic for 8 years after we got married so we could live on a $100/month budget and save the rest to invest."

Everyone loves the harvest story. Joel's success now lands him in National Geographic, Smithsonian, TED talks, and in front of kings and presidents. 

Do you think reporters were beating down his door for stories when he was living on $100/month?

Nope. Those were Joel's 'dark years.'

All winners have the 'dark years.'

Let me share a few mental frameworks, shortcuts, so that you can get your mind in line with natural patterns of success:


1. Turn Off The News

Nothing will make you dumber than following the news too closely.

Like Will Durant says, "Most of us spend too much time on the last 24 hours and too little on the last 6000 years.”

Magazines suck too, most of them...Anything that gives only a quick overview of a story is inherently biased. A quick news blurb or magazine article doesn't have time to tell you the full story of Richard Branson.

It's just a snapshot.

Read books instead. They are timeless. They tell a longer story - a more complete story - the struggle and the victory. Not just the victory alone.

The quick article on Michael Jordan shows you all his championship rings. The book tells you how he was cut from his high school basketball team and how he broke his foot as a pro.

The magazine tells you about how Colonel Sanders owned Kentucky Fried Chicken. The book tells you about his 65 years of failure.

Forbes shows you Warren Buffett on the list of 400 wealthiest people in the world. The biography tells you how Buffett read every book in the Omaha library system on investing before he was age 12.

Read newspapers once a week max. Short stories make you biased. 

Remember your brain can't separate fact from fiction if your eyeballs take in half truths. You will always jump at a horror flick. Fight or flight can't be turned off. You don't want it to be turned off.

So don't overstimulate it. 


2. Replace the news with biographies

Remember you can't just cut something and not replace it with something else. Like I said above, use books to replace old biased media sources.

Specifically switch to one type of book - biographies. 

Read "Kon-Tiki" by Thor Heyerdahl or "Total Recall" by Arnold Schwarzenegger or "Screw It Lets Do It" by Richard Branson. Read about Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Bill Gates, and the Dalai Lama. 

Not just their teachings but the background story of how they got where they are now. 

You will learn that even with people like Michael Jackson there was a struggle. I know we all think he was a natural. He was performing barely out of diapers on the Ed Sullivan Show. But I read that he spent 8 hours a day just practicing doing one spin. 

I remember when I was around 11, I wanted to spin like Michael Jackson. My mom wouldn't let me buy a glove like Michael. She said I would look dumb with it on haha. So I snuck out and bought a bicycle glove. The one without the fingers.

Unfortunately it didn't help me spin. Only 8 hours a day of practice does that. 

Like the book "Bounce" discusses. It it natural talent or is it practice?

It's probably a bit of both.

Michael Jackson might have had the natural affinity but so did thousands of other kids born who didn't cultivate it to through the step by step, get-on-first-base, approach. 

You have to put in your years. 

The alternative is to live an average life. Let me say that there is nothing wrong with average. We all die one day.

But this article is for people who want to be remembered for something great. Those who want more than just their parents and a few friends showing up at their funeral. 

If you are reading this, and this is you, then turn off the pop culture media and pull out a biography of one of the greats. 


3. Train yourself with something a little harsh

Snap yourself out of your funk. Remember the monk in the Tom Hanks movie, "Da Vinci Code"? 

He carried a whip around and whipped his own back to stay disciplined.

A bit extreme.

But the basic principle is gospel truth. Be a real man. Be a real woman. 

Do your duty. Remember in Scarface at the end. Al Pacino says, "Say hello to my little friend."

He was tough. It didn't matter what was coming his way.

He was like the warrior in Chief Tecumseh's poem, "When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Where are the ones living their life like a hero going home?


3. Change your contrasts

Don't be a victim of the contrast cognitive bias. We are happy, sad, satisfied, or ambitious based on who we compare ourselves to. 

Put life into perspective.  Half the world goes to bed hungry every night. Try that for a few nights. 

We think we are supposed to have 24 hour electricity, TIVO, DVR, Game of Thrones, Big Macs, video games, cars, and air conditioning. 

But this isn't the normative pattern. The normal is trial and tribulation. 

And believe it or not, that's what you want. Instead of hedonic, momentary happiness you want fulfillment. Happiness is an emotion. It's meant to come and go.

If you ever meet someone perpetually happy they probably have brain damage (that's actually a fact, Google it)...

But fulfillment can wake you up tap dancing out of bed every morning.

Fulfillment is better in the long run.

Doing your duty will bring fulfillment even if it comes in the midst of rough circumstances.

Stop comparing yourself to people who make you feel comfortable about yourself.

Find someone who is your age but doing 20 times better than you. That will snap you out of the hazy funk of the modern world. 

It's ok to get your self esteem hurt. Don't believe the hype that everything has to be peachy keen every night. 

That's the mentality of consumers, of suckers.You are becoming an investor, someone who makes things happen. 

Follow this principle I came up with. I call it the "law of 33%".

Spend 33% of your time around people not doing as well as you. These are the people you can help. They will also boost your self esteem. We all need a little boost sometimes.

Then spend 33% of your time around people on your level. Like Gandhi in his biography talks about, it's lonely when you are on a path to success. The people on your level will become your close friends. You will need them.

Spend your last 33% around people who are 20 years ahead of you. They will push you. Most of us avoid this last 33%. They can't handle it. 

But this group will create the burn. They will reshift your brain. They will change your contrasts.

I have a friend who started from scratch and in 7 years built a billion dollar company.

He still hangs out with people better than him. He texted me a few months ago, "Tai, I'm so depressed. I'm at dinner with a kid from Korea who is 3 years younger than me and is already a billionaire."

Keep in mind, my friend is still in his 30s and is worth a few hundred million dollars. 

At first I wondered if he was joking with me. Then I realized he was for real. He knows a mental trick. This is the secret of millionaires.

He had trained his brain to always contrast with even greater success.

Of course there is a balance to this. You don't want to be extreme either way. But most of us are way too extreme on the side of under achievement.

The only smug people I know are all my broke friends. If you ask them what they are doing they always say, "We like our life like it is."

It's a lie but they are either to proud or too delusional to admit it. 

They remind me of the weird response you get from smokers when you tell them they smell bad and they should quit. They say, "Tai you have to die of something."

No kidding...

I want to say well, "What if someone pulls out a gun right now and holds it to your head. Do you want to die now?"

No, nobody wants to die sooner than they need to.

So the whole "you have to die of something" is just an excuse from weak-minded people. 

It's like this old friend of mine. I love him but he drives me nuts. He's always ranting about some insane political opinion about why he is broke due to Obama and the recession.

I got stuck in a car with him on a long drive to Palm Springs and wanted to jump out of the window the whole time.

He's a smart guy which makes it worse. He is able to spin convoluted rationale together about his current state of having no job or money.

After 2 hours of patiently listening I finally said, "Dude, you are a smart guy. How come I can name 20 other mutual friends who don't have your IQ but are making money in this horrible recession you talk about?"

That shut him up. He had the wrong contrast.

He should have compared himself to Shahid Khan who came to the U.S. from Pakistan and worked as a dishwasher for $1.20 per hour - but then became a billionaire.

Like Scott Stewart my high school basketball coach used to yell at me, "Stop whining."

And if you look in the mirror and think you look great. Then start comparing yourself to Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jillian Michaels.

Again don't beat yourself up if your not perfect. But be ambitious. Focus on moving towards something great. Create momentum. 

Get a little stronger, a little leaner. Don't buy the lie that looks don't matter. 

Like the old saying goes, "God might judge the inside, but man judges the outside."

Lose some weight or gain some muscle. You will be healthier for it. 

Don't take the lottery ticket approach and think 50 pushups and 2 Zumba classes are going to offset 20 years of eating at Taco Bell.

You don't need a 7 day plan. You need an 18 month plan. 


4. 18 month time frame

The famous business teacher Peter Drucker says that you should make 18 month plans.

So to get what you want, plan for it to take 18 months to even make a dent in your goal. If that sounds too hard for you then I would just remind you: Nature laughs last...

She doesn't care about your impatience. She is a hard taskmaster.

I was working with someone about 7 years ago who was almost 60. They had $75,000 to invest. I told them to invest it into starting their own business. I said that if they were careful, in 10 years that investment would give them enough cash flow to retire on.

I will never forget their reply, "Tai, I am almost 60. I don't want to wait 10 years to get a return."

I didn't reply because well I remember the saying: "Don't try to teach a pig to fly. You can't do it and it bothers the pig."

The sad thing is they invested that $75,000 in a get rich quick idea and now they have nothing. If they had listened, today they would have a nice recurring income source. 

They were like a little kid throwing a tantrum, "Tai I want, I want..."

As if the universe cares.

The universe cares about natural patterns. If those patterns require Warren Buffett to wait 50 years and Bill Gates to wait 19 years why should they break the rules for the whiners?

You can't rush it. Sure, there are shortcuts that cut the learning curve. But there will always be a curve.

Like John Wooden the famous basketball coach says, "Be quick but not in a hurry." Or Joel Salatin, "Make haste slowly."

I want you to start instantly but plan methodically. 

My Swedish singer friend I mentioned at the beginning. I told her, "Spend the next 18 months getting one amazing song on Youtube with a small following of loyal listeners."

That's how empires start. 

My brother is starting a fitness company. I told him, "Start immediately but build it over 18 months or longer."

Like Munger says, "Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve."

Forget about home runs for now. Get on first base.


Destiny Unfolds...

Remember destiny unfolds. Nature is like a good woman. A woman you would want to marry. 

She is not easy to get. You have to work for it. 

You have to compete to get her attention. And like all women, she has her own rules. Rules that don't always make sense to us. But they are rules nonetheless.

Any girl worth getting is hard to get. Only the winner will still be around at the end. 

This is science. The concept of competition is the underpinning of all our modern medicine and biology.

It's also the pattern of business success, physical health, romance, and happiness and fulfillment.

Stay humble. Bend your knee to Nature and her rules will become your greatest ally. 

To end, let me ask you to leave me a comment with the answer to two questions.

1. What have you rushed into and given up on too quickly? Is it your body, your income, your love life, your purpose? 

2. And more importantly what mindset shift are you going to start on today to start on a new journey today?

I hope this has been helpful.


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Question: What is one area of your life that you keep rushing into? (Leave your answer in the comments below!)



 

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