I Was Homeless... Now I’ve got $250 Million (in assets)

How much have you spent in real estate over the years? Well over a billion, maybe two billion. This man has a real estate portfolio worth over 200 million dollars.

He also has one of the most rare car collections in the world and a gigantic social media following, but none of this was handed to him. Manny Coachpin and his parents immigrated to America from Iran, and times were so rough that they all had to live out of a station wagon. His parents and multiple siblings—what's it like to sleep in a car with six people?

A lot of cool lights. You know, sometimes you subconsciously block it. It wasn’t easy.

Yeah, with no clear path to success, Manny dropped out of college and started several businesses that failed. One of our friends used to sell gas stations. I opened escrow and put my twenty thousand dollars in.

Bam! It turned out to be a con artist. I lost all my money.

But despite these setbacks, things began to look up for Manny when he discovered real estate, and now he closes deals that are worth nine figures alone in the real estate portfolio. What's been like the biggest win you’ve had? My biggest win?

50 million on one property. So how did he do it? In this video, we sit down with Manny Coachman to hear the story of how a failed entrepreneur became one of the most respected names in real estate.

So I’m Manny Koshbed. I made my money in real estate, primarily commercial real estate. I have a passion for cars, as you guys can see, but my journey wasn’t easy.

I probably went through five or six different businesses. I failed many times until I found success in buying real estate, adding value, flipping it for a profit, and I’ve been doing that for nearly 30 years now. And so, for your story, you grew up in Iran.

What was going on, and what was the story for you to come to America? Iran obviously had a history of war with Iraq at the time. The war was going on.

My dad had several brothers that got injured; one of them died from the chemical bombs they used in the war. Two weeks before my 14th birthday, my dad decided to take off to avoid me going to the army, because at age 14 you basically cannot live there anymore, and you have to submit to the army. Okay, and that's a pretty young age.

Seeing what happened to his brothers, he didn’t want me to get killed or injured. So, two weeks before my 14th birthday, we decided to leave Iran, went to Turkey, he was about to get a visa, and we came to the US. None of us spoke a word of English except my dad.

My dad had been to the US before, and you know, he was educated and, luckily, he spoke English. But I took three hours of ESL for the first two years in high school when I was here, from 14 to 16, because I didn't speak a single word of English. So a pretty challenging upbringing because we didn’t have any money.

We ran out of money and ended up living in a car for a few months. I think my dad got a job, was able to get an apartment, but all that pressure came down on me. That kind of gave me the guilt trip, and I turned that into motivation—tried to be successful so I could retire my parents, pay them back, and I did just that after many different failures early on.

But yeah, it's been a very interesting journey, and I’m happy to share it because I know there are a lot of immigrants that come to this country for the American dream, and they get discouraged after a couple of failures. That was exactly me, but look at me now. So when you came to America and didn’t speak English, remember what your first week was like?

Because I can't imagine what that experience is like for someone. Yeah, well, you're just like on a different planet, you know? I don’t know my way around, I don’t have any friends, I don’t speak, and I don’t have any money.

So basically, you know, Americans are born into this country; they have all of that which I didn’t have. So I had a pretty rough start, if you want to call it that. But yeah, as a matter of fact, when we first moved here, we went to a Motel 6 in Costa Mesa, and then after a few nights my dad figured that we were going to run out of money, so we moved into a car.

I was at the pool, and I remember this young kid was giving me that bird (you know, I don’t want to) and then another guy sitting at the pool said, “No, that’s not good, not good. ” I didn’t know what the heck was going on. Yeah, so I didn’t—not only did I not speak English, I didn’t know sign language.

That's crazy. What’s it like to sleep in a car with six people? Like, what was it, a station wagon?

It’s not good. Yeah, it was a 1972 Datsun station wagon. A lot of cool lights.

Yeah, it wasn’t good, but you know—I think there was so much suffering and mental pressure on my mom, especially, that sometimes you subconsciously block it; you don’t think about it. I look at the good times now, but it wasn’t easy. Yes, I tried.

Yeah, no, that’s good. What were your parents telling you during that time? Oh, my parents wanted me to go to college, so I.

. . Attended two weeks of college at IBC, it's in Irvine, and I realized, you know, everybody's monkeying around, throwing paper at each other, pens, and I'm like, I showed up there with a briefcase, you know, I'm like wearing a suit; I'm ready to make money.

Yeah, really! And then after two weeks, I quit, and my mom didn't talk to me for like several months. She was very depressed and upset, but I was eager to make money, right?

So at age 18, I started my own business selling nuts door to door. That was my first business. It did great until the Health Department fined me.

They said, "Hey, you gotta have a helper every time you repackage food for resale," and I didn't know that. So I caused that, and I had about $20,000 saved. Then I realized, you know, maybe I should put that to work.

One of our friends used to sell gas stations because, you know, at $20 grand, you could buy a Mobile gas station, because you get, you know, 90% financing. I'm like, really? I was 20; I think 20 at the time.

So we opened escrow, I put my $20,000 in a bank, and a loan officer turned out to be a con artist, and I lost all my money. So that was my first real failure—back to zero. Because there's one thing about not having money and not making it, but once you make it and then you go back to zero, it’s a hard landing, you know?

So then I went back to working at Winston Tires to again work for somebody else to save money, and I got my real estate license. Because every time I was having a Porsche or Ferrari come into the tire shop, I was upselling him, you know, brakes, tires, whatever, alignment. I really would ask, "Hey, what do you do for a living?

" and they would say, "Oh, either I'm an attorney," but nine out of ten times, they own a mortgage company or real estate, right? I'm like, wow! So real estate's good.

I got my license, and then one of the customers that used to come to Winston Tires hired me as a loan officer. So I worked at the loan company for less than a year, learned everything, and then I opened my own mortgage company. In 1993, I was 22 years old; I founded a mortgage group and made $290,000 my first year, and that was my first taste of success—real money!

Right at 22 to 23 years old, having that kind of money. So I bought a 500 SL, a small little condo, and I was wearing three-piece suits, smoking cigars. That was like I found myself on top of the mountain.

Then rates went up, and all my mortgages died because back then there was a refinance boom, okay? You wouldn't lock your rates in; you would wait, you know, get all the loans approved, and then just lock them at the last minute to get a bigger rebate from the bank. So I had 40 loans on my board, rates went up—Greenspan, in 1994, took the rates up three quarters basis point, kind of similar to what's happening now.

You know, today the Fed increased the rates for the tenth consecutive time, right? All my loans went dead. We closed that down, and then I figured, hey, I got a couple hundred thousand dollars saved, and I realized discount stores are doing good—99 Only Stores.

Yeah, as a one, I do 79 cents a store, 79 cents plus. So I opened a 10,000 square foot store in Santa Ana—79 cents plus—and started making good money. Then I opened the second location.

That didn't do well; I closed that one down. Then Food 4 Less opened right next to me; they started competing with me. I started going from making $20,000 to $30,000 a month cash to losing money.

So at that point, I'm like, this is my second failure. I started selling my cars, I sold my condo, and then after two years, I owed $200,000 on my credit cards, paying 20% plus interest. Everybody told me about bankruptcy because I owed money to PepsiCo, Colorado Rock View Farms, you know, all these vendors, right?

They gave me 30 days' term, and so my accounts payable was going up while my cash and sales were dropping because this big store opened next to me, competing with me. I said, "I'm not gonna file bankruptcy. " By then, I knew, you know, because I was in the mortgage business.

This country is built on credit; if I file bankruptcy, I'm dead, right? So I fought and basically let go of several employees, and I called my parents to come and become cashiers. So it took me two, two and a half years to kind of get to a positive cash flow, and I ended up selling it for $185,000.

Then I still owed more than I got from escrow from selling the store. So I'm like, okay, if I pay my credit cards, I'm still going to be in the hole. So I opened an E-Trade account.

This was December 1998. I opened an E-Trade account; I started trading stocks. I got it up to $700,000 by September 1999.

Then I pulled most of it out and bought a shopping center and two REO homes, and that's how I started my real estate. What were the skills that you developed at this early time that other people should be learning? From because I definitely think one that sounds like selling, and another thing you did, which I thought was amazing, is that if you're seeing someone that has something you're interested in, you asked.

It sounded like when you saw these people bringing nice cars, you were like, "What are you doing? " Because, yeah, that could maybe copy what they're doing. I would say definitely be curious, always ask questions, be a sponge.

Even now, I mean, I'm always on Google, YouTube; I'm always learning what's going on, what are the trends, what's happening. But always surround yourself with people that are more successful than you, and also be curious, always ask questions. And I would say, you know, take a sales position in anything, because when you do sales, you're interacting with people, you learn a lot.

You know, everything almost in life is sales, you know? So that would be my advice. How do you think being an immigrant impacts your success, especially early on?

Well, I think the hunger, you know. Coming from another country, you feel—you're in a new environment and you want to prove yourself. You're also learning, right?

Because you don't know the environment, you don't know how the business works, how the system works. But more than anything, I think just that hunger in me, because I was rock bottom, I didn't have any place to go but up, you know? And I think that was what created that drive in me.

A lot of people take that freedom, resources, friends, being able to speak English—all that for granted because they're here, right? But if you take all that away from you, you get really desperate, yeah, real quick. How do you think others can benefit, that aren't immigrants, with that mentality?

Or how can they practice that or develop that? Well, challenging themselves for one. You could still go, you know, the U.

S. has over 50 states, so you can go to other states that are, you know, having a new driver in the economy and open a new business. Just challenging yourself, you know?

And so, setting stagnation in place. What were some of the discrimination or challenges you faced? Oh my God, I can go on and on about that one!

Yeah, Camel Rider, standing—oh no, really? Oh yeah, well, back then there was still a lot of discrimination, especially towards Middle Easterners. So I used to work at Kmart; my first job was at Kmart at age 16.

I was mopping floors, collecting shopping carts, and I used to always avoid walking by the cafeteria because they used to call me names, so I used to go around, you know? But, you know, luckily that period's over. The U.

S. is now primarily a lot of immigrants, so, you know, it's a lot less now than it was 40 years ago. But it was tough—there was a lot of name-calling.

Especially when I was selling nuts, I remember one time I was selling nuts. So what I used to do with my nut business was go to all the auto dealerships because I'd sell, you know, cashews, trail mix, candies to the secretaries, and then the salespeople love nuts—the trail mix, pistachios, and whatever. So one time, I walked into a Toyota dealership—I think it was Toyota—and this GM came at me yelling, screaming in front of everybody on the entire sales floor, "How many got that F out?

! " It was very humiliating, and I'm standing there with my basket of nuts. I remember walking out with tears in my eyes thinking, "You know what?

It's okay, suck it up. " And I went to the next dealership and I sold some nuts. So yeah, you just got to keep going, right?

Do you think you used that discrimination and name-calling and negativity and funneled that over the years? Right? Because you were selling to these car dealerships, and now you have your own dealership.

Yeah, I guess so, if you put it that way. You know, sometimes life gives you challenges, or sometimes people cause challenges for you, right? You can either accept it and get defeated or you can prove them wrong.

You know, so I turned my doubters or haters into my followers. I can't imagine also feeling so discriminated against and discouraged at those times. How did you even know what to think of a vision?

Because when I'm noticing some people, they don't know how big they can even dream—or how far they can even go. So how were you thinking about that, and how did you get there? I just looked at people that were around me that were successful.

Like, you know, when I was at Winston Tire, I used to see people coming there with Mercedes convertibles, a few times Porsches. Early on, to me, success was having a convertible Mercedes, you know? And that's the first car I bought when I made money.

But I didn't even know a Bugatti existed. I didn't know what a Bugatti was. But then, years later, I got involved with higher-caliber friends who had Bugattis.

I'm like, "Wow, I learned how much technology and legacy is behind the story of Bugatti, Ettore Bugatti, that built Bugatti. " Then I started building a passion for cars, and, you know, they're like fine arts. Yeah, and so your dream keeps going with you as long as you have that drive to grow.

What's your definition of the American Dram? A dream is you can just wake up in the morning and decide to take off for two months anywhere you want to go in the world and not have to worry about paying the bills. Do you think this still exists?

Of course! I mean, if you really want it badly enough and you're patient, anyone can do it. I believe that, but you gotta have the drive, you gotta have the hunger, and you're gonna have to have a "never give up" mentality.

Because surely, you're gonna get to a point where you're gonna hit a dead end, and you're gonna have to make a U-turn and find a different route. Well, I'm assuming you think you achieved it? I think so.

I don't know, you know, my wife still tells me that I'm in denial sometimes. And, um, well, you know, when you're accumulating wealth—more cars, this, that—sometimes you don't stop to kind of enjoy it because you're always hustling. But yeah, I think I have.

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com/nuggets, or there'll be a link below in the description. How did you make your first million in real estate? Can you tell us more details about that deal?

Sure! So that was a commercial property in the year 2000. Because I did own this store, I could qualify for an SBA loan for a commercial property to build a vacant building on First Street in Santa Ana.

I bought that with 10% down—$67,000 out of pocket. I remodeled it and then sold it for $1. 6 million in less than a year, so that was my first million bucks on a single flip.

Then I turned that and used the cash to my advantage, and I started writing a lot of offers on apartment buildings in Long Beach—six units and up. I was able to buy some, you know, with short closings, so I used that to my advantage to get a price reduction in return for closing it quickly with no contingencies. So again, I took risks, but it was calculated risk because I knew, "Hey, if they're asking $900,000 and I offer them $650,000, if they settle for $700,000, I just made $200,000.

" Right? Let's tell what they're asking because I was able to perform quickly and buy the assets. Then I did that; I flipped probably 200 to 300 units.

And then I started doing office buildings with a similar concept. As a matter of fact, the building I recently bought for $22 million had a million-and-a-half-dollar non-refundable deposit on day one. There was an offer for $26 million—$4 million more—but the seller gave it to me for $24.

22 million. So, why did they do that? Because they wanted certainty.

The seller was a very wealthy individual and just wanted certainty that the person was going to close. The other offers had 90-day due diligence; they wanted to develop it, go to the city, and see what could be built on it. He just wanted certainty.

So, in real estate, you want to see what the seller's objective is, and if you can fill that void, you can make extra money upfront. So, full-time, I do like that because it's like if you can deal with more uncertainty, you can get bigger upside. Yeah, what was it like to make the first million?

Oh, it was great! I think it was 2000 or 2001. I was born in '71, so I was 29 or 30.

It was great because back then, a million dollars was a lot of money. Right now, a million dollars is not a lot of money; or maybe it is? I don't know; you lose the concept of money when you know you buy five million dollar cars.

But no, it was a great feeling. Obviously, I did a 1031 exchange, but when I had my statement that showed a million dollars in 1031 exchange cash, it was a good feeling. I felt like I made it—like Borat says, "Great success!

" Is that the moment you felt like you achieved the American dream, or when was it? Yeah, well, that was definitely a milestone that I will never forget because I was writing offers, you know, buying the six-unit and nine-unit apartment complexes all cash with a 10-day close when I was 30 years old. It was like, you know, that's a pretty good feeling.

You're setting a powerful scene when you can tell somebody, "Here, I'll close in one week, but I want $200,000 off. " You know, and that worked out really well for me too because that was in 2001 or 2002. And then this real estate I had a good run-up until 2007, so I was able to, you know, manage a portfolio from that one million dollars to over 100 million dollars in real estate by 2007.

If someone is just starting out and they want to make a million dollars in real estate, but they are inexperienced and they don't have much money, what would be the steps they should follow? So, you said you’re interested in residential; how would you think about that? Yeah, residential.

Well, nowadays, with technology—back when I started 30 years ago, there was no internet, so I had to actually fly out to Houston, meet with the listing broker, walk the properties, and then I would pick. . .

Which one I want to buy now? You get on call, start LoopNet; there's so many multiple listed services you can kind of do your research online. And to that point, you can also network with other people that have money.

If you do your research and you find a nice value at real estate that's distressed, you can say, "Okay, this is mismanaged. If we do this to this outparcel, sell it separately or lease it, subdivide it, and lease it to multiple smaller tenants that pay higher rent per foot," the comps are there to support double the price. You go to investors, network with other investors that have equity, bring them in as equity partners, and make a million bucks.

You can do a split; there are so many ways, so many options you have now that you didn't have 30 years ago. So whoever says they can make a million bucks, that's just an excuse; they haven't tried hard enough. Does that mean it's going to happen overnight?

It may take them a year to two years to absorb and study that market to be able to sell that to an equity investor. This is a business that takes time to get educated and power up. The thing I've always kind of avoided about real estate is that anyone can do it.

I do tech, because that's much harder, or making videos like this. It's like everyone can go and do these things, but I'm missing—like everyone’s doing real estate—how are you able to be in that top echelon of performance? What were you doing?

I would say my timing was I was very lucky because that five to six years of run we had in real estate was unprecedented, similar to what happened in the past five years. But I used the same concept of just flipping out of each value add into the bigger deal. Basically, I scaled my portfolio, and at some point, I had over 2 million square feet in real estate, mostly in Houston.

Then in 2007, I realized, just like in 1999 when I sold my stocks, "Okay, this is a little too good to be true. " People were bidding on my high-rise buildings from Florida and New York without seeing them, on an 18 million dollar high-rise, and I had multiple offers. I'm like, "This is not normal; it's just too good to be true.

" So I sold my portfolio in 2007, made a lot of money at a 1031 exchange, and bought a bunch of shopping centers that are anchored by grocery stores and about a million square feet of industrial—Haliburton, FedEx, Continental—these were all in Houston, because I knew those tenants have a strong balance sheet; they can weather the storm if we have a recession. Sure enough, what happened? We had a recession.

Most of my high-rises went back to the bank. I ended up buying five of them from the bank three years later and sold them again; that's another story. But what I'm saying is if you take out the risk and you don't have to underwrite the property, and you know you're on the right cycle, your timing's right, real estate is pretty predictable.

How many places have you bought? I think it's around how much you have spent in real estate over the years. Oh, over a billion, maybe 2 billion; I don't know.

And then, yeah, I think what's also interesting in that—you know how many properties—is that, Eric? Like hundreds? I don't know, 70, 80, maybe 100?

Like one deal right now I bought for 22 million, and I'm opening a score for 72 million. Yeah, hold on, so the person that was selling it, what did they not see that you were able to do? Oh, I can disclose that too; you know, I was like, not that confidentiality with it.

It's a huge company buying it from me. But this property was basically, I'm repurposing it, so it's a land play. I bought it because of the substantial land in a high-density area, and this developer is going to come and put four to six hundred apartments on it.

So to them, they're repurposing the dirt, so it's good money down. What's the value of your current portfolio today? I don't even know; I'm just kidding!

No, a couple hundred million. I've been waiting for a recession to buy because I made all my money in recessions. That's why I have probably 30 million dollars in cars.

Last recession, I only had one Bugatti because I was buying a lot of properties. So now I'm gearing up to load up, because in the next two years, I think it's going to present the mother of all buying opportunities when it comes to commercial—not so much residential maybe, but commercial real estate—there are a lot of defaults. So, you know, I'm looking to double or triple that portfolio value.

Two comments on that. One: when you have bought 70 or 80 and you have a portfolio worth hundreds of millions now, and you've spent billions, I also think it's about how many places you put offers in on that you didn't get, because that's something that people don't realize—like how many have you swung that didn't work out? A lot!

Well, on a good day, I look at probably 20 properties— not physically, but you know on my lead flow—and I probably write an offer every three to four months on one. So if you look at it, that's 150 deals a year. Month, I look at, yeah, and in six months, that's 900 properties I look at.

But I, I write, and then I make one offer, and I haven't been able to get anything in escrow for the past 18 months. That tells you, so a lot of swinging, and I'm not hitting the ball yet. Yeah, but I think that's the part I really wanted to highlight.

Yeah, because your strategy now, it's like you're looking for opportunities in recessions, and but it's not—it's not here. Yeah, and you just go buy one, and it magically works. It's like I think people don't realize that.

Yeah, they're not saying that. Yeah, yeah, you have to swing a lot of bats to hit in real estate, and you gotta be patient because there's a game of patience, and you gotta just wait for those cycles. Right now, you know, we are in a down cycle, so it already started, and with the feds increasing the rates ten times, that's going to accelerate it.

It already has, and I think in the next 18 months, if people are, you know, geared up financially and mentally and powered up knowing what they're going to be doing in which sub-market, they can make an amazing, amazing return. What are the contrarian opportunities or contrarian things that people should be prepared for, thinking about? Well, you know, when a contrary mentality works with anything, like cars, you know.

In, um, when we had the lockdowns, some cars were selling for 50 cents on the dollar because people panic. You know, they have the fear of, "Oh, it's the end of the world. " Right now, it's the banking industry.

You're seeing all the banks, you know, Regional banks are collapsing, they're underwater, so a lot of people taking their money out and putting it at bigger banks because they're scared they're going to lose their money. So fear, and panic always creates opportunity, and you know, whether it's real estate, cars, or stocks, in March 2020, as stocks went down 30 percent, people that bought—they were contrarian—they made a killing. Right?

So you can use that. Of course, it's not—you know, it's easier than said than done. But, um, as you take risk and be a contrarian, and you, you know, make money and have success with it, your balls get bigger in the real estate portfolio.

What's been like the biggest win you've had and the biggest loss? My biggest loss was a six-story building I bought for 17 million, and it was a single tenant. It was a subsidiary of Boeing, USA United Space Alliance.

They used to have all the communication with the space shuttle, and they didn't get the contract from NASA, so they gave me a—I got a FedEx envelope with one page in there telling me they were going to vacate, and my heart dropped. So 5 million cash down gone. That was my biggest loss on a real estate single deal, and my biggest win?

50 million if I close this deal on one property. You got—how many companies do you have, by the way? How many—how many companies do you have?

Like, I went in the building; there's like 18 different stickers of all these businesses. Yeah, I have a lot of different companies. Do you have an idea how many?

Something like six of them I can count right away on my fingers, but there are a lot of others I invest in. I'm a silent partner, like maybe, you know, I own a small personal job, a bank. I have several other companies that I'm just a limited partner in, but the ones I'm actively managing, there's six.

Okay, and then for like owning a house like this, do you have a lot? Do you have passive income? Do you have like income from your real estate, and that's what covers the lifestyle?

Yeah, of course, yeah. Well, my businesses make money, plus I have real estate cash flow. Yeah, they're not empty buildings.

I mean, I have shopping centers, this building. Like, I have a mortgage company upstairs, you know, pays me a lot of money. I got, yeah, I mean, I have two or three buildings that I bought for flips that are vacant.

These are like reposition plays, so when you have a big portfolio, obviously, you have cash flow, and some are value-add that you're flipping, so it's a function of—it's a lot of fluid, you know, a lot of things happening. And, um, I also make money with cars. How do we manage all these businesses, and how do you—and what is your team?

I don't sleep much. I drink a lot of coffee. I get up between four and five in the morning, so I respond to all the emails because I got properties in four different states, you know, and sometimes those are two hours ahead.

I start getting emails early, and then I, uh, kind of go through my to-do list for the day and prioritize my day. By seven, I'm working out—sauna, cold shower, get my third cup of coffee by eight in the morning from Starbucks, and I'm over here at the office. I take lunch about 11:30, and then in the afternoon, I have a couple of meetings usually, and then I have to have a cigar by myself and regroup what happened all day, that day, and then get ready for the next day.

What things are you cheap on? Cheap on? Yeah.

What things not spend a lot of money on? That's a good question. I'm trying to say—well, you should ask my wife!

Well, I don't. . .

I like to spend, you know, like I don’t know, ten thousand dollars on a bottle of wine because I honestly don’t appreciate it. To me, I can have a $30 bottle of wine that does the same thing. I get, you know, I enjoy it just as much.

Um, I don’t know, maybe watches; I mean, I don’t—there’s a hundred thousand dollar watch, but I mean, I could buy a million dollar watch, but I don’t. I think it’s a waste of money, you know. Um, maybe high fashion, you know, it’s just not something that matters as much to me or that I appreciate as much.

Maybe, I don’t know. I’m typically not cheap; come on. It’s like, for me, I’m going to say it too: I would say I would spend less money on it.

It would be like expensive wines, champagne, or anything else. I mean, I do drink cognac: a four or five-thousand dollar bottle of cognac because I smoke cigars, but why not? Not so much to take it; I charter jets all the time.

Um, obviously, you know, jewelry, handbags, you know, on special occasions, I like to treat my wife. And, uh, just vacationing, I would say probably is my biggest splurge. I love vacationing.

For instance, I'm going to Lake Como, and I'm actually getting a villa for a couple of weeks, taking my entire family to Lake Como. How much does it cost to charter a private jet? Yeah, it’s about $12,000 an hour.

So if you’re going across America, it’s a few hours. Yeah, like when we go to Cowboys, it’s like between $40,000 to $50,000 just for the three days we go. And then how much are the hotels and this experience?

Oh, I don’t know. I mean, probably another $15,000-$20,000. Vacationing is the best money spent because, you know, you can’t get time back, right?

This one hour we spent, it’s not going to come back; it’s gone. So, you know, as you get older, you appreciate time, and when you vacation, you’re really spending your time with yourself and your loved ones. So it’s the best money you spend.

What’s it like to drive around in a Rolls Royce? Like, you know, as an immigrant, you come here, didn’t speak English, didn’t have money, lived in a Datsun, and now you’re driving like this hundred-thousand-dollar car? Yeah, well, I have four Royces; I’ve got two drop heads, a Dawn, and a brand new Ghost I bought for my wife.

Um, you know, I hate to say it, but to me, it’s normal because I’ve been driving Rolls Royces since 2004 when the Phantom came out. I bought a brand new Phantom back then; the lease payment on that quote was more than my mortgage payment. But everybody said, “You’re crazy.

” I said, “No, no, you got to get used to having a bigger overhead. ” I went to the Rolls Royce in Newport Beach and I told them, “Give me the highest payment you can give. ” Doesn’t you mean the lowest?

I said, “No, no, highest. ” So, reducing residual, whatever they do in leases, you know. I just want to pay down basically the lease; I want to have less payment in year five when I want to buy it, than, you know, normally you guys do.

Do you have any regrets, like working too hard? Was the money worth it? What regrets do you have?

You know, working so hard, and what’s the money regret? Young and dumb, you know? I stopped making money, and I was partying, single, and drinking and driving—that’s my biggest regret.

Because my friend that was in my car, you know, my correspondent lost control; he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so he got ejected and, you know, unfortunately, he passed away. That was a very dark moment in my life, but I would say that’s my biggest regret in life: being irresponsible, you know, young, doing stupid things, which I know a lot of young kids do. But, you know, sometimes you can't bring on new things like that, right?

And, uh, yeah, you pay for that for the rest of your life, so that’s like probably my biggest regret. Damn. Yeah, I’m glad to share that message because I do think, like myself in the past, I’ve done it; I think a lot of people do it.

So it’s good to remember, like, they’re not guaranteed to be safe there. Yeah, it was a very unfortunate accident, but I take the blame because I was the one driving. And, you know, I wasn’t fit to even drive, so it’s definitely, um, something that, you know, most people won’t really get until it happens to them, you know, because you think everyone’s, you know, back then everybody—all my friends used to go to clubs, bars, have a few drinks, and get behind the wheel.

Yeah, like it was accepted, you know? But that’s one thing I regret the most. Do you feel like we work too much?

I don’t work too much now; I used to work too much, you know, before. But now, I have my kids. Like right now, weekends, even if somebody pays me a million bucks, I wouldn’t show up to do a seminar or work somewhere.

Now, I do seminars for my students, but that’s because it’s part of the program. But I’m saying as a speaker or a job or a gig, you know, I wouldn’t work on weekends because I’d rather spend that with my kids. How do you define success for yourself?

Because I think when a lot of people see you, they say success, but I’ve always thought. . .

Success is actually an internal measurement, so I'm curious how you think about it or how you would decide it. Well, to me, success means having the freedom to choose what you want to do when you wake up and being able to give back, which I think I've achieved. So, you know, it's not how much money you have in the bank or what your net worth is; it's about having the freedom.

If you loved this video, you are going to love this video right up here with John Paul DeJoria, the billionaire founder of Patron Tequila and Paul Mitchell Hair Systems. Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you're not already. Uncle Noah loves you, and I'll see you out there!