How Billionaires REALLY Think: 20 Questions Answered!

hey everyone so I've decided to answer the top questions people ask from billionaires here we go lots of people want to start a business and it seems that every dinner party because of a sh Tang I end up being the guy in the corner that everybody comes up to and says hey I have this idea lots and lots and lots of ideas but you know what the most common question I hear is how do I actually start here's what manager sell something never take advice from somebody who isn't financially invested in the YK and I

don't mean as an investor I mean a customer just call a customer and go out there and sell something when D started fubo he didn't hire a whole bunch of researchers he took a t-shirt stood on a street corner sold it when I started my first tech business I didn't spend years thinking about what should I do products should have I called up a big customer and I sold it to them if you want to start a business go sell something the other day somebody came up to me and they said uh robt tell me

about a business that I can start make a lot of money and not have to spend a lot of time with you know what my advice was don't get into business even easy businesses that you think are going to be easy and not require a lot of Hands-On Guess what at the beginning they're all going to suck your time they're all going to suck your cash and they're all really hard business is just hard it takes many years to get to easy don't be Fool by trying to start something easy you know one of the

things that people always talk to me about is work life balance and they say my gosh you're such a great dad you're always there for your kids you seem to go to everything even at the school but here's the reality it's taken me many years to get to this point when you start there is no work life balance it's it's one of the big lies that people tell you a business is a living breathing thing when it needs to eat you have to feed it it doesn't care that you have a school play it doesn't

care that you want to work out it doesn't care about any of those things a business is a living breathing thing I've seen a lot of businesses start and I've seen a lot of businesses fail one of the most common mistakes that in my experience people make when they start a business is they're not clear what the value proposition to the customer is they look at it through their l so get let me give you a quick example example you heard the famous sell me this pen do you know what the right answer to that

is it's not selling the pen it's before I sell you the pen tell me who I'm selling the business to value is not through your eyes value isn't Through The Eyes of the customer there's an old saying in a famous video from Steve Jobs that talks about product and how to know you have a good product Steve Jobs said people don't know they need a product until you tell them about it other people say you shouldn't create a product until you have an identified customer experience here's my view on it it doesn't really matter if

your product is selling a lot at the beginning or not that doesn't necessarily identify a hot Market you know what does a fanatical customer experience when you sell a product and you give it to the customer and they look at it and they say I cannot live without this then you're on to something look for the fanatical experience and engagement from your customers not always the sales I mean of course if you're not selling any you're going to go out in business one day I was talking to one of my old HR VPS and we're

talking about what makes a great candidate and she said we want to hire somebody who's failed before because that makes them better today and I was like oh my God that is such I don't want people that failed before I don't want to hire somebody who's had a business run into the ground big failure is bad I don't like entrepreneurs to walk in and say I had a business and went bankrupt and failed I'm okay with a small exit but I don't want complete failure I want little pivots along the way so failure is not

about big failure failure is little things and constant adaptation you know when you become successful on the most common questions uh people ask you is if you had to do it again what would you do different I really thought about this question cuz it didn't have a good answer cuz I always think you the product of everything that's happened to you but you know media wants a simple answer so I've really thought about it here's my answer what would I do different if I had to do it all over again I would dream bigger my

limitation reason I'm only a billionaire in Australia because of the exchange rate is I didn't think bigger my capacity for imagining this life I didn't have that capacity I really believe a mind once expand and it can never go back to its original size dream big but work your ass off the other day I was doing a speech and somebody came up to me and said oh my gosh I wish I was successful my life would be so much easier I would be happy every day and all my problems would go away and I'm like

are you kidding me people have this misconception of success that it's fine night that there's this Magic Door you walk through and it says success on the door and why you walk through that door it's all unicorns and puppy dogs and MTI poops guess what the problems just get bigger let me tell you this if you're not happy today with nothing striving working hard you're not going to be happy with lots of money either happiness is not a result of a finite goal happiness is just who you are great wealth amplifies exactly who you are

right now here's an amazing piece of advice that I had to learn that I didn't do and it's about productivity and how to scale your business I used to think that I was really good at managing time and knowing all the important things I have to do every day but guess what here's a simple trick somebody gave me they said to me you're too busy you have too much going on and this is a hack that they gave me they said every morning wake up take a piece of paper and write down three things not

five not 10 not 20 write down three things you have to accomplish today no matter what today not tomorrow do not go to sleep until these three things are done so what I used to do is wake up every day forget all the noise and distraction and write down those three things not necessarily tackle them but my day did not end till those three things are done constant forward momentum I'm invested in a lot of business in the 20 years of uh Shark Tank dragons then Shark Tank Australia and there's a couple of red flags

that really come out for me the first one is a little controversial for most people number one is I don't want an entrepreneur that's failed I don't want to invest in somebody that started a business and had to completely go away I'm okay with little failure or conation or not a great exit but I don't want somebody that gave up on something and had it fail the other one is a one entrepreneur who's solid and mentally together show show me a small business that's in trouble and I'll show you an entrepreneur that's got problems and

then number three is if you don't understand your numbers and I don't mean balance sheet income statement I mean the heartbeat of your business every business has two or three key stats that you need to know every day if I wake up at 2:00 in the morning you got to know that stat in my business it was cashable but in your business it may be completely different you know motivation is uh really hard it's easy to be motivated when things are going your way I always say it you can be motivated when you're having a

crappy day and it's raining and your dog bit you and your friends hate you and your spouse doesn't like you on that day and your kids are yelling at you when nothing's going right and you feel like failure in every part of your body if you can get up on those days and do the things that need to be done that's motivation it's a great saying I heard a long time ago which is a great entrepreneur has the ability to go from failure to failure without any lack of enthusiasm that's motivation everybody wants to start

a business and people are always asking me what kind of a business should I start here's the most common mistake I see young entrepreneurs making and what's the best analogy it's think of it this way there's a piece of cheese and all entrepreneurs are mice and they're all screwing around they go after that piece of cheese and then tomorrow there's a piece of cheese over here and it will be goes this way Wayne Gretzky said at best don't go where the pucky is go where you think the puck is going don't get into a business

that everybody else is getting into get into a business that's going to be the next wave ai ai is still super hot get into that you got to know where the puck is going to go it's got a text somebody asking me to be their mentor and it's one of the common things that I hear a lot of people talk about is uh can you Mentor me or how do I find a good Mentor and then people ask me what was some of the advice you got from a great mentor I always struggle with that

question let me tell you why because advice is relative to where you are in a situation somebody gives me great advice on something and I'm not ready to hear it I'm not going to apply it beauty of life is there are so many great people not just me but there's so many people you can learn from from YouTube University but it applies to where you are in your journey don't look for generalities and advice look for people that can mentor you on a specific problem that you're having now there is no one pill that answers

everything what's really interesting about business is how Dynamic it is and how much it changes and how much it abs and clows one of the biggest impacts that I'm seeing in business that I really believe in is customization people don't want to buy or get something that everybody else can get and with the internet and especially with AI you can recreate and duplicate and scale almost anything I think what's going to happen is if you can create a product where you can create an experience that feels highly personal to me and customized I think that's

always going to stand out sales is the life plug of every business I mean I have lots of Engineers and uh County people all kinds of people that want to start a business and they always say to me oh my gosh I'm so scared of business I say why and we say well I'm not very good at sales so always say to them look there's a Playbook on how to do sales lots of sales sales books but let me give you a piece of advice that's not in any of those books authenticity is impossible to

replicate so I had a guy that worked for me years ago and he was awful at sales today he's one of the best sales guys in the world and the reason I was awful at sales he wasn't very confident he didn't know how to talk to people and he was brand new at it so I sat down with him he knew all the basics so we're going out in the sales call here's what I said to him when we on this call when the meeting starts tell the customer you are so nervous this is your

very first sales call we go there he does that and guess what the customer wants to help him people are nicer than you think and they want to help you especially when you're young and you're starting up now here's the problem he kept doing this for the next hundred sales calls and eventually it wasn't authentic but when you're starting out and you're an engineer an accountant just tell people people I've never done sales here's why I believe in the product people want to help you money is hard and you can make lots of mistakes with

money the thing I've learned over time is you want to be very careful with mistakes you make with money because once you spend a dollar it's gone in day coming back one of the biggest mistakes I made was I was in my 20s and and I invested in a stock because my godfather told me it was going to go through the roof and we're going to make a ton of money on it I knew nothing about the stock market I knew nothing about the stock I didn't know what the company did you know what I

saw I didn't see a stock I saw easy money so I took $2500 and I don't think I even had $2500 I put half of it in my credit card and guess what happened to the stock company went away the stock went from 2500 to I think $200 and because I bought it on margin I had to borrow money from my parents so embarrassing to pay it off biggest mistake I've made that you shouldn't make don't chase easy money because there's no such thing as you start your company it gets bigger all kinds of people

will start telling you about scale scale scale scale here's one of the biggest myths I've learned about scale and don't forget I have little companies doing 200,000 a year with two employees and I have big companies billion dollars a year with a thousand people here's the biggest myth about scale you cannot sanitize scale and make it clean and repetitive and productive every single day there's a certain amount of Chaos in scale no matter what you do if your company is growing there's going to be chaos you have to learn to embrace the chaos but make

sure it doesn't break you I think it was season four of shank in the US this couple came out and they were pitching to us and I think they said something and I didn't really understand the question and they said to me hey you're not listening to were're saying and I think I was having a bad day and I probably was hangry didn't eat breakfast and I said to him hang on a second it is not my responsibility to listen to you it's your responsibility to be heard the biggest investment I've ever made in myself

and that you can make in yourself is learning how to communicate if you can't communicate clearly no one's going to listen to you it doesn't matter if you have the best idea or the best product but if you can't communicate with people and get them to understand it you're never going to be successful there's a great quote so I love to play tennis there's a great quote at this little tennis club I'm a member at in Newport Beach in California and it's from Martina NAB toova and I love this quote and it says pressure is

a privilege of success love that so here's the point the more successful you get the more pressure you're going to have you're never going to go away from pressure you're always going to have pressure so as the pressure builds how do you make decisions so there's two cabinets I use in general my knee-jerk reaction is usually the right one number two never make a decision that will kill your business big risks like that I'm very very wary of so number one your gut feel is probably the right feel and number two don't make big decisions

that could kill your business and my final point is sleep on it in a really really big decision you have to have Clarity of mind so taking all the data then get away from it sleep on it wake up tomorrow morning and how you feel right away is probably the right way lead is is really hard I think I was and am good leader I was probably not a great manager but think I was a pretty good leader and in general I think people want to be let not managed so my personal feeling is what

is great tra of some of the leaders I've seen and by the way I've had dinner with all kinds of great leaders I've had dinner with the president of FR I've had dinner with the prime minister of Canada I've had dinner with some of the most successful business people in the world on and on and on but I actually think where I got the lesson and where the lesson is it's in the Bible and what Jesus said to his disciples is don't tell people I'm paraphrasing but what Jesus said to his disciples is don't tell

people what to do teach ye with parables great leaders have the ability to tell a great story and a great story engages the audience and engages people lead others with a great story I hope you enjoyed that if you have any questions please let me know don't forget to subscribe