Asking Millionaires How They Got RICH! (Dallas)

Excuse me man, quick question for you. Is this your Rolls Royce? Yeah, yes sir. What do you do for a living? This will be my 11th year in the NFL. My name is Tayvon Austin. What has been the most amount of money that you ever made in a single year? Multiple, multiple seven figures. The business, 60 million, and then a couple of million for myself. I probably made 11 million. In my last role, I was the chief operating officer for a $700 million business called Health Management Systems. And did you guys end up selling your company? We did. We sold it to a private equity company for about... Dallas, Texas is a top 20 city in the entire world with the most millionaires. We're out in Highland Park, Dallas, Texas, the wealthiest area in all of Dallas, asking multi-millionaires and luxury shoppers how they became successful. My first question, sir, what industry did you decide to pursue a career in? Consumer products industry. Are you a business owner by any chance? I am not. You're not? I'm the CEO of Frito-Lay. You're the CEO of Frito? Yeah. You're the CEO of Frito-Lay? Yeah. That is incredible. I mean, seriously. I mean, you guys have great chips, obviously. What's your best advice to anybody out there that's trying to build a company into a company like Frito-Lay? Wow. Well, the sky's the limit. I mean, you can do anything. Frito-Lay started with one man, Herman Lay, right? Selling potato chips out of a truck, hustled, worked hard, did it the right way, took care of his customers, took care of his employees, and the next thing you know, it's a multi-billion dollar business. Yeah. In today's environment, you've got to, one, understand your consumer, who's buying your product better than anybody else. This technology is the way to make sure that you stay on top of consumer trends and you understand what consumers want. Being consumer obsessed is, I think, the most important thing. Now, what was the biggest driving factor of your success that enabled you to become a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company? Hey, preparation and a little bit of luck, man. Right place, right time, doing it the right way, being authentic, treating people like you want to be treated. I mean, it really is. You've got to be smart. Everybody's got to be smart. You've got to want to hustle, right? You've got to want to work harder than the next guy, but you can do all that and be a jerk and be failed. That's the CEO of Frito-Lay chips that we just interviewed, bro. You can't make this shit up, bro. I mean, we're just walking around in Dallas, we see the man, and just asking a few questions. He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Let's keep going to get some more, man. Shout out, Dallas. What industry did you decide to pursue a career in? I decided to go into the retail business. The retail business? Yeah. What did you do exactly? Well, I ran a lot of different retail companies. What company were you the CEO of? Well, I was a lot of them. I was a Penny Company, the Penny's Company, Macy Company, Barney's, Neiman Marcus. So a lot of different companies that had difficulties at the time. I was a CEO of the company, but it's not the CEO who makes the success. It's the people who work for that company, but it's a CEO's responsibility to make those people realize how important they are to the company. It's not one person. In one minute, tell me the blueprint that it takes to run a successful company, a multi-hundred million dollar company. What's the blueprint to creating a strong company in today's world? Understanding the culture. Understanding the culture of the company. Each company is different. Neiman Marcus is different than the Penny Company. So you have to go in. You have to understand who they are, not who you are. And then you've also got to understand your customers. Because the number one thing that a person running a company has to know, who his customer is, and take care of them, and make sure your people are taken care of. And then if you do that, you can take care of the shareholder. Even though people say the shareholder comes first, the shareholder does come first because they can fire you. But if you don't take care of the customer first, you're never going to take care of the shareholder. Yo, my man we just interviewed right there was the CEO of Penny's, Macy's, and Neiman Marcus, bro. I couldn't hold it together, bro. We just interviewed the CEO of Frito-Lay, and now we interviewed that mogul. That is a retail mogul right there. Just dropped some straight game on some serious entrepreneurship and business advice, man. Dallas, Texas has been fucking insane, bro. Let's keep it going. My first question for you, man. What industry did you decide to pursue a career in? I'm a professional football player. Professional football player? Yeah. What team do you play for? Played for several teams. Hopefully this will be my 11th year in the NFL. My name is Tayvon Austin. So, I played for the Rams, Cowboys, Jacksonville, the Bills for a little bit, and Green Bay. West Virginia University. You're Tayvon Austin? Yes, sir. Oh my goodness. That is amazing. This is crazy to me. I go to UT, so we're a little bit of a rival here. Okay, yeah, yeah. You done fucked y'all up. I know you did. Hey, trust me. I've seen your returns, though. I know you got it. So, I guess I'll ask you, man. What's been the biggest driving factor of your success that's enabled you to become a professional athlete, work your way into the NFL? What does it take? For number one, it takes a lot of discipline and hard work. I come from a place where a lot of us don't really make it out, you know what I mean? So, my mindset's different. I want it better for myself. I want it better for my family. So, with that being said, always stay focused. Always seeing the point. You got to have good people around you that's willing to tell you when you're wrong. You can't have no type of yes-men around you. You got to have stand-up strong people, either a woman or a man around you. What has been the most amount of money that you ever made in a single year? I probably made $11 million. $11 million? Yeah, $11 million. What's your best financial advice to the younger generation out there? Honestly, you got to get the right financial advisor around you. You got to get people. Even though it's your money, you got to have people try it like it's their money as well. You know what I mean? Because, you know, you like nice things you're spending, but you need somebody that's going to be that backbone to be like, hey, hold on. Hold on right now. This is this. This is that. Got to put this away for this. I love it, man. Thank you so much, Tavon. We appreciate that, man. That is unbelievable. We just interviewed Tavon Austin. Tavon Austin, I used to play with that man's in Madden, bro. He's been in the NFL for over 10 years, and he was one of the best returners in all of football. He's probably got the best college football highlight tape on the entire planet, man. Shout out to Tavon Austin. Over $10 million in one year. What industry did you decide to pursue a career in? Well, my graduate degree is in public administration, but I ended up working in oncology, working in clinical trials. So I went in a completely different direction. Yeah. Are you a business owner? Yeah, part owner. And what has been the most amount of money that you ever made in a single year? On average, we do... Are you talking about me personally or the business? I guess both. Well, I'm personally... So the business, $60 million, and then a couple of million for myself. What's the secret to being able to scale from six to seven figures in business or even just personal income? What's the secret to scaling? Well, part of our success is we started a business in late 1990s, and then we sold it for a nice chunk of change. How much did you sell it for? $365 million. So you sold a company for $365 million? Yeah. There was a group of us. Wow. So that was really very helpful in terms of making... It really gave us an opportunity to sort of look in a different way and work in an industry that we still enjoy, but in a different way. So I think if you can create something that's successful and then find someone who's interested in purchasing it, that will go a long way. What's the best financial advice that you've ever received throughout your lifetime? Invest in different companies and just have a nice investment plan for yourself. And you can never start... They always say you can never start too young, and I think that's true. And is there a particular industry that you think people should really be looking to get into right now? Maybe it's in healthcare, that's a sector that you're in, or where do you think people should really be looking to? Well, I think the tech world continues to be a good part of a successful portfolio, but healthcare definitely. And especially drug development. And I guess why drug development and that sector of healthcare in particular? Well, because we're just in an exciting phase. I mean, when I started 22 years ago doing what I'm doing, there were maybe 12 or 15 good oncology drugs, and now they're over 40. So there's this real breakthrough that we've had, especially with immune therapy, and that'll just continue to move forward. I love that. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you as well. Good luck with your project. Thank you. Thank you, sir. My man sold a company for over $360 million. His company right now is doing $60 million a year. What do you got to say about Dallas so far, man? What the fuck? So, Dallas has been unreal. We got Cowboys player Tavon Austin. We got two major former CEOs, but my biggest lesson about that last interview is the takeaway that all the money that he has made, the $100 million that he sold the company for, and the millions that he's bringing home a year, he made it because he did it with a team of people. Like he said, he didn't just own all the wealth for himself. He said there was a group of us that came together and we made something special happen. They made a shit ton of money doing it. So if you're out there, you're thinking you could do it alone, just remember the saying, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. Let's go, motherfuckers. Hey. My man right here out in Dallas, he's parked in the Cullen in the Rolls Royce. This is a multi-hundred thousand dollar car out in Dallas, Texas. Let's go up and try and get this interview real quick. Excuse me, man. Quick question for you. Is this your Rolls Royce? Yeah. Yes, sir. What do you do for a living? I own a Sunspot tanning franchise that has 75 plus locations in like 13 states. And how long have you been a business owner for? Since 2009. 2009? Yes. Is it cool if we could ask you a few questions? We go all over the country just asking business owners their advice to young entrepreneurs. Is it cool? Could we ask you a couple questions outside of the car real quick? No. Yes, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Awesome, man. Cool. What has been the most amount of money that you ever made in a single year? Multiple, multiple seven figures. For someone out there, they're trying to scale their income from six to seven figures. What advice would you give them? The biggest thing is everybody wants to, people are control freaks. And there's a really good book. It's like super short, but it's called Great CEOs are Lazy or Good CEOs are Lazy. And basically says that if you can delegate and somebody can do the task 70% as well as you can, delegate it. So like I'm a master delegator. So I find people and I put them in positions to do things. Also the other thing is I also give people opportunities that also benefit myself in a sense of like I will buy a company and give somebody equity. So therefore that's their baby. It's an opportunity that they would have never had previously. And they're doing 95% of the work. I use my team and my resources to help set everything up, you know, the books and all that. And then that's ways to, you know, essentially it's actually truly, there's no such thing as passive income, but that's as passive as it gets because that person is doing the work or giving them an opportunity to make more money than they ever would. And you're benefiting from it as well because you know, if it's a say six figure profit business where it's, you know, it's making 600,000, you're 50, 50 partners. Now you're making 300,000. You're literally doing nothing. So next thing I was going to ask you is that, you know, there's a big debate for entrepreneurship, whether they should diversify into different industries, but do you think entrepreneurs in today's world should they diversify or how important has that focus on one thing been for you throughout your career? Yeah. So this is like an amazing question and actually, so concentration builds well, right? Diversification keeps it. I don't know whose quote that is, but I use it all the time. So it's like concentrating on one thing. So I concentrated on one thing and obviously made enough money where I can, there's nothing that I see or want to do that I can't afford to do. So now what I'm doing is I'm vertically integrating my whole business. So you know, we're constantly, right now we're building 20 new locations. So like this month I'm spending like $200,000 on HVAC. So I'm going to buy a HVAC company, an electric company, a plumbing company, you know, a MEP architectural company because we use so much, you know, the amount of people that are making money off of us on the real estate commissions and stuff like that. Also a ton of commercial buildings like commercial strips and every single one of them has my business in it, right? What that does, that's also vertically integrating and that's diversification. But it's like, instead of me paying rent to someone else, I'm paying rent to myself. So like that's my sense of diversification. But when it comes to somebody who is new and like an entrepreneur, everybody says, oh, we want three streams of income and all that. That's all just kind of bullshit. It's like, you know, if you make a thousand dollars on a rent house and then you go and have a drop shipping company, you make a thousand dollars. What is that? You can literally just focus on one thing and kind of scale that up. And once you have enough cashflow to where you can replace your day job and you can also do anything you want to go do, then take that money and then diversify into whatever else you want to do. Yeah. So there you go. There you go. My man, you crushed that. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Dallas has been one of the craziest cities that I've shot in so far. This video has been crazy, but I want you to comment down below who's been your favorite person we've interviewed so far and why. We'd love to connect with you guys. I want to know all your thoughts on this video so far. All right, you guys, a few months ago, we actually interviewed a healthcare executive at a $4 billion company that just sold. He's now an angel investor, but he invited us out to his house in Dallas, Texas to give some game to the young entrepreneur. Yes, sir. Yeah. What's your name? Dante. Dante James. Nice to meet you, bro. Nice to meet you, man. You do the work. Appreciate you, man. Hey, any advice to the younger generation out there? Oh, man. I'm not the one to give advice to the younger generation. Everybody's got their own perspective. You know, like if you could tell anybody any message out there. What's the biggest life lesson you've ever learned? The biggest life lesson I've ever learned, shit, right now is to search peace instead of financial gain. What would you say is important to finding that peace in yourself as opposed to serving money and serving people? Well, if you're not right in here, then whatever you do out here doesn't fucking matter. Hey, that's some real skill right there. Dante, I appreciate you for stopping by, man. Have a good one, man. Have a good one. Thank you. You know what? I love that advice right there. You can't serve money. We want to be super successful, but you got to find that inner peace inside. If all you're looking for is the money, you're never going to find peace. You're never going to find happiness. That's some real skill right there. That was a really cool interaction we just had with Dante. He recognized us from the channel and some of the interviews that we had done, but right now we're on the way to the executive's house. He's going to give us some game on how entrepreneurs can really thrive in today's business world and what he looks for in companies as an angel investor. So let's head out right now. Can't wait to get this content for you guys. What industry did you decide to pursue a career in? Healthcare. In my last role, I was the chief operating officer for a $700 million business called Health Management Systems. And did you guys end up selling your company? We did. We sold it to a private equity company for about $3.5 billion, and it was a very successful exit at the end of 2020. That is incredible. My next question for you, what was the best financial advice that you ever received throughout your lifetime? If you had a mentor or somebody that taught you a lesson about money that has kind of always stuck with you, what's the best financial advice you ever received? Spend about half of what you make and always keep your powder dry because there's always an investment that you could use a little bit of money on. There's always something that you could, a person you can invest in, an idea you can invest in. And if you don't have any dry powder, we call it cash on the sideline, then you're always short of doing that. So always keep enough cash on the sideline for any kind of liquid requirements that you have. And so, and I think in this market, in healthcare today, a lot of the valuations have come down. So over the next two or three years, you're going to see a multitude of investments that weren't there two to three years ago. So you should have some money in cash today. What do you think is the biggest thing that takes a business from seven to eight and eventually nine figures? A lot of people don't have a great business idea. They'll start that business, but they struggle to scale and grow. How were you guys able to scale into a multi-billion dollar business? I think the biggest challenge with scaling is just getting enough infrastructure to drive enough business where you need more people, more technology, you need more sales, you need more marketing, you need more commercialization of the product, and ultimately you need to make it a industry utility. So everybody that's not using it is at a disadvantage. Once you can get to that tipping point, then you really scale. What would you say was the biggest driving factor that really led to your success that enabled you to work your way up and become an executive out of nine and eventually ten figure company in a booming industry? Helping others succeed. I think your biggest focus is if you can help your direct reports get to their next level, if you can mentor people on the line, up the ladder, you can reach down and pull people up the ladder and always be focused on really giving them constructive criticism on what they did, what they didn't do, what they could do, how they should go about it, because hiring the best people and lifting them up always kept me on the top of the food chain, so that's how I raised. And so the better you can surround yourself with great people, the better you can mentor those great people, the more opportunity you have to grow in your career as well. You crushed that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching this video and like and subscribe and click here to watch us going all around Houston asking multimillionaire homeowners how they became successful.