How Billionaires REALLY Think: 30 Questions Answered!

Hey everyone, Robert Herjavec here. Welcome back. Our last segment, Top Questions People Ask from Billionaires, was so successful, I've decided to do it again. Top Questions People Ask Billionaires. Here we go. If you have nothing to sell, sell joy. People will always remember the emotion they had when they met you. Protect your energy. It's more valuable than your money. Here's my answer. My dad had the best answer for this. He said, if you work hard and save, you will never be poor. But just because you save and work hard, doesn't mean you're going to be rich. You cannot get rich or wealthy without knowledge, leverage, experience, all of those things. But, life is a constant. Think of it this way, it doesn't just happen one day. So depending on where you are in life, it's really good to save, it's really good to get comfortable, it's really good to have protection and security, and then you can try to go for the big bucks. When I was 20, I was desperately poor. There was a sense of desperation to me, that I would love to tell you I wanted to build great businesses, do great things, you know what? I just wanted to make money. So for me, money in the 20s seemed finite. It seemed like I'm going to get there, and then the world was going to become this magical place. I mean, I was a millionaire in my 20s, in my 30s I sold a company for $35 million, and all of a sudden, I was rich. It started to get me to think, what was really the purpose of that money? What made me happy? And how can I create great value? Today, in my 60s, what I think about is protecting my assets, because I don't want to go backwards, but I also want to take bigger risks. I want to do more. And I think you'll find most people who've done great things are pretty restless. They don't sit around for very long, and I definitely fall into that camp. So the answer to that question is, it depends where you're watching this video. If you're watching this video in India, and you're making $100,000 a year, guess what? You are doing great. If you're making $100,000 in Manhattan, you're probably paying $5,000, $8,000 in rent. You're barely getting by. So how much money you make as income is directly related to your life circumstances. But here's the question you've got to ask yourself. At this point in your life, that you're watching this video, what is more important to you? Income or experience? If you're young, or if you're in a position where you don't have or need a lot of money, you should get the job that creates the experience you need for the future. It depends. As I got older and got into business, what I realized is there's good debt, and there's bad debt. What's good debt? Stuff you can write off, stuff that grows your business, a second home, things like that. Bad debt, personal debt, credit cards, all that kind of stuff. Well, you should try to pay it off. How do you pay it off? If you have the means to pay it off, you've got to get there faster. The faster you pay off the principal, the less interest you're going to pay. The question becomes, how much are you willing to suffer in order to get debt free? And this is where saving $5 on a coffee does help. This is where not going out for dinner helps. This is where a couple of years of sacrifice is going to get you ahead. Very, very hard to build a great business when you have that much personal debt. Now, if you're really behind, you should go see a debt counselor. There are great companies out there today that can help consolidate your debt, put it all in one program, and help you with a repayment program. The biggest relationship mistake that entrepreneurs make is two things. They get into business and their judgment is people they like. Oh, here's my friend. I like him. We get along. Let's get into business. You should get into business with people that supplement the skills that you don't have. So if you're great at sales and you can't do engineering, bring an engineer into the business. Bring an accountant into the business. Number two, you have to have a very clear path for disagreement. It's like marriage. People always assume it's always going to be a workout. It's always going to be rosy. But you should treat it like you're about to get divorced. Who's going to make those decisions when you don't get along? Here's a hard reality. The business doesn't care about you. The business is a living, breathing entity. Think of it this way. When you start a business, you've adopted another child. Or for those of you who have kids, you've adopted another puppy. And for anybody who's had a puppy, when the puppy has to pee at 2 in the morning, guess what you're doing? You're getting up at 2 in the morning to take the puppy outside. Your business is a living, breathing thing. If you are not willing to commit to that business, above everything else, at the beginning, you're really going to struggle. Now, I have great balance in my life, but I also have great wealth. But I didn't have that balance probably for the first 10 years of my life. Business is really hard. It has no emotion. It doesn't care about you. It just wants constant nurturing and feeding. And that's the way it is at the beginning. It's hard. Here's an answer you may not be expecting. It's actually got nothing to do with business. It's got to do with relationships. Yes, look at me. I'm giving you relationship advice now. The most important partnership you'll ever have in life is the person you marry. I mean, they're for you or they're not. People make the biggest mistakes, the biggest hit to wealth, but the person you marry and the person you end up with can be one of the biggest determining factors in your success or it can really weigh you down. The world can be a really lonely place. Finding the right partner can make the darkest days a lot sunnier. My general experience, though, is most people are not lazy. Most people are afraid. Fear is numbing. Fear can stop people from action. And it's really hard to get ahead without action. It's a great saying somebody said to me a long time ago. There are many dreamers, but there are very few people who are obsessed. A dream doesn't require anything from you. A dream is a wish. An obsession requires action. So the reality is, are you lazy? Are you afraid? And that's okay. Because many, many people are. But the things that you want, are you willing to break through that fear and change your life and take action for it? Is there periods of time in your life that are wasted? Have you ever thought about this? Whenever you sell a company or you try to raise money, most of the people in the room come from equity or venture capital and they all have super fancy degrees. But none of them have ever started a business. Doesn't that sometimes make you think? So that's one. The second one is partying. You know, in your 20s, you've got to make a decision. Either enjoying life and partying is important to you, or getting ready for your 30s and 40s is more important to you. I mean, it was easy for me because I was a super geeky guy who didn't have a lot of friends. So there wasn't a lot of temptation. I was not getting invited to a lot of parties. So it was easy for me to stay home and learn and study and start a business. You can waste time at any point in your life. Colonel Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 64 years old. You're never too old for success and you're never too young for it either. The first thing I say to myself is the sun will always shine the next day. I've learned life is long and no matter how bad today is, tomorrow is the opportunity for better. Easier said than done, when my mom was sick and she was in the hospital, it was probably one of the worst times of my life and I know it's easy to say, oh, the sun's going to shine tomorrow. But I couldn't do it. I didn't have the mental fortitude to wilt myself to feel good. So I did something that stayed with me forever is I started running. I've basically run almost every single day five miles since that day and it stacked me out of it. You know why? The pain of running was so uncomfortable that the mental pain of what I was going through came second. But every day when I run, it's a small win. I need that and it means so much to me on those days. So you've got to know what works for you. Well, when I was a kid in another century they didn't actually diagnose for that kind of stuff. I mean, it's funny, when I was a kid I don't remember any kids that were diagnosed with ADHD or peanut allergies or any of that kind of stuff. But for sure I had a very, very difficult time with being hyper. So today I would be diagnosed probably with ADHD. I tend to get very hyper. I had a very, very difficult time controlling my emotions. What I've learned though is you've got to control your emotions. Interesting fact, half the sharks are dyslexic. Mark, Damon, I think Barbara they have a very difficult time with numbers. They superimpose numbers when they look at them, but they know that. And so whenever they go into a negotiation and have to look at some numbers they make sure they do it again and again and again. Just practice. So do you need the perfect plan? No. What you do need though is a vision. What I realized in my 20s was I can't get to where I want to go in one year. So when I was tired of being poor, I remember I sat around I got a piece of paper, I was going to do all these things. And I looked at it and I said there's no way I'm going to do this in one year. You always overestimate what you can achieve in one year and underestimate what you can achieve in 10. When I started in my 20s, I was poor, no idea what I wanted to do, didn't know a thing about cyber. By 30 I was a multi-millionaire. I was one of the top people in the world on cybersecurity. I already built and sold a business. And I was looking to sell my next business, which I did 5 years later for $35 million. Did I have a plan? No. Did I have a vision? Absolutely. It's going to take you time. Start now. Is starting a business like jumping off a cliff? Is it risky? Do I have to be really risk-oriented to start a business? No. Starting a business is not like standing on the edge of a cliff and jumping off. That's stupid. If you're going to stand on the edge of a cliff and jump off, walk to the bottom first and see how deep the water is. There are smart calculator risks and then there are bad risks. The other thing I've learned is never take a risk that will kill your business. I mean, I'm willing to risk 50% of it. I'm willing to risk a big chunk of it. But I've tried not to make bets that are so big that I lose everything. I think it depends where you are in your life. In my 20s, I was definitely not the result of the 5 people I hung out with. I was working in a factory during the summer, loading trucks. Definitely not the people that were the result of my success. You can find greatness and energy and joy no matter where you are, no matter what kind of a job you have. But in general, you tend to attract the people. But in your 20s, don't worry about it. You know what? As you get older and you get more successful, you'll attract the people that you were meant to attract. One of the things we always hear is, if you lead a hard life, good things will come to you or things will be easier for you. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I've had the pleasure of speaking with Cameron Haynes via text. I've had the incredible pleasure of meeting David Goggins a few times. Those guys are hard. I mean, I like to think I'm hard. I am definitely not. If you're hard on yourself, life will be easy on you. That is just the reality. If the hardest thing you do in a day is something that you've chosen to do, your life is going to be easier. Definitely in my 20s, I was chasing something. It's not that I was chasing something. I was running away from poverty. I was running away from the way we were living. I was running away from being made fun of. I had a massive chip on my shoulder and it probably helped me through all those dark times to get ahead. Once I kind of got there and I won, it didn't change me, but it calmed me. It stopped me from running away from something and made me think about where I'm going. And that was the biggest change. AI is going to change everything. And guess what? We're just at the very, very beginning. If I was starting out today, I would spend every waking moment learning about AI. Just like I did at cyber security. Not that cyber security is dead or any other industry, but AI will be such an amazing force for change. You've got to get on that bandwagon. I don't really think that way. I have a very fatalistic view about life. I think when I'm gone, I'm gone. My lawyer, who's a friend of mine, had a great saying many years ago, which was you can't rule from the grave. If I had one thing to leave the world, I wouldn't necessarily leave it for the world because I hope I made an impact on some people. While I was here, I would say it to my kids and my wife. And all I would leave them with, one sentence, I love you. I've never been burnt out. I have come very, very close to the edge of burnout and then I just shut down and move away. You cannot be successful unless you're healthy. And that's physically and mentally. And I think I've always been fortunate to know when I'm overwhelmed and just break out and do the things that bring me back down. For me, it's working out, watching TV, just whatever. When I had nothing, I thought rich would feel warm and devoid of anxiety and fear. And guess what? For money, it's true. Money is a massive stress for most relationships and most people. Once you get over that, life doesn't just stop. I mean, being wealthy isn't something that you walk into and all of a sudden, every single day is sunshine and unicorns. There are bad things that still happen to me. It felt good not to worry about that but that alone doesn't guarantee a happy or enjoyable life. This is a great question. I think everyone is obsessed with getting a mentor, but it's really hard. I mean, people say to me, oh, can you mentor me? Like, I have time for that. It's really hard to find a mentor, but there are models. YouTube, books, there are lots and lots of people that you can model your life after. And here's the beauty of it. My models today are different than they were in my 20s because my skillset and my needs are different. So I think you can find mentors and models everywhere, but don't forget, the people that come into your life that guide you, they work in that period of time. If you're continually growing, you're probably going to need new mentors and models along the way. That's a great question too. And if you look at high net worth, it's like this. Like, here's the amount of millionaires, here's the amount of 10 million, 50 million, decamillionaires, and so on. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller. But the biggest difference between a million and 10 million is your ability to leverage other people. I don't mean that in a bad way, but your ability to work with a team and get the team to a mission that's important. You know, to become a millionaire, you just got to work really hard. You can start a company, you can power your way through to a million. But typically, to get to 10 million, you need a team. I'm a huge believer that every small business is a byproduct of the entrepreneur. So, show me a small business that's in trouble and I'll show you an entrepreneur that's going through something. And you know what? Sometimes life does happen to you and you've just got to get through it. But I really believe that it's, you can't be successful unless you're personally successful. There are absolutely bad people who achieve incredible amounts of success and they're just really miserable bad people. But I like to believe they're the anomaly. They're not the rule. The riskiest and scariest decision I ever made was going on Dancing with the Stars. I'm a TV guy, obviously, but Shark Deck is five of us sitting in a chair talking about business super easy. I mean, it comes native to me. Dancing in front of a thousand people live and tens of millions at home for a guy who's never danced or done live TV. Did it pay off? Absolutely. That's how I met Kim. Working out it's like meditation, energy, focus, everything for me. My day is so busy. I rarely get time just to think and all my friends think I'm really not very social because they're always like, hey, let's go run together. Let's work out. I'm like, no, I just want to do it on my own. Focus, focus, focus. It's probably the biggest daily contributor to my success. The absolute first thing I would do is go into the field where I'm an expert. The world rewards expertise. So part of my success is not built on the fact that I've leveraged money. My success is built on the fact that I really knew an industry, cybersecurity. Now I really know AI. So if I lost it all, I would probably start a services-based business. Why? Because I don't need any capital. Build up from that, provide value, and do it much faster. If you've ever seen horses, they wear blinders. They wear these things on the side of their head. Do you know why they give that to horses? So the horses stay focused on going forward. Otherwise, the horse looks this way, that way. The world is full of distraction. We are bombarded with stimuli all day. The other thing I try to do is try to figure out what are the, and I write them down, what are the three things I need to achieve today? Every day you're going to need to do 20, 30, 40 things, and then the world's going to add more. But there are three things you need to do today to move the ball forward. It's the ability to be able to filter out the truly urgent from the important. I love cybersecurity, and I would probably go back into that. I'm still involved with it. I'm still involved with my whole company. I'm on the board, and we have great board meetings. We have a great new CEO. But I would also get into AI, which I have gotten into because I think it's the future. I mean, I love technology because it absolutely rewards you for the value that you have. I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did, please subscribe, and if you have any questions you'd like me to answer in the future, please send them to me.