It took me a long time to get rich. It still feels weird to say this about myself. But financially, I’m definitely rich. What’s funny is, I’ve been rich long before I even realized that I was rich. It was actually through conversations with friends that I eventually realized: Fuck yes, I AM rich.
I care much less about it than I thought I would. I’ve heard rich people say this many times before, but: it really doesn’t make much of a difference in my life.
Now, that’s not to say that the human animal in me is above it all. I still want more money. I still sometimes get ensnared by the prospect of making money. I still sometimes struggle to say no to enticing financial opportunities, and one thing that I can tell you is: the more money you have, the more tempting opportunities come your way. Saying yes to these opportunities would be easy, and not doing so is inner work for me.
In today’s episode, I’ll talk about my struggles when it comes to resisting these temptations, and most importantly: I’ll talk about how you can get rich much faster, and with much less suffering than it took me.
TRANSCIPRT:
So here’s the deal. A couple of days ago, I was offered a great business opportunity. It will be very simple work for me, and it would pay me a lot of money.
And there were, let’s say multiple reasons why it
was a compelling offer. I Obviously lots of money and very little work. That’s easy for you. Those seem like pretty compelling reasons. And then you compound that by the person being the type of person that is on the ascent of being very successful and maybe well, very well known and a bunch of other reasons, right?
This for and I rejected it. I said, thanks. But no thanks. And the reason why this is significant is that why this is interesting is that throughout the. Throughout my life, but especially over the last, I would say seven, eight years. The amount of things I am seeing, no two is increasing and that’s not unusual as you become more successful or more well-known you get more things offered to you, right?
More [00:01:00] opportunities come to you, but that’s actually. Quite common and because you’re busier and busier and you have so many amazing opportunities, obviously it seems easier to say no to opportunities that are just not that interesting or not that compelling or profitable. The thing that adds to it though, is that, I mean the beginning, I just started saying no to things where I knew this is worthless, or this is going to be a waste of time.
Or this is a, this is never going to work. But eventually I started saying no to things that did seem like good opportunities even to me, but where a bad use of my time or were not of the highest interest to me at the moment. Like I had to you, the, the, the superpower of the most successful people usually is.
That they are very good at saying no that they are very good at picking and choosing how they’re going to use their time. Right. Because that’s the, that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter how many billions you have, you have the same amount of day that everybody else has. So you have to be very careful how you deploy your time.
Right. And you [00:02:00] value your time more and more and more. You’re less wasteful with it. All those things are normal. I think that. Just in the last two years, I’ve started saying no to things that I would never have said no to before. Like things that are now not rationally explainable anymore. Like where I can’t just say.
I know this is going to be a waste of time, or I know this is not going to pay enough, or I know this is not this, or this is not that now I just say no to things because it’s not going to be fun or it’s not stimulating, or it’s not creative, or I don’t like the person, like I’m I’m I don’t, I don’t want to spend time with this person.
And I was talking to Sophia today about this and the one hand he was agreeing with it, and like kind of. Like, Oh, that’s so awesome. Yes. And on the other hand, anytime I tell some something along these lines to him, there’s a thing that pops up within him. That’s all about like, yeah, but you can also afford it, like once I’m as successful as you, why would also do this right.
Because you’re so [00:03:00] rich. And as we’re talking, I was like, is there any amount of more money that you could have that would make you proportionally happier? And he had to agree that no, he already is rich enough. Like he’s making good enough income that, and he’s not spending most of it that even more income will not make him even more happy.
Right. And there’s this famous study anything about 75 K in annual salary is not directly impacting your happiness anymore. Right. All the way up to where you. Where your survival and your basic needs are not addressed anymore. Anything more is nice, but it’s not materially impacting the quality of your life in terms of your happiness sustained in a sustained way.
So it was like, huh? Maybe this is also true for me. And then the one math that I made for him that I, that I think that people don’t take into account, I didn’t take into account enough. And now I do it more and more and more is the math that, we [00:04:00] just look at the, how much work is it and how much money is it?
Like in my case now, like I’m just giving this an example. I know that everybody doesn’t get a bunch of emails everyday offering them lots of money. Right. But. Even in this example, like for him, I was telling him, Hey, what if somebody offered you 5,000 bucks per hour of coaching them? And all you need to do is coach them twice a month for 10 grand.
Right. That seems like an insane amount of money. Right. And he was like, yeah. I’m like, would you have to say yes to that? He’s like, well, that will be much harder to say no to Mike. All right. I’m not saying that everybody should say no to this. I’m just saying there’s a lot to consider that is easy not to consider.
Number one is, do I really need the money? Like, just because, I mean, this sounds crazy, but just because somebody offers money, we don’t have to say yes to that. Right. Like, I mean, if I offered you money to have sex, this would be ridiculous. It doesn’t matter if I offer you money. You’re like, I don’t want to can do that.
But if I offer you the same amount of [00:05:00] money too, have business conversations with me, although you thought I’m an idiot and you didn’t want to have these kinds of conversation, it would be much harder for you to say no to me, because you’re like, well, it’s a lot of money. And even if it’s an activity, I don’t like, maybe I should just say yes and enjoy it.
It’s not that bad. It’s just an hour. Right? Like we rationalize this. There’s a fear that we have that we should never say no to money, right. That some bad thing will happen. Like fucking Paisano is going to come and fucking, throw some kind of a lightning dart in our ass. If we ever said no to money, I will lose our money tomorrow.
And then we’ll be like, Oh my God, why did I say no to that money? Right. That was so good. That’s one. The other thing is. W do you want to do this? Is this gonna add to the quality of your life? Is this gonna make the main work that you do the main mission yet? You’re on the main business, the Wayne profession is going to enrich it in some way, or is it going to diminish it in some way?
And then, we’re always just thinking about the activity as like an hour, for instance, Oh, this is just going to be an hour of coaching that [00:06:00] I do with somebody, some asshole that I don’t like, but it’s just an hour. It’s just an hour. Is the problem. It’s that way of thinking it’s just an it’s a fucking hour and it’s not just an hour.
You have to consider, how would I feel at the end of this hour, will this hour bummy? So out of Burmese on, on energy that I will, maybe not be able to work for two or three hours afterwards will be productive at least to do really amazing or really creative work. Most things impact us and they impact us beyond the timeframe that we’re engaged in them.
Right. They, they inspire us or the depressors or the drain us or the motivate us or whatever. So asking ourselves, how would I feel during that hour and how will I feel afterwards? How will this. Affect the tone of my day, how will this affect my emotional state? How will this affect my state of creativity, right?
Or optimism or whatever, [00:07:00] like. That’s something we really think through. And then on top of it, I was like in that fictional scenario where there’s some asshole person that’s paying somebody 5k to do an hour consulting. I’m like, all right. So you’re like, it’s just an hour, but maybe every time you talk to that person for the next couple of hours, you’re just in a bad mood because it just, it, it is draining to talk to people.
We don’t like it’s draining to spend time with them. Spend time with people we don’t like. And then what if that guy is sending you emails like the, maybe you just talk with him for one hour, but the next day he sends you a quick email with a question. Two days later, he texts you some dumb joke that you hate, but now you’re in this real.
Now you have to, this is your client. You now have to respond to these messages. You now have to laugh. About these bad jokes, because you want to now you’re like addicted to this money that you never needed in the first place. And didn’t even want, you didn’t seek it out. It just was offered to you. And just like a mental slave.
You’re like, I have to, I guess I have to say yes to this. Now this person [00:08:00] is in your life and it’s not just affecting you in that hour. Maybe that person texts you every other day. Emails, you has questions once this one said, now you’re associated with that asshole that also maybe walks around and treats customers like shit, employees like shit, treats investors like shit and tells all of them.
You’re his friend and his mentor, and he’s learning everything from you. Boom. Beautiful. Now your reputation is fucked because people associate you with an asshole and think that you’re also that kind of a person and it’s not just all that. It’s the question we always have. It’s very easy to think about like here’s an hour in my calendar.
That’s empty. Hence it has zero value. And I could add a calendar event here that says consulting or coaching, and then I would make five grand in that hour. So it’s zero grand, zero money, $0 versus $5,000. But that’s not true. What else could you do in that hour instead of [00:09:00] nothing. I mean, maybe nothing is exactly what you need, if your whole calendar is full, maybe rest and, but rest is what would, you would really would help you sustain your pace of hustle and work.
But what if you used that hour to do something that you truly love that you’re truly passionate about, but that you never have time for. Think about this. Like people, people, people would say, dude, my calendar is so packed. I’m so busy. I have no time for nothing. Can I have you 5k for two hours of consulting coaching and people would go, yeah, I mean, I can, we can easily find two hours.
I mean, two hours. It’s not that they’re bad. All of a sudden magically, we can find two hours right. Where there’s a will. There’s a way. Of course I could find two hours for 5k and it’s. All right, motherfucker. What about that book writing project, that book you always wanted to write. What about that blog?
You always wanted to start? What about that startup SAS product? You want it to build that four months? You’ve been saying you don’t have the time. What if you took those two hours of that hour or whatever it is instead of [00:10:00] giving it to some asshole to make a little bit of money that you’re going to put in a bank account, not touch anyways.
It’s not going to make you happier. What if you took that time and invested in something that was truly important to you, meaningful, and that you are not easily, that you’re not pressured into taking time for it. What if you did something creative during that hour? And then Sophia was like, huh, what if in that hour I did, every week I did a podcasting episode with you and we invited cool people.
He’s like, think about, Oh, what if in that hour we call the friend and we encourage them to start a cycle is Psychedelic retreat company, which is something that Sophia and I have done. Right. And then we were just brainstorming about the impact that some of the time had that we spent together recording podcasts, talking about friends, calling them, inspiring them to do things I’m like, think about a whole year of doing that for an hour every week versus doing that coaching call with some asshole every week.
He is cool. At the end of that first year, you, you maybe you’ve made 120 grand a day. That’s [00:11:00] financially is amazing. I’m not saying that that’s also, I’m not saying that nobody should say yes to money. Like maybe coaching that person would be awesome. And it’s an awesome client and you love coaching, then motherfucker go coach, right?
I mean, that’s not the point. The point is that we say yes to things because they’re offered to us and we think we can’t, but say yes, because it’s quite a good, such a great offer and we’ve, and we look at things and do the math in such a. Short-term fashion. Well, it’s just an hour. And by the way, I give that whole speech to Sophia.
And the only reason I mentioned the whole like missing note to that lady, and then we went into a speech about just doing an hour for a couple of K and the ramification of it is because he’s doing that all the time in my observation, but in different ways, not by somebody offering them coaching, but it’s like, I’m asking him, what did you spend your day on today?
And he’s like, well, I spent three hours putting together an onboarding documentation checklist thing, and I’m like, well, why isn’t some employee on the team doing this? And he’s like, well, they’re all not experienced in onboarding. I’m like, [00:12:00] well, why don’t you just send them a few blog posts?
There’s a bunch of great blog posts on how to do an onboarding checklist. And then why don’t you just review it once they’ve done it and give them feedback that way they’ll learn how to do this shit. It’s like, well, I can do it faster if I do it myself. And in my mind, it’s like, this is a Cardinal sin.
We’ve all made it. I’ve made this mistake a million times, like delegating his heart. Like I’m not, I don’t want to like. It’s not about singling him out. Although I love to do that. He’s a good friend of mine and he’s is a terrible entrepreneur, obviously, but it’s, he does these things so much.
It’s like, Oh, I go and I repair this part in one of our shops. It’s like, why doesn’t somebody else repair this? Well, because I know how to do it and I can do it quickly. And then he always tries to justify, but like, I, I don’t mind. I have fun. I like doing the spreadsheet stuff. I like doing the stuff.
That’s not a big deal at two hours. I had a good time doing it. And what he doesn’t take into account is the opportunity cost of that work opportunity. Both for him to do something much more valuable and more enjoyable and more creative, and also the opportunity to help others [00:13:00] get better at things and challenge them more.
Versus micro-managing and doing things that are way below his pay grade. He could create a lot more value for his business, doing a lot more difficult things. Then a copy pasting checklists or creating spreadsheets, and anybody else could do if he gave them a little bit of guidance and yeah, maybe he has to coach.
Maybe it’ll take him multiple editing rounds. And if he just does it himself, it’s faster, but nobody learns anything. And everybody’s always going to be relying on him doing all the fucking work. Right. It’s a typical example. Like everybody does that, but the one of the Cardinal sins is this. Not valuing yourself and your time enough to consider all the hidden costs of your time, all the things you could do with that time, all the indirect impact that the time a location has, right?
It’s your hour, my hour of talking. To you remain and us [00:14:00] recording for the inner work podcast has positive implications because I know after our conversations, I’m always more energized than before. After the recordings, I’m always more energized, more excited than before. That’s valuable to me, that’s valuable to my business.
That’s valuable to my employees. That’s valuable to my business partners. That’s valuable to my family. It’s valuable to lots of people Steli with more energy is. Everybody’s benefiting from that. Like a lot of people benefit from me feeling more energized, me being more drained now that has ripple effects and costs.
That hurts a lot of people that hurts my businesses, all kinds of things. So I have to be very careful to consider anything and everything that I do is this going to make me run a genetic, give me more energy. Is this something I’m excited about? Is this helping me? My business, the people are really care about.
Or not. And if the answer is or not, it does not matter how much money it is. I’m rich enough to say no because honestly more money. And [00:15:00] I’ve done this many more times in the last two years. Than ever before where I’ve said no to money, to good money for quote unquote easy work for me, things that I can easily do, like talk for an hour, give people advice, right?
Scream at them about what they do wrong. That’s not difficult. Sometimes it’s even pleasurable to me, but I’ve said no, not because I’m above it or I’m so I am not, I’m not wealthy beyond the point where I can get broke. Right. Like I could be broke again very quickly. But it’s that I am now even more careful with my time and I value my time even more.
And honestly, also to be fair, it’s also the experience that I’ve had a couple of years. Where I was already making a good salary, a good living, but I was saying yes to all kinds of extra hustles, right? Maybe the memory of being broke was much much fresher because I’ve been broke for the big portion of my life in many different flavors and varieties [00:16:00] of it.
But, I would say yes to like, Oh, could you do a webinar for, our startup incubator and I would say, well, I don’t do these webinars anymore. Unless, you w when you do the, the one tactic is to put a price tag on it.
That’s so high that if somebody pays it, you do it because you’re like, Oh, shit, somebody really wants to pay that much. And I’m like, no, if you pay me 5k, I’ll do a, an hour workshop or 10 kale do an hour workshop. And lots of people would say no. And then lots of people would say yes, and I’d be like, Oh shit, okay.
I guess I’m going to do this thing. And then I would do it. And I would be. Sometimes drain sometimes not, but here’s what I never got out of any one of these kinds of little engagement, hustles and things. I never got any, any happiness out of the money I made. Right? Like I give a talk a keynote once best.
I only once got paid this much money, but I got paid $25,000 to give a one hour keynote. Once in my life, right? This is not what I’ve [00:17:00] gotten all the time. I never got that much except once. And here’s the deal. I never had less fun at a keynote. Like it was fine. It was not bad, but it was like, there was no fun involved.
I just gave my keynote people loved it. It was whatever. But I, I never touched that money or did anything with it. It never made any, it just went to my savings account. There was something I was trying to remember trying to make myself feel a little happier. Mentally by telling myself, wow, this is a new milestone.
Steli be happy. Wow. Isn’t it insane that people value so much to pay you so much, be grateful, feel gratefulness appreciation. This is a special moment. This is something your younger self would have been crazy about. And not to say that any of these thoughts are, are incorrect. All of this is correct, but you could, you could hear in the way that I’m recreating this, that I was trying, I was working hard and mentally to make myself feel something.
Because there was no feeling involved, also something, something else, even where now when you look in the mirror, you’re [00:18:00] like, I, I’m the kind of person who chooses. And if we stay with a coaching exempt, right. Who chose for 5k? To spend an hour with, with somebody who really disliked doing shit. I hate.
Right. You kind of, there’s an, I, it affects your identity identity. Yeah. Yeah. When you say no for the right reasons, obviously it influences your self image. Right. It makes you feel a certain way about yourself. You’re like, I have so much dignity and self-worth that I had the courage to say no to something really good.
And, and, but when you don’t, you feel kind of shitty because you’re like, I kind of Hort myself out for something I don’t like, and don’t want to do for money. I don’t need, and I won’t use for anything. Right. What is the purpose of this? Why am I doing this? And the only thing it’s very poor, actually it is a poor attitude.
Yeah. Yeah. It is a poor attitude. It’s it’s it’s, I, it’s a, it’s an attitude of somebody that’s like, I, when somebody offers me money, I don’t have free will anymore. I’m not a [00:19:00] free human anymore. I have to say yes, obviously for money, I have to do things. And if it’s lots of money, I have to do almost anything, no matter what I want.
It’s a very poor editor. It’s beautiful. The way that you framed it and. Vice versa. When you can say no to money because you won’t make you happier, it won’t make your life better in the longterm. You are truly rich, right? I am truly rich. I’m rich because I can afford to say why can’t afford. I choose to afford to say no to money.
And it’s not just with these opportunities. I mean, there’s, there’s other areas in my life where I could have trying to participate in things like other startup founders would. Invest in certain projects or get excited about making more money with more money. And I’ve seen a lot of people make a ton of money investing the money in certain ways that I did not understand and was not passionate about and then chose not to participate in.
And I could have [00:20:00] made a ton of money in certain areas. Like Bitcoin is a great example where. I had a good amount of friends that put a lot of money in Bitcoin and were super passionate about it and we’re making some money and we’re talking about it all the time and I considered, should I invest money in Bitcoin?
And then I asked myself, do I know anything about it? No. Am I passionate about it? No. Do I have some kind of original thesis on how this works? No, I’m like, well, why would I do it that well, because everybody else does it, does that a good reason. Is it going to stress me out? Will I then have another homework assignment?
Now I invest in Bitcoin. I need to know where Bitcoin is and what it is and how it works. And I’m like, you know what? I don’t care then honestly. Not to say that there’s not funny money moments, like funky moments where just laugh and, do some math on like what, had a customer wants a Rimini that first year of clothes, there was somebody that wanted to pay us a for like a whole year of clothes for like, I think $8,000 worth in Bitcoin.
And we did discuss it internally. And I think we’d [00:21:00] said, yes. And back then a Bitcoin wasn’t even worth a dollar, right? So we’re talking about like around 10,000 Bitcoins, right. And this would, this would be worth significantly more, this would be insane amount of wealth, right. Insane amount of wealth.
And I think the, the, the, the final stages the guy, I don’t remember what it was. We’re not super thrilled about taking Bitcoin, but we’re also super against it. We’re kind of like oblivious to it. Like, ah, we don’t care. And then he’s sort of just, for whatever reason didn’t pay us in Bitcoin, but that’s just one example of many others where it could point to a situation where it was like, well, I could have made.
Could’ve, could’ve, should’ve, would’ve 50 million. If I had done this, I could’ve made all this kind of money. If I’d done that there’s many, many situations in my life where I’ve lost fortunes, if you want. So, because I didn’t act, and it doesn’t matter like this, this doesn’t matter because it would not make my life better if it was different.
Right. Would I like. To like, do I like [00:22:00] to make money? Yes. Do I like that? My businesses successful? Yes. Would I like to have a, like, if my passion for fighting would translate into an additional a hundred million? Yes. Fuck. Yes. You bet your Haselwood, right? Like I’m not against making money. I’ll make you more money, but I’m against doing shit that I would not like that would create stress in my life because everybody else is doing it.
And I’ve chosen in many areas of my life consciously to say, I’m going to probably make less money in this, in this way, but it’s going to make my, it fits my life better because this is something that doesn’t add up quality to my life. This is not something I’m excited about. This is not something I want to spend a lot of time worrying about or thinking about.
And so I would just do it because everybody else does it or just do it to make more money and I don’t need more money. I want more quality of life. I want more excitement. I want more creativity. I want more adventure, but I don’t necessarily need and want to maximize as much to make as much money as possible.
I’m not [00:23:00] chasing to become a certain number of richness. And again, this is easy to say once you don’t have existential fears anymore. But the reality is that anybody that would ever listen to this podcast probably does not have existential fears. Right? Like I, I know what it means to live in public housing and grow up pretty.
Low income, like pretty poor in some ways I know what it means to have like, literally this is like movie type shit, TV show type shit to have gas, water, and electricity shut off from your apartment because you couldn’t afford rent. Right. I told this story many years at my TEDx, talk about my brothers visiting me in San Francisco.
After six years of not seeing me first time in America. And then they were all sleeping in their jackets because there was no electricity in the apartment. Like I’ve eaten some shit in my life, but even then, even when I was like, not making any money for six years, not earning a penny and like just struggling financially.
I was not [00:24:00] existentially afraid. I could have always. Fall back and live with my brothers. So my mom was somebody and found a job and did some sales. And it would’ve made some money. Like I’m not saying you have money in the bank or not. I’m saying you have existential fears where your means of making money.
They are not, they’re not many available means of you making money on numb cam. You’re fighting for survival. It’s a totally different game. But if you’re past that point, if you were like employable, if you could have a job, if you’ve studied, if you’ve had a career, if you’ve been an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter if you’ve made money lost money.
If, if you can make a living, then it’s all a mental game of asking yourself, how much am I worth to myself? And how much do I want my worth to give to my time? And funny enough, this is the, there’s always the same paradox where. People feel well, once I get to this point, I will then be able to afford to do X, but you have to act in that to ever get to these points to ever feel rich.
You have to have the courage to say no. And there’s [00:25:00] people that are much richer than me, but much poorer in their attitude. They are much more slaves to money. They’re much more afraid about losing what they have and not making more, they’re much more stressed about others that have more than them. So it’s not just about the total net worth that you have with the total amount of money that you have in your bank account.
It’s also about the way you, the way the self-worth that you have. I read a quote recently. Let’s maybe end on this. What’s the name, Ryan? What’s what’s, what’s our dude, the author of the rights, all the story. Stoke shit holiday. What a great name. When you, when your name is Ryan holiday, how could you not have a good life?
Right? How could you not live a good life? Think about the tragedy of being called Ryan holiday and having a terrible life. Right. Ryan holiday should actually be like a comedic actor that plays like Eddie Murphy type movies. Like the feel-good family bullshit comedies, like Ryan holiday would be [00:26:00] the name of an actor that was immensely successful in like Adam Sandler movies.
Right. Ryan holiday. How could you not be happy when your name is Ryan holiday? Now? I don’t think that Ryan is like super happy Debbie, in this. In this temperament. But he has a very happy, last name I have to say. Holiday is great. There wasn’t a thing. He always tweets great. He has great quotes, right?
I mean, Ryan holiday, if I was as determined as I used to be with quotes as I was in the, in my daily sales motivation days, I would be competition for him, but he’s, he’s fucking, he’s put in the work and he’s been consistent. He’s probably the best Twitter of quotes up there. Right. Do you know anybody better at quitting?
Good quotes? No. I, I, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t really know his quotes that much. You don’t know his quotes. Oh, there you go. Well, although I read some of his books and I was saying it didn’t live up to my, like what I, it’s not my jam. Totally. So yeah. But you have very high standards. You’re very high students.
[00:27:00] That’s why you work with me and you’re constantly inspired too high. Yeah. I’m sure. See, that’s the funny thing is I can talk shit like this and just because I’m. And relatively nobody like this doesn’t matter, but eventually these conversations come back to bite you in the ass of the internet, but I could not kill us anyways.
He did this amazing quote. I cannot find it right now. Like, fuck it. I’ll find it later. But there was this beautiful quote about, if it w when something along these lines of, if I lost all my money, it would take with it, nothing but itself. I thought that was like really powerful. Like my money is not attached to anything but itself in my life.
I was like, that’s a bad ass fucking quote. A man, like that’s a bad man that said that. And I’m not there yet. I don’t like, I like in theory in my mind, I don’t give a fuck if I lost everything. But I’m not sure that would really feel, I definitely [00:28:00] know. Say it again as that. You didn’t get that punch in the face.
Not, I mean, I got it when I had less money. Right. I hadn’t gotten, I haven’t gotten it yet and I’m not planning to like, I don’t necessarily want to, but I know that I’m a lot less attached. To my money now that I have more than at times where I had less, but not, I’m not talking about less when I had money problems when I had like money, but not as much as now, I’m not more attached to it in my also I’ve always.
Paid attention to like, my lifestyle has not like gone crazy just because I think that my also it’s a net, there’s also a funky thing about net worth is something.
I think a lot of people. Love to count their net worth. Just like, the, in the first bubble I, I had hired in my, when I was doing financial services back in Germany.
I’m 18 years old. I’d hired a 45 year old man in Germany to do sales for me that had 1.1 million [00:29:00] euros in debt. With his bank. I think they brought him down to, he had only to pay back, I dunno, half a million or something. This guy was making 45,000 a year in salary. And the first internet stock bubble happened, he started investing in a bunch of stock.
All these stocks obviously went up and then his bank allowed him to. To buy options and to like take credit because his portfolio was worth so much money. He could use the worth of that portfolio to borrow money, to buy more stock. And at some point he had told me his stock portfolio is a guy that makes 45 K a year.
And his stock portfolio was worth 3 million. Right. And then these stocks that were trading for 600 years or pop crashed all the way down to one year and 10 cents. And all of a sudden this poor dude was owing the bank 1.1 million, right? Like with a 45 K salary, or you went from [00:30:00] a multimillionaire to be like, really, really broke.
It’s that sort of shit that people don’t take into consideration where it’s like, even with Bitcoin, we were joking about this earlier. There’s somebody today that could be like a bill, a Bitcoin, be worth 40 million in Bitcoins, theoretically. And let’s say tomorrow comes the biggest Bitcoin crash of all time and crushes down to like, I don’t know, a hundred bucks.
And all of a sudden he doesn’t have 10 million anymore. Now he has a hundred thousand. Right. Like these things, they’re not as solid. As we all like to think, and same thing is true for somebody like me, that most of my net worth is tied into my business. Right? My business, my shit worth a shit ton of money.
It might be not a lot of money if it doesn’t go well in the next couple of years, who knows, right? These things are not static. They are also not cash in the bank, not all the time, at least. And even cash in the bank is not solid. Like if we believe what many smart people believe. With the amount of money the world is printing right now, [00:31:00] your money in the bank is going to be worth very little money in the next five years, right?
It might, it might have in value or even worse. So all of this has to be considered, but when my money goes, this is the, this is the attitude that I want to have. Like this is to me, the get rich, quick scheme, how to get rich quick is to adjust your attitude. Your point of view, your belief system.
That’s something that you could do from one moment to another. Usually most of the time it just takes an instant and we might change our belief. We might change our attitude or our point of view, our approach or mentality about something. So my get rich quick scheme is I want to fully embrace an attitude where if my money ever fully goes away, it takes nothing with it.
Other than itself. Like, I want to like my money for what I can do with it, but I want my money not attached to anything related to my self-worth my identity, my quality of life, the amount of happiness or fulfillment I [00:32:00] can receive an experience, nothing. I want my money not attached to anything that really is meaningful in my life.
I just want it to be money. Right. I use it and if I can have lots of it so I can help and do interesting stuff and help lots of people and protect the people I love. That’s awesome. I’m blessed. I’m grateful. But if it ever goes away, it means nothing. It doesn’t mean that I’m nothing. Now I’m a failure.
I’m not worthy. And it doesn’t mean that I need to suffer. I think that is the re the quickest way to truly be rich.