Why Taking Vacations Can Skyrocket Your Business ROI | Jim Dew DSH #1127

You know, it's funny.

Years ago, there was a very wealthy person that I knew, and he said to me, I said, do you have any tips for a young guy like me?

He said, take more vacations.

And I didn't exactly know what he meant then.

It seemed like he didn't know what he was talking about.

And often on vacation, you'll meet somebody that actually can help your business or help your life in some way that you never would have met had you not taken the time to go do something absolutely

all right guys Jim Dew here my financial advisor thanks for coming on today my pleasure.

Nice to see you, Sean.

What's new with you, man?

Oh, man, busy.

I mean, this is a busy part of the year for us near year end, doing things with clients, trying to carve out a little extra time off with Mimi, who you know, my wife as well.

But things are good.

Yeah, you're all over the place.

You're in like seven masterminds, right?

I don't know about seven, but I get around.

Yeah, that's where we met.

Fleischman's, right?

100 million.

Yeah.

Spoke there.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

And now we're working together.

Yeah.

And you guys have saved me a ton of money, helped me buy my first house.

Tax planning's been great.

So it's been a pleasure.

Thank you, man.

Absolutely.

It's been great working with you.

I remember when we met, we had a long bus ride together at 100M.

You were educating me on crypto a little bit.

You're like the crypto expert.

Did you get any?

Yeah, I own some crypto.

Okay.

You're chilling now.

Yeah.

I mean, not enough to where my life's going to change one way or another, but enough to where the move in the last couple of weeks is significant.

Nice.

That's cool to see you adopt to it because I know a lot of people were like kind of iffy about crypto.

Yeah, I still see it as speculative.

Like, I don't, it doesn't pay a dividend.

You know, I don't know.

So far, it's been like just moves with the stock market just more dramatically

than the recent history.

But it's a thing, it's a real thing.

And I think when there's a real thing, even if it's speculative, carving out a little piece of your portfolio makes sense.

I'd assume hundreds of pitches, right, for investments.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Our team probably sees 600 private deals a year.

Jeez.

Yeah.

And what percentage of those actually make it to the end?

About 50.

So like 8%.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And what, uh, is it industry-specific usually?

Or

no, I mean, everything from from private equity, private debt, oil and gas, sexy stuff, venture capital, real estate deals, you know, all the above.

Yeah, because making money your clients are good at, but investing and saving it's a whole nother part of it.

That's exactly right.

And that's what I struggled with because I was good at making money, but I would lose it all.

It happened to me twice.

Yeah.

So I feel much, I could sleep better at night with a team behind me, though.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Yeah, it's, you know, having the structure and having people.

It's like, I like to quote Richard Feynman, one of the smartest physicists who ever lived he said principle number one don't fool yourself and you're the easiest person to fool so a lot of us tend to think oh i know what i'm doing i'm a smart guy whatever and the truth is no one's that smart i mean even warren buffett had charlie munger by his side right right smart people know that they can trick themselves into believing things that aren't true and i think that's why you're successful because you found an issue that entrepreneurs are dealing with they're good at making money but you probably saw a lot of them lose it or invest in dumb stuff oh yeah you provided a solution for them yeah exactly right.

Is that kind of how it started at just going to events and seeing people's problems?

Oh, well, that was farther down the line.

I mean, originally, Mimi and I saw the problem for ourselves.

So the problem that entrepreneurs have, whether it's investing or taxes or anything else, is they have what we call a financial flat tire.

And what I mean by that is over an entrepreneur's lifetime, they pick up an attorney, an accountant, an insurance agent, a banker.

If you picture those like spokes on a wheel, they're usually not all A players.

They're not talking to each other.

They're not, no one's holding them accountable.

But the worst part is the entrepreneur is in the middle of that wheel trying to manage that team when the entrepreneur doesn't speak the languages of tax, legal insurance, and investment.

So that broken wealth wheel causes all kinds of issues for the entrepreneurs, like paying too much in taxes, making dumb investments, not having good asset protection, paying too much for insurance, even when they don't have the right coverages, on and on, that type of thing.

And so that was really the problem that Mimi and I were experiencing as entrepreneurs.

You know, we started our business 25 years ago and then we learned what billionaires do, which is that solution called a family office.

I love it.

Yeah.

Shout out to Mimi, man.

You guys have been rocking for a while now.

Yeah, she's incredible.

We met 35 years ago on a blind date and married for 32 years.

Blind date.

How did that work?

For her, it worked average.

For me, it worked spectacular.

When I met her, I was like, oh, this, this woman is beautiful and smart and funny and all those things.

And I think she was more like, eh, you know, he's all right.

She settled.

Yeah.

I would like to say that she didn't settle.

But at the time, she was not really looking for a serious relationship and she had just gotten out of a serious relationship.

We were both in college.

She had a lot more opportunities and options than I did.

Really?

But I pursued her and I

was.

Have you ever watched Seinfeld?

Episodes.

I was super young, but yeah.

Okay.

Well, Seinfeld, there was an episode where George Costanza, one of the characters.

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He does the opposite because the other characters on on the show say, you know, it seems like you always make the wrong decision.

Just do the opposite of everything you think you should do.

And all of a sudden, his life turns out like amazing.

You just, every time, like, he sees a woman, he's like, I would normally not approach her.

But he walks up to her and he says, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.

And she's like, oh, wow, you're interesting.

So his life turns around.

So I always joked that I was like the George Costanza for her to date because all the other guys she dated before me, they came from, you know, they had money or they dressed well.

They had nice cars.

They, you know, had a certain thing.

And I had no money.

I had a crappy car.

I dressed horrible.

I'd get my hair cut down at the barbershop.

I didn't care.

I just was not at all, you know, ready for prime time.

But she saw that that kind of attracted her in a way that, like, this guy's kind of different.

But then we had very deep conversations.

Early in our dating, I was always kind of an old soul.

So even in my 20s, I would have deep conversations with her.

And she'd always say, gosh, you know, our early dates, we talked about all these real things, these deep things, these important things.

And she's like, in the past, when I dated guys, they're all like, let's go party and all that kind of stuff.

So

that was, I think, I mean, she'd speak for herself, but I think that was what made her interested in me.

And then I just kept being a nice guy and pursuing her and showing up and making her laugh.

That was an important thing.

You're good at that.

And then eventually she was like, oh, I think this guy, I'll give him some time.

That's beautiful, man.

What a story.

Well, that's how you know she's a real one, too, though.

Yeah, she's, she's, there's, they don't make them like her yeah i always say if i could live a thousand lifetimes i don't think i could ever meet someone uh as well paired with me or that i i believe in that i want to make a life partnership with as much as as my wife meeting yeah i'm very grateful that's your soulmate right there yeah it is the more impressive thing to me though is you guys work together yeah that's a whole nother story you know and i think anyone who works with their spouse can attest to some of the challenges.

Oh, yeah.

And I think what we learned in the very early days is to stay in our lane.

And anytime we get in each other's lane, that creates problems.

And so we stay in each other's lane and we try not to disrupt that.

And then when we talk about work, we try to set boundaries because I love my work.

I love what I do.

I could talk all day long every day.

And so sometimes it'll be a Saturday and she'll say, okay, last conversation about work and then we're done.

I love that.

I'm the same way though.

Even in bed, we'll be talking about work in bed.

You know what I mean?

It's nonstop on my mind.

Exactly.

You're like, oh, I need to get that guy on the podcast.

And that's how you go great.

You know, that's why you succeed is when you're constantly obsessing about something.

I think people who casually want to be successful, I mean, there's no successful professional athletes who are casual about it.

And same thing with business owners.

I mean, you have to be almost obsessive to a degree with some balance.

You know, I think you can overwork, as I'm sure you and I have done in our past, right?

You can overwork where you have diminishing returns and the extra effort is actually working against yourself.

But that being said, I think there's some obsession.

Anyone I've known that met great success, I don't mean comfortable success, but great success, obsessed at some point in their life about something, probably in a way that was a little bit unhealthy.

Yeah, I've had to find that balance.

Definitely had burnout.

My first five years of entrepreneurship worked 16 to 18 hours a day, seven hours, seven days a week, no vacations.

And that was not healthy.

My health was terrible.

You know, I was collapsing.

I had panic attacks, physical health, I was a twig.

No one wanted to even talk to me.

I mean, so yeah, you could definitely take it extreme.

Yeah.

Now everybody wants to talk to you, but look where you've gotten.

And part of that is because of that obsession, right?

Yeah.

I mean, so there's, there's some of that.

And then you start noticing things like health problems or relationship problems.

Yep.

And then you go, hey, I better, I better get my life a little more in balance.

Yeah.

Now I take weekends off, which is crazy to even say out loud.

So awesome.

Yeah.

I think it's needed, though, because you study the top guys and they take time to reflect when you're not working all day.

For sure.

So that was a switch for me because I was pretty stagnant when I was working 18 hours a day.

There's only so much you could do physically.

yeah time to think about it reflect maybe go out to dinner or something right you know right yeah you know they say who was the famous i forget the person because i like to always give quotes to who they're attributed to but uh uh she said the time to quit working is when working isn't working and sometimes it's hard for an entrepreneur especially to notice hey you know what i don't think any more work is going to make this thing go forward anymore and i know some of my best ideas for our business have come in moments where i was doing nothing related to business, where I had moments of quiet, moments of relaxation.

And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, poop, this idea comes in like a lightning bolt.

And that was only available because I freed my mind from all the stuff that I was thinking about.

Absolutely.

Some of my best ideas have come on vacation, actually.

It's weird.

Every time I go on vacation, I think of something crazy.

You know, it's funny.

Years ago, there was a very wealthy person that I knew and he said to me, I said, do you have any tips for a young guy like me?

He said, take more vacations.

I said, what do you mean?

He said, well, every time I take a vacation, I make more money.

And I didn't exactly know what he meant then.

It seemed like he didn't know what he was talking about.

But just what you said, I think that's true.

I think when you take a vacation, you give yourself some space to be creative and think about things.

And often on vacation, you'll meet somebody that actually can help your business or help your life in some way, whether it's, you know, sitting first class or on a private jet or in an exclusive restaurant or somewhere you might bump into someone that you never would have met had you not taken the time to go do something.

Absolutely.

And that's important to converse wherever you are, whether it's the gym.

sometimes i'm in the sauna sometimes i'm on a flight wherever it is you never know who you'll meet right you know grocery store even yeah there was actually a study done decades ago about

i'd say being lucky and what they did with this survey is they they this experiment they took and they asked a bunch of people are you lucky or are you not lucky And the ones that said 10 out of 10, I'm the most lucky person in the world, they put those in a group.

And the people that said one out of 10, I'm the most unlucky person in the world, they put those people in a group.

And then they ran them through all these experiments that they didn't know were happening to them.

So one, just to give you an idea, was they told them to meet at a certain place individually,

one at a time.

And then when they got there, they said, oh, we gave you the wrong address.

Go to this other place.

And by the way, it's walking distance.

You can just walk over there.

And then they planted a $20 bill on the side of the sidewalk and just...

They said, we want to see who gets lucky.

And notices finds the $20 bill.

And it was shocking that a huge percentage of the people that said, I'm a 10 out of 10 lucky, found the $20 bill.

And a very small percentage of the people that said, I'm a one out of 10, I'm unlucky, found the $20 bill.

And they went through all these different experiments and they kept finding out that the people who felt they're lucky kept getting lucky.

And that people felt that they were unlucky kept getting unlucky.

But here's what they concluded.

People who feel they're lucky, they look around the world, they talk to people, they engage, and they see things, whether it's a $20 bill by the sidewalk or whether it's making a new relationship in a coffee shop, it's because they're outward looking in the world.

They're looking at the world as, hey, I'm lucky.

What can I find in the world outside me?

The people who feel they're not unlucky, they're looking inside, like, woe is me.

I'm never lucky.

Nothing good happens to me.

And when they're walking, they're probably looking at their shoes.

They're not even looking around in the world.

So anyway, that's an interesting experiment that was done that makes you think that maybe luck and lack of luck are more than just what actually happens to you, but how you see the world.

Wow.

That is fascinating.

So you can kind of control your luck in a way.

It's all perspective and mindset.

And in our hiring, because hiring and recruiting is big for our company to get the right advisors in, we adopted a question that Elon Musk's, Elon Musk asks when he's hiring.

And that is, do you feel lucky?

Wow.

That's the question he asks.

I love that.

Because if people say, I feel lucky, you want to hire those people.

The people who say, I don't feel lucky, you don't want to hire those people.

And why?

Because people who feel lucky, they're winners and winners win more.

Losers lose more.

And people who lose a lot, they feel they're not lucky.

People who win a lot, they feel they're lucky.

It also shows a little bit of humility.

Because if you say, I feel lucky, it's not like, oh, everything that's happened in my life is because of me.

I'm amazing.

And that's also a quality you want in an employee is someone who is humble, but they feel they're lucky.

So they're outward looking in the world.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe your hiring process, man.

I remember the last mastermind, not the one that just happened, but before you had some guy talk about how you guys hire employees.

And it was like a thousand people apply and it gets down to one.

And just the whole system was insane.

Yeah, that's Justin, our COO.

He's unbelievable at building systems.

And when we first hired him, our biggest bottleneck, because we have more demand than we have supply for what we do, our biggest bottleneck was hiring and training the right advisors to deliver on the work that we do.

And so when he first was in the hiring process, he said, oh, I'll fix that problem for you.

And I said, really?

I said, how are you going to fix the problem?

He said, well, first of all, you're thinking about it wrong.

You're thinking that you have a problem with HR and hiring and training.

You don't have a problem with HR.

You have a problem with sales and marketing.

You have to think of attracting and hiring the right people as a sales and marketing problem.

And the same way you have funnels and all the stuff that you do for sales and marketing, you should do for hiring in your HR department.

And that kind of blew my mind.

And then he came in and built this, as you saw, right, this funnel with all these things that happen the same way you would build a funnel to make sales for your company.

And by doing that, now you're treating the hiring process the same as you treat the marketing and sales process.

And people spend so much time on sales and marketing for their company, which you need to.

That's a huge component of how much success you're going to have.

But they also need to do the same thing with hiring the right people.

Because really, when it comes down to it, there's two things that are going to grow your business, your systems and your people.

If you don't have systems, you can have great people and they're going to look bad in a bad system.

But if you have great systems and bad people, then they can actually execute.

So you need great systems and great people.

And so that ties together.

You need great systems to hire the great people to then grow your company.

Right.

Yeah.

You were having them take, I think, three personality tests.

It was crazy.

Yeah.

We've got a cognitive.

We've got a personality.

The cognitive is important because in our industry, with what we do, you have to be able to learn quickly and pick things up very fast.

And if you don't have that cognitive ability, no matter how hard you work, you can't do what our advisors do.

Wow.

So you got to be able to adapt.

We carve that out.

We find those people who can think quickly, learn quickly, and that's who we have to hire.

Now they have to have other skills, obviously.

But if they don't don't have that cognitive cognitive spill skill we will bump them we'll we'll kick them out of the process because if you can't think and learn quickly you're not going to be successful at our phone wow I want to take that test see what I get cognitive test you'd probably get a high one you're pretty my IQ dropped a lot man I think it's tick tock brain I took the same IQ test I did in college and it dropped 20 25 points maybe you were too smart I don't know you know some people are too smart and then no one can relate to them so maybe no no it brought you down that's definitely not me I wouldn't be able to do podcasts That was my dad, though.

It was 150 IQ.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

He was way too smart.

Yeah.

I've known people too smart for their own good.

And if they don't find that little niche of where they're great, they struggle.

Yeah.

I mean, you can be too smart or too dumb to succeed in the world.

You got to, yeah, find that niche.

Also, you need people to relate to, which gets really hard because when you're that smart, you're one out of 10,000 people.

It's so true.

Yeah.

I think that's a skill too, is to be able to find ways to relate to almost anyone, which is why you're so good at what you do.

And that's a lot of people aren't so good at that, you know what I mean?

Anymore in the current world we live in, the ability to be flexible and to get along with all types of people is really important.

And I think more and more people are starting to see the world as, you know, A and B people.

And I'm an A person, so I don't like the B people.

And I don't think that's fair because people are more complex than that.

There's a lot going on with every person.

And I've found even people that I think, God, that person's an idiot, what they believe in this one specific space, you know, you might say politics, right?

But then if I spend time with that person, I hear their life story, it makes sense.

And in some ways, a lot of times I change my perception and I say, well, guess what?

I disagree with them in that one area, but there's a lot of good about this person.

And there's a great story there.

Anyone who's achieved anything has a great story.

And I was just the other day, I was at,

Mimi was out of town.

So I went to our club to have dinner up at the bar.

And I'm sitting next to this guy.

He's in his 70s.

And I just started asking him like, hey, what's your story?

And I asked him, you know, he said, where do you live in the community?

And he has two homes.

One's like a 15,000 square foot home.

Damn.

And he said, it's great views of the valley, but it's too big for me and my wife.

So I bought a second house in the same neighborhood that's only 7,000 square feet.

So he starts telling me all of his stuff.

I was like, how did you get where you are?

And that was the story.

Grew up in L.A.

His dad was an iron worker.

When he was 16, he moved out of the house to make money because they had no money.

And he said he did the most menial jobs.

He said, I don't even want to try to describe the jobs.

I did the most menial jobs you can imagine.

At 18, he took a job selling cars.

First three months, he sold a few cars.

He goes, hey, I'm pretty good at this.

One day he looked up, he saw the glass enclosed office in the dealership.

And he said to one of the other guys, who's up there?

And he said, oh, that's the owner of the dealership.

He looked up there and he said, I said to myself, that guy has nothing I don't have.

I'm going to own a dealership in 10 years.

So he gave himself a reasonable time, right?

He didn't say next month.

He said in eight years, he owned his first dealership.

Now he owns 12.

Whoa.

And now he said, you know, I've got more money, money than I know what to do with.

I've got 12 houses.

I got all this stuff.

He goes, it's too much.

But the story was what interested me.

And a lot of people would probably see that guy and think, oh, this is just some rich dude.

No, this is a guy who has a life story and he worked incredibly hard and he built up this fortune from nothing.

And most wealthy people are from nothing.

Very few wealthy people have inherited their money.

Very few wealthy people were anointed some way.

But that's what we think because we think somehow you see someone driving a fancy car in a fancy house.

And by the way, some of those people aren't rich.

Some of those people just spend their money.

Right.

So it's important to understand people's stories.

And that's how you do such a great job on the podcast.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Converse, being able to converse is an important skill to have in any industry.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm sure you see it with your clients, what percentage of them inherited it versus self-made.

I'm sure it's a lot of self-made.

Yeah.

I can't think of anybody that we work with in our company who's not self-made.

Wow.

Yeah.

And that's what I noticed with all the people I meet too.

I've met thousands of self-made millionaires or like just millionaires in general.

And the percentage of them that inherited, I can maybe think of a handful.

Yeah, that's true.

And it's a misunderstanding by a lot of people who don't have money.

And the great thing about America is you're not born into a class in America.

You get to choose your class.

You know, I mean, now you have to choose the right path.

Like I was a, my first job, I was a high school math teacher, right?

So if I would have stayed in that career, there was only so much wealth I was going to create.

So part of it is the career or the path you choose, but then part of it is how hard you work, how willing you are to be creative, how willing you are to change and take risks and do different things.

But you get to choose your path.

You're not stuck.

It's not like some class country where whatever you're born in, you can't get out of that class.

In this country, you get to choose if you get out of the class.

And it took me a long time to even understand the utility of money or to want to be wealthy because I never wanted to be wealthy when I was a kid, which that statement is controversial.

You get to choose your class, but I think you're spot on.

You know, I think a lot of people have a victim mindset with that statement.

But I think if you surround yourself with the right people, consume the right information,

you could change the odds at least of elevating classes.

And it depends what you want for your life.

Because I mean, if you look at like take Elon Musk, for example, he had $180 million after PayPal.

And he said, okay, I'm going to start this electric car company and I'm going to start SpaceX.

And he said, I give those maybe a 10% chance of success.

So he goes, I'm going to put 90 million toward those endeavors, but I still got 90 million.

That's a lot of money.

Then what happened?

He burned through the 90 million.

So now he's like, okay, now I have a decision to make.

Do I just say that didn't work and keep my 90 million?

Or do I take the rest of my money and pour it into these companies?

And he put all his chips in.

Had those companies failed, he'd be broke.

Instead, he's worth 250 billion, the richest man in the world.

So why did that happen?

Because he had the courage to take $90 million and put all his chips in the middle of the table.

Now, a lot of people aren't willing to do that.

I can tell you, I wouldn't do that.

I would go, I'm good with 90.

I tried those things, didn't work out, but that wasn't him.

So there are certain things that you have have to do to get to certain levels.

And I'm not saying everybody can be Elon Musk, but let's say you just want to have a home debt-free, you want to be able to live your life and not have to work all the time and those kinds of things.

That's a different level.

And I don't know anybody who tries and works hard who can't get to that level in their life.

You know, it's different if you say, you know, hey, I want to be able to drive Lambos and wear fancy watches and

have five jets and all this stuff.

That's different.

But if you want a certain, if you say, hey, I'm poor and I want to be able to have a paid off home and income and a good lifestyle, I've never met anyone in my life who really worked hard and put effort into that who didn't attain that level of success and that change in their class.

Anyone I've met who's remained poor for decades has made bad choices.

And I'm not saying they're bad people.

I would love them to make better choices.

But if you make decent choices and you work very hard, this country will reward you.

Because, you know, one great thing about this country is most Americans, in my experience, want to help other people who are trying hard and working hard.

They want to give them a leg up, but often people are not putting themselves out there in a way that's going to attract someone to want to help them.

Right.

Yeah, I'll say this.

I think to get to the 1%, there is some risk involved.

Absolutely.

I think you need to take some chances.

I don't think you're going to get there easily.

You got to make, what is it, 400K a year?

to be top 1%, something like that.

Yep.

It's four.

It's a little more than that.

Yeah.

But inflation.

Yeah, but it's between $400 and $500,000 puts in the top one percent of the money.

So you got to make some risks.

You got to go through periods where you might not make any money at all.

Yeah.

You might have to lose some friendships, whatever it is.

And I think that's really uncomfortable for most people.

Yeah.

Mimi and I were facing, struggling with the company in 2003.

So we started in 1999.

So that was four years in.

And we reached a point where we were losing money from the business.

And we were faced with this, okay, if this goes on a couple more months, we're going to either have to sell our house

or we're going to have to shut down the business.

Wow.

And we said, you know what, what would we do?

What are we going to do if that continues?

And we just said, we'll sell the house.

We'll go rent somewhere.

So that type of a decision or even putting myself in a position to where we could lose everything or have to sell our house, which is all we had was the equity in the house.

A lot of people aren't willing to do that.

You know, my dad grew up in the Great Depression.

He's since passed away.

And when we started our company in 1999, my dad thought I was out of my mind.

He said, well, wait a second.

You're leaving that company where,

don't they pay for your office?

Yeah, dad, they pay for my office.

Don't you have that good assistant?

Yeah, dad.

Who pays for that?

The company.

And like you have computers and stuff, right?

Yeah, dad.

Well, who pays for that?

Well, yeah, the company, dad.

Well, then who's going to pay for all that stuff now?

I said, well, we are.

And my dad's just like, oh, that's, I don't know.

That seems crazy.

But that generation, right, you worked for one company your whole life and they gave you a rocking chair and a watch and you got your pension, right?

But today is different.

I think if you're stuck in one place because you think they're security, the only security in America today, financially, is your skills and talents and your willingness to change and adapt as things change and adapt.

You know, like they talk about the coyote.

The coyote, the United States declared war on the coyote in 1920, I think it was, because coyotes were eating livestock and doing things out west.

Farmers and ranchers were mad.

So the U.S.

government said, anybody can kill a coyote anytime they want, anywhere they see a coyote.

100 years later, coyotes have now expanded.

They're up in Canada.

They're down in South America.

They're everywhere.

They're in my backyard where we live here in Scottsdale.

And they say the reason why is because coyotes are one of the most adaptable animals in the world.

So they like to eat during the day.

If they can't find food, they'll eat at night.

They like to eat little rabbits and things.

And if they can't eat those, they'll eat roots.

And they adapt.

And they are very clever about how they work together and hunt together.

My point is this.

Your ability to adapt.

and to learn and to grow, that's your security.

If you think your security is because you have a good job with a good company, that's gone.

You can get wiped out tomorrow.

Companies can get sold.

All kinds of things can happen.

So my dad was right for his generation.

He was wrong for my generation, certainly for your generation.

That doesn't mean, though, that you need to start a business and risk selling your house.

That's like another extreme.

But if you want to get seriously wealthy, you probably need to own a business because about 95% of who I would call seriously wealthy in America,

and I define that as Americans who have more than $20 million of liquid net worth.

I'd call that seriously wealthy.

95% of those people owned a small business.

So now you have a few like, you know, LeBron James.

You could be like a professional athlete or CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but a vast majority of the wealthiest people in America or seriously wealthy anyway, own small businesses.

So if you want to be seriously wealthy, you should think about owning a small business.

But guess what?

What that doesn't tell you is all the small business owners that lost everything and failed because we have survivorship bias.

So we go, oh, I know all all these business owners and former business owners who were rich, but they don't see all the people who had to sell their home like we almost had to do.

95% of businesses fail, right?

Yeah, it's a huge percentage.

And most of the successful business owners had multiple iterations.

You know,

quite a few.

Yeah, you try something, it fails.

And that's, I think, the difference because entrepreneurship has gotten this almost like this halo around it in the last few years.

Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur.

And I would say, you know, be careful what you ask for.

it's almost like

years ago, I used to train a lot in different things.

And there was a guy by the name of Willie Shoemaker, and he was a full contact fighter.

And he was this good looking guy, six foot three.

And all the other guys wanted to be like Willie.

And so they would go, Willie, I want to be a professional fighter too.

And Willie, he had the same answer every time.

He said, okay, well, I'll tell you what, let someone punch you in the face as hard as they can.

And if you're okay with that, then maybe you can become a professional fighter, right?

You have to be okay with that.

And I think the idea of being a professional fighter and the reality is different.

And so a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs.

It sounds cool.

Be your own boss.

You're doing your own thing.

You're right.

But the reality of it is very hard.

I mean, all the years, Mimi and I slogged through that we could have been making way more money if we just took jobs.

And so year after year after year, making less money, struggling, trying to find a way, you have to

feel like that's your only path.

Like to us, the fact that I remember I had a friend one time when we're really struggling and he said, are you going to close down the business?

This was about the time we might have to sell our house right i said are you kidding me no way like i'm never closing down this business you have to have that attitude like this is the only way for me if you start to think well i'll start a business but if it's bad i'll go get a job you're probably not an entrepreneur absolutely because an entrepreneur can't like i am unemployable i could not work i seem like a nice guy but i can promise you I could not work for anyone.

I would cause problems.

I would question them.

I would argue with them.

I'm unemployable.

And that's the kind of person that becomes an entrepreneur.

You got to be all in.

But you're right, though.

It's definitely glamorized on social media entrepreneurship.

And that's not the way it should be perceived.

No, it should be the hardest thing you'll ever do.

And you'll ultimately love it if you can get beyond all the trials and tribulations.

You know, there's, we call them the four stages of entrepreneurship that I can kind of walk you through if you're curious.

Yes,

the first one is the eager entrepreneur.

That's when you start your business.

And that was us in 1999.

You're saying, oh my gosh, I'm going to be my own boss.

I'm going to own my own business.

This is the coolest thing.

And then you realize you have no clients or no customers.

So you have to hustle, market, sell, hustle, market, sell.

And when we were eager entrepreneurs, me, me, and I thought, if we could just make a million dollars of revenue, all our problems go away because that number sounded so huge to us.

Well,

when we started making a million dollars revenue, we realized that our problems didn't go away.

We actually had a lot more problems.

That's when we moved to what I call the overwhelmed operator.

That's when you might have a few employees.

That's when you have employees that are making more money than you are, working less than you are.

It's a very stressful time.

And that's when you start to think, at least we did, as an

overwhelmed operator, I really am working so hard for my money.

I wonder if I could get my money to work for me a little bit.

That's when you first start to have that insight.

Then, if you have a good business model and you can work through that very difficult time as the overwhelmed operator, then you move into what we call the secure shareholder.

Like the book, The E-Myth, you start working on your business instead of in your business.

You become the owner instead of the operator.

And that's when you not only think about multiplying money, but you think about protecting what you're building.

That's when you can actually think creatively and start building the future of that company.

That's the secure shareholder.

The level above that, which we hope all entrepreneurs get to, is the influential investor.

And as the influential investor, this is when you start thinking, how does my money matter?

Why am I doing this?

What am I going to do with all these things that I've created and that are now coming my way?

Because as an entrepreneur, I believe you're way underpaid for years and then you're way overpaid for for years.

Yeah.

You know, when you actually figure it out.

And so Mimi, for Mimi and I, when I met her in college on that blind date, she was working three jobs.

She had no support from her household, from her family, and it was very, very difficult.

And we always said, if we ever somehow make money, we would love to give back and help kids like her who have the attitude and the aptitude, but don't have the financial resources.

And so we thought, we're going to create scholarships.

So this last year, we created two scholarships for kids who exactly that have the aptitude and the attitude, but they don't have the financial resources.

And we awarded it actually to two girls in a very bad part of Phoenix.

And one of these kids, just to give you an idea, six people live in her household.

Total household income for the year, $24,000.

Whoa.

So anyway, that's our way to make us matter is, you know, getting kids out of poverty through education, but it doesn't have to be that, you know, and we also feel that through what we do with entrepreneurs like you, we help entrepreneurs become wealthier.

And guess what good people do when they become wealthier?

They give more away.

They make a difference.

They serve their kids.

They create jobs so people can have good jobs, good paying opportunities.

And so we feel like that's one way our money matters.

And then also doing things like through these scholarships.

So whatever it is for you, if you're listening on this podcast, is think about something bigger than you.

It's got to be outside of you.

It can't be just like I want a Lambo or whatever.

Something outside of you that's much bigger than you of how your money is going to matter.

And if you really envision that, like we did, it it will pull you forward in the hard times.

Because during the hard times, it's sometimes it's tough to go,

maybe I don't want the fancy car, maybe I don't need the fancy house, you know, but that's all internal.

The things that drive people the most are external, things about people other than you.

And you'll know that if you ever get to the point where if right now you don't have money and all of a sudden you get a lot of money, you're going to realize there's cool stuff for yourself, but then you realize the things you can do for other people, that's the most powerful thing and the thing that drives people.

And that's why you see people like Warren Buffett giving away 90%, 99%

of his wealth when he passes is because that matters more to him than enjoying the wealth through stuff he could do for himself.

Because after a while, you know, that gets old.

Wow.

He's giving away 99%.

Is that to charity or his kids?

Not to his kids.

I think it's all going to charity.

I think most of it's going to the Gates Foundation.

You know, I don't want to get into any political stuff, but I think he's good friends with Bill Gates.

And I think he liked the way Bill and Melinda were running the foundation.

And so he said, why am I going to try to do this?

I'm just going to name them.

and let.

So last I heard, that's the way it was.

But I know he is very much does not give his kids and grandkids money.

And some people would say almost to the extreme.

Yeah.

Like he won't help them with college and stuff like that.

Wow.

But he believes that money does not help young people and money hurts young people.

And I would say to an extent, I agree with that.

But if you have the right young person with the work ethic and just needs a little help, that's where, you know, I'm more like case by case.

I don't think it's a set formula.

Absolutely.

Like, it depends on the mindset of the child.

For sure.

Like, it could destroy some people.

I've seen, we've both seen that.

And, and I, I feel sorry for kids that are being raised in a family where they get to do what they want, how they want, when they want.

There's no real trials and tribulations, and the parents are protecting them from struggle.

Right.

Because struggle is where you learn the things that will eventually make your life

what you want it to be.

I mean, the struggle gives you the lessons that make your life fulfilling.

Absolutely.

I used to try to run away from my problems, run away from my struggles, and that does not work.

No.

You can't outrun it.

No, I know there's a hike we do because we go to Park City every summer to get out of Arizona for obvious reasons.

And there's one hike we do in Brighton that's beautiful hiking.

You go past a couple lakes and then there's this place, Sunset Point.

Well, there's a place right before you go to Sunset Point that's most of the way up.

And I've seen people there with like their three-year-old kid and flip-flops.

And I was like, what is going going on?

How do these people get up here?

You know, I've got my hiking boots on and all that stuff.

Turns out there's a parking lot that you can drive to to get to this point that's not all the way to the top because the next piece is pretty challenging, but it's most of the way to the top.

And as I was thinking about that, I thought, I can promise you, it doesn't feel the same.

to the people who drove in the parking lot and walked for, you know, 100 yards versus us hiking that whole thing.

It doesn't feel the same.

Not at all.

And that's the thing about life.

If you get something that you didn't earn it doesn't feel that good it's why rental cars no one takes care of rental cars because nobody cares it's what you earn that matters and i think that's true of relationships too i mean the fact that our marriage is successful and because we've really put the time and effort in and we've gone through the hard times because no relationship is great without you know because really trust is built on difficult times.

That's when you build trust with someone, right?

100%.

You see it in sports all the time too.

Like the guy will have natural talent, but he'll cap because he doesn't have the work ethic.

And then the guy with work ethic will surpass the naturally talented athlete.

It's so true.

I've seen every sport.

And same with entrepreneurs.

Some people are talented in certain things.

There's people very talented at podcasting, but they don't do it with your effort and your zeal and your attention.

And that's why you leave them in the dust.

Going for the world record, man.

Are you 2,500 episodes?

I got a hit.

So Rogan has the current world record as of November 15th.

We'll see if he's still there in three years, but I'll be in the mix in three years.

I love it, man.

Gonna be in the Guinness Records.

It was always my childhood dream to get in the Guinness Book of World Records.

I used to read every single one.

Yeah.

I might be too young for you to even

relate to this.

No, I know the Guinness Book of World records.

No, but you know the big ass ones that are colorful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I used to read all of those.

Those were my jam in elementary school.

That's cool.

Well, you know what?

I'm glad because if you weren't trying to get 2,500, I probably would have been cut.

Nah,

if you're doing 10 podcasts, I don't think it's going to be.

I've been trying to get you on for a year.

I know.

I know.

You don't come out to Vegas often often enough.

I know.

And the times I've been to Vegas, there's always like so much business stuff going on.

But yeah, I've been wanting to get on your podcast too.

That's how it should be, though, or else you'll end up gambling at 2 a.m.

in the casino.

That's how Vegas gets you.

That's true.

That's true.

Well, I always say gambling is a tax for the mathematically ignorant.

Yeah, the odds never, because we're both logical.

So when you see the numbers, it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I would rather go out to dinner with my wife and buy a $500 bottle of wine than go gamble $500 on her crafts table just because I know what I'm getting.

I see value.

I know the exchange.

But with the casinos, I, when I go in there, I'm like in the car looking around and I just say to myself, I want to own the casino.

I don't want to gamble at the casino.

And so I know the odds are in their favor.

So why do I want to put money towards something that I feel is a losing venture?

It's against my nature.

So I don't gamble when I go to Vegas.

You know, I'll go to shows, I'll go out to dinner, do business stuff, but I don't gamble.

What's your hobby then?

Pickleball.

I'm not really into pickleball.

I mean, exercise is a big thing to me.

I mean, Mimi was very into exercise and fitness when I met her.

And so I said, well, I better keep up with her.

So, you know, I work out six days a week.

I watch my diet.

I try to stay healthy.

And so that's, I guess you might call that a hobby.

We love hiking.

We love going to movies.

We love shows like when we're in New York, going to Broadway, stuff like that.

But the truth is, I like reading too.

But the truth is my biggest hobby is business.

I just love all things business.

I like hanging out with other entrepreneurs and learning what they're doing.

And I really believe that the entrepreneurs in America, everywhere really, but entrepreneurs drive the economy 100%.

And I've seen statistics like half of jobs created are small businesses.

I would argue with that.

I'd say 100% almost because you got government jobs, right?

Which maybe those will be, there'll be fewer here.

Yeah, yeah, maybe, you know, definitely there is a, there's waste in government, I believe, a lot of waste.

Doge.

But if you take out those jobs of private sector jobs, I'd say 100%

are created by small business owners.

Why do I say that?

Because Apple was a small business at one point.

IBM was a small business at one point.

Like all these companies were small businesses.

At one point, someone started the business and then they become large businesses.

So I'd say almost all jobs you can track back to small business owners.

And that's the great thing about this country is the ability for entrepreneurs to start companies out of nothing.

And today, you can start a business without money, without employees, without a place to, you you know, an office.

It used to be you had to have all this money to start a business.

Now you don't have to.

You can start online business tomorrow for nothing.

We have to be one of the best countries in the world for entrepreneurship, I'd imagine.

No doubt.

I remember hearing this date me a little bit, but I heard an economist speak in the 1990s.

And he was reverting back to the 1970s when we had terrible inflation, we had the oil embargo, we had like all these issues.

And he said, if you would have told me in the 1970s that I'd be standing here reporting on an economy in the United States the way it is today, I would have told you, and so would other economists would have told you that's impossible.

Whoa.

He said, there's only one way I can explain it, American entrepreneurship.

And I've always thought, well, okay, that's our hope, like with the deficit and the debt.

The only hope is American entrepreneurship to get us out of that.

And that's why I think it's great that we might have some entrepreneurs actually looking at government waste because That's been my biggest claim all my life, really, is the government waste.

I think politicians on both sides, and I definitely don't want to get into politics, but the one thing that I say we should all agree on when I talk to people, because I have friends that are on all extremes, when I talk to them, I say, can we just agree on this one thing?

Forget like, should we pay more or less taxes?

Who should pay taxes?

Forget that.

Don't you think there should be accountability for the way our government's spending the money we're giving them?

And 100% of people say, yeah, there should be accountability.

I say, what's the accountability?

I can get audited by the IRS.

Like, I'm accountable.

How do we audit the government?

How do we make sure that they're accountable for where all this money is going?

These trillions of dollars, where is it all going?

Right.

It makes no sense.

You'd never run a business where you're like, oh, yeah, well, I send money to this department.

I don't know what they're doing with it, but I guess it's fine.

I'll send them more next year.

And so I finally see like people are paying attention a little bit.

Like we need some accountability on our government.

And I bet you, I bet you if we really dig into it and find out how much waste there is, There's plenty of money going to the government to do everything that we want to do.

But what happens is governments get bigger and bigger and bigger.

It's what the founders were afraid of.

And then this bureaucracy gets huge.

And then you're just feeding the bureaucracy.

You're not actually doing things that help the people.

Yeah.

I'm very interested to see what Elon and Vivek find.

Yeah.

I think it's going to raise a lot of fun.

I got to imagine it's not going to be hard to find a lot of ways because when no one's looking at it for decades, you would think when you go in there, you're going to find a mess.

Yeah.

I mean, you hear it from every government agency that they just waste money.

Like even the military, like I'm not trying to call anyone out, but I had buddies in the military.

If they had any leftover ammo or explosives, they would just go in the desert and shoot it all just so they wouldn't get budget cuts.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I've got a friend who works for one of the largest suppliers of military weapons, the U.S.

government.

And he says, you know, it's funny, every year we just add 20% to what we charge the government and the government pays it.

He's like, I think someone should be probably showing up and asking us, like, why are all these things costing 20% more?

But no one is because it's just like everybody's, it's the whole thing about the fox and the hen house, right?

Everybody's in this thing together and and no one is served or no one is incentivized to go wait a second we're wasting you know taxpayer money and that thing is taken way too lightly in my opinion i i work very hard for my money that i give to the government and i expect they should handle it with care not recklessly the way they have for many years absolutely because we're giving them you know 40 of our money of our profits we work very hard for that hours and we don't even know where it's going that's exactly right it's crazy yeah well jim where can people keep up with you man where can people find you Yeah.

Well, our website is dowealth.com, D-E-W-W-E-A-L-T-H.com.

You know, I'm around and about on social media.

You can kind of find me a little bit.

I'm not a big social media influencer.

That's why, you know, I can't blast this out to 10 million people.

I wish I could.

But yeah, I'm around.

I do speaking and podcasts from time to time.

We'll link your stuff below.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Great to see you.

Yup.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Check them out.