Show me your friendsand I'll show you your future.
Unless you want average, in America married two point four kidswith one and a half dogs But I can guarantee you you will never achieve anythinggreater than your highest aspiration.
If you want a millionyou'll make a million not a $1.
5 million.
If you want $10 million, a $100 million and you'll never exceed that.
If you change a billion lives, that's the formula to becomea billionaire and change the world.
Time costs lives.
Show me your friendsand I'll show you your future.
You want to know why you're all f***** up? Just look at the bumsyou hang around with.
I do what you don't want to do that you know that you've got todo to be where you want to be.
Ted Turner just gave his 75th anniversaryparty on CNN a few months ago and he has, he makes a couple ofcomments and he says number one, and I'm not suggesting this for everybody, it's how I lived though.
The first 10 years of my starting CNN, I slept on my couch, I didn't have an apartment.
Bill Gates slept in the office, Steve Jobs slept in the office and I can go down a whole list.
Now these are super successfulmega-wealthy guys.
I slept in my office, not everybody is willingto make that sacrifice.
But it's not the only thing but even if you don'twant to sleep in your office, if you want to sendyour kids to a better school, if you want to be able to take care ofyour mother when she gets dementia, if you want to.
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this all takes money.
When I.
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my children aren't gettingany of my money when I die.
Not not one centavo, not one penny.
And.
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Two of my kids are cool with it, one of them is not so cool with it.
I'm not going to you know, I think Andrew Carnegie by the way, Andrew Carnegie arguably the richest mostsuccessful entrepreneur of all time.
He said, the best thingthat you can have for a child is him to be born into poverty.
And I agree.
Lack of self-esteem, lack of self-worth.
Now they think they have self-worth, they think because they made a few bucks but in actuality, and when they measure it againstthe other 8, 10, 12 people sitting around the table they realize or they start the question “Hell, maybe I was just lucky.
” Now all of us, when you're only a one-trick guy or gal think, “Was I lucky?” Now I've done it so manytimes, I know I wasn't lucky I might have been lucky the first time but I haven't been luckythe 15, 20, 40, 50, – I know that.
– Okay But maybe I was lucky the first time.
My life changed when I went, I was a pretty much.
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a haphazard kid got in a lot of trouble, got arrested 4 or 5 times, thrown in jail and this was with my dad as a cop.
But then I went, I volunteeredfor the draft in 1966 at the height of the Vietnam War and I went to OCSand that changed my life because it was the really firstreal high performance thing that I could measure myselfagainst, with other people.
Two-thirds of all Fortune 500 CEOshave one thing in common – military background.
– Really Two-thirds of those two-thirdshave something else Martial Arts.
What do you learn in martial arts Brian? Discipline, focus.
A lot of people don't believethey deserve to be there I convinced them and we have these drills, why you belong there? A lot of people that come there, you know with money that have mademoney think they made it by accident.
I just had one of my super starswhose made a hundred million bucks tell me in the last week, “You know, I'm not sure I'm going tohave another lucky accident.
” And I said, “You did it.
” I mean, you know, you tried a lot of things.
Thomas Edison, I would, I wouldn't have done it 10, 000 times.
I would've hired an engineer from MIT to do it.
But I mean, I've tried a lot of things nobody's failed at more things than I have and the first 100 million are successes but I could write a bookabout failures that'd be I mean because I've trieda lot of different things because failure is just testing and one of the reasonsI've been so successful in generating this equityand value in my kids -and I call you all kids- is because I convinced themthat making a mistake is okay.
Your parents probably told you you can be anything you want, but you can't.
That's ***.
You can't.
If it's all juxtaposed So but what you tell them is that you can do anything you wantthat you have passion for.
Because that eliminates most of the crap because most peopledon't follow their dream, you know, like they sayin the sound of music.
“You can't have a dream come trueunless you have a dream” Now I still dream, I dream in technicolor, I say my affirmationsand goals every single night.
It's bloody hard to be a high-performance person.
Perfection equals paralysis.
If you left it to the engineers, no car would evercome off the assembly line.
No car would ever come offthe assembly line and I've been in businesswith enough engineers that I can tell attest to thatwith my hand on my heart.
They'd still be.
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Trying to make it better and the internet businessis very much the same.
The internet kids wantto test and test and test and they will wantthe landing page to be this Just roll it out, the great thing about the internetis your results are instantaneous.
If something that I'm overseeingat a Concorde level 60, 000 feet doesn't work in two days forget about it move on.
And today I had our meeting now the young kids are, “We ran it three days sir, and we closed it down.
” And they are thinking I'm going to ask why I said, “No, that's fine next” Because without them making mistakes, and without them being allowed to makethe decision they never get any better and 95% of the timeI know probably better than they do, We're never going to beable to know everything or have them know everythingunless they make some mistakes and get comfortable with making mistakes.
What gets measured gets accomplished.
Without measurementyou're just fooling yourself.
Before I had any money I used to go to the Rolls Royce dealersand sit in the cars and smell the leather touch the leather.
Okay I went to million dollar houses and my wife and Iwould walk through the house and they'd say, “When areyour parents getting here kids?” “No, we are the buyers.
” Practice within when you're without.
Practice being successful.
How many people listening to this todaypractice being successful today.
Through affirmations, through going to the Rolls Royce dealer.
Maybe Lamborghini, maybe something else.
In my particular case it was Rolls Royce.
And within a year of me going to aRolls Royce dealer, I had a Rolls Okay Within.
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19 months of me dreaming and.
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adding it to my goalsa castle on an island, I owned Guthrie castle.
– 19 months- Okay Go to stores you can't afford.
Go hire lawyers, you can't afford.
Lawyers will meet with anybody, accountants will meet with anybody.
Go to the big four accountants.
With a business idea, the first couple meetings are for free.
Jettison, probably a lot ofthe people you hang around with.
If you have poor public speaking skills join Toastmasters.
Do these.
If you go, if you went to a good school and you're not successful, go to the alumni deals Okay I didn't go to a good school, I'm a perfect living example that a lot of trouble as a kid, working-class background, my parents, went to just a mediocre university that I flunked out of three times beforeI finally graduated with honors, but.
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And I had no money to begin with, $820 So it's all possible But I, you know, I devoted myself to feeling successful.
I was wearing suits like this, before I could afford them.
Most people procrastinatebecause they're unsure.
So just do it.
And, but I've never hada problem just doing it because one of the thingsyou learn as a young combat, infantry officer is time cost lives.
We over analyze because we're unsure, we're not- over analyze, we don't over analyzebecause we are not sure.
If it will work or not, we're more worried abouton the emotional side it embarrassing us.
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