The Wealthiest People in the World Do This One Thing Only

0:00The wealthiest people in the world do this one thing only. So Neil, let's give some context here. So do you remember what we were talking about yesterday on the phone? No, but if I had to guess, I would say they focus. Okay. So, well, don't ruin the punchline here. If it's on YouTube, then retention drops to nothing. So anyway, Neil and I were talking on the phone yesterday, and this was a long phone conversation. You can see a lot of topics came from this one phone conversation. I was kind of going on a rant. It's like, you know, these people that start multiple things, Neil's gone through this, like, you know, hosting business, this and that.

0:29And like, I mean, SaaS business, senior living business, this, this, this, this, this, right? And then what ends up happening is like, those of you that are watching a video, if you think of success as a circle, you start in the middle of it, you can hit on any of like when you hit the edge of the circle, whatever you call it, right? But if you go in a straight line, you're going to get there faster. But if you keep changing directions all the time, you're not going to get there. Then Neil started giving some comparisons on like, you know, the rich people that he knows, right? Or the wealthy people that he knows.

0:54So Neil, you want to go? When I was looking at the wealthiest people that I know, they just make their money from one thing. Let's look at the Forbes top 100. All right. So Elon Musk, he does a few different businesses, but Bernard, Alnar, and family, it's LVMH clothing. They've been doing the same high-end fashion for ages. Jeff Bezos is Amazon. Larry Ellison is Amazon. You know he bought all those, right? Do you know the story behind it? Yeah, I know the story. Larry Ellison was Oracle, Bill Gates, Microsoft. Warren Buffett is a conglomerate, but he's been buying the same old, ugly, boring businesses.

1:24And I don't mean it in a bad way. He's just a smart investor, right? I look at Berkshire Hathaway as just a massive private equity fund. and say what lvmh i just look at as a private equity fund for fashion steve balmer microsoft mark zuckerberg facebook larry page google carlos slim it was telecommunications sergey michael bloomberg everyone knows bloomberg mukesh ambani a lot of it started with the father ortega zara next one is l 'oreal the next one next three are waltons which is walmart the next one is someone from China. I don't know how to pronounce your name, but I do know they made their money from beverage waters.

2:02Michael Dell is number 20, which is Dell. Again, if you just go down through the Forbes 100 list, you'll notice that most people have made their money from one thing. Now, it doesn't mean that they didn't take their money eventually once they accumulated billions and billions of dollars and then diversify S &P, treasury bonds, other companies. Microsoft has tons of other products now, but it's the focus. You got to just do one main thing. Even if you look at Elon Musk, a lot of his net worth comes from Tesla. Yes, there's SpaceX and yes, there's Boring Company, but a lot of his net worth does come from Tesla.

2:38And I think Elon Musk is anomaly. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just think he's rare in a good way in which there's not too many people that can do what he does. Yeah. So look, Elon's a good example of someone that built their wealth in one thing. You might say he has SpaceX. You might say he has Tesla. You might say all these things, right? But what we're really getting at here is people eventually, they focus on one thing to get their nut. And what we mean by the nut first is you get, that's where your money is, you're covered for the rest of your life. You're set, right? When he sold X, or I think it was X, when he merged it with PayPal, right?

3:09He was actually the CEO. And most people don't know this, but he was partnered with Peter Thiel. And I think it was Max Levchin. Lev, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but he has a company called Affirm. So he actually got let go from PayPal. And then he had the proceeds from PayPal. I think it's like$180 million or something like that. And he took the vast majority of that and plowed it into Tesla and plowed it into SpaceX, right? Where basically he went back to sleeping on his friend's couch, right? And so he earned his nut already, right? He focused, he got his nut by focusing, and then he bet it all again.

3:40But he's still very focused on what he does now. Because most people don't know that he has badass women operators. There's SpaceX, I think her name's Gwyneth. I've heard her talk before at TED, and she was amazing. He just hired Linda Yaccarino, right? And so he's got amazing operators, and his job is to just come in and to contribute from a product standpoint and from a strategic and an engineering standpoint too. He's that example, right? When you look at Warren Buffett, or even when you look at LVMH, Bernard, right? For them, they focused on, they had one thing first, and they built it up.

4:11But they also think of things from an investor's mindset where they understand that all they need to do is just wait it out, wait it out, wait it out. Bet on something you believe in and wait it out, right? That's an investor's mindset. But when you look at everyone else on this list, it was one product first before they started diversifying to others. Facebook was Facebook before they bought WhatsApp, before they bought Instagram. Microsoft was Windows before they added other stuff, right? Amazon was a bookstore before they started adding all this other stuff. So get the nut first. You got to define what that is before you decide to expand.

4:42I totally agree there. The model has worked out really well if you just end up focusing. If you do too many things, it's hard to build any big business. The other thing that they all have in common is they focus on big TAMs. None of them are trying to do these businesses that's a niche. Clothing is applicable to everyone. Everyone uses Google or search. Everyone needs software to run their computers. People need cars. People need to buy food and groceries like Walmart and clothing. but like if you look at these people, they all created businesses in big camps, not niches. And I hate when people say the riches are in the niches because that's the farthest thing from reality.

5:17I mean, I'll be honest. I used to hate the agency single grain, but now I love it because of what's in front of me. And it's what I've known for close to the last 10 years or so, right? So it is what it is. And anything else, Neil? No, and even with the agency world that Eric and I are in, it's a massive punch bowl. You know, a lot of people can end up drinking for it. A lot of people are gonna get drunk. There's a ton of money in it. Just look at how many publicly traded agencies there are. It's a massive market. When you go after something that's a massive market, easier to make money, but focus on it.

5:44All right. Well, hey, take this from two people that learned it the hard way. Those of you that are listening that are early in your entrepreneurial journey, you're probably not going to listen to us, but come back to this podcast later and you can thank us. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe to this pod, five stars, please. If you're interested in events, levelingup.com slash founders in Beverly Hills, great marketers, great founders there, great topics as well. and yeah, that's it. Goodbye.