How To Stop Being Poor By Doing What Rich People Do | Kevin O'Leary

0:00I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

0:38Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:50What do you think are three things that rich people do differently than the poor people or people that aren't thinking about building wealth in that way? Number one, and you'll be surprised to hear me say this, they don't take inordinate risk. You're going to find that the majority of very wealthy people are extremely conservative in how they invest. They don't need to beat the market. They've already done that. They just need to preserve their capital. So what you find them doing, and I don't know what that number is for you. Wealth means different things to different people. but when you are fortunate and you become wealthy what you'll find is most of those people do not take a lot of risk and they they invest in things that are very long term they don't use a lot of debt in most cases they don't use leverage when they're investing they don't take very speculative positions on you know you hear that they might buy bitcoin or they They may buy a speculative stock, but if you look at it as a percentage of what they're worth, it's nothing.

1:53And so when they're making that investment, they're saying, I'm willing to lose it. It's entertainment almost for me. It's not something I think that I'm going to have to live off. And the other thing I found, because I advise a lot of wealthy people, because my companies that I invest in, of which I have over 30, At any one time, 10 % of them are being acquired by a private equity firm or being bought by a strategic. And I've known the entrepreneur and maybe it's their first liquidity event. I try and help them on that journey. And some of them, you know, get$100 million or$80 million. They've got plenty of situations like that.

2:30And they're young. And what happens is you find out later that entrepreneurs are actually really bad investors. They're very good at running a business and they focus myopically on that their whole lives, but when they actually get liquidity, it's usually their husband or wife that was the person that was taking care of the family and mitigating the risk. And they're the ones that are the better investor. And that's why I say in a family, you have to have a team approach. But I've learned this, that you really, you'll find that what's successful about families is they know what they're good at or wealthy people, and they know what they're not good at.

3:08And they don't try and do things they don't understand. And this is important because you have to say, I have limits on my skills. I know what I'm good at, but I've been very fortunate and I'm not going to go risk anything now doing something I don't know. I see that characteristic a lot. And the other thing that I would say is different, and this may have a lot to do with the concept of karma. Another lesson I learned from my mother, that if you're successful and you talk to wealthy people, you'll always find that there's something that motivates them to be philanthropic, to give money to something that matters to them.

3:52And that's the whole idea of giving back. You've been successful and you have to find the cause that motivates you. You're willing to spend your time and money supporting. That is a big difference because if you believe in karma, and I do, when you do that, it kind of protects you against the horrific downside of something bad happening to you because you're just so greedy. You can't, when you have success and you're a wealthy person, if you show me a greedy wealthy person, just wait 10 years. Then you'll just show me a person. Somehow karma will separate their money from them. That's what I find.

4:31or they'll get sick or something will happen where, yeah. I really believe this. I really believe it. And you've got to find those things that you can give back on that means something to you. But if you abuse karma, it's got a special gift coming for you. So finding ways to give back. Are you giving back in a lot of other ways, philanthropically right now as well? Yeah, you know, I like to have a concentrated approach. I call it five and five. I prefer to pick five charities or in our case we support a dance company, we support some hospitals, some educational institutions and give enough that it's a material gift and that I have a say in how it's spent very often.

5:20And above all, I like to see expense ratios reported. I generally don't support charities that can't provide, just like an investment, some kind of a statement on where my money went right and that is actually something I think Bill Gates is famous for early on saying why can't I treat my charitable investments as I do my private ones and ask for some performance metrics and I kind of believe that he's right yeah it's thing is smart and what would you say is one other thing that rich people do differently that poor people don't do

5:51this may have a lot to do with you know the access to but in the last five years I've realized how important food is and how if you're you know you say poor how you should be or even you should focus on what you put in your body because in our society we do two things very badly we eat too much sodium and we eat too much sugar white cane sugar and we have been trained to do that since the 40s by a whole industrial complex that wants to sell us that shit and we eat it and I'm guilty of it and so is everybody else. Salt and sugar feel good. They're comfort foods, snacks and all that. It's the worst thing you put in your body.

6:37And I have learned, it's kind of weird but the older I get and the more I experience this because I'm actually a classically trained chef in French fusion. I have a job on QVC as Chef Wonderful. I sell millions of dollars of food and wine each year there. It's because I grew up for a few years in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. And that's at a place where it was a French colonized place. My dad was working in the United Nations. And the two women that were the housekeepers and the cook used to go to the market. It was on the Mekong River in Phnom Penh and take me with them at four in the morning. And it's very hot there.

7:15And so they were classically trained French chefs. So in French cooking, particularly if you're a sous chef, which is really hard to get that designation, and I'm pretty proud of what I can do in that area, is you work with a lot of heavy butter and cream. But you can't do that in an environment where it's 110 degrees at 100 % humidity every day. You can't eat like that. So what those chefs taught me was how to replace the butter and the cream with things like a mango puree or lime and lemon juice or guava crushed. I mean, all kinds of different flavors. So they would take a classic dish like crepe flambée, which is one of my specialties, or escargot.

8:02And those are classic French dishes. They're very time-consuming to make, particularly escargot if it's made properly, with real shells and real snails. But you don't have to put all that butter in it. You can have a different flavor set based on using a fusion of citrus. Anyways, the whole idea of eating better for me is part of my DNA in growing up. So now I look at what I eat every day. When I was young, I'd eat three steaks a week. I used to love that. I don't think I've had a piece of red meat in months. I eat fish, I eat fruit and vegetables, and it really helps you feel better. So if you're asking me what's different, but I'm proud to see that many people are exploring plant-based, and regardless of their financial income, meat is actually very expensive and very inefficient.

8:51And there's ways to get protein. You don't have to become a vegan. I'm just saying you have to choose to focus on the things that are better for you, regardless of your income. And you will get more energy. you'll feel better. That kind of thing. That's the difference as well. That's powerful. I love that.

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10:04Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.