John Morgan: Life is Luck

0:00This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. Did you know with the Sam's Club app, you're technically in the club, no matter where you are? Like, this is a club. This is also a club. And this is a club.

0:42My bad. Come join us. Sam's Club.

0:50This is the Ed Mylan Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I wanted to have this man on the show for a while. I mean, I've watched him on TV for, you know, forever. And he is not only is he an attorney, but he's built one of the great brands in the United States, really in the world. And I wanted to pick his brain, obviously, about the brand that he's built, but also the success he's had in his life. He's become an incredibly wealthy man. He's also helped other people get very wealthy as well. But he's somebody right when I tell you the name of his company, the name of his firm, you're going to know it immediately.

1:24And I can't wait to pick his brain. He's written a bunch of books, but the one we're going to talk about today is called Life is Luck from Morgan in Morgan. Mr. John Morgan, welcome to the Ed Milet Show. Good to be here. It's great to have you. You're looking all relaxed there in Florida, and I'm over here working in Cleveland. So hopefully we'll make some magic today. So I'll be honest with you. I was going to have you on because I've always been a fan of your work. And then I heard the title of the book about luck, and I'm like, I don't want to bring a guy on that wants to talk about luck because that's going to discourage people, right?

1:54Then I read the book, and I went, okay, all right, that makes sense to me. Let's define a few of your philosophies first. In the book, which is brilliant, by the way, you guys, go get it, you talk about there being really three types of luck. I wish you would illustrate that for the audience and then give some depth to it because it's really awesome. Well, the three types of luck are pure luck, planned luck, and practiced luck. Pure luck, and by the way, luck can be bad luck and good luck. Sometimes people think luck is always good luck. No, luck can almost be bad luck. Pure bad luck is being struck by lightning in Florida.

2:37That's pure luck. Pure planned luck is Ben Franklin looking up in the clouds and seeing all this movement and taking a kite and a key and stretching it out to the clouds and go, So that's planned luck. Right. And practice luck is we watch people, football teams are down with 60 seconds left in the game on their own five-yard line. And 95 yards to go, and they go down the field, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and score, and you go, that was lucky. No, it wasn't, because the last things these pro teams and college teams do is they run two-minute drills in practice over and over and over again. I write in my book about Grant Hill's luck.

3:29Yes. He threw the pass to Kentucky. I told him one time when we were flying back, I said, that was the luckiest thing. He said, no, it wasn't luck, John. He goes, we practice that play every day in practice, and we tried it with Wake Forest, but I threw it down the side. It didn't work, so we said we're going to do it at the top of the key. And when the time came for Grant Hill to make that pass to Christian Laettner, they had practiced that play, which is the most iconic play in the history of college basketball. They practiced it every day at the end of practice. And when it came time to go, Coach K calls him over to the sidelines.

4:04He says, Grant, can you make the pass? He says, I can make the pass. Christian, can you make the shot? I can make the shot. Let's go win this game. And that practice luck turned into the greatest luck ever in college basketball. Broke my heart because I'm from Kentucky. I was watching that game live. I remember thinking, I did not know the backstory. I thought that was just pure luck. Right. And that's why the book is misleading because people think luck is, hey, I'm rolling dice. Well, I also told in the book about casinos. life is a bunch of casinos there's this casino and that casino and we have all these casinos we can go in to find our luck to find our success and when you get in those casinos there's all sorts of games you can play to be lucky or unlucky now you go into the casino there's rules in the casinos the dealer deals deals you two aces what do you do you know split them okay you're a degenerate gambler i just you split them because that's the rule you you get hit you you're sitting on 16 but they're showing 10 what do you do you hit they're showing five what do you they're showing five.

5:34What do you do? You stick. All those rules. Now, there's slot machines that are loose slot machines. Where are they loose in the bullshit casinos off the strip or in some little honky-tonk in Reno? The better machines that the better casinos have are not loose. So if you go down off the strip you have a better chance of winning that's what life is all about so when i talk about luck i'm talking about looking for luck finding luck enhancing luck improving luck and it's the same as a casino is the casino you choose by the way if you go to casino and play keno you're gonna lose your rear it's so funny who's the degenerate gambler now but your point is really well taken in the sense that I want to pick that apart a little bit from a business perspective too.

6:33So one thing I find with this like Instagram entrepreneur era is I think people think winning in business is a whole lot easier than it is in the real world. That's number one. And one thing that you have to do if you're going to be a degenerate gambler or a gambler in general is have some risk tolerance. So I see a lot of people that say, I want to be wealthy, I want to be successful, but they want to keep their foot on first base before they go to second. They're afraid to get caught stealing, theoretically. And so talk about risk, how that's applied in your life, and also the fact that preparation minimizes that risk.

7:06But you still have to take some. What about those two things hand in hand? Well, the famous quote from – I heard it first from Daryl Royal when he was coaching Texas. You know, luck is when hard work and preparation collide. We've all heard variations of that. But what I would say about risk is there are risks. There are some risks. There are small risks. And then there are some risks that I talk about in the book called moonshots. These are B-H-A-G, big, hairy, audacious goals. And so there's two different ways to look at it. A moonshot is when you fail on a moonshot, the rocket blows up and you die.

7:49And you have to be aware that you might die. And if you're going to die, have a plan B that you're not going to be totally dead. So one of my moonshots years ago was I built this attraction called Wonderworks. I had, you know, and the house is turned upside down. It's like a side center. I built it 30 years ago. I raised money, OPM, other people's money. If you don't have money, that's how you get money. and it turned out now if i'd failed i don't know what i would have done that was a moonshot but it made it and here we are 30 years later i got six of them and we have no debt 33 million in ebda wow that moonshot worked but that was a very risky for most businesses i talk about bullets before bombs okay you kind of got to go in small test it test it test it test it and then expanded expanded expanded but just like the casino there are rules in life location location location the greatest concept in the world won't fix a bad location true true if you one of the mistakes i made in one of my businesses i built a little amusement park but i didn't have enough parking.

9:12So I've revised that to location, location, location, parking, parking, parking. If you don't have parking, people can't come. And then the other big mistake people make is undercapitalized. They start thinking, we're going to come in, this is going to be popular, we're going to make money, and we're going to pay for some of this out of our cash flow. Yeah, that's right. Look, in America, 25 % of businesses, small businesses go out of business year one, 43 % by year five, 65 % by year 10. And that doesn't count that they might have been better off working for somebody and just making a salary.

10:00My daughter had a boutique and she liked it. And she was lucky that she had me as a father because she would have been better to have gone and take the job with Ann Taylor and moved to Atlanta. She'd have made more money than we made at the Violent Clover. But it was a win for me because I kept her in town. I relate. I got to see her. I didn't want her to go to Atlanta. But it was ticking. I mean, she worked her butt off. Yeah. Retails hard. How do you know? Like, someone's listening to this. I think that's a great point. And I've been asked this question for 20 years, and I don't know that I even believe my own answer half the time.

10:38How do you, and I wonder if you have a really strong opinion about this, how does someone know if they have the juice for that, like to be an entrepreneur? I mean, there's really what's never celebrated as being a great number one or a number two at a very successful company. You get most of the upside with almost none of the stress or the risk that comes with it. And by the way, we should celebrate people the number one, two, or three at another company more often than we do. It's all of us, the theoretical, you know, the rock star entrepreneur that had this big cash out. But these people behind the scenes that helped you and I built what we've built, we wouldn't have it without them.

11:12But how does someone do you have a test? How do you know which one you should be, who should be an entrepreneur and who shouldn't be? Yes, I do have a test for that. And listen, you're right about that, because when I look at my organizations, if I miss two or three different people, I don't have the success I have. Likewise. You know, sometimes I watch these football quarterbacks giving all the thanks to their offensive line without my offensive line. I used to think that's just BS. But let me tell you something. It's true. It's true. Yep. If you don't, that's why they take, that's why they buy them all Rolexes.

11:49And that's why they take them out to dinner before every game. Look at Brady's 10 Super Bowls, the seven where they could block, he won, and the three where they couldn't, he lost. And look at my homes. Yep, look at my homes. All of it. And that offensive line, if you don't got that offensive line, you're going to be sacked. In your business. In your business, you mean. In your business. You've got to have that support. Now, why do I call the book Life is Luck, Lessons from a Paperboy? Because here's what I believe. I believe that some of us, and this is a lucky part, were born, just like Shaq was born seven foot one, some of us were born with an entrepreneurial seed i had a paper route i don't know what you had at 11 or 10 i would bet i did if it wasn't mowing grass i don't know how old you are you look young if it wasn't a newspaper route there was something you were doing i'll meet you in the middle i had a baseball card business an auto detailing business and i sold sodas at the golf course I'm right with you.

12:51I had that gene early. I'm not surprised. Yep. And Warren Buffett calls it the ovarian lottery. Some of us get this thing. Yeah. And most kids aren't working. You know, if you remember your friends, they weren't working. So true. And so for all of us paper boys, I worked at a golf course too. I went out and did range balls and worked at the pro shop and got tips. And you kind of learn a lot in a golf shop too. They do. So you're born with that. Now, what I would say to people, there are tests. Briggs-Meyer is an unbelievable test. Sure is. A lot of people don't test people. One time I brought in all my people and we gave them all the tests.

13:36And then the person who was facilitating told everybody, you go to table one, table two, table three, table four. And when I looked at all the four different tables, the one table was the high A personalities organized. The other table was the high A personalities disorganized. And then there was this one table with these sad sacks, the lowest producers, the Eeyores of the Disney parade, just over there, head down. And it was so like, so I said, you know what? I got to start using these break. So if you're running a business and not testing before you hire, you're making a big mistake because it's right there.

14:22The hardest thing about a business is people. It's a fact. It's the hardest thing about any business, whether it's my attraction business or my hotels or my law firms, it's always the people. and so look you need to test it's it doesn't it doesn't cost hardly anything and all of a sudden you know it i had a at a real estate company that we owned and we would test the people coming in it was like this person is going to be a superstar this person can be developed into a superstar this person shouldn't be hired and this person don't even just get them out get them out yeah Get them out and save yourself the time.

15:06So if you're going to play this casino game, give a test. Briggs-Myers is free. And there's other tests that are even better than Briggs-Myers that shows if the applicant is lying about their answers. You're right. By the way, guys, when you Google it, it's probably going to be Myers-Briggs. Yeah, Myers-Briggs. But they're interchangeable. As you saw, I wrote in the book about dyslexia. No, but they find it. I'm convinced I'm dyslexic, so that's why I said it. Well, I'm convinced you're super wealthy in spite of that. So that's, by the way, you've written enough books, you can't be that dyslexic.

15:41But I want to ask you, you know, this luck thing, I just had some young men were visiting my place, and my son was one of them. They were talking about, you know, the blessings that I've had. I call them blessings. But I said, here's my biggest luck or blessing, was that I sort of stumbled. I didn't do it intentionally. But this is a formula. I'd like you to talk about it. I did figure out what I don't have a lot of talents and that's not false humility. I do have a couple, though, and one of them is my ability to communicate and persuade and transfer energy verbally or in person. I think that's a skill of mine.

16:17I'm intense and I'm a competitor. I happen to pick businesses that took advantage of my proclivities. And I don't think enough people I think they get into what they like, but maybe not what they would be naturally good at. I don't think business has to be that difficult if you actually choose something that's in your lane or your sphere of genius. And to your point about testing, maybe it's just some self-awareness. What are you good at? Is it organization? Is it structure? Is it problem solving? Is it steamrolling through a problem? But for me, one of the great blessings of my life is very young.

16:52I found business is, but one in particular, that took advantage of a couple talents that I had that could develop into skills. started with a talent, became a skill. Is that true for you as well? And what would your advice be about that? If you're looking for a new path to help your child succeed this year, there's still time to enroll in K-12 powered online schools. This could be the perfect fit for your family. They offer, listen to this, tuition-free, accredited online public education for students kindergarten through 12th grade with a curriculum designed to meet your child where they are and support their needs, even their unique ones, their unique interests, their unique goals, Even extracurricular activities to connect with peers and explore interests.

17:32K-12's dedicated teachers are trained in virtual instruction and provide real-time support. It's great. All in one setting, online, for your family. You can do it at home or anywhere there's internet. Plus, K-12 has been a leader in online education for more than 25 years, so it's not an experiment. They get this stuff. 3 million students and counting. And it's not too late to enroll for this fall. See how K-12-powered schools can help your child thrive this year and beyond. Enroll online today at k12.com slash mylet. That's the letter K, the number 12, dot com slash mylet. k12.com slash mylet.

18:06Scaling a business requires the right expertise and at the right time. Upwork helps growing teams quickly bring in specialized freelancers so you can move faster and take the business to the next level. Upwork's a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across the web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business ops, and a whole lot more stuff. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to a full-time headcount and ruining your overhead.

18:37With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. You'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. Upwork also cuts down operational hassle by handling things like contracts and payments in one place. So here's the deal. You just spend more time running your business, not doing payroll and looking for the right people, they'll help you do that part. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. It's very true. And look, my talent has been, I'm a connector.

19:12I like people. Being with people, it charges me up. interesting some people don't like to are not are introverts that's me okay are you an introvert very much so yeah it drains me i would never have said that i never would have thought that i know so so you're an excited introvert so i am uh here's the thing i'd say about that you first of all you got to know who you are yes you got to know you got to be in the most dangerous person in the world is the person who thinks he's something he's not or thinks They're not. So what I say to that point is this. You got to know who you are. I know this for a fact.

19:53I'm not that smart with tests. I'm not that smart in math or science. I just I just know it. But here's the thing I am. I am smart enough to know what I'm not smart about. And I'm smart enough to go find the people who are smart at what I'm not smart at. And so I read a book once on Rockefeller and it's called Titan and books as big as the damn Bible. And I only underlined one thing. They said, Mr. Rockefeller, you're not a geologist. You're not a scientist. You don't have an MBA. You don't have this. You know, you're a bookkeeper. How did you build this incredible oil company by not being a scientist?

20:40Here's the only thing I underlined. Rockefeller said, I hire scientists. Yep. Very good. Okay. So look, by the way, Steve Jobs did not create Microsoft. Was this he did or whatever that guy's name? It's Apple and it's Woz. You're exactly right. You're exactly right. Yeah. Woz was the guy doing it. That's correct. And Jobs saw how smart Woz was. That's right. That's right. And he just harnessed Woz. You make such that's to me, I think you just called out the most perfect example of what you're describing, even in the book. You had Woz and his genius, which was he could build those boards. It was a board company originally.

21:27And then you had jobs, which was his marketing ability, his intensity, his passion, his energy. And perfectionism. Perfectionism, relentless work ethic. You're exactly like 10 million percent agree with you on that. Speaking of intelligence, I didn't know I was going to ask you this, but it made me think about it. I've asked it on about every fifth episode now if I have an entrepreneur on, which we're talking about intelligence here, knowing your own intelligence. We would have a really silly episode if I let you leave here and I didn't ask you about artificial intelligence because it's obviously – I just was watching a clip right before I came in here of Elon Musk.

22:03Elon, right? And I'm wondering how that's impacting your businesses and any counsel or advice you'd give to people about this wave we're currently in and where it's coming. Do you think it's overcooked, over-exaggerated, it's a bigger deal, how it's going to impact businesses and yours? Well, it's not overcooked and it's not overhyped because it's here. And look, all I know is I'm probably on Claude 20 times a day myself. Wow. Okay. Just myself. And so once I gave a speech called the stagecoach and the train and the essence of the speech was the stagecoach company heard about the train, but they never paid attention to the train.

22:51They heard it moved a few inches and then they were like, how's that train going to go over water? How's that train going to go around mountains? How's that train going to go through mountains? Look, we're at the stagecoach and the train moment right now. The train is leaving the station. AI. Now, the problem with AI is the same problem you had back in the 1860s with the gold rush. The same problem you had with marijuana. Everybody wanted to get into marijuana because that's the next great thing. Whenever you have a gold rush, you're going to have more fool's gold than real gold. you're going to have more zirconian than diamonds and for me i'm not a gemologist you you spread all these things on and say john which one's the diamond and which ones is zirconian i don't know but i'll tell you what i did i just recently hired a very very very expensive guy from amazon that was in their ai and why did i do that because i need a gemologist I'm not a gemologist.

24:03I need somebody to tell me what are diamonds and what are zirconians, what's fool's gold and what's real gold. So what I would say to everybody is this, look, it's happening. I mean, I'm already using AI in my call centers. We get 3 million, 4 million calls a year. And so we're trying AI out right there right now. But it is going to happen in a very big way. I can't tell you all the different ways I could use it in my law firm, but I'm already using it. But the big thing to be careful about is don't run out just because it's a fad, just because everybody's in AI. It's like, listen, I don't know if I offend anybody when I say this because it's like crypto to me.

24:50I don't know. And if I don't know, I don't buy. And when Lamar Odom is selling crypto, I'm also not interested in that. It seems like everybody's selling crypto has got gold chains and Russians in the front seat of a Ferrari. So I kind of always watch who's selling what. And to me, the guys that are making money in crypto are the tolls getting it coming and going. But I don't understand it. And I tell you, I'm tempted to go there. And you know what? You know when you lose money? When you're greedy. When you're greedy. And my greed pushes me towards crypto. But I got to keep saying to myself, John, you don't even know what it is.

25:37So if I can't explain it to myself, and listen, I've been into Claude many nights trying to understand crypto. You know, I need to, somebody needs to write a book. They used to have all these books for dummies. Somebody needs to write a book called Crypto for Dummies. It's true. so I can understand it. Well, when you figure it out, send me an email or call me because I'm in the same boat. And by the way, same exact thing. I've dabbled, but I really don't know. And I certainly don't want to miss out on that gold rush, but I also don't know that it's not fool's gold. And I just literally don't know.

26:08I want to ask you something. Sometimes we can overcomplicate things in business. And one of the things I admire something about you, I want to just tell you this personally too. When I meet somebody young or even that's coming in a bit, the scariest person to me, and you talk about this in the book, to compete against. Like if I have to compete against a company or a business or a person, the scariest person for me is the hungry one. Like they're hungry, right? Like it's an under estimated undervalued trait, hunger, desire, like just flat out. It used to be talked about all the time with Napoleon.

26:43Now it's desire. Like someone who wants it so bad, they're going, they'll, they'll sleep in the office. They'll, you know, and so I want you to talk about that, but also in your case, I don't know how old you are either, but we're both not young guys like this. We're taking a Saturday right now and we're helping people. You're still hungry. And you've been a, in the metaphorical sense, financially, a very well-fed man. You're incredibly wealthy. You built all kinds of different businesses. There's something in you that's that dog that got, you know, that thing, right? Like talk about that one, how important hunger is.

27:19And two, How have you kept it as you've had so many successes in your life? Well, the very first book I wrote was called You Can't Teach Hungry. Okay? And sometimes people would say, what does that mean? And I would say to them, if I've got to explain that to you, don't read the book. Don't bother. because it's just something in us. It goes back to the paper boy. It goes back to you at the golf course. It goes back to me selling candy in school. There is just something there. Look at your face change even when you start to talk about it. Right. There's just something there. And what it really is, I think at the end of the day, you get to a point where how much is enough?

28:13And I used to think at one point I thought$10 million was enough. And then I thought, I thought 30 million with your house paid off is enough. 30 million with tax-free bonds, get your 1.2 million a year free. And you know, I'm living like a chic on 1.2 million. I mean, with my house paid off because the number one check we write every month is the mortgage. But then what happens is you keep going. It's, and this is why I write the book a little bit about youth sports. Why you see so many jackasses coaching youth sports, because most people don't get to get up every day and win or lose. But in business, we get to win and lose or win or lose every single day.