Why Smart Business Owners Still Struggle With Money (And Don't Know Why)

0:08We are listening to another episode of the Vault Unlocked And today, all the way from South Africa, we have Mira Ezra, who at 32 years old sold a$100 million company. Today, it would be worth in the billions. Currently, he has 24 businesses all across the country, all across the world. From software to marketing, all the way up to even business lending and financing for Crypto Bros. It is a pleasure. I cannot wait to get to the core secret, the code of what Unlocked is all about, of how you got to this success. But before we do, all the way from South Africa, welcome to the show, Ezra. How are you feeling today?

1:01Amazing, and thank you. Very happy to be with you, and cannot wait to chat with you. I can't wait to dive into this. But before we do, for the viewers that don't know who Ezra is and what your story is, tell us a little bit of like who you are, where you come from, and how do you sell a company at$32 for$100 million? Okay, so my story starts in a very, very, very small town on the border in Israel, between Israel and Lebanon, where we used to have every night 60 to 100 missiles for years. So from the age of zero, I was conditioned to confront anything. So very early in my life, I realized that I need to look at life as you have to win and lose with the same level of enthusiasm.

1:57You have to be able to win and lose with the same level of enthusiasm. nothing fazes me everything is nice if i win beautiful if i lose beautiful it's me that created i have no one to i'm not going to blame anyone unless if i want to insult myself like if if you want to insult me tell me that you did something against me like am i so weak yeah so So the viewpoint was like that. At the age of three, I woke up one day and the radio did not work. And I opened the back of the radio, took out a vacuum tube, went to my father, woke him up. It was Saturday. And I told him, Dad, you need to replace this vacuum tube.

2:42Now, this is what the family tells as a story. I don't really remember it, but it's a story that goes in the family for years. And my dad said, how do you know that this is the vacuum tube? And I said, how do you know your name? When you know, you know. And since this time, I just knew electronics. I just knew electronics. Okay. Like I just knew, just like I read the book. I never read the book. I couldn't read, but I knew electronics. So I started to fix the neighbors, radios, later on TVs, build amplifiers, da, da, da, da, da. and going fast forward after I was in the Israeli Navy, I was a diver.

3:24And after six years in the army, I went to the Far East. Someone told me after a year in the Far East spending$6 per day, the money finished. And I was looking, what should I do? What should I do? And someone told me, you know, in South Africa, there's a guy that's looking for a programmer. Looking for a programmer, not a problem. I'm not a programmer, but I thought it's not a problem to learn how to program. At that time, computers just started. I never saw a computer in my life. Yes, a PC. So I called this guy and he said, can you program? I said, of course. And he said, OK, fine, come, I'll give you a job.

4:01And I was trying to save$6 ,000 to go back to the Far East for another year. Yeah. I got to South Africa, learned how to program. I bought a book, learned how to program from the book. I arrived to South Africa, created this program and realized that programming is quite boring and stupid. So I created a program that writes programs. And I was selling it and it started to be, you can say viral, but it was on disk. Disk has been going between people and people started to use it and call me for support. and one day two guys with suit come to my small room that i could hardly fit in and then i was sure that they are from the irs like the south african irs because i had issue any invoices nothing everything was black like everything was cash and they came to me and they say started to talk to me and i was like oh my god within few like an hour i realized They're not from the IRS.

5:08They actually came from a very, very big company in South Africa, and they purchased that company. They purchased it for$100 ,000. At that time, I thought that I'm a billionaire. Yeah. $100 ,000. I needed to stay for another three months to work with them. But three months later, I went to the Far East, and I saw, now, when you have$100 ,000, it's not like$6 ,000. Yeah. So now, the Far East is not the right game anymore. I came back to South Africa and I saw that they have a problem with fuel fraud. So what happened is that the drivers of truck. Sorry, what fraud? Fuel fraud? Yeah, fuel fraud.

5:48Okay. The drivers of trucks steal the diesel, steal the fuel from the trucks. And they used to lose 36, 40 % of the cost of the fuel was stolen. Everyone was stealing. And I came up with a system to prevent it. This system became very, very, very successful. Is this a system that was built in the cars or built at the fuel tank? It's built on both sides. Generally, it's on both sides. I put some kind of RFID next to the refueling hole and a reader on the nozzle. And usually when you take the nozzle and you press the button, you get fuel. But in my system, only when the nozzle is in the hole, there's communication and you get fuel.

6:36So you cannot take it out and steal the fuel. Yeah, wow. And there was all kinds of things around it. So this become very, very successful. And after about three years, I sold this company, made a lot of money and continue with more and more and more businesses. and at one point someone asked me about i don't know about 10 years ago or something like that someone asked me how do you how do you turn this thing to gold how do you do everything you touch turn to gold yeah so first i say it's not everything i touch you you see the successes you don't see the failures yeah so first of all it's not everything i touch and second end, it's very simple.

7:21It's just simple. It's really simple. It's very, very, very simple to make money, but it's very difficult to convince people that it's simple to make money. Wow. Okay. So like I had, there's so much I want to talk about and I don't want to lose track, but we have to talk about that right now. I mean, we, I want to finish the, your, your story, but we can't just let you off the hook with that comment. So it is so simple to make money, but it's so difficult to convince other people how simple it actually is. Wow. What does that mean to you? Well, um, when you know something, when you have knowledge, the proof that your knowledge is not a broken knowledge is that that knowledge bring results okay okay now because most of the people cannot be wrong once they have a piece of knowledge even if it's broken knowledge even if it doesn't bring results they will not change the knowledge so for example i'll give you an example i say that basically a person think that it's more important to be right than to live people will die before they will say that they are wrong wow yeah that's that's wrong because i'm wrong but which means i'm not wrong if i say i love you but it means i don't love you yeah yes so because people really want to be right once they have a stable datum once they have a stable data once they believe in something yeah and believe is the problem once they believe in something they become robots they become slaves to what they believe in you become a slave to the belief yeah so yeah is is is that are you wow okay as profound as i thought it might have been is as as literal as it is you are saying the reason why people don't see money to make money being easy is because their belief of money is that money's hard to be earned or hard to make and as long as they change the belief everything else changes 100 did you ever had did you go to the gym and you believe that you can do i don't know 80 kilo bench press yes and then slowly slowly slowly you train and you convince yourself that you now can do 85 kilo so now you can do 85 kilo what changed the belief the body and everything respond to your viewpoint i'll give you another example you are in the gym and you're doing the maximum that you can like let's say you can do 10 reps of bench press okay and just at nine rep there's a blonde that walk next to you immediately you do another two three reps yeah yeah so your viewpoint is senior to the physical universe okay the physical universe try to believe you that you are a slave but the truth is that you the spirit is senior to the physical universe and the only limitation that you have are your considerations if you consider it's beautiful it's beautiful if you consider it's ugly it's ugly if you consider it is difficult it is if you consider it's easy it is it is your considerations that define the physical universe and not the other way around and before you actually know it not understand it not believe it before you know it before you remove all the lies that prevent you from seeing that even god will not help you yeah wow wow wow okay i want to go back to when you were younger because this is this ties into that the first question i wanted to go to and bombs were flying over you and you you said you said you got to have the same enthusiasm which i love that you have to have the same enthusiasm as winning as you do losing now a lot of yeah a lot i would say probably most of the children you grew up with the people you knew from your hometown their attitudes were not like yours something shifted in you where it went from a victim i live in poverty we're always being bobbed i don't have resources i can't i won't i shouldn't look at everyone else and you looked at it and said, whoa, God's given me a gift to learn how to deal with the up and the down all at the same time.

12:10And I'm going to choose to see the bright side of both sides of it. Where do you think that was developed? Because that's not the norm. That's actually not even how our brains are supposed to even think. Cause as you know, our brains are wired to have survival so in the situation you're in your nervous system must have been wound right up and you were just in a place of survival but yet you were thinking like you were in a place of success and abundance okay so a few things we can go depends on how deep you want to go yes this is the vault unlocked we're gonna go as deep as we can okay fine no problem so first of all the brain belongs to you yes my brain belongs to who belongs to me who is me so if it belongs to me i'm senior to the brain if it's my car i'm senior to the brain to the car and if i said no no the car is going like that so i'm going like that something is wrong the brain has nothing to do with your results.

13:18The brain is just a piece of meat, just a piece of meat, and the only job of the brain is a switchboard. It's actually routing information from the spirit, which we will define soon what it is, to the brain, and the brain send electrical messages through the nervous system and the glands and move the body. And I'll give you a very short story to demonstrate it. Okay. So I do a lot of donations and I help a lot of institutions. And one day I, a few years ago, I donated money to one of the universities in Israel. And as a reward, they wanted to waste my time. They invited me to, took me around in the university to meet the different professors and whatever.

14:14Okay. So I'm going between the university, between the professors. And one of the professors is the youngest professor there. And he is researching the brain. And I asked him just being polite, what are you doing? And he says, look, I'm trying to balance the brain. And I said, look, I'm not as educated as you. I'm very simple. I actually didn't go to school I stopped studying never actually went to school I just went to exams so I had an agreement with my parents that as long as my results is above 95 I can go and do my electronics and whatever so anyway so I said look I'm not educated but you are you balancing the brain balance means that there is one brain on the right hand side that is balanced and then let's say my brain and you see that it's not balanced he say yes exactly correct i said okay good where did you get the balanced brain where did you get the balanced brain show me the balanced brain like show me what a balanced brain actually looks like yes what is it balanced brand show me one it's not mine for sure yeah so so so we got into argument everyone left we talked for about seven hours we became super good friends, super up to today.

15:38And then of course he realized that it's bullshit. And he changed his whole research around that. And one day I'm sitting with him. I took, I showed him how to kite surf. We're sitting on the beach after we kite surfed for a few hours, smoking cigars. And he told me, you know, mayor, when the brain is thinking, I said, listen, Ben, the brain is not thinking. He says, mayor, everyone knows. I said, when everyone knows, you know that it's a because truth is unique. And he said, no, come on, everyone knows. What if I prove it to you? Will you buy me dinner? He says, yes. I said, okay, fine. Did you ever see someone that died and came back?

16:16And he said, yes, of course, many times. I said, good. And when someone dies, you can 100 % see that the brain do nothing. There's no activity. Yes, we can see 100 % that the brain do nothing. But when he comes back, he tells you all the things that he taught. All the things that he saw. All the conclusions. He had a lot of realization while he was dead. So obviously it's not the brain. Because it's my brain. It has to be junior to me. It's my car. It's my body, which means the body is junior to me. Although most of the people worship their body. I don't worship my body. I use my body. I don't serve the body.

17:03I'm not a slave to the body. Most people are. So I say food and sleep is for weak people. I use the body. Food and sleep are for weak people. 100%. Mayor, this is fascinating. What do you mean by food and sleep are for the weak people? when people need to eat and they need to sleep and they cannot control it they're weak because now the the body tell me what to do i if i have a project and i need to work three days non-stop and i'm not moving from the chair for three days i have someone that bring me water and coffee and that's it i work yeah i don't get up i have a seminar and my seminars usually start at 10 o 'clock in the morning and they let me go at about midnight like i'm standing i don't go to the restroom i don't eat i don't anything i don't leave the room from 10 o 'clock in the morning until midnight and i talk non-stop they go to breaks they need to go to the restroom the students need to eat they have all kind of things but when they when i gave them a break i sit with the other students that come and talk to me by the time we finish to talk i need to Yeah, I got it.

18:24Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I control the body, and the body gets reward as food and sleep when it does what I tell him to do. Who's I? I is the spirit. So let's define the word I. Well, yeah, I was going to ask. Who's I? Who's me? And what is spirit? Let's define the word I. Yeah. So in order to define the word I, let's define, first of all, what is the smallest number in this universe?

18:57Well, I would want to say zero, but it's probably not. It's 0.000000000000. Extremely smart. It's not zero. It's two. And I'll explain before you jump. I'll explain. You will see that for every plus, there must be minus. For every force, there is counterforce. There is nothing in this universe. The atom is composed of electron and proton. There is nothing in the universe that can survive alone. Seven mean nothing. Seven in comparison to eight or in comparison to six means something. There is not zero. You can go from one side of this planet or this universe to the other and you will not find an absolute zero.

19:40Actually, absolute is unobtainable in this universe. There is no absolute zero. There is minus 239.97673, but it's approximately, approximating zero, but it's not zero. They actually theorize that if you will get to the absolute zero, there will be no universe here. And they are right, because you will stop the basic mechanism of this universe, which is plus and minus. Everything is composed of two. Okay? which means that we can say that the physical universe is a universe of twos. So something is anything that compose of two. I'm hearing you. So if I look at that, it's of many, many, many, many, many atoms which compose of twos.

20:28They cannot be composed of one. They cannot be composed of half. They have to be composed of two. No one found anything in this universe less than two. Okay. Okay, good. So if let's say that this is the only thing in the universe, this pen is the only thing in the universe, and I break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down to two. At the beginning, it started with two. The word beginning mean was not here before. The beginning of this interview, there was no interview before, yes? Yes. The beginning of the iPhone, there was no iPhone before. So what created the two, what come before the two cannot be two.

21:06Okay. So actually, the spirit is this nothingness that can bring about somethingness. The spirit is nothingness that can bring about somethingness. Yeah, and the spirit loses its power the moment that it becomes drunk. And it thinks that the somethingness that it created, it's senior to it. It started to listen to it. Okay. I'm learning. So the spirit is a nothingness. It has no wavelength, no mass, no position in space, but it can create something out of nothing. If you look at anything in the universe, every physical thing used to be an idea. An idea is not a physical thing. Well, no, it's not.

21:57Yeah. I would call it a spiritual thing. Yeah. An idea is just... come up with something and then you make other people believe in it yes you can say that the clever person is a person that can recognize truth i i define a clever person clever the ability to recognize truth and i define genius as a person that creates new truth not recognize truth Create new truth for other people to follow. That's a genius. Okay. Now, this is all tied up to money because when you look at the word money, money is only an idea that people trust. An idea backed by confidence. You have a credit card, five cents. I go to the shop.

22:56I went to the shop the other day. I took a$250 ,000 Merck with a piece of plastic. I gave him a piece of plastic. An idea. I come to you and I say, this will help you. You get it. It's an idea. You didn't use it yet. You didn't use it yet. You give me money for it. If, which means that how much money you will make has to do with how much you can turn your ideas into something people have confidence in. How much money you make is in direct proportion of the ideas that you come up with and your ability to get them to believe in the idea. That's correct. And you will believe in it only for as long as you will not have internal disbeliefs which means as long as you will not find in the physical universe reason why it will not work which means as long as you will be the boss so i call that conviction in sales not a problem um but i think this is obviously more than just conviction um i i i think this is phenomenal stuff and i and i and i see it all and i and i and i'm still asking the question where did you at a young age this because obviously you've learned this as you've gone through your years of wisdom but somewhere along the way the one thing you switched your mindset from victim to victor or you decided in your sense that you're not a slave to your brain, you're not a slave to your body, that you are a, I would say, what, a supporter, what do you want to call it?

24:50An advocate of the spirit? I'm saying that I'm source. I'm source of everything that around me. I'm source and cause. I'm saying that when you are actually responsible, if you're actually responsible, you are the source and cause for everything that happened and everything that happened to you. Yeah. And when you are responsible, you take control over something. So responsibility brings about control. Either knowledge or responsibility brings about control. And control equals income. So if I teach you how to drive a car, you will control the car and you'll have the income from the car, which is arriving safely and quickly and comfortably to your destination.

25:44But if you drink, your responsibility drop, immediately your control drop and you will not have the income. You will not get what you want. So anything in your life, any piece of knowledge that you know, if you have knowledge, you will demonstrate control and there will be income. That's why, for example, if you train your staff, people work for you, if you train them, you give them knowledge, they will demonstrate control and there will be income. And if not, if you don't train them, they will learn broken knowledge, which inevitably create out ethics, irresponsibility, which will inevitably reduce the control and reduce the income.

26:26Yes. Manifestation of lack of knowledge and the manifestation of lack of responsibility, how it shows up in the physical universe is open cycles. is think that you start and you did not complete. Procrastinations, all kind of open cycle. The cycle is a start, change, stop. So all kind of open cycle. Think that you started, you did something, but you did not complete. You look at your email, but you didn't answer later. You know that you need to pay tax, but you didn't. You know that you need to write this thing, but you didn't write it. You know that you have many, many of these open cycles. It is the result of lack of knowledge or lack of responsibility.

27:12If you are responsible, you will burn the midnight oil and you will end every day with zero item in your inbox. I religiously end every day with zero item in my inbox. Every inbox. WhatsApp, email. Yeah, that's the same here. I don't ever leave an email for the next day. It's my pet peeve. My email box is zeroed. It's zeroed out all day long. That's why you're successful. You get the income from that control, which means that you're very ethical, you're very responsible, and your knowledge is wide. You don't believe in things. You actually look and say, does it actually bring the expected result?

27:56And I don't care who say it, what say it. I don't care the source of who's saying it. I look, I don't listen. Yeah. I look, does it bring the expected result? If it brings the expected result, I crown this thing as God. It's true. You're like living out a life. It's very fascinating. And what I can see and hear and everything from you is, first and foremost, your mindset, your spirituality, whatever that might be, religion, whatever that might be to you. But you're living at a conscious level, at such a high conscious level. I call it Buddha level where, where your conscious level is like this, as me, as I am source, everything comes through me as me.

28:42I'm not actually in control of everything. I'm in control of the one thing, which is to be the, uh, the, the, I can't find the word, but the, the, the truth, I would say the truth of source is what you operate at. And you adopted that at a young age and that results into a hundred million dollar company at 30 well it resulted in multiple things because on your way to a hundred million dollar company it sounded like you've been always this thing that's been building and then it seems like yes everything you touch turns into gold but we don't talk about all the failures you currently today as a source i'm just going to say as the source of truth today you have 25 plus companies all over the world funding people softwares um i mean as the source what is your greatest gift to give back to this world because i'm going to assume you you've already made all the money you need in the world and i'm sure you look at it i don't need money it's what it's just the result of being the source of truth so you have enough resources i would say in an abundance that you are taking care of what's like how do you wake up in the morning and decide I'm going to focus on this or put my energy here and to find the strength to get through all the chaos that's happening in this world.

30:07Now something's going to tell me that you're like, there's no chaos in this world. It's what people see it to be. Right. But I just, I'm so fascinated. Okay. So first of all, what is the purpose? Once you have a lot of money is that's why I'm doing what I'm doing with this. I'm investing 15 % of my time in helping people. I have this coaching company and it's a whole operation and I help people and I take people and I make them millionaires, ethical millionaires. They're not just millionaires. It's very easy to print money selling drugs, but no, I'm actually making them make sure that they make money ethically.

30:52And if you look at my success stories on the website or whatever, you will see that everyone will tell you that, number one, they make money. But money is one thing. I make sure that they are healthy because they control, they know how to heal the body. Make sure the family is actually in an amazing condition. I make sure that they are ethical. I make sure that the companies, the way that they make money is growing and successful. I make sure they give back to society, to mankind. I make sure that the life forms around them, trees, animals, etc., are taken care of. I make sure that the physical universe, that everything around them looks and maintains 100%.

31:37I make sure that they, the spirit, as a spiritual being, are actually in a good condition and not in a turmoil. and most importantly, I make sure that they realize that whoever the creator is, and I will not get into it right now, but they recognize that there is a creator and the creator is there. It's not just an accident or some kind of a big bang. Yeah. And that's what I do to give back. So this is number one. And so I look at all these areas. I have all those, you can call it circles of life that I'm looking at, and that gives me the definition of what is the right thing to do. The right, the word right is actually the ability or the bringing about the greatest survival to the greatest number of circles.

32:40Yourself, your family, groups, mankind, etc. So if I invent a drug that kills one person and saves a billion people, it's good, it's correct, it's right. But if I sell drugs that kill many, many, many people and make me a lot of money, it's not good. It's not good. It's not right because it's not pro-survival. So everything I look at is around this thing. How do I make these people make a lot of money ethically? And to do that, you need to take care of all those circles of life because you cannot cheat your wife and expect to make money. you will see that every single person that had problem in business before that had problem with somewhere with the family, somewhere with the family, because the basic principle is that if you have a problem here, the source of the problem is always before.

33:43You will try to solve this problem. It will not solve the sources before. So if I see a problem in the business, the problem is not the business. the problem is before yeah and the before is the family sex this area if you have a problem with family and sex the problem is before it's something to do with your mind something to do with your mind not with you with your mind and if you really understand if you really have them if you look at life as um it's not some kind of an accident there is a loss for the physical universe which people know so for example you know about gravity you got you know about om law you know about the i don't know ellen fitzgerald law you know about many physical laws yes yeah but if i ask you give me one law of the spirit one for me are you asking me the question what one law of the spirit that comes to me is it like the one law of my spirit that i believe my spirit is your direct reflection of the results you get that's one of my laws so what does that actually mean is do good be good be your best self listen to what you say you are the result of your own reflection yes you're you're you are a direct result of the results you get so basically what you've been saying this whole But I am the starting point.

35:18I'm the spirit. So I cannot be the result. Like you cannot love yourself. Because if I need to love yourself, I need to create someone senior to me that somehow love me. And who is me? You understand? If I say I love myself, I'm the beginning. How can the beginning love itself? You need to create some synthetic something that loves yourself. It's all nonsense. People say things because they don't actually have the definition of what is the spirit. If you understand that the spirit is the source, it brings something out of nothing. The spirit is not the result. The spirit is the source. Okay. The source cannot be the result.

36:00Yeah. The source is not the result. If the water comes from here, I'm not the result of the water that's coming from here. It's just not logical. Okay. So let me ask you some questions here. I believe, or whatever, I don't know the terminology now with you, but I have a belief. I have a belief that the source will not give to you what can't flow through you. Not a problem. Who is the source? You're asking someone who's been in a constant conflict with the source. So I don't have that answer. Who is the source? Never mind if you're in conflict or if you're in peace or if you're in third world war.

36:44Who is the source? Just answer my question. The being. People call it God. People call it religion. How can you give to you? How can you give to you? You can, if I'm me, I can give others. I'm not saying I'm the source. What source means the emanation point? The point where something comes out from? Not the receiving point. If I'm the transmitter, I cannot be the receiver. I am the receiver of the source. Not the problem. The receiver of the source is not the source. So now you are something. You're the receiver of the source. Not the problem. So who is the source? The source sends out a transmission to me.

37:29Okay. Who is the source? I'm not sure. You tell me. That's exactly the point. Okay. But you say your source. So who's your source? No, I am the source. If I am the source, everything that happened next to me is the physical universe is an effect. I'm the cause. That's the effect. I'm the cause. I'm moving the pen. This is the effect because I decided that this is moving. I am the source. I know. I create. And everything around is the effect of me. And if not, if there is an external source and I'm just a machine, then I wouldn't be able to change anything because I just need to ask the source, please change it for me.

38:20And I just need to wait. Maybe it will agree or not. So the whole, so the, the standpoint then is what I'm hearing is you become the source. So the source is me. I control, well, I take full responsibility of what I need to do. I do not make excuses. I do not let my brain hold me back or procrastinate. I don't let my body tell me it's hungry. I don't let my body tell me it's thirsty. I, as the source is the one who's actually in the ultimate control. So the question then becomes, who is I? Is I the brain? Is I intuition? Is I your gut? Or is I a third source? This is what we explain. You are the spirit.

39:03You are not a physical thing. You have physical thing. When you say my body, you have a physical thing, a body. Not my body. I am. Sorry? Is it your body? It's not my body. It's just a meat container. Not a problem, but it's mine. It belongs to me. What does it mean belong to me? Belong to me, I take care of it. If something happened to it, I'm responsible for it. I either have the control or not. So when I say my body, it's not that I have a soul. I am the soul. I am the spirit that have a body, that have a brain, that have a mind. And before you realize that you are not your brain, you are not your body, you are not the chair, you are not your car.