Die verschiedenen Stufen von Wohlstand

0:00Levels of wealth. So, you are very open about kind of net worth and money and stuff. And I I just love the way you talk about it in a such a matter-of-fact way. Um one thing that um I I've been curious about is like what are the levels of wealth at beyond which like you get significant diminishing returns? People say 75K is the peak happiness and then but like clearly there are people that you know, 300K is better than 75K, a million is better than 300K. Like have you have you got in mind a rough sort of ladder of what level of wealth unlocks certain certain things? Yeah, I think there's like the I don't have to worry about any basic needs level.

0:38Um and then there's the I don't have to worry about discretionary spending level. Within reason, you know what I mean? Like I can get I can go out for drinks, I can go to a fancy restaurant and it's not going to, you know, affect me. I can buy appetizers and not just buy, you know, the cheapest thing on the menu with no appetizers, no alcohol and call that the dinner. So, Leila spends a lot more money than I do cuz we just have different but that being said, I spend money on other stuff. So, like I spend a lot of money only on information. It's all I spend my money on. It's just information, access, like that's all I spend my money on.

1:08And that stuff is expensive, you know what I mean? She offered one guy 350 grand for an hour um so I could just learn from him, you know what I mean? Just for context. So, like we'll spend whatever it takes to learn anything. Yeah. But like it's always been the highest return for me. So, for me it's just an I like sure, let's go. You know what I mean? Like I just I I've made so much every every penny I've made has come from knowledge. And if I can buy someone else's 10 years and say if I can save a year of my life for 350 grand, why would I not spend that? You know what I mean? So, we've got needs, we've got discretionary spending where you're not worried about appetizers and stuff.

1:41What >> Yeah. And then you have what I would consider like luxury wealth, which is probably like, you know, 100 grand a month. But it it all depends on what you're willing to save. And so, like Leila and I have always lived on less than 10% of what we make. So, whatever we make it's 10% of that is what we're kind of willing to spend. I don't even think we spend that now. Um we probably spend about 5% of what we make. Still a lot of money, but it's not a lot relative cuz we're both actually pretty risk averse. But we're not illogical cuz some people I know there's some people in the in the YouTube space I was having a conversation with her, you know, clearing clearing eight figures and are like splitting entrees at dinner.

2:15I mean, dude, like you we literally made more money than this dinner cost while sitting here. You know what I mean? Like I was I was having a conversation with my father-in-law and he offered to pay for for lunch or something and I was like, while we have waited in line, I have made more money than this lunch cost. Let me cover lunch. I don't care. So, it really depends on your on your your savings versus uh spending uh percentage that you're comfortable with. So, that's the big multiplier on those levels, but I think those are the three levels and it just depends on what that percentage is for you. So, if you're a five-to-one person, I want to make I want to save 80% spend 20, then your needs before when you go from needs to uh you know, for level one discretionary, you need to still five extra income to do that, but it's just that that smaller percentage. So, I do think that's individual. I'm super risk averse, ironically. So, what do you do with the cash? Like if you're spending 10% or and sort of what happens to the other 90%?

3:09Are we are we now going S&P 500 or is that still like No, I I count it. Um we invest, but I have a bigger I kind of a bigger play for what we're going to do. So, right now I'm just stacking it. And I I've always been a pretty big cash stacker. Um I always have a lot of liquidity. I just feel better with it. People are like, you're not getting the return. I was like, dude, I make a ton of money. I don't like that's not like what what am I getting the return for? So, I would rather have big chunks of cash that I can go on big offense when I want it than it's just different way of doing things.

3:40You know what I mean? I also have Leila and so she handles a ton of stuff internally. And so, I wouldn't be able to do some of the investment stuff that we do. I probably wouldn't do some of the investment stuff we do right now that takes a little bit more time, like deal analysis, etc. Uh if I didn't have her. So like if I didn't have Leila and I was just trying to live the most passive chill lifestyle, I'd probably just put everything into a dividend ETF. Make 3-4% a year and still get the appreciation. And I would just love paying down or paying up that dividend check every month and just watching it go up. And I would probably just become a game for me uh because it's truly passive. You know what I mean? Like that's just truly zero management passive income, which I do like from a cash flow perspective. And qualified dividends for anyone who's curious gets taxed at capital gains rates, which are lower. So even if you make a ton of money, you're still only paying, you know, 20-23% depending on where you're at. So for me, I was like, okay, that works.

4:28I'll still It's still relatively tax efficient to get the the cash flow from the from the from the investment. Um but for me though, I am going to take bigger risks with the wealth I have because it's the kind of the next level of the game for me is taking big bets. Um So what does what does that look like broadly? You'll see more stuff from me on the media side um probably in the in the next 12 to 18. Uh I'll be probably making really major investments in media. Um because like, you know, here's a fun one which you can appreciate from a YouTube perspective.

5:02It costs me like less than a dollar or it just cost me a dollar whatever. It's around a buck per subscriber per month. Now, I'm taking my entire media team cost, which goes across all platforms, which is not really fair. But if I were to if I even took that whole media team and put it against YouTube, um it costs me around a dollar-ish a month per subscriber. And I make more than a dollar a year per subscriber just in AdSense.

5:30So like from a return, you know what I mean? Like that doesn't include like where I actually make money, which is my you know, my deal flow side. Um So it's you know what I mean? It's like, well, then I should, you know, put my money there. And I will be I'll be taking bigger and bigger chunks of companies. Uh right now we do minority deals, but will be taking majority uh interesting companies where it makes sense. Uh so it's like if I see a company that makes sense within the entire portfolio.

5:54So, I'll give an example. So, like if somebody has an accounting firm, it would be great to just have the accounting at HoldCo, and I'll just buy 100%, and then I can provide those services internally. And then because of the buying power that I have between the entire kind of conglomerate for lack of a better term, you know, if I have you know, 200 250 million dollars a year in in business that I can push towards something. It's like I'm not going to push that kind of money towards something that I don't own majority of, at least.

6:22So, those are kind of the two directions that I'll probably go, and it's just reinvesting more in the team. Um and you know, taking I mean, from a from a money allocation perspective, more of that would go towards the majority purchases than the team. But that's just, you know, fundamentally how I see it. Like I'll get better returns on that stuff than I will on the S&P, and I have to take If I want to get to a billion, I have to make some bigger bets, which is fine. What's the goal here? Is the goal to get to a billion? Like what what what what what what what what what what what is the problem with that? >> billion. Yeah, the goal is to get to 10 billion.

6:49Um but the the mission is to just make real business knowledge available for everyone. And so, that's that's what I'm trying to do. And so, everything I do aligns to that. That's why I make the books, that's why I make the courses, that's why we do the YouTube stuff, that's why we make the shorts, that's why we do podcasts, that's why we do all of it. Um it's just to make real business education available to everyone, but I have to answer the question, "Why should I listen to you?" And I want to be unassailable in that perspective, A.

7:14And then B, I do believe that I'll gain more perspective as as things grow. So, it's more that I'm just curious what I'm going to learn going from, you know, a 200 million dollar a year portfolio to a billion dollar a year portfolio to a 10 billion dollar a year portfolio. And so, I have wished that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Warren Buffett would come out with a course. I wouldn't that be amazing? But they didn't. And so, my goal is to just document the path that we learn along the way. Um and you know, when I die, I there'll just be a whole bunch of people who are younger than me who make way more money than I do at my age because they were able to just shortcut a lot.

7:47Why is that the mission? Like I'm making business education available. Like what what is the kind of emotional resonance with you for that thing? Cuz that's what set me free. Free as in free from the corporate wage slavery. >> everything. >> Yeah. Not even corporate wage. Like I'm free. I can do whatever. I don't have to do anything. If I didn't want to. So I just get I just get optionality, which is all I want. I just want to have options. And so I wouldn't have that if all of this stuff didn't exist. And I have had many mentors and many coaching programs and many courses. And so, you know, I would say that I differ from the vast majority of the talking heads in the business space in that I to my knowledge I'm the only one who came up through that world. Like you look at Andy Frisella, you look at Mylett, you look at Gary. You know what I mean? Like there's there's they've none of them came up through learning stuff on YouTube, going to seminars, going to coaching programs. I did.

8:39So I'm a huge advocate for the for for for alternative education and you know, paying for skills as fast as you can. To what extent do you think about the balance between I guess optimizing for freedom freedom, fun, flexibility, all of that like living whatever life you want kind of vibes versus some people say that once you get to a certain point you realize that oh actually more money, more status, more success, more freedom is not actually thing and actually the thing I care about is investing in a relationship and like having a family and having kids and like buying a house and the sort of putting down roots versus having wings kind of vibe.

9:15I have options. So if I change my mind, I can change my mind. Um but as I see it right now from where I sit, the thing that lights me up every day is is making business knowledge available to everyone. And doing I mean I spend an inordinate amount of time. Like I spend so much time on those books and presentations that I make when I give speeches and stuff like, every presentation I make up to this point in my career has been custom.

9:41And that takes me like 3 days, you know what I mean, to make a presentation. So, like if you've seen Last Dance, Michael Jordan, there's this there's this moment where he says that he always has to bring his all because it's the there's some person who spent hard-earned money and it's the only game they're ever going to see and he wants to bring his best for that. And so, that's how I see it. You know what I mean, like there's people who will never, you know, they spent real money to be there and it was like they're hoping that they can get one thing from this thing that's going to like change their life and I want to honor that. Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help. And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.