THE BILLIONAIRE MINDSET - Powerful Motivational Video for Success

You need to work super hard. So, what does super hard mean? When my brother and I were starting our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch. And we showered at the YMCA. And we're so hard up we had just one computer, so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night. 7 days a week, all the time. And I mean, if you do simple math, say like, okay, if somebody else is working 50 hours and you're working 100, you'll get twice as done as much done in the course of a year as the other company. You can't skip steps. You have to put one foot in front of the other. Things take time. You There are no shortcuts. And but you want to do those steps with, you know, passion and ferocity. When you first start a company, there's lots of optimism and things are great. So, happiness at first is high. Then you encounter all sorts of issues and happiness will steadily decline. And then you'll go through a whole world of hurt. And then eventually, if you succeed, and in most cases you will not succeed. And Tesla almost didn't succeed, came very close to failure. Then if you succeed, then after a long time, you will finally get back to happiness. Ideas don't come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started. — You know, even if you're the best of the best, there's always a chance of failure. You know, at Amazon we still take risks all the time and we encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we're going to be moving the needle. We need to have, you know, billion-dollar scale failures. And if we're not, we're not swinging hard enough. Don't just follow the trends. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there. And this is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense or if it's just what everybody else is doing. You have got to have some passion for the arena that you're going to develop and work in. Because otherwise, you're going to be competing against people who do have passion for that and they're going to build better products and services. You can't be a mercenary, you have to be a missionary. Missionaries build better products and services. They always win. I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people. And I had a brilliant boss I much admired. I went to my boss and told him I was going to start a company selling books on the internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, — listened carefully to me, and finally said, "That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn't already have a good job. " You can have a job or career calling. And if you can somehow figure how to have a calling, you have hit the jackpot cuz that's the big deal. — I met Jeff Bezos 25 years ago and he told me, "Dave, I want you to invest in my company. What are you doing? I'm going to start a bookstore in my garage. " Okay. And I'm going to put it online. People will buy online and I'm going to ship out of my garage. But if you invest in me, Dave, someday I'm going to be the richest man in the world. I'll do over a hundred billion dollars. First of all, there is no such thing as a hundred billion dollars 25 years ago. Statistically, there's no such thing. Countries didn't have a hundred. Our national debt wasn't a hundred billion dollars. And this dude's telling me at 26 years old that he's going to be the richest man in the world cuz he has a garage and the internet? That was his truth. No, but he did not he did not know it and neither did I, but the difference between him and I is I was laughing, scoffing, and jesting at him and he was already applauding himself going at the right way at the perfect time. I'm going to make as much as I can as quickly and I'm sitting there going, "There's no way this is going to be a big business. " Do something you're very passionate about. And don't try to chase what is kind of the hot passion of the day. — Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice. But ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. — And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all. After much consideration, I took the less safe path to follow my

passion and I'm proud of that choice. As a young boy, I'd been a garage inventor. I'd invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn't work very well out of an umbrella and aluminum foil, baking pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I'd always wanted to be an inventor and she wanted me to follow my passion. There's a military phrase that I especially love and it says, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. " And I have seen that in every endeavor I've ever been in. That's the kind of thing that really allows you to make progress. You know, you get certain gifts in life and you want to take advantage of those. But you I guess my advice on adversity and success would be to be proud not of your gifts, but of your hard work and your choices. So, you know, you may be the kinds of gifts you get in life, you know, you might be really good at math. It might be really easy for you. That's a kind of gift. But practicing that math and taking it to the next step, that could be very challenging and hard and take a lot of sweat. That's a choice. You can't really be proud of your gifts because they were given to you. You can be grateful for them and thankful for them. And but your choices, you choose to work hard. You choose to do hard things. Those are choices that you can be proud of. You can choose. We all get to choose our life stories and it's the choices that define us, not our gifts. Everybody in this room has many gifts. I have many gifts. You can never be proud of your gifts because they're gifts. They were given to you. You might be, you know, tall or you might be really good at math extremely beautiful or handsome or, you know, there or there are many gifts. And you can only be proud really of your choices because those are the things that you are that you're that you are acting on. And one of the most important choices that each of us has, and you know this just as well as I do, is you can choose a life of ease and comfort or service and adventure. And when you're 80, which one of those things do you think you're going to be more proud of? of having chosen a life of service and adventure. There's never been a better time to be alive. I mean, it's just an incredible the amount of inspiration that the world generates — for me and I think for a lot of people. It's just it's insane the amount of change and invention and opportunity. Your life, the life you author from scratch on your own, begins. How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide or will you follow your passions? — Will you follow dogma or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease or a life of service and adventure? Will you wilt under criticism or will you follow your convictions? Will you bluff it out when you're wrong or will you apologize? Will you guard your heart against rejection or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe or will you be a little bit swashbuckling? When it's tough, will you give up or will you be relentless? — Will you be a cynic or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others or will you be kind? Every time you figure out some way of providing tools and services that empower other people to deploy their creativity, you're really onto something. You know, you're very lucky if you have a career. A lot of people end up with a job. If you don't love your work, you're never going to be great at it. Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Galileo, Newton, all the curious from the ages

would have wanted to be alive most of all right now. As a civilization, we will have so many gifts, just as you as individuals — have so many individual gifts as you sit before me. How you use these gifts? And will you take pride in your gifts or pride in your choices? If you put Donald Trump, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jordan Peterson, Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Richard Branson in a room, what would be the one thing they could agree on? Simple. Elon Musk. I think what Elon has done with Tesla is fantastic. It's, you know, probably the biggest single contribution to showing us that electric cars are part of how we solve climate change. And now he's got a carbon removal challenge. So we need more Elon Musks. We need one for steel and cement and all the different categories. God only knows what's up with him, all things considered. We saw his new truck. The truck's an amazing piece of engineering. The factory is massive. — You know, what do you say about someone who built a functional electric car and shot it into space on a rocket? He's a singular person. Of course, Elon Musk, who is an extraordinary leader in car manufacturing and you know, we love his cars. He is He's a force in society that's like a cross-pollination of Thomas Edison and Tony Stark from The Avengers, okay? You cross-pollinate those two folks, you get Elon Musk. Now, he's got a publicly traded company. You don't cross the SEC, okay? You must obey the regulations regarding your public company. But otherwise, give the man some space. Let him be an individual. What do you want to homogenize him so he looks like any other person in a boardroom? What would that be? I mean, Elon and his team are extraordinary what they achieved. — Yeah, and he's also doing the rockets. He likes rockets and he does good at rockets, too, by the way. I never saw where the engines come down with no wings, no anything, and they're landing. I said, "I've never seen that before. " And I was worried about him because he's one of our great geniuses, and we have to protect our genius. He's done a very good job. Shocking how well, you know, how it's come so fast. I mean, you go back a year and they were talking about the end of the company, and now all of a sudden they're talking about these great things. He's going to be building a very big plant. Founder, CEO, angel investor, business giant, and tech mogul, Elon Musk is considered one of the most influential people on the planet. His story is weeded with epic failures and massive triumphs, as well as plenty of hard work and dedication. Here are five lessons that Elon Musk has taught us about being a leader and icon in the business and tech world. While the mogul's life seems to be well within the lap of luxury, this wasn't always the case. Growing up, Elon had to deal with an abusive father, his parents divorced, and being horrendously bullied at school. According to The Guardian, the bullying had gotten so bad that he was admitted to hospital for 2 weeks after a gang of boys threw him down a flight of stairs. This didn't stop Elon. He found solace in his dream of moving to the United States and finding a way to change the world. Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in, you know, 80-hour 80 to 100-hour weeks every week. And then it's a lot of work. That all those things improve the odds of success. Okay. Um I mean, if if other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you're putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if uh you're doing the same thing, you know that in 1 year you will achieve what they achieve. You will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve. It's no secret that Elon has an incredible work ethic. He understood that by taking more time to grow your business and invest as much as you could into your business, you would be ahead of your competitors. Growing a business is no easy task, especially if you want to be at the top. Find ways that allow you to work on your business more efficiently, and you will leave your competition in the dust. I think the right way to think things is like, what is the most useful thing that you can think of to do? And that others are not doing. If a problem's are getting well solved by others, there's not much point in going and then competing against them if they're going to solve it well anyway. It's better to work on things that you think probably people enough smart people aren't working on. Following his own advice, Elon has helped found and create businesses that have had a major and positive impact on humanity. He is continually looking to help solve problems that we face daily. By becoming the solution to a problem, you become invaluable to not only your clients, but the world as well. I would encourage you to take risks now. Do something bold. Um you won't regret it. Taking

risks is something Elon is well versed in. With the many obstacles he's had to face in every one of the companies he's been a part of, most people would have thrown in the towel and moved on. Not Elon. If it wasn't for his tenacity and drive, Tesla would have gone out of business and SpaceX would have never seen a successful launch. — I would say I'm more motivated by curiosity more than anything. Just a desire to think about the future, and I mean, I'm feeling I guess rel- — relatively optimistic about the future these days. Um there are certainly some big risks that humanity faces. Uh I think the population collapse is a really big deal that I wish more people would would think about. I was always sort of really interested in reading when I was a kid, um and I read everything that I could get my hands on. I read the encyclopedia. I read everything. — Um let's see. Probably age 9 or 10. Okay. Um You were starting to — Well, not that I actually wanted to read the encyclopedia, but I ran out of things to read, so in desperation I read the encyclopedia. You just really wanted to learn. So in the early stage you had that, and you had that inner drive yourself. Yeah. Um well, I just sort of I got bored easily, and so unless I was doing something um like reading or playing a video game or watching TV, and we had like terrible TV in South Africa, you know, I like watching TV, but there wasn't that much there, so Elon is a big advocate for learning and has been led by his curiosity for most of his life. He is an avid reader and claims that reading is what taught him to build rockets. He even hired learning guru Jim Kwik to help him master quicker reading and learning. If the man behind SpaceX and SolarCity has time to learn and stay curious, it may be something you want to try out yourself as well. When I was a kid, I was wondering kind of what's the meaning of life? Like, why are we here? — What's it all about? And um I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions. There's certain things that are necessary to ensure that the future is good. And some of those things are in the long term having long-term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation to be a space-bearing civilization, and for humanity to be out there among the stars, and be a multi-planetary uh species. Um I mean, I think the being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars is important for uh the long-term survival of humanity. And uh that's one reason, kind of like life insurance for life like we life as we know it. Um but then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future. Elon Musk is an inspiration for people around the world. His hope to better humanity, to create a future we can be excited about, is not only inspiring, but something that all humanity should look forward to. July 16th, 1995 was the day that in a small garage in a rented house, Jeff Bezos began his online bookseller business, Amazon. This was the day that began the starting point of what would eventually lead to one of the biggest American multinational technology companies that has impacted and changed the world as we know it. So it really was a decision that I had to make for myself. And the framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I call, which only a nerd would call, a regret minimization framework. So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 — and say, "Okay, now I'm looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have. " And you know, I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. wanted, you know, trying to participate in this thing called the internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret — is not ever having tried. And I knew that would haunt me every day. Um and so when I thought about it that way, it was an incredibly easy decision. Um and I think that's a very good It's If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, "What will I think at that time? " it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left uh this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. And that's the kind of thing that the short term can confuse you, but if you think about the long term, then you can — really make good life decisions that you

won't regret later. Most regrets, by the way, are acts of omission and not commission. Jeff originally was at a good job with stable pay and yearly bonuses. He didn't have to risk it all, but he realized quickly that there were trends that were constantly popping up explaining how big the internet was going to be. He is now worth over 122. 3 billion dollars and is living proof that if you believe in yourself, you can win. If we were to learn from Jeff's success, what trail of clues would there be? What did he do to separate himself from other entrepreneurs and skyrocket himself into ventures beyond our wildest dreams? Here are some insights into how and why Jeff Bezos has become successful. When planning a business like this, I think to sort of look at what is the brand promise that you're going to make to customers. — And the brand promise that you make has to actually coincide and in a very, very closely — with the things that you can deliver. And in our case, that led to the name of amazon. com. It's a basically Earth's biggest river, Earth's biggest bookstore. And we wanted to use this large selection to be able to build an authoritative store. Authoritative means a few things. Authoritative selection, authoritative prices, and authoritative information about books so that you can make a purchase decision. And the internet allowed us to do all those things. We could have more selection. We could also have lower prices because we don't have to have retail real estate in high traffic areas. That's very expensive. Inventorying books in those spaces is very expensive. We get to inventory our books in very low cost warehouse space. It's also possible to have more information online about products than you could ever have in a physical shopping environment. So you can really build an authoritative store. One of the biggest things to remember in business is what you are bringing to the table. What is the promise you are dedicating your brand to? What is it that you bring potential customers that no other business can provide? As Jeff explains, being able to follow through on what you promise and not overextending or under extending yourself has a massive impact on whether or not your business is successful. One of the things that everybody should realize and that is probably the single most important factor is that any startup company that turns into a substantial company over the years never lose track of the fact that there was a lot of luck involved in that. So, you know, there are a lot of entrepreneurs. people who are very smart, very hard working. Very few ever have, you know, the planetary alignment that leads to a tiny little company growing into something substantial. So, that requires not only a lot of planning, a lot of hard work, a big team of people who are all dedicated, but it also requires that not only the planets align, but that, you know, you get a few galaxies in there aligning, too. And that's certainly what happened to us. You know, our timing was good. — Our choice of product categories, books, was a very good choice. And we did a lot of analysis on that to pick that category as the first best category for e-commerce online. But there were no guarantees that was a good category. At the time we launched this business, it wasn't even crystal clear that the technology would improve fast enough that ordinary people, you know, non-computer people, would even want to bother with this technology. So that was good luck. So there are a whole bunch of things that have to sort of align to make it work. Hard work plays a role in creating a business, but one of the most underrated factors in a startup's success is luck. Being able to hit the market with a successful business at the right time, with the right products, and with a carefully thought-out business strategy is a step in the right direction to help your business thrive and succeed. If you want to be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be customer obsessed. So, don't satisfy your customers. Figure out how to absolutely delight them. That is the number one thing, whoever your customers are. Passion, you have got to have some passion for the arena that you're going to — develop and work in. Because otherwise you're going to be competing against people who do have compassion for that, and they're going to build better products and services. You can't be a mercenary, you have to be a missionary. Missionaries build better products and services, they always win. The mercenaries are just trying to make money, and paradoxically, the missionaries always end up making more money. You have to pick something that you actually have a genuine passion for. You have to take risk.

You have to be willing to take risk. If you aren't going to take risk, if you come up with a business idea there's no risk there, you're probably, you know, it's probably already being done. Those ideas are already being done. They're being done well by many, many people. So, you got to have something that might not work. And so you have to accept that your business is going to be in many ways — an experiment. And it might fail. And that's okay. That's what risk is. — The good news is in Amazon we still take risks all the time and we encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we're going to be moving the needle. We need to have, you know, billion-dollar scale failures. And if we're not, we're not swinging hard enough. As Jeff puts it, being customer obsessed, having passion about your business, and being able to take risks are some of the most important ways that a business can be successful. If your customer is happy, they are more likely to become repeat customers and spread the word about your business. If you are passionate about what you do, it will show in your everyday practice. If you can take risks, you are able to push outside of your comfort zone and either grow your business tremendously or take the failure as an opportunity to grow and learn. Do you ever have trouble winning support for any of your ideas? The answer is yes. You know, I have to If I have a new idea that I am in love with and I want to see it pursued, I do have to build support for it, just like anybody would, cuz you need very smart people to embrace the idea and move it forward. We have a framework in Amazon. It's one of our leadership principles, it's called disagree and commit. And that is extremely useful. Because after you've discussed an idea, you do need to make a decision and move forward and people the whole team needs to really commit to that. When I really feel strongly about something and the team disagrees with me, I have a phrase that I like to use which is helpful, which is I want you to gamble with me on this. It's very different from phrasing it in a way because the truth is when you're — in a position like that where nobody knows what the right answer is. You're not saying I'm right on this. You're saying I want you to gamble with me on this because I don't know if it's right either. I disagree and commit all the time. And I promise the people when I do it, I very clear, I don't agree with this. I think it's probably not going to work, but I will never say I told you so, and I'm going to be on your team. I will do everything I can to make it work. Being able to support new ideas, even if you disagree with them, is an essential way to build trust between you and your team. Jeff talks about his disagree and commit policy as a way for people to openly discuss new ideas and new risks they believe could be beneficial to the company. Providing a safe environment where people can openly voice ideas and opinions is essential in creating a successful and thriving business practice. Jeff Bezos is now using his massive fortune to donate to multiple philanthropic projects, including his own climate change nonprofit, the Bezos Earth Fund. In total, Jeff has donated over 2. 4 billion dollars to multiple charities that he believes strongly in. He understands that with great power comes great responsibility, and without his success and his customers, he wouldn't be in the position he is today. There's no need even to have a college degree at all. Or even high school. — The I mean, if somebody graduated from a great university, that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things, but it's not necessarily the case. Um you know, if you look at um say people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, these guys didn't graduate from college. But if you had a chance to hire them, of course, that would be a good idea. I would love to talk to Elon Musk, so um I'm sure that would be ridiculously fun. I would love to find out. I'd like to ask him about his thought process. And also, I'm really curious about how in the world he manages to do multiple impossible things, because doing one impossible thing is impossible, but doing like five impossible things is the product of five impossibilities, and that just seems like hyper impossible. But he's managed it. You know, I mean, think about it. Think about what he did. He built an electric car, which is like hard, and then he built a rocket, and then he blasted the car into space on his rocket. That's not real. That doesn't happen. But it did happen, and he did it. And so, I would really I would love to talk to him. It's it's very difficult to start companies and quite painful. Um I think that's important to bear in mind. I don't know if that's

probably not encouraging. Um let me put it this way. If you need inspiring words, don't do it. A challenge for entrepreneurs is to say, "Well, what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them versus pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit. " And it's that is a really difficult thing to tell you can you tell the difference between those two things. So, you need to be sort of very rigorous in your self self-analysis. — Um I think certainly extremely tenacious. Uh and um and then just work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in, you know, 80-hour 80 to 100-hour weeks every week. And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring uh and make life worth living. If you're creating company or if you're joining company, uh the most important thing is to uh attract is to attract great people. So, either be with join a group that's amazing that you really respect or if you if you're building a company, you've got to gather great people. I mean, all a company is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service. And so, depending upon how talented and hard working that group is and the degree to which they're focused uh cohesively in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company. Who do you think is really leading the way forward? I think uh SpaceX probably because of uh uh Elon coming from South Africa uh having uh the competitive spirit to make a good bit of money in PayPal and then uh put that into his dreams. Elon would like to uh get involved in selling uh launches to the Air Force. Mhm. Uh but he's being opposed some. Uh he almost went broke. He had three failures. And one more, in his words, would have uh taken him out of the business of rocket launches. He sort of succeeded on that one pretty much. Uh he uh has a very good rocket at a very good price. I asked him if he wanted to uh maybe lead efforts toward Mars by allowing people to use his rocket on their project to fly by of Mars and then combining another company. Uh I said that I I'm in touch with very wealthy people or maybe in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and uh perhaps we could have some investment money. — Mhm. He said, "No, we don't need any money. We'll do it ourselves. " The space business is quite it's quite hard to start a company in the space business because it's such a capital intensive business. So, it may be better to do something in um solar power or uh if you're going to do it in cars, do it in as kind of a component supplier for cars or something like that. That the all those things improve the odds of success. Okay. Um I mean, if if other people are putting in 40-hour work weeks and you're putting in 100-hour work weeks, then even if uh you're doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them — a year to achieve. The when I was a kid, I was wondering kind of what's the meaning of life. Like, why are we here? What's it all about? And um I came to the conclusion that uh what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of uh human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions. If somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that's a good thing. Like, it doesn't have to change the world. If you're doing something that has high value to people, I mean, I think that's fine. Like, stuff doesn't need to be change the world just to be good. But in terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the future of humanity, I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect uh humanity. So, it's very important that we have the advent of AI uh in a good way. If you could look into a crystal ball and see the future, you would like that outcome. Um because it is something that could go um could go wrong um as we've talked about many times. We really need to make sure it goes right.

Working on AI and making sure it's great future. That's the most important thing I think right now. I would say anything is to do with genetics. — Um if you can actually solve genetic diseases, prevent dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that um with genetic reprogramming, that would be wonderful. So, I think this genetics I might be the sort of second most important item. I think um having a high bandwidth interface to the brain. Like, um we're currently bandwidth limited. We we have a digital tertiary self uh in the form of our email capabilities like computers, phones, applications. Uh we're effectively superhuman. Um but we are extremely bandwidth constrained in that interface between the cortex and your sort of uh that tertiary digital form of yourself. And um having solved that bandwidth constraint uh would be I think a very important for the future as well. On signal over noise, uh a lot of companies get confused. They spend money on things that don't actually make the product better. So, for example, at Tesla, we've never spent any money on advertising. Uh we put all of the money into R& D and manufacturing and design to try to make the car as good as possible. Um and uh I think that's the way to go. So, for any given company, just keep thinking about are these efforts that people are expending? Are they resulting in a better product or service? If they're not, stop those efforts. You may have heard me say that it's good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles, uh which is rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there. And this is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense or if it's just what everybody else is doing. It's hard to think that way. You can't think that way about everything. Takes a lot of effort. Uh but if you're trying to do something new, it's the best way to think. Um and that framework was developed by physicists to figure out counterintuitive things um like quantum mechanics. So, it's really a powerful method. You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. You know, um don't let anything hold you back. Uh imagination is the go out there and create some magic. —