Tai Lopez -- His Rules

You can find a transcript of Tai Lopez's talk on the Internet.

Here's why it is worth looking up the transcript
GET THE TRANSCRIPT HERE

In one of Tai's youtube video ads (his ad is a bit annoying to some people), he shows material things (cars, house) and says, "School doesn't teach you about what's important."

I'm a high school teacher and I have to agree.   So I decided to take time to get past my objections to Tai's way of talking and his persistent ads and listen to his tips.   


Here are some quotes from Tai's talk in TEDx.

Tai Lopez – investor, partner, or advisor

YOU CAN GET MENTORS

1. Imagine for a second. If right now, today, how much more successful would you be if you just started a company 50:50 with Bill Gates as your business partner and he was using every trick of the trade that he used to build Microsoft into one of the biggest companies in the world?

2. Imagine how much money you’d have in your bank account today – how much more money, I should say – if Warren Buffet was teaching you how to invest in the stock market, showing you what he used to build Berkshire Hathaway into a $140 billion company. Imagine how much happier you’d be today if the Dali Lama was your personal guide, showing you how to find fulfillment in life, in the little things that most people overlook.

3. Imagine how healthy you’d be today if when you woke up, you went down to your gym, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was waiting there, who was your personal trainer, showing you how he built his body into the most fit body maybe ever, right?

Imagine the change you’d be making in the world, the injustice you’d be solving today, if Mother Theresa and you were running a charity together and she was showing you what she learned on the streets of Calcutta, helping the poor, the sick, and the dying.

Mentors have the power to do this in your life. I think everybody here recognizes the importance of a role model. 

3.  ADVICE FROM THE GRANDFATHER

"A handful of people along the way will point the way.”

A package came. It was books. My grandfather had a 20,000-book library, and he had sent me some old dusty ones. A 1,000-page volume. 11 books. “The Story of Civilization,” by Will and Ariel Durant.

4. Look for a mentor
I looked in the finance section of the Yellow Pages and I found this guy. I said, “I’m going to visit that guy.”  

I showed up and Kathy, his secretary, opened the door and I walked back, and Mike Steinback, from the phone book, I walked up to him and I said, “Mike, you don’t know me. If you show me what you know, because I figured you must know a lot about money, if you can afford a full-page ad in the yellow pages – if you show me what you know I’ll work for you for free.”

He said, “You know what, Tai? I’ve been looking for someone like you for 20 years. Show up in the morning, I’ll show you what I know.”

And he began to mentor me on business. And now I’m an entrepreneur. I’m an investor. But I’ve continued on that path, traveling, finding mentors, reading. 

5. I read a book a day. I have a little book club, I write. And what I’ve found in my research is that I wasn’t the abnormal path. Mentors – your ability to copy – is the biggest predictor of the success that you will have in life. As Picasso said, “Good artists copy, but great artists steal.” 

And I looked around, and it’s interesting. Did you know Albert Einstein had a mentor? Every Thursday, he would have lunch with a mentor growing up. Jay-Z, the rapper, he had a mentor. Oprah Winfrey said she had two mentors. Gandhi had a mentor. Alexander, the Great, had Aristotle. Bill Gates had Paul Allen. Warren Buffet had Benjamin Graham. There’s something here that most of us have missed out on.

6. Mentor Rules. It’s the Law of 33%. You should divide up your life and spend 33% of your time around people lower than you. You can mentor them, you can help them.

Then you have 33% of people that are on your level. These become your friends, your peers.

But that last 33% is what most people forget about. Those are people 10, 20 years ahead of you. They’ll make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but that’s what you want, 

7. 10X Rule; find somebody 10 times further ahead than you.

If you want to learn how to grow a $1 million company, you have to find somebody who has a $10 million company. Don’t be afraid to go to the top. In-person mentors are amazing. And you can get people like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates. You’d be surprised!

ALSO READ:   Full Transcript: Jesse Henry on The Theory of Success at TEDxFSU

ALSO READ:   Panti Presents All The Little Things at TEDxDublin (Full Transcript)

8. Next, perseverance.

Bill Gates started at 12. It wasn’t until 31 years old that he was a billionaire. He said, “From age 20 to 30, I never took a day off. Not even one”. You must persevere, and in your search for mentors you must persevere, as well.

9. Next, books.
Books you should see as hidden treasure. Shakespeare, Darwin, Freud, Mahatma Gandhi. If I told you all those people were in my house and they’re going to be there this Saturday answering questions, would you show up at my house? Of course everybody would buy a plane ticket and end up in California. They are there in my house. They’re in my library. They can be in your library, too.

Talking about Sam Walton. This is a man who made $160 billion for himself, more than all the other billionaires, basically, combined. He wrote a book on his death bed. How many people have read it? It’s a tragedy that not every businessperson has read a $5 book by a man who built an empire. But it’s because the modern education system has turned people off from books. You’ve got to rewire your brain. Let me show you a few quick tricks.

First thing: stop seeing a book like a one-time event. See a book like a friend. You read it over and over. You come back. 

Like friends, you pick a handful of books. I recommend you find 150 books. There’s 130 million. You can’t read that many. But 150 you can read over and over for the rest of your life. There’s no rule, either, at how fast you have to read them, at what pace. I set my own pace. People say, “How do you read a book a day?” Sometimes I take a week. But sometimes, books only have one or two things that are worth reading. In fact, most books only have that.

So I’ll flip through the pages. One time I like to go through it three times. First time, I read the table of contents at the back. The second time, I go a little faster. The third time, I just focus on one chapter. See yourself like a gold miner just looking for that one nugget. Then put it back on the shelf.

The average American buys 17 books a year. Maybe reads one a month. You should read at least one book a week, because remember, everybody wants the good life, but not everybody’s willing to read to get it. You must read more.

And lastly, stoic versus epicurean.

One of the first books that I read, this 11-set volume that I got from my grandfather, there was a quote that I wrote down. “A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean.” Stoics were people willing to sacrifice present pleasure for something better later. You could say they were investors. Epicureans live for now. They were consumers. They said, “You only live once.”

There’s a saying, “If you’re in a room and you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.” You never want to be the sucker. Guess what the media wants to do. I can tell you, I’m from Hollywood. They bombard you. We see on average 2,000 ads a day. They’re trying to sell you something.

Luxury comes at the cost of killing your hopes, your dreams, your ambitions. So toughen up a little bit. Be a stoic. When was the last time you went a week without eating sugar? Or walked instead of taken a car to get groceries? Or did 100 push-ups? Or turned the air conditioning off? Toughen yourself up. Take a cold shower.

You see everybody wants, but not everybody is willing to toughen up to get the good life.

You must toughen up.

So in closing, I’ll share with you my favorite poem, Chief Tecumseh. He says, “Love your life. Perfect your life. Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long, and its purpose in the service of your people.” Mentors will help you do that. They are the shortcut that you want. You don’t want to do it the hard way.

Find a mentor, no matter if you’re just starting out or if you’re already experienced. There’s always someone to learn from. You must follow those rules.

Be humble. Persevere. Read more. Toughen up.

Remember, it’s going to be a little bit hard. It’s like Tom Hanks says in that one movie, “It’s supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great.”

If you do these things, you will find the good life.