#174 Rey Flemings: A Different Definition of Success
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Every child, we grow up like, hey, I want to be successful.

Your parents say, "Go be successful." In our society, broadly speaking, we have made the definition of success how much money you have. Work, work, work, work, work, hustle culture, entrepreneurial culture. You see all the blogs, you see all the tweets, "I'm out there hustling, I'm out there hustling. Got to make money, got to make money." But there is no end to that. And so you wind up in a scenario where you have made it, you have a wealth event, you've got $100 million.

but that's not enough because someone has 500 million dollars. Welcome to The Knowledge Project, a podcast about mastering the best of what other people have already figured out so you can apply their insights to your life. I'm your host, Shane Parrish.

If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like access to the podcast before public release, special episodes that don't appear anywhere else, hand edited transcripts, or you just want to support the show you love, you can join at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link. My guest today is Ray Flemings, the founder and CEO of Myra, which is building a community for the world's most successful people to connect and enjoy their lives.

Fleming's is one of the nation's experts on the ultra wealthy. His unique perspective was honed during his 30 year career bridging Silicon Valley, Hollywood and family offices. Fleming's was the CEO of Particle, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. I wanted to talk to Ray because I walked away from dinner with him one night thinking he might be the world's most interesting person. He's definitely one of the most interesting people I've ever met.

He's the guy you call with an impossible request and he somehow pulls it off and makes it happen. His stories are legit crazy as you'll hear. It's time to listen and learn.

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Okay, you told me one of the craziest stories I've ever heard the first time we met. We were driving back from dinner and sharing a car on our way to the hotel. And you talked to me about how you got some ventilators. I'm wondering if you can tell that story for everybody.

On April 1st, I believe, 2020, now you've got to set the scene. The world is crazy. If you remember at that time, Manhattan had scores of refrigerator trucks, right? Because the morgue system couldn't even process the bodies, right? This is a very scary time. It's not, you know what I mean? This is peak unknown COVID, right? And no one knows where this thing is heading. And we get a call from Governor Cuomo's office.

And the call was that the state of New York needed ventilators. So in my company, we have a practice where we take on special projects, things which are incredibly difficult to do. Some would say impossible. Things that are really, really hard, we'll get those phone calls. And this was one of them. And so, you know, we got two things that day. We got a wire from the state of New York for $45.9 million and a phone call from the FBI.

So at this time, you remember there was all these crazy people who were essentially defrauding governments over medical supplies and PPE. And so the call from the FBI was basically to let you know, we're watching. And so it's like, go out here and try to get these ventilators. And you're also under, you're being essentially watched by the FBI while this stuff is going on at the same time. And so-

I think the task was we had 72 hours to get, I can't remember the exact math, but a couple of thousand ventilators, whatever the math worked out to be, and get them into Manhattan and to get them out of China. Well, there was a problem. It was never really public news, but China had embargoed

the distribution or sale of ventilators to America. They were kind of angered by the Kung flu comments and these other things, and they were like, no, no ventilators. And so the reason that the state of New York couldn't just go and buy them direct is for this reason, right? Now, these are life-saving instruments. It sounds like we're setting up to go and run drugs or something, right? We're literally just seeking ventilators. But at that moment in time,

Those devices were the most valuable commodity on earth. Every hour it seemed like the price on these things was going. So the week before we took that project on, I think the average price of those devices was less than $6,000. By the end of the 10 days or so that we worked on this project, the price reached nearly $400,000 for a ventilator. Everybody needed one. Everybody wanted one. Governments were willing to pay kind of whatever it took to get them.

And whenever a thing is that valuable, it invites all sorts of criminal elements, fraud, every crazy thing that you could ever want to have happen. So at the end of the day, it was a complete mess. We wound up hiring a medical device inspector locally in China or a group of them.

to basically run from warehouse to warehouse to make sure we weren't buying rocks in a box and sit on the ventilators physically and kind of tape them down as we found different allotments of them. We made some arrangements to have them essentially brought into the United States through essentially smuggled out of China. And then

only to find out that the state of New York ultimately did not want the ventilators. I had no idea why and still kind of don't know why. I would note as a footnote that a year and a half or so ago, it came out that the state of New York had kind of falsified the death numbers from the nursing homes and things of that sort. But a very, very interesting experience to go get

2000 ventilators in the middle of COVID and then have the ventilators turned down after doing the work. So yeah, that's that story. That is one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. In a lot of ways, it relates to what you do now. You make the impossible sort of possible. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Sure. Myria is a community and concierge for people who are super successful. And in the course of

You know people come to us because they want enhanced access to relationships, people that they don't know and to things that they want in their life and we help them get those things. And I think all people want to feel special.

Certainly successful people want to feel special. So accessing things that other folks can't readily get their hands on is at the heart of our business. Is there a spectrum of sort of concierge services or access? The easiest way to think about what we do is this five-step spectrum where to the left things are simple and to the right they're difficult.

to impossible. So one, two, three, four, five. On the left, anything that you can purchase on a web browser. You want to rent a home to stay in when you go to LA. Well, there's Airbnb for that. You want to buy a ticket to Coachella.

go to Coachella.com. You've got a VIP pass. Number two is hard. These are things where maybe they're available online, but they're still difficult for you to get your hands on. So these would be things like booking a private jet. Yeah, you can book a private jet online, but it's so confusing and so much brain damage from a booking. Most people use a broker or a travel person to do it. Number three, we call off market.

And so these are things that sellers want to sell, but they never list or make available on a website. Artist credentials to go see your favorite band and all sorts of other things that are never on public sale. Category four would be stuff that's hard, walking red carpet at the Met Gala or being on stage with your favorite artist, et cetera, et cetera. And then the fifth category are

the impossible requests like the ventilator chase or all of these other sorts of wild and interesting things that we get called on to do. What's another example of something on that extremely difficult, nearly impossible thing that you guys have pulled off? We had a client who was vacationing in Europe and he wanted armed private security in a nation that did not allow for armed private security.

the only people who could carry a gun in that country were on duty military and on duty essentially federal police. The client had some security concerns, he was on vacation, and we essentially got security, an exception made by the government to treat him like a diplomat. And the president of the nation actually gave a member of his own, the equivalent of the Secret Service, of his own security detail to secure a private American citizen. I mean, the degree of difficulty on getting stuff like that done is

you know, kind of off the chart. And what I find fascinating about problems like this, because you're solving a problem effectively, they're not really repeatable. I mean, in those two instances, in the security instance, they are repeatable in the ventilator. Obviously, that was kind of a once in a lifetime, hopefully, you know, sort of global pandemic. But a lot of what we do, our business is more repeatable than it seems. It's just not openly commoditizable.

Can you expand on that a little? Yeah. So the secret of our business is that we're not just randomly going out trying to do an impossible thing for a random person with a lot of money.

We're actually matchmaking. We work very closely with our clients to understand them, to understand what they want, and to understand the value exchange. A lot of things are in that impossible number five category because people, they don't, it's about more than money. They have certain non-financial considerations like who is the buyer? And by understanding what the seller wants and how to make that happen, the levers, and by understanding

out of all of our clients who the right clients are for that thing, we can make really unique things happen for them. Does wealth become hollow at some point or money, I guess, is a different way to word this. Does money become hollow at the point where you can go out and buy anything you want that's available for sale? You know, money has has been proven to have some negative effects on people. Right. We become the rich

the richer we become, we become insensitive. Wealth is also isolating, you know, the rich become very, very insular. Billionaire is becoming a dirty word. It's becoming a pejorative, you know, people, you know, are very, very concerned. And so, yeah, I think, you know, wealth can have several different effects on you. But we think that when people get to a point where

They have everything that they want financially. They move kind of out of this luxury mindset and into a place of what we call post-luxury, where it's not necessarily about the nice thing. It's about experiences. It's about connection. It's about people. And we're building an organization to help folks

find other people of like mind. So in dealing with this subset of the population, is there a difference in your mind between being rich and being wealthy? There is. I think that every child, we grow up like, hey, I want to be successful. Your parents say, go be successful. And we chase success. In our society, broadly speaking, we have made the definition of success how much money you have.

Right. And so, you know, that's led to, you know, work, work, work, work, work, hustle culture, entrepreneurial culture. You see all the blogs, you see all the tweets. You know, I'm out there hustling, hustling, got to make money, got to make money. But there is no end to that. Right. And so you wind up in a scenario where you have made it. You have a wealth event. You've got one hundred million dollars, but that's not enough because someone has five hundred million dollars.

you become a billionaire. That's not enough because somebody's got 10 billion. There's an element of like happy if, right? Like happy when I think if it is happy, if and happy when I'll be happy, if I can get the promotion, I'll be happy if I reach $10 million, I'll be happy when I get to $20 million. And then at that point that you get there,

Your baseline for happiness just totally changes. And then all of a sudden you're looking forward. But there's a weird sort of element where I wonder if it's the same drive that got you to achieve those goals that is the same trigger that's got you looking forward to the next set of goals. I think there's something, there's a great truth about that. I agree with you on that.

So how do you think about rich versus wealthy? We think that we need to broaden the definition of what success looks like to be more holistic, to not just be money. And we are all socially connected. Have you ever had Nicholas Christakis on as a guest? He wrote a great book called Connected.

You know, we know that we can catch COVID, we were talking about earlier, we know we can catch flu, but you know, he, Nicholas is a world renowned academic and just great human. He's a sterling professor at Yale and he's done all this fantastic research. And basically, you can also catch obesity, you can catch smoking, you can catch suicide, depression, you can also catch happiness, you can catch sadness, you know, all of these things.

I think because society has kind of placed this ideal, go get rich is the number one thing. And there is social contagion essentially, right? This idea has spread that we're chasing that thing. And I believe if we broaden that definition, if we set a more holistic example of what success could look like,

And what if the richest people in the world were also the nicest? What if the richest people in the world were also the kindest? What if the world's wealthiest humans were disproportionately charitable? Not most charitable because they have the most money and giving away one or two or three,

far and away, massive percentages of their income, what sort of societal impact would that have? Right now, if you went to, I imagine, school-aged children and asked them, draw a picture, tell me what philanthropy looks like. They might draw or paint many pictures of what philanthropy looks like, but they wouldn't describe it as cool. And making this idea of giving back and helping other people cool and sexy, that's really where I think we have to go with it.

I like that approach. I think that that would be really good for society. As you were saying, sort of the hustle culture, it also had me thinking about how it relates to our connectedness through Instagram and Facebook and everything else where what we do is we work really hard to achieve these goals that we think we're playing by somebody else's scoreboard, right? Because I think unconsciously,

Somebody's told us this is what we need to do. And then we play to that scoreboard only two later in life to realize we played to the wrong scoreboard. But because we're playing to that scoreboard, then we want to show people we're successful. So we post the new car, we post the vacation, we post the which causes unhappiness and other people too, because it used to be

You know, we were living on a street and if somebody got a new car, you would know. But like, that's the extent of what you're exposed to. And now you're exposed to every vacation, every sort of car, all these people. The best moments in everyone else's life. Right. And they're not moments of people who are like you, right? Or just one level above you. They're moments of people who are just well beyond the gap between, you know, rich in the money that you can afford and the things that you can afford.

is you're not exposed to people that are like you anymore. You're exposed to people who are very different than you. How do you think about that? I agree with you. That is part of the problem. And I think all of the studies are pretty clear that it has a negative effect on people. It's like a slot machine.

Right. Every time you you open your phone, you've got the notification and the the uncertain what you're going to see. It's addicting people to it. And and I also think it gives a false impression. So even folks who are way wealthier than you are, they're still only posting the great moments of their lives. They're still humans. They've got crap moments in their lives just like everyone else. But they're not posting that. Right. And so you're seeing this.

highlight reel of life. And so you're not just looking at economic inequality, you're also looking at kind of the best of the best of the best moments in anyone's life. And

the super majority of your life isn't like that. The super majority of all of our lives isn't like that. But you're scrolling and all you're seeing are these extraordinary moments in everybody else's lives. And it weighs down on people, I think. How can it not? When I think of wealth versus rich, I think wealth has a language and it's not money. And that language is sort of connectedness, relationships, health,

All of that to me goes into, well, so does money. If you have enough, right? And enough is, how do you define enough? You know, there's the great story, Kurt Vonnegut eulogized Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch-22. And in his eulogy, he told a story about he and Heller visiting a billionaire's island. You probably heard this in all the great literature you have behind the wall. But the story goes something like Vonnegut teases Joseph Heller by saying, do you know

that our billionaire host made more money today than you made in all the copies of Catch-22 you've ever sold since publication?" And Heller said, "Yeah, I know that. But I have something that the billionaire will never have." And Vonnegut asks, "What?" And Heller says, "Enough. I have enough. I believe that

People broadly don't understand the difference in large numbers. We don't have an intuitive grasp of what it means, you know, because What is that a thousand books behind us or 500? You know, it's hard for me to just look at it at a glance and know and when you get into really big numbers millions and tens of millions and billions We just can't we can't process it process it We can't intuit it and that leads us to just not knowing what these things mean or not having a grasp of what it means so

Sharing the difference between or developing an understanding around what is the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is important. And I think the clearest example of that is to use time. Nearly all of us have gotten a paycheck in our life. If you're paid bi-weekly, you spend a million seconds of your life every 12 and a half days. You spend a billion seconds of your life every 32 years, roughly. So the difference between a million and a billion is the difference between a two-week paycheck

and your entire career in time. If that's the difference between a million and a billion,

And we're chasing $1 billion, $2 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion. What is the point, right? At some point, we need to be pushing those things further and further and helping people. I also love Warren Buffett's quote in his documentary. You know, they basically said, hey, Warren, you were kind of famously not very charitable early in your career. Why? And his response was along the lines of, well, I believe I could compound money as well or better than anybody in the world.

And my goal was to grow the pot as big as I could possibly grow it and then give away the maximum amount when I was done. And the interviewer says, well, why did that change? And I said, well, it changed because I discovered that the problems of humanity are compounding faster than I can compound money.

And that led to him, you know, I think at this time he is the has given away the largest percentage of his fortune during his lifetime than any other person after after realizing. That's a powerful sort of realization. One of the things is you were talking about millions and billions and how we lose the concept of what that means.

We also lose it in society. It's not just with people who have billions. It's when governments announce they're spending billions of dollars, it's just become sort of a million, right? Like we don't understand the context of what that is. I've often wondered why they don't do it per capita.

And then that would explain to people in very relatable terms how much per person is being spent on X, Y, and Z. And I think that they don't do it because they actually know people don't grasp these concepts and we don't teach it in school. And I think part of the reason we don't teach them in schools is we have this sort of incentive where we don't want people to understand the difference between a million and a billion. You know, I would go a little further. I would actually say that it's not that we don't want people to understand.

It's that we don't understand, and I'm meaning the big we, the so-called leaders. There's this idea that there's this group of really smart people who have their hand on the wheel guiding the planet left or right or kind of making all of these decisions. I actually don't agree with that. I believe that the systems are too big.

You know, if you ask me, and I know this is not a political show, the problem is not Trump or Biden. The problem is not Obama or Bush. The problem in America is with the presidency itself. You know, the idea of the presidency was developed so long ago. Hey, let's elect our king. Well, when the Constitution was ratified,

A human being had never traveled faster than a horse could carry them. The world was much smaller. It was easier to manage. So here we are saying, let's pick one person who can run our military and educate our children, run the economy and healthcare. And that person doesn't exist. There is no human being that smart who can do a good job on all of these things. It's far beyond their reach. And I think we've got to

recognize that the system is getting to a point where it doesn't make sense even to the people who are operating the system. In my business, Silicon Valley Bank imploded. I'll give you an example. Silicon Valley Bank imploded and people woke up to this reality that, oh my goodness, a deposit in a bank is actually not a deposit.

It's an unsecured loan to the bank. Above 250K, right? Right. And so even that number, right, the FDIC, the FDIC has about $130 billion. And if everybody withdrew their money? This is not even everybody. They've got $130 billion of insurance money.

How much money do US depositors have in US bank? 20 trillion, right? So how's $130 billion insuring $20 trillion? The entire economic system, we think it sits on money and people will sit there, these policy walks, and they'll talk about numbers and blah, blah, blah, and all these things. The economy is based on trust. And when that trust breaks down,

you see what you're seeing in our society today, when the rich aren't trusting the poor and the whites aren't trusting the blacks and the Republicans aren't trusting... You begin to see this fraying of the edges, the things that you see in San Francisco right now with all of these things going on. It all actually sits on a lack of trust or an erosion of trust, this fraying of the American experiment.

How do we rebuild trust? South Africa did something really interesting. Here was a community, thanks to apartheid, which there had been a lot of wrongs done. You could look at examples throughout history where when one group has been done wrong, if they come to power, they do the same things essentially to the other group that was done to them, and back and forth and back and forth throughout human history. South Africa took a different approach. They instituted something called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

And the basic idea was that if you, that apartheid was wrong and people were wronged, we've learned from it and we're going to do better as a nation. And if you committed a crime under apartheid, come forward, admit your crime and apply for amnesty by admitting it. But if you didn't, and they could later prove

that you had committed the crime then you could stand to account for it so it was this encouraging this sort of day of reckoning around all of the historical wrongs yeah a program to kind of make those things right and then move forward so your question was how do we start to restore that trust so

That's actually part of our mission at Miria. When we say that the world's most successful people should be, that we're a community and a concierge, we want them to be having more fun. We want them to be spending more money. And it sounds very snooty. It sounds very exclusive until you understand that we believe in inclusive exclusivity.

Right. So success is not just money. So our members are not just rich. They're also people who are changing the world in many other walks of life. Very great academics and accomplished business people and artists and solving the economic problems we need.

to all kind of do our part in it. That goes back to, you know, what if the wealthiest people in the world were also the nicest? What if they also were the most charitable? Well, if you're having fun in your life and you're enjoying your life and you're coming into contact with people and it's not insular and it's more fun, you're seeing and kind of touching the problems, right? I mean, our primary service for our customers on the concierge side, of course, is human powered services. And

being nice to and tipping well and making sure the people who are serving you are taken care of, it's a rounding error on the balance sheets for most of our clients. So why not do it? Because when you really, really think about it, let's say you and I hit the jackpot, build a great business or hit the lottery, whatever our path to success or money is. We have all the money we can dream of. We go and buy a $70 million G6. How many people have to wake up that morning

so that my plane can take off. Somebody's got to fuel it. Somebody had to drive a truck to get it there. Somebody's got to be in that air traffic control tower. Somebody's got to handle the baggage. You got to have pilots in the cockpit. And that's just here where you're taking off from. Somebody halfway around the world have to also get up and do the same thing. Well, those people who are getting up to fuel your plane, they have got to earn a living wage.

Because at the point that they don't learn the living wage, then you have a problem. The whole system falls apart. Right. Then you see what you're seeing in America, the tent cities. You have people who are like, I've worked 60 hours this week and cannot eat and pay rent. Why am I working?

I worked a 60-hour work week in America and I am on public assistance. Why work at all? And this goes back to the whole, there are three people in America with more money than the bottom 50% of Americans. So wealth is getting concentrated into so few hands that it becomes dangerous. And you never know where it starts. You never know the moment of ignition. Think about the Arab Spring. The forces which led to it had been

underway for decades, right? All this upheaval and people were able to suppress it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. One day, a person whose name none of us will even remember his name, he had done everything society had told him. I think he had two degrees from great school and he's there selling fruit in a fruit stand. And he's like, fuck it. He self-immolates. He sets himself on fire.

which literally was the spark for the Arab Spring because it touched so many other people there who were like in this position of like, I don't trust these people. I don't trust this system. I'm an optimist. I want you to hear me loud and clear. I actually believe

that you and I are having this conversation because at the end of the day, the universe bends towards positive and most people want to do the right thing. And sure, we've got a lot of crazy things that we need to address. And I just want to promote honest and open conversation around those things so that we can get there the fun and interesting and happy way as opposed to the sort of powder keg situations that I think being divisive and not talking openly about these things promotes.

I want to come back to something we said earlier and then, which was trust and circles. One of the things that we both noticed and talked about a little bit beforehand is how

Sometimes the wealthier you are the smaller your circle is and not only is it smaller but it gets smaller every year It's really hard to get into that Circle for an outsider. Can you talk to me about that what you've seen and experienced? Right. Um, so it starts Really and truly with the successful person being focused, right? So great financial success

I'm not talking about heirs, but entrepreneurs, people that are out there building businesses, it takes a lot out of you. And we are all only given 24 hours a day. And if you've built some giant thing to give you a bunch of money, you've spent the majority of your time doing that thing. And so whatever that thing is, it's just like one vertical, one business. And so that in and of itself is...

is insular, right? So you're focused on that thing. You're missing the kids' ball games. You're not on the PTA board. You're at work, right? So it kind of starts there.

Having a bunch of money has some awesome parts to it, right? The more money you have, the more stuff you can buy, the more places you can get, right? There's some cool parts to it. But then there are some downsides. Most things are directly related to money. The more money you have, it's going up.

But then a lot of the personal pieces are inversely related. So the more money you have, the fewer people you can trust. The more money you have, the harder it is for a person to look you in the eye and tell you the truth, just tell you things that you don't want to hear. And so that circle to your point just keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. That is one of the things that we hope to correct with the community aspect of Myria in exposing people

people who are super successful to other interesting human beings that are doing amazing things. Contact theory, right? Just by, you know, by coming into contact with other Myriad members and the service people who make all the magic happen around the world for our clients, we think it helps everyone to, you know, to be more successful and happier ultimately. There's two things there that I want to dive into a little bit. One was the

Often we become successful because we've focused on one vertical. That vertical is usually money, career success. We're climbing one ladder at the exclusion of kids, family. And so it's interesting to me because we often look up to people and we're like, oh man, I wish I was this person. And then if you dove into it, you'd find out that they're an incredibly successful

unbalanced person. They have extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses. I mean, there's more than a couple of billionaires that I'm sure we both know in the United States that couldn't drive their kids to school if they had to because they don't know where their kids go to school. They don't know how to get there from their house.

And so we look at this and we hold these people up and we think, oh, I want to be like that person. But we're picking one vertical out of that. We don't want to trade all of our problems for their problems. Right. Well, this is the whole changing the definition of success, changing what it looks like. What does it mean? So.

For us, if success is money, this goes back to that idea of the Arab Spring person. He did what society told him to do. Get an education. Well, he didn't just get one degree, he got two. You play by the rules. You do what you're told.

And then the shock of your life, you don't have what you thought would be there. And so we're looking at success as money. And even the rich are getting all of the money and are like, well, I thought happiness was here. Well, I thought community, you know, and it's just not because the definition was always wrong. All of these concepts, you know, we were talking about America's system of government or the presidency being an outdated concept, even capitalism.

the economy. Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations the same year, 1776, that America became a nation, right? 250 some odd years ago. And the capitalism that Adam Smith articulated in Wealth of Nations is not the capitalism that we practice today. Nowhere near it. In fact,

By today's definition, Adam Smith would be labeled a socialist or a communist if you actually read Adam Smith's quotes in the book. You know, he says the rich should not be taxed in proportion to their income, but something more than. Right. I mean, there's all these these crazy sorts of sounding things like, oh, no, responsible capitalist would. But capitalism and democracy, all of these things are meant to serve the people.

and to hopefully make us happier and more productive and lead better lives. I also don't believe in this idea of a James Bond supervillain. Pick whoever you think of as the worst billionaire in the world. Were they alive in 1776? No. They didn't invent capitalism. They were born into it, just like us. And if there's a problem with the game, if there's a problem with inequality,

then let's all work together to change the game that we all agreed to play instead of blaming the people who are playing it. I believe that they are us. We have this idea that this conspiratorial sorts of thing, someone's got their hand on the wheel, but no one has their hand on the wheel. Do you think if we got rid of multi-generational wealth,

in the sense that you could accumulate as much as you want during your life, but when you pass on, it all goes away. It would solve a massive amount of the problems. So would property records. Why do you own the land past your natural life? So America obviously was settled. There was a homesteading act

And the American government gave over 10% of the land of the United States to people, but not all people. That created the first inequality. Because wealth compounds and the nation has protected the property records. You know, a generation is between 10 and 25, 10 and 30 years. Let's kind of split the difference, call it 25.

There's been about 10 generations in America. From the foundation until 1978, if you were black in America, you could not fairly compound money. 202 years out of the 10 generations, right? So literally my son

and I'm not that old, is the first generation of black folks in America that could actually begin compounding money in the way that other people were allowed to in the nation. For generations before. From the founding of the country. Since we got there, right? From the start until 1978. I was five years old when that occurred. And then specifically in 1978, because you had the Fair Housing Act and all of the associated lending protections to go in place.

And so it took literally that long, 1776 to 1978. Now federal taxes started in 1913, whatever that is, 65 years, and African Americans are paying federal taxes for benefits that they do not receive. And it compounds this sort of wild inequality generation after generation after generation. And it's at the heart of eroding the trust

Right at the end of the day people want to go to work. They want to obey the rules of society I've paid my taxes. I've gone to school. I've done nothing wrong. I voted I've been a good person and there is nothing here for you know that system You know as it just keeps going going going going Breaks down now the founding fathers and their wisdom gave us a system voting to change it

I made that statistic earlier that three people are richer than 165 million. Well, what's the most votes ever cast in a US federal election? 81 million votes. Literally, at the next federal election, if they so chose, those 165 million people could vote their way out of poverty. You could tax their way out of poverty unilaterally. But there's too much division in the nation

There's no honest fact-based conversations to talk about how we solve these problems. And it just leads to this sort of spiraling, spiraling, spiraling, when does it end? I would tell you that even my wealthiest clients don't like it. So they played by the rules of the game, they succeeded.

They want to change it, but no one person, even if one person said, hey, I'm a billionaire, here's a billion dollars. I'm going to leave it on a street corner in the poorest neighborhood in town. Go run with it. Whoever wants it, it's all yours. What's the US federal budget? Trillions of dollars. That $1 billion is not going to address anything. I mean, sure, the people who, quote unquote, hit the lottery that day and found the money would do better, but it won't fix anything systemically. This is why we believe we've got to create groups of people

who are having more fun, who are having these discussions, who are being inclusively exclusive. So, "Hey, I'm financially successful. Hey, I'm a great artist. Hey, I'm financially successful.

I'm tops in music. Hey, you know, and bringing those people together, not in an accusatorial way, not in an agenda sort of way, but, um, but kind of moving society forward in that way. That's interesting. Cause you, you don't just accept anybody. You have an onboarding process. Uh, and through that process, you're getting to know each other. They're getting to know you, you're getting to know them. I'm wondering if you can go through some of the questions that you ask people, uh,

And I'm sure our audience would value going through these as well in terms of how do I get to know myself and where I'm at? Yeah, I think one of the great opportunities is to choose happiness today and to choose a broader definition of what we think of as success. So when we sit down with people, we send them a questionnaire. And the questionnaire includes a bunch of different sections. There's a fun section.

Because again, I believe if people are having more fun in their life, we're all human beings. Who doesn't want to enjoy their life, right? Like everyone wants to be having a good time, to feel good, to feel special, have a great time. And so there's all of the bucket list questions, if you will, right? What's the stuff that you've done? What's the stuff that you've been wanting to do your whole life? You know, what are the things that you're curious about? And then we get into more of the philosophical things. Imagine you're at your 80th birthday.

or whatever late life birthday you want it to be, everyone you love is gathered around and they say, they're gonna toast you. What would those closest to you say about you? Now if that birthday party was held tonight, what would they say about you today? And if there's a delta, what do you wanna do about it? If your doctor called you right now and was like, you've got one year to live, would you be doing anything different than you're doing today? And if so,

Why? And just really asking these sorts of probing questions, who matters in your life? Talk to us about your community. And so it kind of starts at the me, you know, because we're all looking at ourselves and then we try to broaden it to get our clients to kind of look outside of themselves and to start thinking about obviously their family first, then their community, and then kind of the broader issues.

I think one of the interesting things that COVID did is it disconnected us from our community en masse. It locked us in our house, delivery services. We don't have to interact with people. We're not forced to see people who are more or less successful than we are. We don't see the full spectrum of society. And because we don't, we think the world looks a lot like us. We become disconnected and selfish as a result of that.

I agree with you. I would argue that you see it in music. I am old enough to remember how black people in America acted before hip hop. And I'm going to sound like a boomer. I already know, you know, people are going to be like, what? Dr. Dre. Everybody can see Dr. Dre in their head. Well, before Dr. Dre was in a black ball cap and, you know, the N.W.A. look,

Dr. Dre was in world-class wrecking crew, you know sequins jacket with long jerry curl, right? Like it was a completely different Thing I'm the first hip-hop generation. There would be no such thing as hip-hop of my generation didn't like it So it's not I'm not criticizing hip-hop in any way But what I'm trying to say is at that point in time it was entertainment and now it's become not entertainment It's become lifestyle and culture for a lot of people the music

even in early hip-hop was we centric it was looking out at the world like and at some point that changed and all of the lyrics became me how much I've got how much money look at me me me me me me me me me me me me me me and you know that me centric thinking

Is I think closely related to how we've defined success, right? All the money I got the this I got the car I've got the you know me me me what I've got and again, we are all connected We are not going to be able to ever create a society where we don't need each other And if we could create it who would want that I don't want to live in some, you know test tube without people Right, and we've gotten very myopic

Very narrowly viewed. And I see it reflected in the culture, in the music, in the movies, et cetera, et cetera. We're all part of an ecosystem. We are a super organism, whether we know it or not. And this was interesting because during COVID, I mean, my kids actually used this against me to get what they wanted, which I thought was quite clever of them. Because I was teaching them like, well, we have to support society.

small businesses, right? So we have to find a way to either order food or like go out and get food, even if we can't go in the restaurant. Well, like, and they were like, well, why? And I was like, well, because we're all part of an ecosystem. I run a business, they run a business, we're all interconnected, right? Like, I can't really be successful if they're not successful. I mean, I can financially, but I can't exist in the community and in a world

we're not all successful together. And so my oldest comes to me and he's like, I think we should make a rule to have croissants every day. He was like 10 at the time, I think, or 11. Mine is 11. So I get it. And I was like, well, what do you think will happen if we have croissants every day? And he's quite clever. He's like, well, in France, they eat croissants every day. And like,

They seem pretty healthy. They also drink an espresso. Should I give you an espresso? No. And I was like, okay. And then he's like, and you told us we need to support local businesses. And like this box of cereal or, you know, whatever is not local and like croissants, that's just down the road. They're as smart as their power. Oh my God. And then of course we end up having croissants more often than we'd like because of that. But it was a clever sort of argument about that. But yeah, we're all part of the same system.

And I do feel like you can't have one part of that system be so successful when other parts of the system aren't.

But it's about growing the pie, not dividing the pie, right? So how do we grow the pie for everybody instead of focus on the selfishness of sort of how do we get the biggest piece for ourselves? That's one of the most amazing things about all of this stuff that we're discussing. I wrote this section in my upcoming book called The Cost of Stupidity. Stress from poverty and all of the crazy things that go on in America is

shortens the lifespan of African Americans. Blacks live 5.8 years less than white people in America. There's about 42 million black people in America. You multiply 5.8 years times 42 million, and you get a big number: 2.1 trillion hours of life. The Apollo space program, the moonshot, was 5.2 billion man hours to put a man on the moon.

And the benefits to society has changed telecommunications. There would be no SpaceX today without the Apollo program. Like, think about all of the societal benefits from one moonshot. Then think about how much life is being wasted in America. 2.1 trillion man hours, divide that in half, we're wasting about 200 moonshots of human productivity being selfish, not letting

the lessons of the past change our future. And there is no telling where our society would be. We could tackle all of these great issues we keep talking about but don't want to deal with in a meaningful way just by being more open and honest about these things. I want to come back to the questions that you asked just for a second. Is there one that stands out for you as like if I could only ask one question to get to know somebody,

and determine whether this is a person I want to work with, what would that question be? That would be the question. And it's different for everyone. There is no right answer. Right. So for every person, for our clients, for every person who comes in young, 20s or 30s, wealth event, single, ready to go have fun, meet people, party, whatever. We have a mid-career person.

with kids. The last thing they want to do is go party. They're trying to do fun stuff with their family. We have other people, late stage career, who are focused on wealth transfer, who are legacy, so forth and so on. There's no right answer to it. But if you ask the question, would we want to work with them? I think the what do you want is very, very helpful. Do you see answers change over time? Like with the people who are sort of like maybe near end of life, do they think about

their role in society and sort of things differently than people who are maybe mid-stage? It depends on who. We kind of over-index on people who are thinking socially.

But we certainly know a bunch of folks who aren't. Because we all gain perspective. I mean, like the 40-year-old me looks at my 16-year-old self and was like, man, that guy was an idiot. But my 60-year-old self is going to look at me now and be like, man, that guy was an idiot. Again, I'm an optimist, right? When I look at the sort of folks that we're meeting, I think that

the wealthy get painted with this broad stroke, a caricature almost. But certainly some of our mutual friends are literally some of the nicest and most genial humans on this planet who definitely care, who are definitely trying to get it right. None of us have this whole thing figured out. We can sit here with all of our fancy words and our big talk and our learnings, but we really just don't know that much. I mean, humanity is frankly not that smart. I mean, when you think about AI,

So here we've created a machine that can run on your phone that knows everything every human has ever thought. And for me, it just...

really points towards a little bit, maybe a more human humility. Isn't that fucking crazy? Like literally your iPhone gives you access to this incredible amount of knowledge. But I also think it puts us into perspective, right? The pale blue dot idea. Carl Sagan, yeah. The Carl Sagan idea that at the end of the day, when you zoom out and really look at it,

we can realize that we're special through humility as opposed to ego. You know, that thinking, well, we're so smart. We're so this, we're so that. Well, AI knows everything we have ever thought or will think in every language and can translate it back and forth. So if you could build a box, a machine to do that, we're really all that smart all along. You know what I mean? I actually think it's kind of a pale blue dot moment for us to kind of look at

ourselves and gain some humility around it. I'm actually not in the AI doom and gloom camp at all. That's interesting. A lot of people, it does seem very bifurcated between doom and gloom and optimism. There's not a lot of like, well, we'll see how it plays out sort of in the middle. I'm wondering what do your clients tend to worry about? Like what stresses them out? Is it the same things that stress normal people out? Is it different? Is it amplified?

I think money is an amplifier. It turns up the volume on who a person is. It doesn't change who they are.

with the caveat that great wealth does have the negative effects I was mentioning earlier. So the normal worries that folks have, safety and security, is kind of a big one. They become targets for frivolous litigation and a lot of bad behavior. You know, things which if they were poor, you know,

would never be an issue, but even the minorest of infractions are like, you know, everything's super, super litigious. And so people, this leads to the kind of isolating and insular thing where they, you know, they have to be careful with people because they don't know what's going on. Oh, I slipped and fell. Here's, you know. So besides the security and kind of the litigation issues, there's a lot of hand wrangling over what's going on in society.

the, the broader sort of, you know, these are, there are people who are, I feel like really concerned about it, putting their money where their mouth is and kind of thinking through these problems, um, in a, in a significant way. But yeah, people are people, right? So they, they have the basic fears, but it does kind of turn up the volume on some of the, uh, what about kids? I know some of my wealthier friends who might be targets or, or

what have you in sort of frivolous lawsuits or something. They, they might allow their kids to have like an Instagram account, but it's private, it's locked, it's not public. And that's sort of also,

And comes back to harm these kids in a way right when they go to university and they go for they go to rush for a sorority or now all of a sudden they've got this locked account. It doesn't seem like they're you know, we're always looking at the wrong metrics. So I don't want to get into like whether we're looking at the right metrics or not, but their life is very closed system oriented.

of trust. Talk to me a little bit about that and how you see it and what you've seen work and not work. I think all parents want the best for their kids. If anybody out there has a rule book for how to get the best out of their kids, I definitely want that book. We're all trying. People who have raised happy, successful kids, kind of a

Some of the best examples, you know, I feel like are the parents who kind of let their kids be themselves and been patient with them. Lord knows we all needed a lot of patience. The child parent relationships that have been the most strained that we've been exposed to have been those where the parents try to

handle the fish a little too much. You know what I mean? Either positively or negatively, right? You can be a helicopter parent in one direction, you can be a jerk in another direction. The families that I know where the kids are

you know, just most normal, happiest leading their lives. The parents kind of let them be kids and let them be themselves. One thing I've heard from somebody that I totally admire and respect, and I don't want to reveal who the person is, but they said, if you have, well,

How you raise your kids is their expectation. So like if you, you can't have them live a different lifestyle. So if you're living in a mansion and you get picked up in a chauffeur and you tell your 15 year old to go get a job at McDonald's, it's going to cause resentment.

So you have to live whatever lifestyle you want them to grow up in. So if you want your kids to grow up in a middle class lifestyle, you actually have to live. You can't force a subset of a middle class lifestyle on them. Or how do you how do you see this? Like you interact with all these people. That is interesting.

a truism. Let's go back to our definition of success, right? So in America, this Horatio Alger, I worked hard and I made it. You know, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. I did it. I went out there and made it, young man. And you too, you're going to go out there and make it, right? So I'm worth $10 billion. I'm going to leave you $100,000 or nothing at all. And you're going to go, you know, because I don't want to spoil you. You know, somewhere in

Along the lines, our definition of success also kind of blended with masculinity in this weird sort of way. And it comes to kind of define the alpha male, you know, I'm super, super successful. And if you look at Forbes, so Forbes publishes the billionaire list and 26, 2700 names on it. That's actually not the most important designation. The most important designation is self-made. Hmm.

So within the Forbes billionaire list, there's heirs, there's all these, but that self-made billionaire, that's the designation that everyone wants. And it leads to this sort of thing where everyone has to be self-made. Talk to any billionaire, the first words out of anyone's mouth will be like, I didn't come from anything. Whether or not that's true, right? They'll be like, oh, I came from nothing, right? That's at the beginning of

of every story on the self-made thing. And I think it leads to some really, really interesting effects, particularly with relation to people's children,

and their ability to be self-made kind of in a parent's shadow. And it's not just with money. It's also with like what they're calling now nepo babies. So your parents are famous actor, your parents are famous singer. Well, if you're interested in acting, you get opportunities because, oh, and then you're looked down on it. You know, just all of this weirdness where, of course, if a child grows up in this lifestyle, seeing this thing, maybe they want to emulate it. Maybe they don't.

And who doesn't want to look out for their kids and do the best for them? But then when you get to the kind of wealth money transfer and the self-made thing, it gets kind of wonky. I can go deeper on it, but it's kind of a touchy subject. Yeah, there's another aspect to sort of call them wealthy kids for lack of a better term that a lot of people don't appreciate as much as other people, which is often their parents aren't home.

They're working. They're not there for them emotionally or even physically present with their kids. And that takes a toll. And maybe later in life, you sort of because you you lived unconsciously, you come to regret that. Maybe you don't. I mean, I would definitely think that that would be.

um something people would regret but it's only you sort of realize that after and so how do we use their hindsight to become our foresight well you know on that topic i wouldn't even point a finger at my client i'd point a finger at myself you know i've been an entrepreneur you know building businesses and and look you know i had a day of reckoning around this very point you know that i'm not i was not spending the time and the care with my own children that i should have and you know listen

Everything that I'm saying out here about entrepreneurs and success, I'm dealing with as a human as well. Right. And so I definitely don't want to make this sound like, you know, I'm exempted from it. And a lot of these learnings and the things that we're encouraging people to do because I'm a dad of two and I've run multiple companies and sold a business and work too much and trying to lead a happier, balanced life myself.

So I get it, I guess, is another reason I hope that we're able to have good conversations with folks around it. What happened? Your day of reckoning, like what was the moment or the story that you were like, whoa? Yeah, so in 2021, kind of the worst things that I could ever imagine happening to me

all happened at once, like, you know, major, major life crisis. It was the sort of thing which, you know, when it happened, my life would either, my life would never be the same from the instance it happened and the outcome would be binary, right? I would go on to be okay or, you know, or wind up in a very, very bad place. Going through it, I discovered that the things that were happening to me were not really happening to me. They were happening for me.

And it produced this really, really incredible personal effect on me. One of the most visible effects, if you see old photos of me online, I was 350 pounds. So I lost 100 pounds in about four and a half months. It helped me rebuild my company, rebuilt and improved the time I get to spend with my kids and just all of these other things that kind of came through that journey. The journey is the inward journey.

Right. Really reconnecting with and understanding one's self and then our relation to others and being able to just kind of get outside of our own lens, our own perspective and see ourselves more honestly, more candidly. Was that the hardest moment in your life? Far and away. Is there any advice you'd have to people going through something similar where they're feeling it's the hardest moment that they're going through?

The advice that I would give would be to wholly face and embrace it. Don't shy away from it. Don't delay it. You know, mine was so crazy that I couldn't, you know, I think I had kicked the can down the road as far as I could on for me. And then, you know,

When it happened, there was nothing that I could do. I had to face it. I think a lot of times people will start to get the inkling, hey, something's wrong. I need to face this. And you kind of delay it. You put it off because it's uncomfortable to go through kind of great personal change. And, you know, you've to be free of these things.

you have to defeat them, you know, whatever that is, you know, addiction to food or whatever these things, whatever problem it is for a person, you got to face that thing, hold on and, um, and conquer it. I like that. That's good advice. I think it's fitting. We always wrap up the show with a very similar question and given the episode and the stuff that we've talked about today, what is success for you?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately because our business is growing and a lot of really interesting things are afoot that I frankly never would have dreamed would happen and I feel like I dream big dreams. But for me, success is first and foremost being a better father, my family,

fulfilling my social responsibility and making a difference as you know as glib and heard it before as that sounds you know I've got a book coming out and all of these other things that are going on but but the stuff that really really matters is the the heartfelt pieces for me my life has has changed a lot in that regard I love what I get to do every day being able to work with the folks that we work with and I really do feel like we're making a difference not only

in the lives of our clients, but in the lives of everyone that we touch. Thank you. That's beautiful, right? Thank you for taking the time today. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be in Ottawa. This is a great conversation, man. Thank you, sir. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog slash podcast, or just Google The Knowledge Project. Until next time.