Show Notes:

King of the jungle. “A lot of life is just luck. Some of us were born with a certain drive, and some of us were born without it. Every day in the jungle, a lion is born and a sloth is born. The sloth is screwed from the beginning because they only really eat, sleep, and poop. The lion can be six months old and cause people to run for cover. He or she is the king or the queen of the jungle. Luck is just part of life.”

Learn from paperboys. “I’ve always been fascinated with paperboys. They’re 10 or 11 years old, and they’re tied to this job every day. Rain, sleet, snow, grouchy customers, bad customers, but they do it every single day. I believe those paperboys are lions. Warren Buffett was a paperboy. Oprah Winfrey was a papergirl. When I meet people, especially my age, I ask them if they were a paperboy or a papergirl. And when they tell me they were, it’s like my own little Myers-Briggs personality test. I know who I’m dealing with.”

Nothing beats hard work. “Some mules can plow all day long, and some mules don’t do anything. The secret to success is not brains; it’s the willingness to work. Everybody that I know who is very successful has been a hard worker. When I look around my firm or around the offices in America, the most successful people are the people working on the weekends. The common denominator: the most successful people in my life have been the hardest working.”

You can’t teach hungry. “Almost everybody has a limit of satiability. But then there’s that rare breed that has an insatiable appetite. No matter what they have, they want more. It’s not about money. It’s about winning. It’s about succeeding. It’s about being respected. I’m always looking for those people who have that insatiable appetite. That they’re never going to stop because they want to be successful, respected, and revered.”

Think outside the (upside-down) box. “I don’t golf, fish, or hunt. My hobbies were my family and business. Then I asked myself, ‘What if I built an attraction?’ So I built WonderWorks: an interactive science exhibit inside of an upside-down house. Now I’ve got six. Those things print money because there’s no cost of goods, they’re hard to steal from, and people love them. It’s a great hobby because it keeps me occupied and makes me money at the same time.”

Surround yourself with Roys. “Walt Disney was the visionary, but he had his brother Roy to balance him out. My ‘Roy’ is my wife. The one thing you find about people who make and keep a lot of their money is that they rely on various partners. That’s why I rely heavily on my wife as well as all kinds of other professionals, like CPAs. I keep a whole team of ‘Roys’ around.”

Swim upstream. “There’s always resistance from vision-blockers. There’s always somebody trying to stop you. Anything that’s worthwhile will not be easy. Sam Walton had a rule: swim upstream. When people tell you that you can’t, that just means that they can’t. When people say no, it really means yes. You have to make sure that you understand that a lot of people are trying to stop you from being great because they know that they can’t be great. And misery loves company.”