Show Notes:

4:06 – It all starts with luck. “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.”

5:21 – We can learn a lot 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 Briggs Meyer personality test. I know who I’m dealing with.”

6:40 – The common denominator of success is 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.”

8:18 – Seek those with an insatiable appetite. “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.”

20:29 – 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.”

25:20 – The balance to the visionary (Roy Disney). “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.”

29:59 – 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.”

EPISODE RESOURCES & REFERENCES
Morgan & Morgan
Warren Buffett
Oprah Winfrey
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Shaquille O’Neal
Maker’s Mark
12 Angry Men
Beverly Hills Sports Council
Major League Baseball
WonderWorks
Alcatraz East
Guy Fieri
Guy Fieri’s Downtown Flavortown
Dave and Buster’s
Pigeon Forge
Tiger Woods
OJ Simpson
Ford Bronco
Ted Bundy
Bonnie and Clyde
Al Pacino
Pluto
Disney World
Walt Disney
Roy Disney
The Millionaire Next Door
Marie Antoinette
Fulgencio Batista
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
Mad Max
Sam Walton
Ben Franklin (business)
Litify
Salesforce
Andrew Yang
Johnnie Cochran