Rey Flemings: A Different Definition of Success

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/e68d34b6aea529f2

you know, 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, you know, I'm out there hustling, out there hustling, gotta make money, gotta make money.
But there was no end to that.
And so you wind up in a scenario where
You have made it. You have a wealth of it. You've got a hundred million dollars.
But that's not enough because
Someone has five hundred million dollars.
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Shane Parrish.
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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.
Flemings is one of the nation's experts on the ultra wealthy.
His unique perspective was honed during his thirty year career bridging Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and family offices. Flemings was the CEO of Proticle, which was acquired by Apple in twenty ten.
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.
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 first, I believe.
Two thousand twenty. Now you've got to to set the scene, the world is crazy.
Um, if you remember at that time
Manhattan had
Scores of refrigerator trucks.
Right, because the
the the Morgue system could even process the body. So this is a very scary time. It's not you know what I mean? It's 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 uh have a 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 will get those phone calls. And uh this was one of
And so
You know, we got two things that day.
We got a wire from the state of New York for
Forty five point nine million dollars.
and a phone call from the FBI.
Uh so at this time you remember there was all these
You know.
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.
Right. 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
Uh I think the task was we had seventy two hours to get
I can't remember the exact math, but a a couple of thousand ventilators, whatever the math worked out to be.
And get them into Manhattan.

Um and to get them out of China.
Well, there was a problem.
Was never really
Public news.
But China had
embargoed.
The distribution
uh sale of ventilators to America.
Um 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. Um
Now these are life saving instruments. You know, it sounds like we're setting up to, you know, go and run drugs or something, right? We're literally just seeking ventilators, but at that moment in time.
uh those devices were
The most valuable commodity on earth.
you know, every hour it seemed like the price on these things was you know was going. So the week before
We took that project on. I think the average price of those devices
was less than six thousand dollars.
by the end of the ten days or so that we worked on this project.
the price reached nearly four hundred thousand dollars.
for ventilator.
Right.
Everybody needed one. Everybody wanted one. Governments were willing to pay kind of whatever it took to get them.
Um, and whenever a thing is that valuable, it invites
All sorts of
criminal elements.
fraud, you know, every crazy thing that you could ever want to have happen. So at the end of the day,
Um 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 ventors physically and kind of tape them down as we, you know, as we found uh
Different allotments of them.
We made um some arrangements to have them, you know, essentially.
you know, brought into the United States uh through essentially smuggled out of China. Um 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, you know, kind of don't know why.
I would note as a footnote that
You know
A year and a half or so ago it came out that the uh
you know, the the state of New York had
it kind of falsified the
the death numbers from the nursing homes and things of that sort.
uh but a very, very interesting experience to go get
two thousand ventilators in the middle of COVID, and then have the ventilators turned down after doing the work. Uh so um
Yeah, that's uh 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. Um, Miriam is a community and concierge for people who are super successful.
And in the course of
uh you know, people come to us because they want um
enhanced access to
Um
relationships, people that they don't know.
and to things that they want in their lives, and we help them get those things. And um I think all people want to feel special.
Uh 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
uh 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
Uh they're difficult.
uh too 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 B for that. You want to buy a ticket to Coachella.
Go to Coachella.com. You've got a VIP pass.
Number two is hard.
Um, these are things where maybe they're available online, but they're still difficult for you to get your hands on. Uh so these would be things like
booking a private jet.
Yeah, you can book a private shed 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 of Med Kayla or
being on stage with your favorite artist, et cetera, et cetera. And then um the fifth category are
the impossible requests like the ventilator chase or all of these other sorts of of wild
and interesting things that we get called on to do.
Wha what 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.
Um 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.
Um the client had uh some security concerns, he was on vacation.
And um we essentially got
security an exception made by the government to treat him like a diplomat.
And uh 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.
mean the degree of difficulty on getting stuff like that done is
You know, kind of off the off the chart.
And what I what I find fascinating about problems like this,'cause you're solving a problem effectively.
Not really repeatable. I mean, in those two instances, in the security, in the security instance, they are repeatable in the ventilator, obviously. That was kind of a a once in in a lifetime, hopefully, um, you know, sort of global pandemic.
Um, 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 um 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.
Um, 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 or money, I guess is a different way to word this. Does money become hollow?
the point where you can go out and buy anything you want that's available for sale. You know, money has um has been proven.
uh to
you know, have some negative effects on people.
Right, we become
The richer we become, we become insensitive.
Wealth is also um isolating.
You know, the the rich become very, very insular.
Um, billionaire is becoming a dirty word, it's becoming a pejorative, you know, people uh, 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 be out of this luxury mindset and into a place of
of what we call post luxury.
Where it's not necessarily about the nice thing.
Um
It's about experiences.
It's about connection.
It's about people.
And um 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
you know, every child we grow up like, Hey, I wanna be successful.
Your parents say, Go be successful.
Right, and we we chase success.
Um 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. I'm out, you know, I'm out there hustling, out there hustling, gotta make money, gotta make money.
But there was no end to that.
Right. And so you wind up in a scenario where
You have made it. You have a wealth of it. You've got a 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 ten billion.
There's an element of like happy if, right? Like
Happy when I 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 dollars. I'll be happy when I get to twenty million dollars. 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 polls. I I think there's something, uh there's a 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 of what success looks like.
to be more holistic.
To not just be money.
And
you know, we are all uh socially connected.
Um, have you ever had Nicholas Kristakas on as a guest?
Yeah. Uh he wrote a great book called Connect It.
you know, we know that we can catch covet, we were talking about, or we know we can catch flu, but
You know, he uh Nicholas is a is a world renowned academic and and just great human. He's a Sterling professor at Yale, and he's done all this fantastic research and basically
Um
You can also catch obesity.
You can catch smoking.
You can catch suicide, depression.
You can also catch happiness.
uh you can catch sadness, you know, all of these things. And so
I think
Because society has kind of placed this ideal, go get rich as 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 brought in 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 but
Far it away.
massive percentages of their income, what sort of societal impact would that have?
You know, right now
If you went to I imagine school age children and and asked them
Draw a picture of it. Tell me what philanthropy looks like.
They might be able to do it.
or paint many pictures of what philanthropy looks like, but they wouldn't
Describe it as cool.
Right, 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 we're
What we do is we work really hard to achieve these goals that we think we're playing by somebody else's scoreboard, right? Cause I think unconsciously,
somebody's told us this is what we need to do and then we play to that scoreboard.
only too 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 in 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's life. Right. And they're they're not moments of people who are like you, right? Or just one level above you. They're moments of people who are
who are just well beyond the gap between
you know, rich uh 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?
Uh I agree with you.
Uh that is part of the problem.
And I think, you know, all of the studies are pretty clear that it has a negative effects on 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, you know, 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, you know, kind of the best of the best of the best moments in anyone's life and
the supermajority of your life isn't like that.
Well the super majority of all of our lives isn't like that. But you're you're f you're scrolling and all you're seeing are these extraordinary moments in everybody else's life.
And it weighs down on people, I think.
How can it not?
When I think of wealth versus rich, I think
You know, wealth has a language and it's not money.
And that language is sort of
Um 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.
Ulogized uh Joseph Heller.
Who wrote Catch Twenty Two?
And in his eulogy he told a story about he and Heller visiting a billionaire's island. You probably heard this in all the the great literature you have behind the wall, but the the story goes something like
Voniga teases.
Joseph Heller by saying, Do you know?
That our billionaire host made more money today.
Then you may
in all the copies of catch twenty two you've ever sold since publication.
And Hell said, Yeah, I know that.
But I have something that the billionaire
We'll never have.
And Vonnegut asks what?
And Hiller 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 five hundred, 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 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 uh
have gotten a paycheck in our life.
if you're paid bi weekly.
Um
You spend a million seconds of your life every twelve and a half days.
You spend a billion seconds of your life every
Thirty two 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 one billion, two billion.
Twenty billion, thirty billion, fifty billion, six what is the point?
Right. Um, at some point we need to be pushing those things further and further and helping people. I also loved Warren Buffett's quote in his documentary.
Yeah, 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 as 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 uh says, uh Well why did that change?
And uh said, Will it change because
I discovered that the problems of humanity are compounding faster.
Then I can compound money.
And uh 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, uh after after realizing it.
That's a powerful sort of realization. W one of the things is you were talking about millions and billions and how we we lose the concept of what that means.
We we also lose it in society. It's not just with um 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
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 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 the
We don't understand, and I'm meaning the big we, the the the so called leaders, you know, there's this idea.
That there is this
group of really smart people.
who have their hand on the wheel guiding the planet left or right or kind of, you know, making all of these decisions.
I
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 the problem is not.
Trump or Biden.
The problem's not Obama or Bush.
The problem in America is with the presidency itself.
You know, the 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.
That 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
Дезо до хума бін да смарт.
who can do a good job on all of these things it's it's it's far beyond their reach
And I think we've got to
uh recognize
That the system
Is getting
to a point where
Where it doesn't make sense even to the people who are operating the system.
In in my business, uh Silicon Valley Bank imploded, I'll give you an example.
uh 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 two hundred and fifty K, right? Right. So so even that number, right? The FBI C
The FDIC has about a hundred and thirty billion dollars.
And if everybody withdrew their money. This is not even everybody.
They've got a hundred and thirty billion of insurance money.
How much money do US depositors have in US Bank?
twenty trillion.
Right.
So how's a hundred and thirty billion dollars insuring
twenty trillion dollars.
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 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 poor and the whites aren't trusting the blacks, and Republicans aren't trust. You begin to see this fraying of the edges, the the things that you see in San Francisco right now is
you know, all of the these things going on. It's
It all actually sits on
A lack of trust or an erosion of trust this
freeing of the American experiment.
How do we rebuild trust? South Africa did something really interesting.
Here was a you know a community thanks to apartheid, which uh there had been a lot of wrongs done.
You could look at examples throughout history where
You know, 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 gonna 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 it
Mm.
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.
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 our mission at Miriam.
Yeah, when we say that the world's most successful people
should be um you know that we're 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
um believe in inclusive exclusivity.
Right, so success is not just money.
So our members are not just rich.
There are also people who are changing the world in many other walks of life.
very great academics and accomplished business people and artists.
And
Совінні економік проблем.
uh we n
Uh 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 uh 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
Um
Our primary service for our customers on the concierge side, of course, is human powered services.
And
Um
being nice to.
and tipping well and making sure the people who are serving you
uh 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 our path to success or money is.
We have all the money we can dream of. We go and buy
A seventy million dollar.
G six.
How many people have to wake up?
That morning.
So that my plane can take off.
Somebody's gotta fuel it.
Somebody had to drive a truck to get it there.
Somebody's gotta be in that air traffic control tower.
Somebody's gotta handle the baggage.
You gotta 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 were getting up to
fuel your plane.
They have got to earn a living wage.
Because at the point that they don't earn a 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 were like,
I've worked sixty hours this week.
and cannot eat and pay rent.
Why am I working?
Right, I worked a sixty hour work week in America and I am on public assistance.
Why work at all?
And this goes back to the whole there are you know, three people in America with more money
than the bottom fifty percent of Americans.
Right. 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 uh 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
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
So that we can get there the fun and interesting and and happy way.
As opposed to
The sort of
you know, powder keg situations that I think
being divisive and not talking openly about these things promotes.
Uh, I wanna come back to something we said earlier and then um
Which was
Trust and circles.
One of the things that we 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. And it's really hard to get into that.
circle for an outsider. Can you talk to me about that and 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.
you know, um and I'm not talking about heirs, but but entrepreneurs, people that are out there building businesses.
It takes a lot out of you.
Right, and we were all only given twenty four 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 um is insular, right? So you're focused on that thing, you're 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.
Um
Having a bunch of money.
has some awesome parts to it, right? The more money you have.
uh the more stuff you can buy, the more places you can go, right? It there's some cool parts to it.
But then there are some downsides.
Most things are.
directly related.
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 Miriam.
Um in exposing
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 Miriam members and the service people who make all the magic happen around the world for our clients.
Uh we think it it helps everyone.
Two
you know, to be more successful and happier ultimately.
There's two things there that I I wanna dive into a little bit. One was the
uh often we become successful because we 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
uh unbalanced person. They have extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses. I mean there's
uh more than a couple of billionaires that I'm sure we both know.
uh in the United States they couldn't drive their kids to school if they had to'cause they don't know where their kids go to school.
They don't know how to get there from their house.
Uh, and so we look at this and we hold these people up and we
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 the whole um
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
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 know, you you play by the rules.
You do what you're told.
And then
the shock of your life. You don't, 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 the money and are like
Uh.
happiness was here. Well I I thought community we you know, and it
It's just not.
Because the definition was always wrong.
О всь концепції
You know we were talking about
America's system of government.
um or the the presidency being an outdated concept. Even um
The economy. Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations the same year.
seventeen seventy six that the that the America became a nation, right?
Um two hundred and fifty some odd years ago.
And um
the capitalism that
Adam Smith articulated
in wealth of nations is not the capitalism that we practice today.
Uh nowhere near it.
Uh in fact.
Uh
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 uh should not be taxed in proportion to their income.
But something more than, right? I mean, there's all 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.
Um
I also don't believe in this idea of a um
A James Bond supervillain.
You know, pick.
Whoever you think of as the worst.
billionaire in the world.
Were they alive in seventeen seventy six?
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.
Ah, then let's all work together.
to change the game that we all agreed to play.
instead of blaming the people who were playing it.
Right.
Um I uh
I believe that they
Or us.
Right, we have this idea that like
this conspiratorial sorts of things. 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 when you
Pass on.
It all goes away.
It would solve a massive amount of the problems.
Uh so would property records.
You know, why do you own the land past
Your natural life.
So um, you know, America obviously was settled.
Um there was a homesteading act.
And uh the American government gave
over ten percent of the land of the United States.
Uh 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, 10 and 30 years. Let's let's kind of split the difference, call it 25.
There's been about ten generations in America.
From the foundation until nineteen seventy eight, if you were black in America, you could not.
Fairly.
compound money.
Two hundred and two years.
Um out of the ten generations.
Right, so literally my son.
And I'm not that old, is the first generation of you know 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.
Since since we got there, right? From the start until nineteen seventy eight. I was five years old when that occurred. And then specifically nineteen seventy eight because
Uh, you had the Fair Housing Act and all of the associated lending protections to go in place.
Um and so
It took literally that long, seventeen seventy six to nineteen seventy eight.
Now federal taxes started.
In nineteen thirteen.
Whatever that is, sixty five years.
African Americans.

paying federal taxes.
For benefits that they do not receive.
And uh in
It compounds this sort of wild inequality generation after generation after generation.
And 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've voted.
I've been a good person and
There is nothing here for you that system.
You know, as it just keeps going, going, going, going.
uh breaks down.
Now the founding fathers in their wisdom gave us
A system.
Voting.
To change it.
I made that statistic earlier that uh three people are richer than a hundred and sixty five million.
Well
What is
What's the most votes ever cast?
In a US federal election.
Eighty one million votes.
Literally.
At the next federal election.
If they so chose, those one hundred sixty five million people.
could vote their way out of poverty.
you could tax their way out of poverty like unilaterally.
But there's too much
Division in the nation.
Um, 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? You know, I would tell you that even my wealthiest clients.
Don't like it.
Right. So
They play by the rules of the game.
They succeeded.
And
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 gonna leave it on a street corner in the poorest neighborhood in town.
Go run with it, right? Whoever wants it, it's all yours, you know.
What's the the US federal budget?
trillions of dollars, that one billion dollars is not going to address
anything. I mean sure the people who
quote unquote hit the lottery that day and and found the money uh would do better, but it we won't fix anything s 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. Hey
And
Tops and music, hey, you know.
And bringing those people together, not in an accusatorial way, not in a s in an agenda sort of way, but um but kind of moving society forward in that way. That that's interesting, because you you don't just accept anybody. You have an onboarding process.
And through that process you're getting to know each other. They're getting to know you, you're getting to know them.
Wondering if you can go through some of the questions that you ask people.
Uh, and I'm sure our audience would 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 the great opportunities is
To choose happiness today and to choose
you know, a a broader definition.
what we think of as success. So when we sit down with people
We send them a questionnaire.
The questionnaire includes a 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 uh 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?
Um, and then we get into more of the philosophical things.
Imagine you're at your eightieth birthday.
Or whatever late life birthday you want it to be.
Uh everyone you love is gathered around and they say
Uh they're gonna toast you.
What would those closest to you say about you?
Now if that birthday party was held tonight.
Uh what would they say about you today?
And um
If there's a delta, what do you want to do about it?
If your doctor called you right now it was like
You know.
You've got one year to live.
What 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 kinda starts
At the me.
You know,'cause 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
Um
obviously their family first.
In 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.
On mass.
Uh locked us in our house.
uh delivery services, we don't have to interact with people, we're not forced to see
uh people who are more or less successful than we are. We're not 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.
I'm gonna sound like a boomer. I I already know you know, people are gonna be like what?

Doctor Dre
Everybody can see Doctor Dre in their head. Well, before Doctor Dre was in a
Black ball cap and
You know, the the N W A.
Look.
doctor Dre was in world class wrecking crew.
Yeah, 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 if 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.
Mm.
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.

And you know
That
Mii 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
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 to without people.
Right, and we've gotten very myopic.
very narrowly viewed and I I I see it reflected in the culture, in the music, in the movies.
Um, et cetera, et cetera.
We're all part of an ecosystem.
We are a super organism, whether we know it or not. And and this was interesting'cause during Covid, I mean, my kids actually used this against me to get what they wanted, which I thought was quite clever of them.
Um, because I was teaching them like w well, we have to support
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 r restaurant, we'll 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 we're not all successful together.
And so my um
My oldest comes to me and he's like, I think we should just
We should make a rule to have croissants every day.
He was like ten at the time, I think, or eleven. Mine is eleven, so I I get I get it. And I was like, Well, what do you think will happen if we have croissants every day? Well he and he's 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 they're pop. Oh my god, and then w 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 s 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
So
How do we get the mo the biggest piece for ourselves? That's one of the most amazing things about all of this stuff that we're discussing.
Uh I wrote this
section of my upcoming book called the
The cost of stupidity.
Stress.
From
poverty and all of the crazy things that go on in America.
shortens the lifespan of African Americans. Blacks live five point eight years.
less than white people in America.
There's about forty two million black people in America.
You multiply five point eight years.
times forty two million, and you get a big number.
Two point one trillion
hours of life.
The Apollo Space Program.
The moonshot.
was five point two 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 like
Think about all of the societal benefits from one moonshot.
Then think about
How much life is being wasted in America.
two point twine million two point one trillion man hours, divide that in half.
We're wasting about two hundred moon shots of of human productivity.
Being selfish.
Not letting you know.
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 and and honest about these things.
Wanna come back to the questions that you asked just for a second.
It it i 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
Um, 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's no right answer.
Right. So for every person, uh for our clients, for every person who comes in
Young twenties or thirties, wealth event.
single, ready to go have fun, meet people, party, whatever.
We have a 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 there's no right answer to it, but if you ask the question, would we want to work with them?
Uh I think the what do you want.
It's very, very helpful. Do you see answers over time, like with the the the people who are sort of like maybe near end of life?
There
Do they think about
their role in society and sort of things differently than people who are maybe mid stage.
It depends on on who.
We kind of over index on people who were thinking
socially.
Um, but we certainly know a bunch of folks who aren't.
'Cause we all we all
gain persp I mean like
The forty year old meet
Looked at my sixteen year old self and is like
Man, that guy was an idiot.
But you know, my sixty year old self is gonna 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 wealth.
the get painted with this broad stroke a a caricature.
Almost.
But certainly some of our mutual friends are literally some of the nicest and most genial humans on this planet.
uh who definitely care, who are definitely trying to get it right. None of us have this whole thing figured out. You know, 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. Right. I mean humanity is
is frankly not that smart. Right. I mean when you think about
Uh
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. 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? Yeah, the pale blue dot.
Idea Carl Sagan. Yeah.
The Carl Sagan idea, th 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 through 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 we'll 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 a it's kind of a pale blue dot moment for us.
uh to kinda look at
uh ourselves.
and gain some some humility around it. I'm I'm actually not.
In the
AI doom and gloom camp at all.
That's interesting. A lot of people it it does seem very bifurcated between doom and gloom and
optimism and there's not a lot of like, well we'll see how it plays out sort of in the middle.
Uh I'm wondering what 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?
Um, I think money.
uh is an amplifier. It turns up the volume on who a person is. It doesn't change who they are.
Um
With the caveat that
that great wealth does have the negative effects I was was mentioning earlier. So the the normal worries um that folks have
Safety and security.
Um
is kind of a big one. They become targets for frivolous litigation and a lot of bad behavior.
Um, you know, things
Which
If they were poor.
you know, um 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 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 the the litigation issues, there's a lot of um
A lot of hand wrangling over what's going on in society.
Um
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
W what about kids? I know some of my
uh wealthier friends who might be
Target or
what have you, in sort of frivolous lawsuits or something, they
Um, they might allow their kids to have like an Instagram account, but it's private. It's locked.
It's not public.
And that sort of also
um 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
uh now all of a sudden they've got this locked account. It it doesn't seem like they're you know, we're always looking at the wrong metric. So I don't want to get into like whether we're looking at the right metrics or not. But their life is a very closed system.
uh of trust.
Talk to me a little bit about that and how you see it and
what you've seen work and not work and
I think all parents, uh, you know, want the best for their kids.
If anybody out there has uh
a rule book for how to get the best out of their kids. I definitely want that book. You know, I um we're we're all a trying.
Um things that I you know, people who have raised happy, successful kids, um
You know 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 uh been patient with him.
Uh, Lord knows we all needed a lot of patience.
the child parent relationships that have been the most strained, uh, 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 you know, you can
be a helicopter parent, you know, in one direction, you can be a jerk in another direc you know.
Um
the the families that I know where the you know the kids are
Mm
Yeah, just most normal, happiest leading their lives.
Um
The parents kinda let them be kids and let them be themselves. One thing I've heard
uh 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 wealth
how you raise your kids is their expectation. So like if 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 fifteen year old to go get a job at McDonalds, it's gonna cause resentment.
uh 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 a 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.
Th that is
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 I did it. I went out there and made it, young man, and you too.
you're gonna 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
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 the super, super successful.
And
If you look at Forbes.
So Ford publishes the billionaire list and twenty six, twenty seven hundred names on it.
That's actually not.
the most important designation.
The most important designation.
is self made.
Uh
So within the Forbes billionaire list there's airs, 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 out of anyone's mouth will be like I didn't come from anything.
Whether or not that's true. Right.
Of every story.
Uh on the self made thing.
And I think it um
it leads to some really, really interesting effects, particularly with relation to people's children.
and their ability to be self made kind of an apparent shadow. And it's not just with money, it's also with like
um, what they're calling now Nepo babies. So your parents a famous actor, your parents a famous singer. Well
If you're interested in acting, you you get opportunities because of it. Oh, and then you look down on it. You know, just all of this weirdness where of course if a child grows up in in in this lifestyle seeing this thing, maybe they want to emulate it, maybe they don't.
Um and who doesn't want to look out for their kids and do the best for them. Um, but then when you get to the the kind of wealth money transfer and the self-made thing.
it gets kind of wonky. I can go deeper on it, but it uh
It's kind of a touchy subject. Yeah, there's another aspect to sort of um
call them wealthy kids for 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 you sort of
because you you lived unconsciously, you come to regret that. Maybe you don't. I mean I 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 and
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.
um, you know, building businesses and
And look.
You know, I 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.
Okay.
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 this sound like
You know, I'm exempt 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
And trying to lead a happier, balanced life myself.
Uh so so I get it, I guess is a is another reason I hope that that we're able to to have good conversations with folks around it. What happened?
Your day of reckoning. Like what was the the moment or the story that
You were like Whoa.
Yeah, so
Um in twenty twenty one.
uh kind of the worst things that I could ever imagine happening to me.
uh all happened at once.
like you know major major life crisis
was the sort of thing which
You know.
When it happened my life would either
Life would never be the same from the the instance it happened.
And
The outcome.
would be binary.
Right. I would
go go on to to be okay.
Or you know, or 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 three hundred and fifty pounds.
So I lost a hundred pounds in about four and a half months.
Um
you know, it helped me rebuild my company, rebuild
uh improved.
you know, the time I get to spend with my kids and just all of these other things that kind of came through uh that
That journey.
Of
Mm.
The journey is is the inward journey.
Right. Um
really reconnecting with and understanding one's self and then our relation to others.
And and being able to just kind of get outside of our own
Um
lends our own perspective.
And see ourselves.
Oh.
More honestly and more candidly.
Was that the hardest moment in your life?
Oh 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
Holy 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 I think I had kicked the can down the road as far as as I could on on for me.
And then you know
when it happened, there was nothing that I could could do. I had to face it.
I think uh a lot of times people will start to get the inkling, hey, something's wrong.
Need to face this, but when you kinda delay it, you put it off'cause it's uncomfortable.
I to go through kind of great personal change.
And um
Yeah, you've you've
To be free of these things.
you have to defeat them.
Yeah, whatever that is.
you know, uh addiction to food or w you know, whatever these things
Whatever.
problem it is for a person, you gotta 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 uh
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 uh lately because you know our our business is is growing.
And um, you know, a lot of
really interesting things or afo that, you know, I frankly never would have dreamed um would happen and and I I feel like I dream big dreams.
But um you know for me success is um
First and foremost.
Being a better father.
Oh.
Uh my family.
um fulfilling my social responsibility and making a difference.
as you know, as glib and heard it before.
As that sounds.
Um
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.
Um my life has uh has changed a lot in that regard.
Um, I love what I get to do every day.
uh being able to work with the folks that we work with. And I really do feel like we're making a difference, uh, not only
uh in the lives of our clients, but in the lives of everyone that we touch.
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, then.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks for listening and learning with us.
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