Transcription
Excuse me, sir. Question for you. How old were you when you became a millionaire?
You have to ask a millionaire.
What do you mean? I'm a billionaire.
You're a billionaire? Yeah. Have you ever been broke before?
Hell no.
No. And what line of business are you in?
I want to tell you that, but I ain't been broke.
Are you a business owner?
I was, but I sold my company.
How much did you sell your company for?
255 million.
You sold a company for over 250 bill?
I did, actually.
Y. How old are you now?
I'm 39.
And how old were you when you became a millionaire?
17.
17 years old? That's right. A millionaire at 17. Throughout your career, what was the most amount of money that you made in a single year in sales?
Yes, hundreds of millions a year.
Did you go to college?
I did go to college. Elementary was good enough.
Ele was good enough? So, give him one last lesson about businesses not taught in [Music] school.
You guys, we just landed in Beverly Hills, in one of the richest cities in the entire world, Los Angeles, California. And today, I'm going to be going around one of the wealthiest shopping centers out on Rodeo Drive to ask holiday shoppers how they created their wealth, how they grew multi-million dollar, billion dollar net worths, and how you can do the exact same thing and start your path to becoming financially free going into 2025. So, stay tuned from start to finish, 'cause this is going to be another banger. But with that being said, let's get this video on the [Music] [Music] way.
Excuse me, sir. Question for you. How old were you when you became a millionaire?
You have to ask a millionaire.
What do you mean? I'm a billionaire.
You're a billionaire? Yeah. How old were you when you became a billionaire?
Oh, in my 50s.
In your 50s? Yeah. And what line of business were you in?
The hospitality business.
What were you doing in hospitality?
It's a funny story. I was busboy to boardroom. I've done every job. Created Diamond Resorts International.
Yeah. So, you're a business owner?
I was. I was. Hilton owns my company today.
Hilton bought your company?
Hilton bought my company. Wow. Eventually, yeah.
What did the company do?
I own hotels all over the world, 35 countries. I go all over the world.
Interviewing the most successful entrepreneurs. Could I get one quick minute with you for the channel?
Sure.
Do you come from a lot of money?
No. Like, I started with negative $20 million. Unfortunately, my father went broke. I had to pay it off. So, I didn't start from zero. I started $20 million.
Try that party trick. And what did you turn that into?
I I actually created a company was worth 2.2 billion dollars. 3.3 billion equity value. Actually, actually enterprise value. Yeah.
Wow. What was your relationship with debt as a business owner?
I always made sure that I'd never overlevered myself and I always paid my partners back as quick as I can. My banks off as quick because I can before I took money myself. So, I always made sure that people were paid off before I paid myself.
Did you go to college?
I did. Did college help you become a billionaire?
It taught me how to think logically. 'Cause I went to school to be a surgeon. I never went to business school, but I kind of did 'cause Mike Milken helped me learn business. He gave me my business degree. And Harry Reid taught me by politics and policy.
You've sold billions of dollars in revenue and in profit throughout your career. What is a billionaire secret to sales? Give me some sauce on sales right here.
Listen. Is that simple? Listen. Yeah. The customer, your friends, your bankers will always tell you the pathway. Listen. Deliver equal or greater value.
But what's your best negotiation advice as a billionaire?
Put the pen across the table and the first person who talks loses.
Actually, break that down. You don't want to speak first in the negotiation, is what you're saying?
When the deal is ripe, it solves itself. Just put the pen across the table and shut up. But that comes from listening.
What's a lesson about money that banks don't want people to know?
The lesson I would always, I never negotiate with my banks.
Don't negotiate with your banks?
Make sure you make your banks a ton of money. They'll always be there for you.
What do you mean by that?
'Cause banks are in the business of making money for themselves.
So, how can you kind of, I guess, forgo that or or?
I never negotiated rates. I always made sure my banks made a lot of money with me. We all made a lot of money together. Everyone was always paid back. Everyone, my investors early, my bankers early, and they all made a lot of money. So, never worry about negotiating rates. If somebody offers you a deal and it makes sense for everyone, let everyone make money, right?
But have you ever been broke before?
K. Close to being broke, never. But it was usually for unintended consequences like 9/11, the financial crisis of '08, '09, uncontrollable situations.
What do you mean by 9/11?
When the planes hit the Twin Towers, and I was in the hotel business, and we had guests at our hotel, and then all the planes stopped flying. I had no customers. My cash register went to zero.
How important were relationships for you?
Relationships are always very important. But a matter of fact, you got to stay out of one zip code. The zip code of bad people. If they're around your life, make them go away. Don't go in that zip code. You are who you hang around with. So, hang around people that are smarter than you, always. That are more successful than you. Learn, learn, learn, and you'll have your time. But you got to work hard, right? There's no free lunch. There's no lottery. And if you win the lottery, it's called the lottery curse. So, you will go broke. Bad things will happen to you. You have to earn it the old-fashioned way. Work hard.
What's a red flag that you see in people that tells you, "Stay away from that person"?
When you're leasing a Lamborghini or leasing a house in Bel Air or Beverly Hills, you can't afford it. Don't stay there. Don't don't drive it until you can pay cash for it.
So, you can't trust people who are renting, is what you're saying?
Flakes, frauds, cons, grifters. Wow. You got amazing advice, sir. Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate you.
You guys, we just ran into and interviewed a billionaire out here in Beverly Hills. He said, "I'm not a millionaire, I'm a billionaire with a B." And I have to say, my favorite part of that interview was when he talked about the importance of listening, and most importantly, to your customers. Guys, the biggest reason people go out of business is because they have the customers, people buying their products, but they don't listen to what they want, the changes they want being made. So, they're going to go give their business to other people. If you listen to your customer feedback and figure out what they want in the products and the services that you're offering, you can create real market share and build a winning million-dollar business. Great interview out here in Beverly Hills. We got to keep this video rolling. Go get another one out here. Come on.
Excuse me, ma'am. Quick question for you. Have you ever been broke before?
I have.
And what line of business were you in?
I owned hair salons.
So, you were a business owner?
I was, but I sold it.
How much did you sell your company for?
255 million.
You sold a company for over 250 bill?
I did, actually.
I go all over the world interviewing the most successful business owners. Could I get one quick minute with you for the channel real quick?
Sure.
Did you have a lot of money when you started your company?
No, I had no money. I had no money. Luckily, my brother had a little bit of money. My brother was one of the first employees at Yahoo back in the day, so he had made a little bit of money. But I had no money. But he offered me basically sweat equity and said, "You know, you run the business and I'll, you know, and be the day-to-day." And he had another job at the time. I was like, "So, let me get this straight. I don't put in any money, but I have 50% equity?" Which I thought was like, "That's a great deal." Like, "Yeah." No, I had nothing back then.
Did you raise a lot of money?
We did. 75 million.
You raised 75 million?
About 75 million, give or take. Yeah.
Eight out of 10 companies in today's world, they don't make it past five years.
Oh, I know. I've invested in a lot of those. Yeah. Yeah.
What's the number one reason why those businesses fail?
What I see in general, most businesses, they're just not paying attention to enough of the details that are important. And also, like, I believe in like asking your employees, asking your customers, like, "What's working for you? What's not?" And like, most people don't want to hear bad feedback 'cause it hurts. And you're like, you've put all this money into this business, and you don't want to be told like something you've thought is good isn't good. But if you can get past that and listen and pay attention what's going on in your business and what's working and what's not working, you know, I just don't think a lot of people even see it to be able to correct it.
So, in other words, the littlest things can make some of the biggest differences?
Huge. I mean, you know how it is. Whether you're going into a restaurant or your favorite coffee shop, you inherently, whether you realize it or not, you feel better if everything's taken care of. You feel like there's somebody in charge, things are running smoothly, you're not waiting forever, the person at the front isn't having attitude with you. Like, you go to the bathroom, it's not disgusting. Like, there's an ambiance that a business owner can create to make you as a customer, me, feel comfortable. And I really like being here. They don't often know why. You know? Have you ever been in like a place where someone pulls out a chair and they hear that loud, like screech, and you're like, "Why doesn't somebody fix that? Put a little thing on the bottom of the chair?" Like, it drives me crazy. But I'm I'm a lunatic. Like, I will go into any place and be like, "This could be so much better." You know? So, I think that's why, to your point, I didn't know exactly the statistics, but yeah, so many fail because they're just not paying attention.
As a multiple nine-figure entrepreneur, what was the best financial advice that you ever received?
I would say, be really careful who you get into business with. And that was definitely an experience that we went through as we were raising money. And we raised about 75 million. You don't want to raise money from the wrong people. And by the wrong people, I mean people who aren't in lockstep with you, what you want to build, what your vision is. It's like a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, can easily make the mistake of someone's offering to give them a lot of money to invest in their company, but they have a different idea of what they want and what the long-term vision of it is, or, you know, what infrastructure is going to look like, or if the CEO or founder is going to stay. Like, there's all these things that come into play. So, you have to really know who you're getting into business with 'cause again, it's a marriage. And you want to make sure you feel really good about that, not just take a check.
Guys, she sold her business for over $250 million. And we're headed to go get our next interview right now. But before we do that, I need to drop some game for you guys. See, after interviewing over a thousand millionaires and over 10 billionaires, the one lesson I've learned is there's only one shortcut to success in and anything you want out of life, in business, and your career, and finances, and everything. That's mentorship. And that's why after building a multi-billion dollar network over the last three years, growing this channel across social media to 10 million followers, I decided to launch one of the greatest entrepreneur communities in the entire world called the School of Mentors. We've already got almost 2,000 members where every single week, the members in our community get to hop on live calls with the millionaires and the billionaires that I interview on this channel where they can ask questions directly to people about how to sell, how to market and grow their business, how to create wealth in real estate, how to invest their money and make it work for them, how to negotiate like a billionaire. You guys do not want to miss out on this opportunity. I'm also hosting live workshops with big entrepreneurs every week to learn and implement these skills in your businesses. To join the community, go to the link down in the description of this video. You do not want to miss out on it. But with that being said, let's get back to this video and go get this next interview. Come on.
Who am I here with today?
Neil Patel.
And for those that don't know, what industry did you decide to pursue a career in?
Marketing.
Are you a business owner?
I am.
How long have you been an entrepreneur for?
23 years.
What was the turning point getting into entrepreneurship?
Well, I was 16 when I was starting, so there wasn't too many options other than create your own business if you wanted to make money.
What was the most amount of money that you've made in a single year?
Well, our revenue is in the nine figures a year. And for income, I try not to make more than four or 5 million a year max in distributions because I'd rather reinvest majority of the profits versus taking it. So, I take enough to pay for my expenses. The rest I invest into buying more companies, expanding, hiring more people, etc.
It's just saying that I love about marketing, that a lot of people are extremely good at what they do, but no one knows what they do. What's a hack about marketing that you could give to a business owner in today's world that maybe they have a great product but they suck at building awareness?
The number one highest ROI channel right now in marketing that most people don't want to leverage is influencer marketing. But I'm not talking about the people who have a lot of followers. I'm talking about the people that are micro-influencers between 1,000 and 100,000 followers. Look for ones that are relevant to your product and service that have really engaged communities. Hit them up. They're super flexible in how they take compensation. You can pay them commission-based, a percentage of sales. They'll go above and beyond to make really good content and promote your product. It's extremely profitable. We see over a 30% return on investment with micro-influencers.
So, that's marketing game from a nine-figure entrepreneur right there. Yeah, that works out. I love that. And why do a lot of companies fail in today's world?
Most people would say most businesses fail because of lack of capital. I say that most businesses fail because they're going after too small of a TAM. TAM stands for total addressable market. You know, someone may look at my business be like, "Oh, nine figures, that's a lot of money." Well, some of my competitors do 18 billion a year in revenue. So, if you're after a really big market, it's not hard to take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5% of the market. If you want to go after a $10 million market, if you capture 100% of it, all you're making is $10 million a year. And that's just revenue. You want to go after something really big and just try to capture a small percentage of it.
I love it. How old are you now?
I'm 39.
And how old were you when you became a millionaire?
17.
17 years old? Capability at 17?
I started my career when I was 15 and a half, and I was helping people drive more traffic to their websites. My first client paid me $5,000 a month. I made him $25 million in revenue. Got three more referrals that took me up to $20,000 a month, and it just kept scaling from doing really good work.
Now, did you inherit the money?
No. My parents, uh, my mom was a teacher and my dad worked at a bank.
Did you go to college?
I did go to college. Was it worth it?
No. I would not recommend anyone go to college unless you're in a profession that requires you to go to college.
If you had to start from zero and you had one year to make a million dollars and your life depended on it, what would you do?
I would go buy a business from someone who's retiring in a boring, ugly field like roofing, plumbing, HVAC. Do seller-based financing and get an SBA loan. So, a combo of both. And grow that business and put in technology like spreadsheets, invoicing, and automate all the stuff they're not doing. Get them better rankings on Google. Uh, also do their Google My Business profile, get the reviews, ratings, and grow the business.
But if you were to start from zero, how would you get the money to buy that business?
You would seller-based finance it. So, you say, "Hey, you're retiring, you're 60 years old, you don't want your HVAC business anymore. I'll buy it from you. I'll put down 2X profit, which I can get bank-financed for, and you hold a note and provide the rest of the financing."
Will banks give you money if you don't have any capital?
Yes, they will. Based on that business. And the government helps. It's called SBA financing.
Wow. They don't teach that in school, you know that, right?
They don't.
That's amazing. Most people who go to Harvard right now aren't thinking about private equity or venture capital. They're graduating Harvard and saying, "Hey, instead of going working for someone, I should just go buy one of these boring, ugly businesses that are owned by these 60-year-olds who are retiring because no one wants their old, ugly business that's printing off millions of dollars in profit." One of the greatest transfers of wealth that's about to happen.
That's right. You got amazing advice, my friend. Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate you.
You guys, we just interviewed a nine-figure marketing mogul out here in Beverly Hills. That's got to be one of my favorite interviews I've done because when I asked him what he would do if he were to start over from zero and how he would build back his empire and make a million dollars in a year, go back and rewatch. Listen to his answer. See, these guys, once they have the mindset and the skill sets to build this kind of wealth, you can take everything away from them, and they will build it back and build it back 10 times bigger. Great interview out here in Beverly Hills. We got to keep this video rolling and go get another one out here. Come on.
Excuse me, sir. Question for you. Have you ever been broke before?
Hell no.
No. And what line of business are you in?
I want to tell you that, but I ain't been broke.
Wait, real quick. I started a channel on Austin. I grew to 10 million followers. I've interviewed the biggest business owners all over the world. Can I get one quick minute with you real quick?
What's up?
Can I get one quick minute with you?
It's one quick way.
What line of business are you in?
Uh, I'm in transport.
Transporting? Yeah. You in a trucking company or what?
Yeah. Yeah. Trans.
And how did you get into this business?
What you know, someone told me about it. I was walking, driving down the freeway, and I always seen these trucks going down the freeway and I said, "Man, transport is always, always there. It's always going to be there. No electronic, no robot, or anything like that is going to change it. It's just going to be there. It's recession-proof." And people can't replace it. You can't replace it. You can't replace. Always going to be a job for you.
Looking for a job? Not a job, but but but but but maybe another business to get into. Let me ask you this, right? Like, at the company, in terms of revenue, not personal income, what was the most amount of money you made in a single year?
You want me to tell, man? And it's almost the first of the year. You want me to actually put that on IRS?
Just revenue, not personal.
I I couldn't say.
But is it safe to say there's a lot of money to be made?
It's a lot of money to be made. And it pays my bills.
Do you come from a lot, a lot of money?
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. My father's a king.
If you lost everything tomorrow, could you make it all back?
Oh, hell yeah. I'm a brother. We lost everything before. So, there's nothing for us to get it back.
Are you a good salesman?
Yes, I am.
What was, what's your secret to selling?
Consistency. Never take no for an answer.
How about negotiating? A lot of people struggle to close deals. You've closed some big deals with some heavy hitters. What's your, what's your negotiation advice?
Man, like I said, consistency. Everything is consistency. And PR, being at the right place, right time. You can take a piece of a glass of water, a bottle of water, and move it from place to place, and it changes its price. But it's the same glass of water. That's game right there.
Love that, my friend. Did you go to school? You went to college or no?
Yeah. Elementary was good enough.
Elementary was good enough? So, give him one last lesson about businesses not taught in school.
Man, you working me. Man, am I getting paid for this, brother?
Maybe we have to cut it. We have to cut it for you. You're lyin'. Get a mentor. Definitely get a mentor because you don't have a mentor, you don't have no direction. You know? And find out his bad moves that he had made. You can grow from.
You got amazing advice, my friend. Thank you so much.
Man, amazing. Thank you, my friend.
Likewise. Thank you.
Guys, that is a wrap on today's video. I need you guys to like and subscribe for amazing content we've got coming every single week on this channel to connect you guys to learn from the biggest business owners in the entire world. And if you're not a member already, you guys need to join my private entrepreneur community, the School of Mentors. The link is going to be up here or down in the description where you guys can connect with, learn from, and implement the skills taught to you directly from the millionaires and billionaires I interview every single week via live calls, live workshops, where you can ask your questions directly to the people I interview about how to scale and grow your business, how to sell, how to develop, how to invest, everything. You do not want to miss out on this opportunity. So, I can't wait to see you inside of my community, the School of Mentors. That being said, see you in the next video.