Transcription
Point 13, and this is [ __ ] important. And this is the biggest mistake I made with T2. Businesses won't last forever. I know you think your business will last forever, but it won't. And if a business won't last forever, you need to get rich quick and put yourself before your business.
The biggest mistake I made with T2 is I was so desperate trying to keep it afloat that I wasn't taking any of my own money. I bought a new car and I gave myself a little bit of money, but if I could go back in time, I would have milked that cow. I had money in the bank, but to keep it surviving, I didn't want to take so much money. I had to keep Dan's coke habit down, so I reduced the amount of wages we were taking, kept it low. So when it all blew up, I wasn't sitting on any money. I kept the company alive at the expense of me. If I could go back in time, by the time it all blew up, I'd be sitting on half a mil clean. Look after yourself first.
And this is very, very important because no business lasts forever. Doesn't matter what the business is. Even my TV advertising business that worked 13 years ago would never work today. Calling people on the phone, trying to convince them out of money when they can just cut a YouTuber for 500 pounds with more viewership, and they can track the clicks and directly see how much money they're getting back. That you can't do with TV. I could never sell TV to someone today. Never. This is before Instagram, before social media, before YouTube. All this came along and killed TV. Now, now there's a few big brands left. Netflix. Who even watches TV? That business wouldn't last anymore. I bet if you told blacksmiths 200 years ago that being a blacksmith ain't going to ever work again, they'd be like, "What? People always need metal. What are you talking about?" Blacksmiths don't aren't around anymore. Every single business is going to fail sooner or later. So if it's going to fail, make sure you get that money before it blows up.
I have no problem with any one of my businesses going boom if it's already paid me. If all my cam girls quit, but I have three mil, good. If I've taken all that three mil and invested it in a big studio and reinvested all the money and made everything nice, and then they all quit, then what was the [ __ ] point? The goal of a business is to make you rich. This is the point of your business, to make you rich. The point of a business is not to have a business for vanity. The point of the business is to make you rich. Look after yourself first.
Now, obviously, this is an equation. I'm not saying only look after yourself to look after your business. I'm saying take this in mind, keep it as a happy equation, and make sure you're getting that money. With T2, I made a mistake and I kept funneling all the money back into keeping the ship afloat. That's my ship, the T2 ship on the waves. And I didn't take enough of the money for myself. Kept investing in new staff, new computers, dumb [ __ ]. I was 20. All the lessons I'm telling you now are lessons I've learned. If I would have just taken the money, you know what? Get a deal in. All right, yeah, we'll keep it going. Yeah, just take the money, take the money, take the money. You take the money. By the time it blew up, I would be sitting on 500 [ __ ] grand, and I didn't. You have to look after yourself. A business won't last forever, so you have to take the money and get rich. Look after yourself.
If you're thinking about, "Oh, maybe I need a new camera, maybe I need a new car, maybe I need new vans," whatever your business is, doesn't matter. Think about it, but also think long and heavy: is that going to bring new money in? Let's look at our video production business, just came to my head. You have a video production business, you're filming in 4K, you want this new camera. It's still 4K, but it does all these extra features. Does the layman understand it? Not really. If you can go to a meeting and tell him you're going to film in 4K, it's the same. That camera is 20 grand. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just off tomorrow. I don't know about cameras. Do you spend the money on that camera, or do you just pocket the 20 grand? Tell me what you do. You pocket the 20 grand because it's not going to get you any more clients. It's still 4K. You can just lie in the meetings and pretend your camera can do what that camera can do. You're not going to lose or make any more business. Get the [ __ ]. You take the 20 grand. It ain't going to add money in directly, so you don't need it. You need to be getting rich from your company. Look after yourself first because when your company [ __ ] up, you need to be able to say, "Okay, abandon [ __ ] abandon ship with [ __ ] suitcases." Don't abandon. When I abandoned T2, I had nothing, and that was a mistake. I worked my ass off, sleepless nights, millions of dollars to the bank for nothing. Don't do that. Look after yourself first.
This is point 13. A business won't last forever. You need to get rich quick, and you need to take the money. Take the money for yourself. Don't run a business for vanity. Look after yourself. Get that money and keep it. If you have to choose between you and the company, most of the time you should be choosing you. It's a, obviously, it's a balance. You need to make sure your company's looked after, you need to reinvest in your company, blah, blah, of course. But still, you are the primary focus of your universe. Everything serves you, including your company. That's point 13. Don't make the mistake I made with T2, putting it all back in and not looking after yourself.
There's a reason why you can actually put this in the course. Look him up. Sir Philip Green. With BHS, billionaire, bought BHS, which is a big clothing store in England. Saw it was failing, took billions and billions for himself, let it fail, let everyone's pensions go under, let it sink. Once he realized, you know what, what do I do here? Do I, do I just make millions and billions for myself, or do I save this company? Nah. For me, he actually lost his lordship for it because they thought it was such an evil thing to do. Because like a thousand, like ten thousand old ladies lost their pensions who'd worked there for like four years. Pretty evil. But the point is the same. As a billionaire, he understood me first, company second. So he milked it.
I was another company. There's a toy store, and they ran up until Christmas Day, and they took all the money for Christmas. No, it was a catalog. You remember the catalog? There was, there's Chris, no, there was this Christmas catalogs. I can't remember these Christmas catalogs, and you pay every month, and you build up this balance, and then before Christmas, you can order all your presents and all your food from the catalog. And they ran up until Christmas Day, and then they closed, took millions, and didn't deliver anything. Ruined everyone's Christmases. I remember it was big in the news in England. They ruined something like ten thousand families' Christmases because they couldn't afford a Christmas anymore. But the managing director, because the managing director ended up going to court, but he still got away because it was legal. He took seven million. He looked at his business and goes, "You know what? I don't think this is sustainable anymore. I'm not gonna put any more money into this. I'm gonna take seven million pounds. I'm gonna [ __ ] it off. I'm gonna deal with the big PR disaster. I'm gonna go hiding and whatever." He'll call seven mil. He looked after himself first. If we put that seven mil back in, the company would have gone bust a year and a half later, and you have no money. Look after yourself first. Be ruthless with it. Take the money for you. There's no point in going through this stress for any other reason.
So Sir Philip Green, look him up. He did it with BHS, and you can also Google, uh, Christmas catalog bankruptcy, and you'll see both of these people. Both times the managing directors took their money. Same thing with the big banks. When the big banks went bust, all the banking directors, you think they didn't take big money? When the big banks all [ __ ] up, you think they didn't take their big bonuses first? The smart people know: look after yourself first, look after the business second. The smart people know that because as long as you're financially okay, as long as your bills are paid, your mortgage is paid, you have money, everything's gonna be.