- I'm doing a little business networking event at my house.
These are people in kind of a mastermind that I had
going for a while so,
I'm gonna talk, answer some questions
changing into the 750 Yeezy Boost
give me a little good luck charm, you know.
As Charlie Munger says, "If it wasn't for the stupidity
"of most people", he says he wouldn't be so rich.
That's kind of a harsh way to say it.
I don't say it quite that harsh
but you probably know where he's coming from.
(loud overlapping conversations)
I have some very important, this is somewhat controversial
but I promise you it's the truth
and I can prove it
and I will debate any human being
and I will embarrass them if they wanna argue on this
in a public, live forum.
Working hard is very uncorrelated with wealth.
Now, just a few examples that are so powerful
that the fact that people still try to refute me
makes me worry about them as a thinker.
The top 10 men in the world
make more than the bottom 3.5 billion people
combined, right.
That's a fact, you can Google it.
10 men are wealthier,
make more, have more to their name than 3.5 billion,
half of the world.
Now, how hard can 10 men work in one day?
Maximum, 240 hours.
Right?
How much can 3.5 billion people work
if they only work one hour a day?
3.5 billion hours.
Work is uncorrelated with success.
It's sometimes a necessity just like
brushing your teeth is uncorrelated to wealth
even though some wealthy people brush their teeth.
People don't understand causation and correlation
so people see that Bill Gates works many hours
but what about...
I read that in India there's about,
(sighs) don't quote me,
I think 10 million people that work in the dumpsters,
that pick out trash, small pieces of plastic
and they make, on average, $14 a month
and they work from dawn to dusk.
Are they working harder?
Of course they are.
America and the world is full of people
working three times as hard.
If I could go back in time
without a doubt I would tell myself to be lazier,
without a doubt.
I mean, it is one of, I will tell you
even though I joke about it,
true painful realization was the fact that
I didn't know what one of my business partners just told me,
I was just talking with Alex Meyer, he said,
he's an engineer, PhD, really smart guy.
He said, "People don't understand.
"in engineering you never confuse input and output.
"You always try to put the least amount of input
"to get the most output.
"That's what technology is.
"So, when you're building a car
"you never try to figure out how to put the most gas in
"to go a hundred miles,
"you try to figure out is how do you just put
"one gallon in and the car goes a hundred miles."
You guys are getting where I'm coming?
So what happens with entrepreneurs is you start
focusing on inputs like, "Ah, I'm just gonna (groans)"
but you gotta be focused on output.
Guys like Warren Buffet, I mean, he says
he loves quoting that one quote.
I don't know the exact quote.
I should have memorized it but he goes,
"They say that hard work won't kill you
"but I don't wanna take the chance."
(attendees laughing)
I think that's how it goes.
And he quotes it and he says,
"I pretty much sit around all day
"looking for opportunities",
and since 1965, I think, 51 years ago,
they've made 25 good decisions that have made
almost all their money.
So on average, every two years they were able to find...
So what he spends all his day doing is
reading and looking, you know,
being observant.
So I do think you have to be aware but hard work
is very uncorrelated with wealth
and it will get you...
You know, so I was talking about there's a lot of
people out there giving business advice
about working hard, a lot.
There's not one, there are some more than others
but Alex Meyer says his theory, he calls it,
what did he call it,
little-mind theory or ant theory,
that basically it's a primitive impulse
that if you say to people,
"You know what, working hard is gonna get you far",
it jives with our primitive mind because
50,000 years ago it was true.
There was no technology.
The man who hunted with a spear
but even then
the one who had a spear versus
the one who just used his hands, still won.
Technology has been beatin' everything
so what actually is correlated wealth is using tools
before most people are.
So you wanna look for tools.
To me, social media is just a tool just like
a caveman who had his bare hands versus a caveman who
came up with his first spear
or if you study history,
you had the bronze age and things like that
and then during those ages...
Well, look at the Incas.
Have you ever read the story, not Bizarro, but
who was the one who went to the Incas?
Not Magellan but one of them, you know,
it was what 30 soldiers
that beat 100,000 native Americans?
They had horses and armor and they just
they decimated a whole, it was like 25 men.
If business is war, right, you wanna be like that.
Let other people have 100,000 people
and you won't burn yourself out.
So, who here's feeling a little bit burn out?
Okay, these are signs that you're doing it wrong
and so I wish every time
I had had, like, some shock collar on me
that every time in the past that I was like,
"I'm not making the money I wanna make
"so I'm gonna work harder",
like it would've just shocked me, you know?
(attendees chuckling)
I see that on social media.
I mean, I see people posting more than me,
starting way before me and I'm just like,
"See ya."
Tools but it's not because of me.
It's because working smarter always beats working harder.