uh when i was in the grammar school i tried to kill my teacher and i've been arrested and in jail
five six times i did awful things got in fights beat up people hurt people i slept in my office
i didn't have an apartment you come in looking like some of you i wouldn't give you toilet paper
i didn't have any dreams the only goal my father had for me was to keep me alive alive
and not dead till i reached the age of reason he didn't know if that was 20 30 40 or ever
uh and i didn't really uh establish goals other than staying alive because
i got in a lot of trouble when i was in the grammar school i tried to kill my teacher
amongst other things i got expelled not from the school but from the district they wouldn't
allow me to go to school in the district and i've been arrested and in jail five six times
and uh but then i went into the military and uh that straightened me out and made a man
of me but your father was a policeman my man was a high profile policeman hard hard hard
tough guy and uh what did you learn from him oh well i learned that um discipline focus honesty
the basic rules yeah so there were no dreams when you were young
so what did you do after school got in trouble i did awful things got in fights
beat up people hurt people by the grace of god i lived yeah i went off to the military
entered a private came out four years later an officer and i was getting a big award in the
military and there was a two-star general that was pinning something on my chest and he said you know
if you were in the real world danny that's what they used to call me i was a lieutenant
you could probably get rich and a light bulb went off over my head i'd never thought of that before
i didn't know how much a million dollars was except for about that same time frame
one of the other young officers inherited 1.4 million dollars and he was buying all
the officers drinks in the officers club and i said well why is john buying us all drinks he
says he just inherited a million dollars and i said write it down for me i'm 22 years old
and they put it with the zeros they go i didn't know how many zeros a million had and then the
general said that if you went out in the real world dan you could probably make a lot of money
i then within a week i took action i reversed my paperwork i just put in paperwork to be a
permanent military forever and i reversed it to get out i got out five six months later i came
back uh went back to school where i had to get special permission because i had flunked out three
times out of university and then i graduated ultimately with honors i wanted to go where
the action was and the action in those days and this was in 1972 was on wall street so i went to
work for a wall street firm and i was really good at it one i was a good salesman two i had
learned to be articulate and i had already self-confidence uh and self-esteem and so
those are a great combination for an investment banker in the early 70s
bill gates slept in the office steve jobs slept in the office and i can go down a whole list
now these are super successful mega wealthy guys i slept in my office not everybody's willing to make
that sacrifice but it's not the only thing but even if you don't sleep in your office
if you want to send your kids to a better school if you want to be able to take your
hair your mother when she gets dementia if you want to this all takes money
my children aren't getting any of my money when i die i'm not going to you know i i think andrew
carnegie by the way andrew carnegie arguably the richest most successful entrepreneur of all time
he said the the best thing that you can have for a child is him to be born into poverty
and i agree but most of you don't have and i say generally speaking most of you don't have
faith in yourselves because you've got low self-esteem no self-confidence you look like
[ __ ] you dress like and you blame it on the 21st century the reason why you dress the way you do
25 years ago if you come to a seminar like this you'd all be wearing suit and tie
40 years ago the women would be wearing hats this is my uniform i don't go to sleep like this but i
mean this is my uniform it hasn't been for a long long time if you want to get money from banks
dress like the president of your country you come in looking like some of you i wouldn't
give [ __ ] toilet paper you only have one time to make a first impression kids
before i had any money i used to go to the rolls-royce dealers and sit in the cars and
smell the leather touch the leather i went to million dollar houses and my wife and i would
walk through the house and they'd say what are your parents getting here kids
no we are the buyers practice within when you're without practice being successful how many people
listening to this today practice being successful today within 19 months of me dreaming and adding
it to my goals a castle on an island i own guthrie castle go to stores you can't afford
go hire lawyers you can't afford lawyers will meet with anybody accounts will meet with anybody
go to the big four accountants with a business idea the first couple meetings are for free
jettison probably a lot of the people you hang around with a lot of people don't believe they
deserve to be there i convince them and we have these drills why you belong there a lot of people
that come there you know with money that have made money think they made it by accident nobody's
failed at more things than i have and the first 100 million are successes but i could write a
book about failures i mean because i've tried a lot of different things because test failure is
just testing and uh one of the reasons i've been so successful in generating this equity and value
in my kids and i call you all kids is because i convince him that making a mistake is okay
your parents probably told you you can be anything you want but you can't that's horrific you can't
if it's all juxtaposed but what you tell them is that you can do anything you want that you have
passion for because that eliminates most of the crap because most people don't follow their dream
you know like they say in the sound of music you can't have a dream come true unless you have a
dream now i still dream i dream in technicolor i say my affirmations and goals every single night
it's bloody hard to be a high performance person
most people procrastinate because they're unsure so just do it and but i i've never had
a problem just doing it because one of the things you learn as a young combat infantry officer is
time costs lives we over analyze because we're unsure
if it'll work or not we're more worried about on the emotional side it embarrassing this
what what is necessary what's the best advice
the best advice is find something you love find something that can change a billion lives
zuckerberg is a classic example he changed more than a billion lives
added value correct added value change you make a billion lives better potentially you may not get
to a billion people but potentially you can make a billion lives better and the odds have just gone
geometrically up for you to become a billionaire and if not a billionaire a whole bunch of money
it's the same advice that i give and the best advice that i got just and do it
you