- I've never, ever been motivated by money.
- It's not about money for me.
- The goal really was not so much to make a lot of money.
- We created the company not because I wanted to be
some successful entrepreneur and make a bunch of money.
- They didn't make money.
- You have to be willing to not make money at it.
- Sherry and I never talked about how much money we made
or how much money we wanted to make.
- Nothing I did where the only reason
for doing it was the money was ever worth it.
- Business doesn't have to be always money-centered.
- Hello, Believe Nation.
Today we're talking about how you shouldn't do it
for the money, and as always guys,
if you hear something that really resonates with you,
please leave it down in the comments below.
Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired
and when you write it down yourself,
it's much more likely to stick with you as well.
Enjoy.
(uptempo music)
- You make more money than any actor in the world.
- This too shall pass.
By the way, I don't even know if that's true.
I can tell you I pay more taxes than anybody I've ever met.
Truth be told, I've never, ever been motivated by money.
- I got to give it to you, man,
because you just seem like such a normal guy.
- That is my super power, talk to my wife.
- Exactly, that's what it is.
Make people believe you're a normal dude.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- For me, I never did anything for money,
right, so it was never about money.
My experience has been when people do things
for money, you make bad choices.
Find what you love and then you'll learn
how to make money doing what you love.
When I changed careers, I was never changin' to something
for money, I was changin' to something I loved more, right,
and to me, that's really the only way to keep the passion.
If you have two choices, one is playing a piano,
and another one is, you know, bowling,
and you can make more money bowling,
but you love playing the piano more,
you got to play the piano.
It's like you'll tear yourself apart
if you're not doing the thing that you love most in life,
and you know what it is right now.
Right now there's something
that you love more than everything.
Whatever it is that you love crazy
has to be the thing that you dedicate your life.
- Are you going to get paid upfront for this from Lloyd?
Is Lloyd ever going to cut you a check?
- Am I getting paid upfront for this?
- You didn't get your check?
- I don't know, but it's not about,
it's not about money for me.
Like, it's not.
I wanted to do, I wanted my own network.
I wanted to put, I wanted to do something cool,
and it's always about just me doing something
that I think is awesome, and the money will come.
I'm not, I'm not worried about that.
That'll come when the universe decides for it to come.
- Our goal was to get, we started with four employees,
and our goal was to get to 50 employees,
and the goal really was not so much to make a lot of money.
I wanted, to me a lot of money in those days
was I want to own a house, I want to have a nice car,
and I wanted to work with interesting people
and do interesting things,
and I thought if I could control my own environment,
have a small consulting company,
and Oracle started out as a software consulting company.
We worked for Tandem Computer,
if anyone remembers those guys.
We worked for IBM.
We worked for a lot of different tech companies
in Silicon Valley doing contract programming,
fixed price contract programming,
and we did pretty well, actually,
and again, the idea was just to have
a small software contract, software company,
bunch of, you know, we thought were hot shot programmers
and we thought we could make a decent living
doing just that, and quite by accident, we built a product.
- Airbnb, we created the company
not because I wanted to be some successful entrepreneur
and make a bunch of money.
If I was going to do that, I would not have started air beds
for conferences around the country.
That was not going to be a good idea.
In fact, I had a mentor,
I told him about the idea of Air Bed and Breakfast,
and he told me, "I hope that's not
the only idea you're working on."
And my mom growing up, all she ever wanted,
'cause I went to art school.
She said, "Just make sure you get a job
that has health insurance,"
and so when we created Air Bed and Breakfast, she said,
"So I guess you never got that job with health insurance.
You start having to let strangers in your homes."
- I come from a country where you didn't make money
because you made movies, you lost money if you made movies,
and all of my life, when I approach a new project,
and I'm 50 years old and I've done now,
I don't know how many movies as producer, director,
and I still have the same emotion when I go into a project.
I go, "How much am I willing to lose to do that image?"
And there's always one or two images in every project
that you would mortgage your house, sell your car,
give everything you have to make sure
that image comes to safe.
- Yeah, I've heard you talk about like, Pacific Rim.
It was the girl with the red shoes.
- Absolutely.
- You like, had to make that movie just to see that.
- It doesn't matter what you go through,
it doesn't matter if they give you X amount of time,
you need to always protect the images that are crucial.
- So, you've sort of arrived
at these different approaches to writing.
What was the first, to your mind,
like, the first writing piece that you did
that kind of put you on the map?
Where, not like, "I've arrived,"
but you're like, "Okay, I actually,
I actually could make this work,
or I could actually really be good at this,"
or, "Wow, I just got recognition for this piece."
I mean, were there any sort of defining moments
in your career as a writer?
- Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't know.
Yeah, I mean the things that I remember,
I remember like I was like, by the way,
the best way to get started in anything
is to be willing to work for free.
Internships like to me are the path to anything,
and I mean, I really think being,
there's definitely a lot of people who are entitled.
Basically, I have so much to say,
but anyway, if you want to live in your passion,
whatever your passion is,
you have to be willing to not make money at it.
If you want to do what you love, you have a choice.
You can choose money or you can choose what you love.
Joseph Campbell has a great quote that I always use.
I don't know if you guys know this.
- Joseph Campbell, so the hero with a thousand faces.
- Yeah, the great kind of professor of mythology,
but he said the insecure, have you guys heard this?
The insecure way is the secure way.
I don't know if you guys have heard that quote,
and what it means basically is, you know,
my parents, and I'm sure like most people's parents,
say, "Get a good job, try and make some money,
make a good living," 'cause they think
that's secure if you go and make money,
but if you do a job, you make money, you lose that job,
then you lose the money, you have nothing.
- Right, right, right.
- But he says if you choose your passion,
it actually doesn't matter whether you make money
or lose money because you're always going to have your passion
to be happy so it doesn't actually matter.
- And that's your safety net.
- Right, but the challenge of that
is that it might be eight years or four years
before you're actually making a living at it,
versus something else.
- Actually what it finally comes down to
in your business and how you run it
is you first and me second.
Take that home with you, you first and me second.
The first thing you want to do
is help your people succeed and then you succeed.
Just keep it in the right order.
It's not you succeeding
and then hopefully they come out okay.
It's all about them, not about you,
and I think that was the foundation of our business.
You know, we never, Sherry and I never talked about
how much money we made or how much money we wanted to make.
We talked about how big we'd like to have our business,
but it was never a personal financial goal,
but our focus was on how we could enrich the lives
of our people and make them better,
oftentimes influencing them with our faith, as well.
- When you start out, you have to deal
with the problems of failure.
You need to be thick skinned to learn
that not every project will survive.
A freelance life or life in the arts is sometimes like
putting messages in bottles on a desert island
and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles
and open it and read it and put something in a bottle
that will wash its way back to you.
Appreciation or a commission or money or love,
and you have to accept that you may put out hundreds
of things for every bottle that winds up coming back.
The problems of failure are problems
of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger.
You want everything to happen
and you want it now and things go wrong.
My first book, a piece of journalism
I'd done only for the money,
and which had already bought me an electric typewriter
from the advance should've been a bestseller.
It should've paid me a lot of money.
If the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation
between the first print run selling out
and the second print run never happening
and before any royalties could be paid, it would've done,
and I shrugged, and I still have my electric typewriter,
and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months
and I decided that I'd do my best in the future
not to write books just for the money.
If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything,
and if did work I was proud of and I didn't get the money,
well, at least I'd have the work.
Every now and then, I forget that rule, and whenever I do,
the universe kicks me hard and reminds me.
I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me,
but it's true that nothing I did where the only reason
for doing it was the money was ever worth it
except as bitter experience.
Usually, I didn't wind up getting the money, either.
(audience laughing)
The things I did because I was excited
and wanted to see them exist in reality
have never let me down and I've never regretted
the time I spent on any of them.
- Everything that we do in the business world
is focused on making money.
That's the indicator that you try to assess,
how successful we are.
In the business world, there's nothing else,
so that kind of squeezed out all kinds of social orientation
of human life and human activity,
and that's not a turnable situation,
and that unturnable situation
has created better structure that we have.
I said business doesn't have to be
always money-centered, always self-centered,
always, or many times, obsessed with money,
because human beings, they are not always about money.
Human beings are much bigger than just money making machine.
We are not robots.
We are human beings.
We take care of ourselves individually.
At the same time, we take care of everybody else.
We take care of the planet itself,
and business world doesn't have that orientation,
so at the moment, we can do that.
We can create a different kind of business
which is not money-centered.
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed.
I'd love to know, what was your favorite clip?
What resonated the most with you?
What are you going to take from this video
and immediately apply to your life or your business somehow?
Please leave it down in the comments.
I'm super curious to find out.
Thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is, much love, I'll see you soon.