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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2015-01-15
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bB_fVDlvhc
everybody wants the good life but not everybody gets the good life right imagine for a second if right now today how much more successful would you be if you just started a company fifty fifty with Bill Gates is your business partner and he was using every trick of the trade that he used to build Microsoft into one of the biggest companies in the world imagine how
much money you have in your bank account today how much more money I should say if Warren Buffett was teaching you how to invest in the stock market showing you what he use to build Berkshire Hathaway in two hundred forty billion dollar company imagine how much happier you'd be today if the Dalai Lama was your personal guide showing you how to find fulfillment in life in
the little things that most people overlook imagine how healthy you'd be today if when you woke up and he went down to your gym and Arnold Schwarzenegger was waiting there who's your personal trainer right showing you how he built his body into the most fit body maybe ever I imagine the change would be making in the world injustice should be solving today if mother Theresa and
you were running a charity together and she was showing you what she learned on the streets of Calcutta helping poor the sick and the dying mentors have the power to do this in your life I think everybody here recognizes the importance of a role model but in next few minutes I'm gonna show you how mentors are more powerful than you can possibly imagine to try it
in their ability to transform your life it's interesting that I'm here in Luxembourg because my grandmother was born not too far from here in Berlin Germany she's ninety six years old by the way and she said Ty dome hello so hello from my ninety six year old grandma of she said there was a role model and mentor that I had when I was a little girl
choose born in nineteen eighteen in Berlin and she said we had a renter in our house Edith Knox is a famous piano player from California the nineteen twenties and she said talk this woman made such an impression on me she rented a room for summer and she said eva's Knox wore pants my grandma said I'd never seen a woman wear pants apparently in Germany in the
twenties no women were passing not just rake Apache had an orange jumpsuit on and then she played the piano and Edith knocks at every hour would stand on her head for exercise and my grandma was like seven and she said hi I thought if that's how women are in California one day I'm gonna move to California and sure enough she ended up in California that's the
story part of the story how my family end up in California and I I'm from California I flew here to twenty hours to get here Tom and die I'm from Hollywood specifically so Hollywood that the land of dreams or for most people it's the land of broken dreams every year hundred thousand people move in and out of Hollywood some come to be movie stars actors singers
writers comedians most go home empty handed N. dot so I live up in the hills and I'm surrounded by all the celebrities have one of my left woman right and often think why did these celebrities make what did they do differently that allowed them to make it because in Hollywood everybody want something but not everybody gets what they want so I want to talk a little
bit about that today because life is short I think we all realize sands of time quickly can slip passed by in your life and you don't want to be old when you finally get the good life or tooled right it's like the Dutch saying we're too soon old too late smart Steve Jobs said I didn't want to be the richest man in the graveyard and I
realize this I remember back I was a younger and and Alan nation one of my mentors he had told me he said tie he said what did you want to be when you were sixteen that's the truce version of yourself what you want to be when you were six and I remember at sixteen I wanted to find the good life yeah Aristotle talks about you know
mia his definition the good life health wealth happiness love all those things that I would I remember going it's too hard how my ever going to figure this out there so many hard questions on sixteen our farewell college I'm gonna go to what religion I'm a follow who women marry what politics where to live book career path to pursue and I had this idea that I
know the perfect idea what I'll do is I'll find one person I thought this was a genius turned out to not be so smart but I find one person who had all the answers so I wrote a letter the smart person I could think of was my grandfather so I wrote this letter announcing you tell me how to design my life Ted is about T. E.
Dee Dee Dee is about design designed life so I say we you help me design my life and also excited three days later forties that I got this letter back from Europe I read it and it said sorry Ty I can help you the modern world's too complicated you will never find all the answers from just one person if you're lucky a handful of people along
the way will point the way and I was like off mark so much my shortcut but seven days later a package came it was books my grandfather had a twenty thousand books librarian he had sent me some old dusty ones thousand page volume are eleven books the stories civilization by will and Ariel Durant and I was like a thousand pages this is too much trite but
I see now he was giving me a hint I did understand that there's this myth that you have to go inward to find truth truth he was saying is you have to go out word if you can download the consciousness the mind set people who have gone before you the smartest the wisest the most intelligent the most experienced people then you will get what you want
and so I went on a night I started writing down no chords and I call mental shortcuts hours reading these books and then I started traveling with the fifty one countries I would read a book that's a lady who visit this person in person so I want to be Zealand Australia America Argentina iron that all over the world and I was focused on this for things
health wealth Lovin happiness I decided to focus on health and happiness I lived on for two years with Joel Salatin on its famous sustainable agriculture or is organic form and then I spent two and half years at the Amish no electricity trying to see what was life when we lived in community and made one mistake I forgot about money it's one of the things and so
eventually I ran out of money and so I had to do the thing nobody wants to do I to call my mom and be like mom I know men adult but I don't any money do you mind if I come to stay home to I get back on my feet said sure Jetta mobile home in north clean North Carolina went and dashes that starts out I
have a room for you but you can sleep on his couch and so I I remember laying there at night alike did I mess up did I miss out on the good life here I am I have no college degree my skills I could milk a cow domiciles wasn't very marketable skill %HESITATION I had forty I remember I like forty seven dollars in my bank account
and I did have a car accident a car but it had holes in the floor somehow rusted through if you drive if you accidentally would put your foot down I it would like chop your foot off so I didn't want to drive it anywhere I don't wanna pick anybody up in that car so I remember back to when my grandpa said he said look outwards I
start asking around somebody help me my uncle said you know what tell you need somebody who can show you how to make money so is a great idea I'm gonna go find somebody but I don't have any gas money so I was stuck berubah Montana at forty dollars so I I walked to the kitchen that's what I could afford to do and I found the yellow
pages I opened up this hill pages and I look in the finance section I found this guy and I someone go visit that guy found a suit I got a suit out because it was a minor was too big look weird on me god help me I don't know what I look like when I showed up at that guy's house but got somebody to drive me
and I I showed up and Kathy a secretary open the door and I walked back and this guy Mike stand back from the phone book I walked up to I said Mike you don't know me if you show me what you know because I figure you must know a lot about money if you can afford a full page ad in the yellow pages if you show
me what you know all work for you for free and I'll never forget he was sitting this chariot big mustache he look a like Tom Selleck you sit in there and he just rolled his chair towards me and said you know what time I've been looking for someone like you for twenty years show up in the morning I'm a show you what I know and sure
enough he did show me may begin to mentor me on business and now I'm an entrepreneur I'm an investor but I've continued on that path traveling finding mentors reading I because I read a book a day I will book club are right and what I found in my research is that I wasn't abnormal pap men towards your ability to copy is the biggest predictor of the
success that you have in life as Picasso said good artists copy but great artists steal right and I looked around in and it's interesting did you know Albert Einstein had a mentor every Thursday he would have lunch with the mentor growing up Jay Z. the rapper he had a mentor Oprah Winfrey said she had two mentors Gandhi had a mentor Alexander the great had Aristotle Bill
Gates had Paul Allen Warren Buffett head Benjamin Graham there's something here that most of us our block I've missed out on so I want to share with you some things that I found some specifics that you can do with mentors the first thank the first rule is I call them the mentor rules is the law of thirty three percent you should divide up your life it's
been thirty three percent of your time around people lower than you you can mentor them you can help them and they'll help you back by making you feel good about yourself writes good to know somebody's doing worse than you or I that's that thirty percent then you have thirty three percent of people that are on your level these become your friends your peers but the last
thirty three percent of all most people forget about those are people ten twenty years ahead of you they'll make you feel a little bit uncomfortable but that's what you want and remember you don't wanna make mistake most people make a mattress find somebody just a little bit better than them you don't be the blind leading the blind cyclop the ten X. rule find somebody ten times
further ahead than you if you want to learn how to grow a million dollar company you have to find someone who has a ten million dollar company don't be afraid to go to the top in person mentors are amazing and you can get people like Warren Buffett Bill Gates you be surprised my friend heard a talk Frankie's the director in Hollywood satanic leaves I heard her
talk and I emailed some people want Yvonne mosque the founder of PayPal only Mando three companies worth a billion dollars he wrote me back and I had lunch with them you'd be surprised people remember because up people remember their struggle on they'll reach out and help you to remember everybody wants the good life but not everybody is willing to follow these rules you must follow these
rules next humility one my favorite stories in business Sam Walton he becomes the richest man in America he starts Walmart and speak empire any takes a trip to Brazil to sao Paulo and when he's there sao Paulo his host family his friends get a call for the police department alike come bail out Sam Walton he's in jail by storms in old he's an older guy billionaire
that they rushed down if you've ever seen inside of a Brazilian jail cell it's not a good place for seventy or sixty year old bill billionaire right and ask the police are you crazy or you invent the arrest him like we didn't know who he was and we found crawling around the floors of stores and they asked pass them on what are you doing and he's
like well I was just taking a tape measure and measuring how wide the aisles were because I'm trying to figure out if these Brazilians knew something that I didn't know already a billionaire you'd think he'd be cocky you see everybody what's the good life but not everybody is willing to be humble like Sam Walton was you have to be humble next perseverance the media has tricked
us they only shows the success at the end but Bill Gates started at twelve it was until thirty one years old that he was a billionaire he said from age twenty to age thirty I never took a day off not even one you must persevere and in your search for mentors you must persevere as well I've been looking up to become friends with one of the
top real estate investors in the world as it how in the world did you get started he said back when I was nineteen as I want to real estate a little little town but I knew there is one developer that's pretty gets I went down the developers office I met the secretary said I'd like to I'd like to meet this developers that sorry he does he's
busy man he don't have time to meet you said I came back the next day she turned me away seventeen times set on the seventeenth time the lady felt bad for him and said listen here's what you do hide behind the plant by the elevator when he comes out of his office at the end of the day jump in the elevator and he will have a
choice the doors will close and you got four floors to convince this guy that you're worth you know talking to I don't know my friend said but he said enough that when they got the bottom elevator that developer said meet me at the airport in the morning well go down my private jet you come down to Florida I'll show you how I vested in hotels down
there sure enough my friend learn from this mentor became one of the wealthiest real estate investors in the world he persevere because you see everybody wants the good life but not everybody is willing to persevere to yet you must persevere next books books you should see is hidden treasure think about it if I told you because as I said mentors are great in person but some
of the great mentors are no longer alive Shakespeare Darwin Floyd Mohammed Gandhi but if I told you all those people were my house they gonna be there this Saturday answering questions magically I can make that happen would you show up at my house course everybody would buy a plane ticket and and up in California they are there in my house there are my library they can