What Billionaires Know That You Don’t (Until Now)

Shine Star

Unlock the powerful secrets billionaires have hidden from the world — until now.  Are you ready to discover what they know and change your financial future forever?   #BillionaireSecrets  #UnlockWealth  #FinancialFreedom  #MindsetShift  #WealthHacks  #SuccessBlueprint  #MoneyMastery  #SecretToRiches  #HighIncomeTips  #WealthUnlocked   Watch now to uncover what billionaires don’t want   you to know!  Don’t miss these hidden secrets  — tap to learn more!  Ready to think like a billionaire?  Click and start now!  Unlock the secrets to wealth  — watch before it’s gone!  Tap to discover the billionaire mindset today!

Transcript

00:00I was walking on a beach with a billionaire, and he's talking to me about the mission that he sees

00:04for me. And he's like, I think we should own more small businesses, and I don't want any more

00:08Walmarts. And I'm like, yes, it is. I got it. And I tell him all my ideas. And he kind of turns and

00:13looks at me and he goes, do you think you've invested in small business for so long that

00:18small has infected your thinking? When you get in a room with somebody who thinks that much bigger

00:25than you, it opens up your mind to an entirely different world. All right, guys, you want to

00:29come on in? Do this. I'm going to share a few things with you today that candidly, although

00:34I'm all over the internet, I typically don't share. My biggest regret. And my biggest regret

00:40is basically that for the past 15 years, let's say, I lived other people's lives. I worked

00:46in corporate America in jobs that I didn't like with people that I wasn't that excited

00:51about. I was married to a gent that wasn't right for me. Basically, this whole period of

00:57my life was doing the thing I thought I was supposed to do, not the thing that I really

01:02knew I wanted to do. And if I could have done one thing different, it would probably be to

01:10start this adventure of mine sooner. It took me 15 years to even think about that I could

01:17be worthy of sharing some knowledge to other people. It felt egotistical. It felt like maybe

01:23I didn't know enough. And when I started doing it, that all changed. But I think that you

01:28guys might be a little bit like me. That you might have this anxiety that deep down inside,

01:35you know you were meant for something bigger. That you also might have what I call my little

01:41it in the closet, which was the Cody that I just kind of kept shoving in there because

01:47I wasn't ready to deal with it because I was having some success already. And I didn't want

01:52to let it out. And I thought that it might be scary if I did. Or worse, what if I go all

01:58in and I fail? What if I actually try all the way and it doesn't work? I had never kind of

02:05tried all the way in my life. I'd worked pretty hard, but I'd never gone all in. And I wish

02:10I had a group like all of you here and like Dean and the business that he's built to start

02:15because I didn't. I just kind of did it. And you'll see what happens when you do it,

02:21even if you don't do it the right way with a bunch of guidance like these guys have. You see,

02:26I probably, like many of you, I actually think I played pretty small. I lived everybody else's

02:30life, like I told you about. I did the safe thing until one day something happened. I was actually,

02:36I was walking on a beach with a billionaire. This billionaire happened to be the CEO of one

02:41of my last companies where I worked for somebody else. And he drew a line in the sand. And that

02:45line in the sand changed just about everything for me. And the line in the sand kind of went like

02:50this. I was building this company. We were really successful. We were the biggest international

02:55division. We had amassed a billion dollars in assets. And I had done that from zero. That had

03:02been me and 80 hour weeks and a divorce and unhappiness and not being very healthy to get to that.

03:06And then we're walking along the beach at the Montage in California. And he's like,

03:12Cody, what are you doing at this firm? And I was like, I don't know, making a lot of money. I'm like,

03:17what do you mean? What am I doing at this firm? And he's like, listen, at this firm, we do things

03:22my way. We get rich quietly. And the way you're building with social media and online newsletters,

03:32it's not how we do things here. And so if you want to do that, you got to find a new boat,

03:37but it's not this one. So he drew a line in the sand, an ultimatum. And a business that I had spent

03:42years building, I walked away with nothing. No severance, no equity, nothing. And you'd think

03:51that that one conversation would be enough for me, but I'm actually kind of a wuss. You know,

03:55have you guys ever had a big push and been like, I'm going to do it? And you hear the Rocky soundtrack in

03:59the back of your head. And then all of a sudden, like 24 hours passes and you don't do the thing.

04:06And you're just like, you stay in your lane. You're like, yeah, that sucked, but I'm actually

04:09going to, I'm comfortable here. I'm still hanging out. No big deal. That was me. And it actually took

04:14this until I jumped. And I found a little example just for you. It's my meter, which is basically,

04:21have you ever been in a company, in a job, in a life, wherever, where like your tolerance is,

04:26oh man, it's getting tested. It's getting tested. One more Zoom meeting, you know, that's useless

04:31and could have been an email. One more bill that you can't pay, but you're making so much money for

04:36other people. Well, mine was kind of getting to the end. And right about at the top, it starts to

04:40wiggle, just like a thermometer. It's ready to break. And my, my meter broke. And what broke it was

04:45this. If y'all can see this, this is a text message, a real one from a gent named Daniel. And I really

04:52wanted to put his last name on here for you guys, but I thought being an adult, so I didn't. And he

04:56basically said, uh, you're dumbing us down. I hope you've gained more followers this week because you

05:02didn't help the firm. Now at the time, I am the number one producing international business,

05:08but I wasn't doing it their way. We've always done it this way. It's not impossible at all,

05:16but for you it is. It'd be better if you were just quiet and in the corner. I don't know if you've

05:20ever felt that way. Now they had a point. They had a point in that it was their boat. I was on it

05:27and I was rowing really fast and they didn't want that same thing. And so what I kind of took with

05:35me then, and I made this my mantra at the time and I didn't tell anybody and I didn't know if it was

05:39going to be true, honestly. So that first they make fun of you, then they call you crazy. And then

05:44one day they ask you how you did it. And I took this as my mantra and I said, what if,

05:50what if I actually believed this? What if I believed that yes, they're going to make fun of

05:55you to start, but eventually once you succeed, they're going to ask you how you did it. And I

06:00basically determined that, you know, you've made it when you've got your first hater. I think that's

06:05what you guys should shoot for. Everybody's showing clients up there. I'm like, nah, tell me when

06:10somebody sends you a text message, it gets you right in the gut so that you get a chip on your

06:14shoulder so big that every time something hard comes, you go, oh yeah, I remember you. Watch me.

06:20Now, I am speaking before an actual monk, Jay Shetty, so I bet his message is going to be a little

06:24bit different. My life's a little bit more hardcore. But I do have this belief that that, the haters,

06:31the difficulties in your life can be the very thing that drives you. There's a famous story about

06:35the CEO of Yahoo. Reddit went to go sell their company to Yahoo, supposedly. You guys, anybody

06:41use Yahoo still? That's right, nobody. And Reddit went to go sell to them. And Yahoo told them,

06:49listen guys, yeah, you're not really worth us buying you because you're a rounding error to us.

06:54You're so small, you're like a couple cents, basically. And what did the founders of Reddit,

07:00Alex O'Han didn't do? He put that sign up on their office where they could all see. Rounding

07:06error. So every time it got hard, they looked back at that little chip on their shoulder and they said,

07:11watch me. So I think you guys should actually look for your first hater. Now, that might be a little

07:17painful for you to do because maybe you're a people pleaser. Actually, I am. I think sometimes I'm so

07:21intense and do all of this because deep inside, I just want everybody to like me. I just want us all to be

07:27buddies. I just want us to be friends. And I felt safe in the world in which it was set out

07:33explicitly for me. I mean, I went to Georgetown. I did go to ASU before that. Any Sun Devils on here?

07:39There's a bunch in here. I went to Georgetown. I worked at Goldman Sachs. I, you know, was on the

07:46nice TV screen at Wall Street talking about stocks, doing the thing that my parents could be proud of,

07:52right? They had worked so hard for me to have this life. And now I was kind of going to throw it in

07:59the trash. Because what do I do now? Basically this. I make TikToks on the interwebs, right? I mean,

08:05oh, how the mighty have fallen. I do rule. So you can have some parameters when you get on the

08:10internet. I don't dance on the interwebs. That's, I don't know if anybody's with me there, but I don't

08:14do that. But I actually think I should go give that crotchety CEO a hug. And the reason why is

08:22because I think sometimes someone else's no is the only way to get to your yes. That's what I

08:30realized. If you're like me and you've ever been scared to do just about anything, do you ever feel

08:35like the universe kind of pushes you sometimes? It's like, oh, you're not ready? Watch this.

08:39Pew. That's what happens. And I think what makes a difference between a successful big life

08:46and a life living somebody else's dreams is what you say when that punch to the gut comes to you.

08:53What do you say when that no is in front of you? Dean was talking about turning your mess into your

08:57message. I think the same thing. It's like, take that chip on the shoulder and power that automobile

09:03that's going to take off into your future. And so I started thinking about it. Okay, what was my dream?

09:08I wanted to create one million business owners. I hated that line. We get rich quietly. It's like

09:15there's so much money. It's so abundant. Why couldn't we get rich together? And my belief was

09:21that in America, in the US, we don't own our communities anymore. We've sort of given up to

09:30big institutions and big corporations. And what happens to us being owners? That's what I saw. I

09:36thought, I could talk about that. I could get behind a dream so big that the other humans all

09:42around me could become the owners of their communities. Yeah, what would happen if I

09:46believed that? I took that chip on my shoulder and I believed this. And then it was actually two

09:51years later, but I like this slide. If anybody's a Spongebob fan, aka a nerd like me, you know it's up.

09:56What happened two years later? Basically this. A million followers on Instagram. Now 800,000 on YouTube

10:02as of yesterday. Five million social followers across the web. 100 million monthly views. When I

10:09tell you that I still don't know how to use TikTok and Instagram and post reels, I'm serious. When I

10:15tell you that before two years ago, I wasn't on the internet. I was taking like the dad selfie.

10:20Anybody ever do those? Where like the face is really just really close to the image.

10:25And what happened that I thought was so interesting is that this quote unquote fame thing is kind of

10:32fascinating in some ways and it's fun and it's cool. But you know what's cooler than that?

10:37I know we're not always supposed to talk about money this way, but I think money is cooler.

10:42Let me tell you why. Because money is a tool to change the world. Fame can be too, but money talks.

10:50It's how a lot of politicians get elected. It's certainly how you buy things. It's certainly how you

10:55change the world around you. And so I was like, well, if we have fame, can we also create an empire

11:01monetarily? That's important to me. And we did. Eight figure annual media company, a bunch of

11:06businesses in my local community where I get to shake hands with the owner as opposed to going to

11:11a Starbucks, and 2,000 students we've taught to buy small businesses. I never would have thought that

11:15was possible two years ago. And then the extra cool part, the gent with the abs is my husband,

11:20and I hired him. And now he works with me. And the gent without the abs, sorry dad,

11:25he's also on this phone call, he also came and worked for me. Because I thought, man, when you

11:32own your future and you are in charge, you bring along the people you love with you. You get to build

11:39the company you want to build. And so we did. And what's fascinating for me in this instance is that

11:46this is a truth that the next generation knows. But I didn't before. That this one thing is more

11:54true now than ever. And you all are poised at an incredible point in time. I wish I had been

11:59sitting in your seats when I had started. Because back then, everybody just made fun of me and told

12:03me that I was crazy. But you all now have, you've like peeked behind the curtain. What Dean has done

12:09is he's Wizard of Oz'd you. He's basically said, hold on a second. You think there's some special

12:14thing behind? Let me pull back the curtain. And let me tell you some truth. Now I've met a lot

12:19of billionaires. I've met a ton of famous people. I'm friends with the both of them. And they are

12:24just like you and me. That's the secret. They are not special. Maybe they work a little bit harder.

12:29I don't know. Maybe some of their IQs are bigger. I don't always think so. But we are just a bunch of

12:33anxious bipedal monkeys running around trying to figure it out. And so if you can have that belief,

12:38then you can tap into this new economy that I call and many people call the audience or attention economy.

12:44The best types of leverage, labor, employees back in the day, then capital, banks, then code,

12:50aka Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk building their billions. And today it's audience. And guess what?

12:56The audience is the only one that's permissionless. I don't got to go to a bank and ask for money. I don't

13:02have to learn how to do code. And I don't have to get somebody a degree to work for me and do labor.

13:07With attention, I can just post things on the internet. And I can pull people into my mission,

13:13as opposed to pushing along my company and begging and pleading for things.

13:18It's pretty incredible. In fact, it's so incredible that regardless of what you think of these people

13:21ethically and morally, which many questions, these people have turned attention into tens of billions

13:28of dollars. And we've seen it right in front of our eyes. And how about my first slide where I said,

13:33if they can do it, you can do it? Perfect example. We've all watched these people live.

13:38They are just like you and I. And one of my beliefs is that the universe doesn't like a vacuum.

13:47The universe will fill it with things that don't help us, that don't make us better,

13:52unless we have humans like all of you who actually have real missions. I saw your mission. It was like,

13:57there was nothing on there that said, I'm going to make people's butts bigger and their lips bigger.

14:02That's my mission. It was like, I want to change the world. I want to save people from divorce. I

14:08want people to make more money. Like you on this call need to fill the vacuum. That's your calling.

14:14And I think step one is what you're doing today. Become an owner. Own your future. Get your voice out

14:21there if you have something worthy of saying. And then you build an empire, which is maybe the 2.0

14:27version. Now, how do we do this? Dean gave you a ton of interesting ways to do it. Stuff that I

14:33hadn't even thought about, honestly. So that was interesting for me to listen to. My little triangle

14:39and how I thought about it back in the day is what I call the triangle of genius. And here's basically

14:45what it is. I'm looking for the intersection of fun, money, ease. Now, I've been in finance for

14:52a long time. What I can tell you about finance people are we're not that creative. We're pretty

14:56good at spreadsheets. We're actually a little bit lazy. We want things to come to us in a way that's

15:01really efficient. We're like, have you heard about, you know, Archimedes and his lever? If you give me a

15:06lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, I can move the world. I'm always looking for my lever.

15:11I don't want to work that hard. I want to work really smart. So I was looking for the intersection

15:15between these three things. And basically, this is how I found my thing to talk about on the

15:21universe, my it. First, I asked myself the question, fun, what do you talk about or do

15:25even when no one pays you? My husband, for instance, he loves AI. He talks about it all day,

15:31wouldn't shut up about it. Now, he does something with the Department of Defense in their innovation

15:34unit. But that was all from him just talking about this. Ease. What is so easy it's like breathing

15:40to you? What do people come to you for advice on already? And you're giving it out for

15:45free. And then money do people spend in that category. This one I think is important. I'm a

15:49big believer that you should be paid for your effort. I think once you believe that, the money

15:55comes a little bit easier. I also think people value the things they pay for. So money is important.

16:00Mine was this resume, which if you can see this really tiny language on here was basically that

16:05I was in finance. I talked about a lot of financing things. I was in private equity for a long time.

16:11And I didn't know what would be interesting to people to talk about that. I didn't really want

16:14to do personal budgeting. I was never really good at that, to be honest. I was known for

16:18overdrawing my checking account back in the day, many a time. So I had to think about what I was

16:22good at. And what I realized is there is another truth that only these guys know, if you know them.

16:26These are some of the richest men in the world. Carlos Slim, to the right, richest guy in Mexico.

16:30Got the richest guy in India, up and to the left. We've also got the head of LVMH, Bernard, here.

16:36And what do they know that I knew? Well, they knew that it's easier to buy profits than try to grow

16:42them. This is a belief of mine. That actually, in fact, a lot of us spend a ton of time in startup

16:49land when we could buy our profits. They also know that when you own one company, why can't you own 10?

16:57Dean and Tony are an incredible example of that. They are doing what I think Tony said, which is you

17:02can't be, what you can't see. Them allowing you to see into their lives, which is really scary. And

17:07there's lots of risks for being public on the internet, which is probably why people want to

17:10get rich quietly. But they're pulling back the curtain for you. And what I realized is private

17:15equity was private. I was in the club that creates the most billionaires of any industry across the

17:22world, and they let me in. So I was like, well, I could talk about that on the internet. I could teach

17:28other people this thing that I do kind of without thinking about it. And because of that, I made a

17:35pretty massive change. And that change looked a little bit like this. I started to put my face on

17:43the internet. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about. Now, Dean has another model that he

17:48teaches as well. And this is just one way to do it. But if you were my student, I would tell you two

17:53things to do today. And let's go through them really quickly. I would tell you that first and

17:57foremost, you need to find a viral platform. Why? Because attention is the arbitrage trade of the 21st

18:06century. This is a screenshot right here. Anytime somebody gives you a flywheel, a funnel, or an org chart,

18:14do me a solid screenshot it. Even if you don't know what you're going to do now, once you get more

18:18information, you're going to go back, and you're going to look at this, and you're going to realize that all

18:21of these things are always a map. They're a map to steal somebody else's homework. So basically,

18:25what you can see here is I started at Instagram, then I went to Twitter, then I started a newsletter,

18:29then I went to TikTok, then I went to LinkedIn. All of those things drove to the thing I was selling,

18:35and then created more audience, and then drove back to the thing that I was selling, and then

18:38created more audience. You want a flywheel of your own, whatever it is. And the fastest way to get

18:44there, I think, is through virality. Now, what does virality mean? It means that it's easy to share your

18:50stuff. And there's three different viral channels that I like. Easiest one, finger pointing on

18:56Instagram. Instagram is great for those of you who are visual. If you like video, and if you like

19:02visual images, I like Instagram. And one word, why? When you open your phone, right, and you scroll into

19:08the DMs each day, that's the first thing you open, right? You open Instagram, you go to your DMs,

19:13your friends send you stuff. That's how your stuff gets in somebody else's inbox. The second one is

19:18LinkedIn. This is great if you're corporate. LinkedIn's a great spot to post things that are

19:23more corporate and steal that audience from your previous work history. And lastly is Twitter.

19:28So if you're into controversy, you're like me, you're a little bit edgy, or you're into news,

19:32maybe you pick Twitter as your first one. But I like picking one of these three things. Now,

19:37everything I talk about is going really big. You can also start very small. Just a few people you know.

19:43But I want to push you to have a bigger dream. Now, the last thing that I push pretty hard is that

19:50email isn't dead. And I think you guys should add an email newsletter. And let me tell you why.

19:56Because when I started my newsletter, as you can see here, we basically had no subscribers in the

20:01beginning, and now have 500,000 subscribers. And the reason that that's interesting is that a newsletter,

20:08screenshot this, allows you to have an owned versus a rented platform, meaning you can

20:17control the emails. The other ones are controlled by Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, whoever controls TikTok,

20:21I don't know these days. There's also less competition because people read their emails,

20:26and they convert higher to sales than anything else. So I think you might want to have a newsletter.

20:33And if you have a newsletter, there's really just one rule. That being normal is boring. Please don't

20:38do it. Please let that little inner, freaky, weird part of you out, whatever that is. Let out the

20:44personality that comes with your friends. We've got like Nina and her red lipstick. Like, I want to see

20:50that in your emails. I want your emails to feel like you as a human. And let me give you an example.

20:57Most emails from companies look like this, which is why we hate getting them, right? Anybody feel like,

21:00I wish I got more emails in my inbox? Probably not. Okay, yeah, that's zero hands. And why?

21:07Because over to the right, this second one is a clothing company. It's a building. Why would I open

21:11this? It makes no sense whatsoever. And so the reason I would get fired in corporate, but why I have

21:17500,000 emails is because I have some fun with them. And I want you to have some fun with your

21:21newsletters when you start them. Newsletters really matter in one particular thing, your subject line.

21:27Now we could do 452 different tactics today, but I'm just going to give you one. And I'm going to

21:32give you an example. So we had a newsletter that was going to go out, and the newsletter was about

21:37tree trimming. And so the options were like, this guy made 15K trimming trees. This guy trims grass

21:44lawns and makes 100K. And I was like, these are so boring, nobody's going to use them. Get me

21:50attention and don't be boring. And my team said, no, these are good. And I said, okay, how about we do a

21:55contest? I'll give a thousand bucks to you guys if your newsletter beats my newsletter.

22:00And they said, yes. And then here's my newsletter title.

22:05I love guys with wood, dot, dot, dot. Do you think that email got a few opens?

22:12I want you to feel comfortable sharing whatever it is inside of you. Now this one is very much Cody.

22:18My mom definitely wouldn't send this email, but I want you to feel comfortable sharing that thing inside

22:23of you in your own particular language. We love humans. Be human. Yes, we're going to use AI to

22:30help you, but your human is the difference between robots and you. So make sure you keep it. And lastly,

22:37when you get obsessed with your purpose, it becomes your obsession. Nobody tells you this.

22:44Most other things in life end up feeling like a distraction. And your unfair advantage is that if

22:49you spend the time finding your triangle of genius, nobody will be able to compete with you because

22:55you'll be so obsessed they can't keep up. Now, my last slide was my second walk with a billionaire.

23:01And on this walk with a billionaire, a guy by the name of Bill Perkins, he wrote a book called

23:05Die with Zero, if you guys have ever read it. And we're walking along his mansion in Lake Austin,

23:10and he's talking to me about the mission that he sees for me. And he's like, I think we should own more

23:15small businesses. And I don't want any more Walmarts. And it's your mission to sort of take

23:20back small America by teaching more people this. And I'm like, yes, it is. I got it. And I tell him

23:26all my ideas. And he kind of turns and looks at me and he goes, do you think you've invested in small

23:31business for so long that small has infected your thinking? And I was like, so I thought my dream was

23:39pretty big. But then I realized when you get in a room with somebody who has that many more zeros than

23:46you, who thinks that much bigger than you, what does it do? It opens up your mind to an entirely

23:51different world. He did something for me that was so good that Dean is now doing for all of you guys.

23:57It's this. He got you into a room where your dreams are our realities. And guess what? Dreams are

24:07contagious. So I hope you get your first hater. I hope you take a big leap. I hope you do the hard

24:13thing. And I hope your dream scares you to death. Because that's how you know you're doing it right.

24:18Thanks so much for having me today, everybody.

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