My Wife Told Me to Quit My Job

[Music] brought to you by the Ramsey Network app download for Content that keeps you motivated today how has your view of wealth changed as you've actually built it you know there's a view of wealth we have when we're young and we're striving has it changed for you now that you're kind of in a different phase maybe maybe in some ways uh you know listen I I was always ambitious to make more money I mean I'm not going to make any bones about this I don't think that's a bad thing I think that you know I didn't get into the business I was in in order to make money you don't go into the political commentary business because you think you're just going to be loaded at the end of the day in fact every time I tried to make money in a way that was not my passion it ended up failing right which I which I think is another thing that that folks don't realize about people who tend to make a lot of money is the reason they got into the business that they're in typically is not for the money it's because that's where their creative capacity was so for example I I mentioned I went to law school at Harvard Law right you come out you have a trajectory now you're going to make a lot of money because you go to Harvard Law the chances you end up poor are pretty low so I go I work at a firm called Goodwin Proctor and I'm like you know I for I had the worst interview record in the history of Harvard Law because I was conservative and that that didn't work out well with the law firms but after I took my books off my resume I got a job and I ended up working in like real estate law and so I'm sitting at this beautiful office in centry city and looking out you know over the over the hills toward the ocean and it's 2007 and so there's no work right it's the end of the it's the end of 2007 the real estate market has collapsed you're sitting there doing nothing all day and I am absolutely miserable and I was making what was you know great money coming out of law school it's like $180,000 and it was coming out of law school that's a lot of money and it's still a lot of money I was dating my wife at the time we' gotten engaged and she saw you're she's like you're absolutely miserable you're you you're losing weight you're miserable you hate this you should quit and I said okay I mean I'm going to make a you know I don't have a job and said well don't worry like I have faith that you'll you'll be able to get a job because you have a degree you're a smart person you'll figure it out and if we have to live on a lot less we'll live on a lot less so you don't have to be miserable and so I ended up quitting we had just you know bought a condo which was great move I took a job for onethird the pay working at a place called Talk Radio Network which was the syndicator for a bunch of nationally syndicator radio uh and the deal that I made with the head of the company Mark Masters was that I would do corporate legal like half the time I'd be kind of the secondary attorney there they had a primary um I'd be an associate about four hours a day and the other four hours I was going to I told him I'm only going to do this I get to learn the basics of production I want to like sit in the room I want to cut audio I want to see how the monologues are done I want to see like how everything in this industry works and so I got like really in the guts of it from that trajectory came everything else right you had I had to take a step a couple steps back financially in order to take steps forward because I was learning the thing getting expert at the thing that I want to be expert at and then you try and you fail and you try and you fail and you try and then you hit and and I think that's the story for a lot of people who get you know really really you know wealthy is is that you got to fail a lot absolutely and I think you're right that the um politicians stating that they are your answer for Prosperity is a alive from the pit of Hell and I just I rail on it on our shows about that what happens in your house is a thousand times more important than what happens in the white house as far as the trajectory of your future success neither party is going to make your life awesome I'm old I've seen both parties in office neither party has sent me money neither one of them have caused me to be successful I've done stupid things under both of them I've done really smart things under both of them and the results of the stupid things or smart things that I did are what I inherited well Bill Clinton didn't send me any money he didn't curse me he didn't bring my life to an end or anything else and and George W didn't and Ronald Reagan didn't and uh neither one of these two will well that's why it drives me up a wall when you hear politicians say I created this number of jobs no you no you didn't by what standard what business did you start that you created that number of jobs and if you did create jobs in the in the public sector how much money did you have to steal from people in the private sector in order to redirect it to people that that you think are now going to vote for you you know I actually just told president Trump that in the interview the other day I said when you tell people when politicians tell people they created jobs it pisses people like me off because we know we create the jobs so since small business is the backbone of the American economy 54% of the gross domestic product then what are you going to do to unleash small businesses to create jobs because that's who most people work for that was my question to him and he kind of chuckled went well you know that's right it's like yeah I I think there's something in the American Soul that's been inovated and put down for a long time and the way that we discuss wealth and the way we discuss money in this country has been wrong for a long time this idea that the wealthy are quotequote the privileged or the lucky I mean yes obviously there's an element of luck obviously we we all have the privilege of living in the greatest country in the history of the world some of us have more privileges than others in the sense that we were born smarter or born more handsome or you know we're born more athletic but the reality is that that's the part you can't control and so when we talk about wealth that way what we're doing is talking about all the stupid things that that you can't control the thing that you can control is how you approach the world there a saying that we have at our company that we we kind of you know started trafficking in early on we started hiring employees which is you can't you can't teach hungry right I can do I can I can teach you all sorts of skills I can make you better at your job but I cannot teach you if you're not hungry and Americans I I feel like have lost hungry or at least they've forgotten how to be hungry but I think that deep in the American Soul there is a desire again to be Pioneers there's there's a desire to be entrepreneurial there's a desire to to actually go out there and Conquer and that that's a good thing we've gotten away from this sort of aggressive language with regards to how approach the world but that but that that language is good I think you have a duty to succeed I think that this this this idea that it's a matter of you know moral apathy whether you make the decisions that lead to success or not is really terrible you have a duty to at least try to succeed you have a duty to make the good decisions and you have to take that burden on yourself and when you do you'll be Freer because it'll it'll you'll be in the flow you'll you'll feel the thing you'll feel like you have a pathway to success there's something about putting that harness on and leaning into it that that stimulates you it really does and you know we've got uh about 1100 team members and well over 400 of them are gen Z and you know for the people watching this I I'm greatly encouraged about hungry because in gen Z there is a group of them that are tremendously hungry they they are missional they they'll charge the gates of hell with a water pistol uh and then there's a group of them that are useless completely useless right and there's kind of no middle ground like Baby Boomers we would at least lie and you know say we were useful you know but they won't even lie they'll just look at you and say I'm useless or they'll say Let Me In put me in coach put me in coach by by the way I think that that that last point is really important is that what that says there there has now been created in the United States a permission structure for uselessness right used to be that if you if you if you were you know lazy didn't want to do the work you at least had to pretend that you weren't lazy and that you didn't want to do the work and now there's been a permission structure that's been created by politic yeah I mean every time people talk about well is it really that good that you're committed so much to your work is it good that you're spending so much time at work now listen if you have a bad work life balance meaning you know first of all I don't even like the term work life balance because work is part of your life but if if if the idea is you're spending so much time at work you're not spending the proper amount of time with your family that's a real concern you need to rejigger your life I mean I I have to make conscious decisions about when to stop working to spend time with my kids but that's not what people are talking about what they really mean by work life balance is that work is something terrible it's a burden that you take upon yourself and if only the markets were nice and friendly then you just get everything you want hand it to you if we just had the Star Trek replicator machine we just hand you everything that you want and that's really the natural state of things and it's like that is not even remotely the natural state of things the natural state of things is people dying at the age of 30 from some terrible disease while living in the outdoors right that's the natural state of things that'll make you grateful yeah it Americans very few Americans have spent a lot of time in you know other places of the world that are a lot poorer by the way you don't have to go that far they don't have to be that much poorer you go to places in in Latin America where the corruption is endemic I mean truly endemic you just walk off the plane we my wife and I went to Panama recently and literally we got off the tour got had to bribe a cop like at the airport I mean that sort of stuff is is really really common you should be grateful to live in a country where if you try to bribe a cop you're probably going to get arrested right like the the the level of of honesty in America is extraordinary the level of consistency in application of rules yes there are problems but compared to other countries is astonishing if you can't succeed in America where where precisely are you going to succeed and what does success look like like to you