“Tai Lopez is an investor, partner, consultant or advisor to 20 multi-million dollar businesses,” is the description that you find about him in addition to the information that through his podcasts and workshops he trains people for “success” or “the good life”. In this TED talk which has been titled “Why I read a Book a day”, the talk is not just about books. He talks about the good life that everyone wants but few know how to get it.
Delivered dramatically may be because the acting skills of his neighbourhood have rubbed off on him (he tells you many times that he is from Hollywood), Lopez has lots of interesting things to say. He begins by saying that when he was 16 and was still wondering how to plan his career, his love, his place of stay and all that, he thought he would “ask someone who knew.” So he asked his grandfather who sent him eleven books from his library telling him that he would not be able to find one person who could guide him, may be books could help.
Lopez did come to read those books, but in a while. First he looked up the yellow pages and found a guy who had given a full page advertisement. The next morning he knocked at his door and said, “If you show me what you are good at, I will work for you for free.” So he says the moral of the lesson is to find a mentor. All successful people have a mentor, “Albert Einstein had a mentor with whom he would lunch every Thursday. Oprah Winfrey says she had two. Bill Gates had Paul Allen, Alexander the Great had Aristotle….”
Lopez says the first rule or the mentor rule is what he calls the 33 per cent. “You have to have 33 per cent people who are doing worse than you. You can mentor them, help them. Then you have 33 per cent on your level, your friends. The last 33 per cent are those who are 10-20 years ahead of you. They will make you feel a little uncomfortable but that is what you want. I call it the 10x rule. Find somebody who is 10 times ahead of you. If you are looking to make money, find the guy who has made ten times more than you, not just marginally better off.”
The next point Lopez makes is humility. He gives the example of Sam Walton who he says went to Brazil and was found crawling around the floor of stores…he was measuring the aisles saying he was wondering if Brazilians know something that he did not know.
Lopez says perseverance is the third key attribute. Perseverance to both finding a mentor and staying at the job you are doing. Bill Gates, says Lopez, began at 19 and achieved success only at 31.
It is only now that Lopez comes to books. “You must see books as a great treasure. Some great mentors are not alive, like Mahatma Gandhi…Rewire your brain to read again…treat books as friends and not as a one time event. Pick a handful of books, 150 of them and read them over and over again…most books have only one or two things worth reading…see yourself as a gold miner and look for those nuggets in them. Read more.”
Lopez hands the key to many of the above ideas by saying, “And lastly Stoic versus Epicurean. From one of the eleven books my grandfather sent me I noted down one quote, ‘A Nation is born Stoic and dies Epicurean.’ Stoics are people willing to sacrifice pleasures for something better in the future, they are like investors. Epicureans live for the now, they are consumers. The media bombards you, they are trying to sell you something. Luxury comes at a cost, they are killing your dreams, your ambitions. So toughen up a little bit. Be a stoic. When was the last time you went a week without eating sugar or walked instead of taking the car to get the groceries or turned off the AC? You see everybody wants, but few are willing to toughen up…”
Lopez ends by saying there is always someone to learn from, do so and devote your life to the service of others.
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Web link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bB_fVDlvhc
