28 Ways to Stay Poor: Inversion Thinking for Success

in this video i'm going to talk to you about the 28 ways to stay poor and the reason i'm framing it that way is

because charlie munger my personal hero had a seminal talk that he gave multiple times on how to live a miserable life

and the reason he gives it that way is that he believes in a process called inversion thinking which is where you

solve problems in reverse so for example if you want to have a good marriage rather than asking the question how do i

have a good marriage you ask the question how would i destroy my marriage and then you list out all the ways to

destroy your marriage and then you do the exact opposite of that and what's interesting is that our brains are much

better at finding problems than they are finding solutions and so we do is we harness this innate ability that we have

to find the problems and then after finding every possible problem we can imagine every threat imaginable which

evolutionary we're designed to look for then flip that in reverse to find our solutions all right and this is a

process of thinking that i've applied to business i've applied it to merit i've applied to a lot of different aspects in

my life and i would and i would encourage you to do it as well but in this video i'll talk about the 28 ways

to stay poor hey and stay tuned to the end of the video because at the very end i'm going to give you the reverse of

these the 28 rules of how not to be poor i'll take all of these things and i'll reverse them for

you in one hard-hitting blip that you will not want to miss all right if you don't know who i am my name is oxford

moses i own acquisition.com it's a portfolio of companies that deserve a 100 million a year i make these videos

because i have a lot of fun doing it and i hope you enjoy them as much as i enjoy making them for you all right so the

first one this is one of the best ways to stay poor and as a result by the way side note this entire uh little mini

thread here got over 5000 uh shares on my twitter uh and so that is why i decided to make this video because it

seemed like a lot of you guys like that okay so the first and best way to stay poor is to start tomorrow so whatever it

is that you want to do whether it's losing weight saving money starting that business whatever it is to start

tomorrow all right so that's the best thing you can do to stay poor is just start tomorrow okay the next one is to

read lots of books and then do nothing all right because it's one of the you know lots of people talk about reading

books and i see people all the time that i've seen for years in the exact same position posting every oh yeah i'm

reading 52 books this year that's my commitment instead of reading 52 books maybe just read one book and actually do

something about it crazy i know number three take advice from poor people on how to be rich all right so think about

that for a second a lot of us surround ourselves or at least i did when i was starting out surround ourselves with

people who are very poor and we listen to their advice on how to be rich and they have no idea what they are doing

and we also listen to their judgment on why our idea is stupid even though they are poor so what would they know so

number three take advice from poor people on how to be rich number four this is a big one pick a spouse who will

make you feel guilty for working all right so you have your dreams you have these things you want to pursue but this

person is saying you shouldn't do that you need to be doing x y z blah blah blah and then you feel like you need to

compromise your dreams for that person the problem is that you put your power of your destiny in their hands and

you're asking for permission instead of support right because the other day if you don't accomplish your dreams and you

did it because of them who do you think you're going to resent so you owe to yourself and you go to your marriage to

hey pick people who are not who are going to support you in your dreams even if they don't necessarily agree right

but more easily not put your power in somebody else right number five fail once quit forever all right so as soon

as you do actually start to decide doing something you fail immediately and say oh i guess this isn't for me i guess

success isn't for me i guess business isn't for me i guess sales isn't for me i guess whatever the thing is isn't for

me because you failed once but it's because we have we have an incorrect view of failure because failure is a

necessary part and the thing is you learn from failure and so it's either you win or you learn but that is the

fifth thing you want to do if you want to stay poor forever number six is think that the world is fair

so a lot of us are get you know especially me earlier on like i would complain i'd be like that's not fair

this is fair it shouldn't be this way blah blah blah blah and the thing is is that all that complaining that i did did

nothing at all whatsoever did nothing and so the thing is there's no activity that comes from blaming your

circumstances which just so happens to be the seventh one of how to stay poor is blame your circumstances and complain

all right complaining about things that you cannot control and the thing is is like these sound so obvious but think

about these in reverse again so if the if the contrary of thinking the world is fair is assume the world is fair it's

unfair excuse me assume the world is unfair and then act accordingly instead of blaming your circumstances you think

your circumstances for who you are and what they gave you you are who you are because of the [ __ ] that you have gone

through right there's a there's a saying your mess is your message and i think it's a very it's a very beautiful saying

because how sad would it be to wish to have a life of ease and comfort because strong character is built through hard

times and so if we want to have strong character we basically must have a hard life for

periods of time or for seasons and so we can't lament the thing that creates the outcome you can't lament the heat and

and that the beating of the hammer to to strengthen the steel right they go one in this they go hand in hand and so we

just have to accept them for what they are and and as for complaining i think you can just accept and move on so

number nine i covered three there number nine expect the government to save you all right that's a great way to stay

poor expect the government to save you or even say expect other people to save you the reality is no one's going to

save you except for you and a lot of times many people have spent their entire lives waiting around for someone

to save them and still stay poor number 10 value the opinion of others over your own it's an excellent way to stay poor

you think everyone else's opinions matter more than yours and i'll give you a secret that it took me you know making

a lot of money to then realize which is you are successful the moment you say you are crazy right like you are

successful the moment that you decide you are successful there are people who are billionaires who don't feel like

they are successful and there are people who have almost no money and absolutely think that they're an amazing success

and the thing is is that they are both right it's our choice and i can promise you that if you try and give yourself a

number you will just move the goal post i promise you that from the depth of my soul you will move the number and make

something else the new goal and once that once i am rich then whatever but it's a when then fallacy it doesn't it's

not true so you can accept and you can become successful today because if you look at yourself compared to people in a

much worse off scenario they would love to have your life and so you just need to decide for yourself if you are

successful the thing is that success is a process rather than an outcome and so you can be successful in that you are

living your values of pursuit that can mean success if you choose to define that way so number 11 way to stay poor

avoid discomfort all right a lot of us you know we have new things you have to take risks you have to learn things and

it's uncomfortable because you will suck right of course you will suck it's normal to suck but people avoid

discomfort because they don't want to go through that and it's so silly the discomfort that they're feeling is the

judgment they impose upon themselves about not being good at something they've never done before how insane is

that very and that's why humans are also kind of insane when you think about the things that we do the things that we

think and so great way to stay poor is to avoid discomfort of all kinds you also guarantee the number one discomfort

which is that you don't accomplish what you want in your life 12 how to stay poor tolerate mediocrity from yourself

and others alright so as you start to grow if you're growing you know a small business or even in the workplace if you

tolerate mediocrity from others you will get more mediocrity and people over time will just degrade and get worse and

worse over time rather than the reverse of that of thinking like i will only tolerate excellence and anything below

that is intolerable if you think about the best leaders and the best ceos the most successful people of all time they

have this innate trait right for lack of voter trump they're ball busters right they hold a standard that and here's the

catch that they themselves stay above which means you must raise your own standards so that you can model what it

looks like for other people around you to hold themselves right the best like most people don't need to be led most

people need a model and they can see that right and you're you're leading by example and so best thing to do to stay

poor tolerate mediocrity from yourself and others 13. how to stay poor make promises break promises

so you make promises to yourself and make promises to other people and you both you destroy your reputation with

other people and that's a terrible thing and it takes a long time to fix that but the one that's the hardest one to fix is

the reputation you have with yourself you make promises to yourself and you break promises to yourself because the

thing is you're the only one who's holding you accountable and i think a different version of happiness in my

opinion is respect for oneself and i think your own respect is the hardest to earn because you know how hard you could

have pushed you know if you could have gone for an extra mile you could have showed up to the gym more times you

could have eaten better you could have made more cold calls you could have done more reach outs you could have made more

content you could have actually done a l left a nice note for somebody on your team when you when you were too tired to

do so you could have over delivered on the product you could have made a better version of that video and you decided to

put it up anyways even though you knew it wasn't as good as it could have been and so you make promises to yourself and

then you break promises yourself and you lose respect in the process so it's an excellent way to stay poor number 14

wait for perfect conditions all right this is a great one great way to stay poor is uh it's one of my favorites you

gotta wait for everything to be perfectly aligned for you to be successful and here's the secret there

are never gonna be perfect conditions and here's what's even crazier if you need perfect conditions to be successful

the moment the conditions change you will stop being successful so you might as well start when the conditions are

their absolute worst because it means that they will only get better from there and if you can prove success when

things get bad when they get bad again which is guaranteed you will still remain successful because you have

learned how to do it in this time in this circumstance make sense great reason do not wait for perfect

conditions 15. prioritize looking rich over being rich this is a classic one of poor folks

in general i get the the loving amount of troll comments that i get from the fact that i'm in my mama's basement and

wearing a wife beater and wearing a nose strip right must mean that i am poor of course right because you confuse looking

rich with being rich right just silly you can just google my name and just put private equity and uh jim launch an

american pacific group and you can see what we sold to our businesses for so the point is

you have to prioritize being rich which means spending less for a long period of time because you were not valuing the

opinion of other people over your own which because you respect your own approval more than that of other people

you have to be willing to die to the opinion of others rather than dying to the opinion of yourself and i mean that

it's real [ __ ] stop trying to look rich be willing to look poor all right i know that's contrary to like dress the part

and all that stuff but like the thing is is like you've got to be real to you or you'll be real to no one that's a

promise number 16 avoid working on what matters most all right this is a great way to stay poor is that you work all

day long you're busy you're full of activity you're doing stuff and nothing important moves forward because the

nature of speed is not about activity the people who are the richest in the world aren't doing the most stuff

they're doing the right stuff right they're making sure better stated making sure the right stuff gets done in

general whether or not it's them or someone else and so it's looking at the many things that you can or could do and

picking the very few that are the ones that move the needle the most and typically they are the ones that you do

not want to do and you are procrastinating on and you can probably eliminate all the stuff that you that

give you the mental masturbation of getting stuff done without actually moving the ball forward towards your

goals so it's a great way to stay poor it's just keep doing stuff that does not matter 17. say you're going to do

something and then don't do it this is just like making and breaking promises to others himself but this one is

actually just like that so take that 18. this is a really good one great way to stay poor is do what everyone else is

doing right because if you're doing what everyone else is doing most people are not in the one percent if you want to be

in the one percent you can't do what 99 of people are doing which is hard for people which is why you can't value

their opinions because again talking to poor people about how to get rich is a great way to stay poor right they have

no idea and so you can't look for their approval on what you are doing or model what everyone else is doing because

everyone else is poor why model them right think about it number 19 do your best not what it takes because the

reality is a lot of times your best may suck and what is required is what is required and that may be beyond you

which means you must become better so that your best is beyond what is required because the number of people

who say well i tried my best universe doesn't give a [ __ ] the marketplace doesn't give a [ __ ] your boss doesn't

give a [ __ ] what they care about is what is required and so what you have to do is figure out what is required and then

if you are incapable of doing it be better and do it for long enough that would be unreasonable for you not to be

good and then your best will surpass what is required and you will become better in the process but if you don't

do that it's an excellent way to stay poor is just keep doing your best and giving yourself paddling back and say i

tried 20. talk more do less post about your goals post about your affirmations spend all day doing routines and stuff

of getting prepared to work and actually do very little all right it's a great way this is one of the favorite ones

especially in the internet community people love talking about how much they're working rather than actually

getting [ __ ] done so i would advise you to rather than spend all this time preparing to work and creating

superstitions and routines around the things that you think you should do in order to maybe potentially get something

done start with doing because sometimes the doing just needs done all right 21 start something new today start

something new tomorrow repeat great way to stay poor do stuff try something try something else try something else try

something else always leave half-built bridges right you never complete anything you start just keep

starting new things because it's exciting and it's new and you have what is called uninformed optimism because as

soon as you jump into the new thing you realize that it will take work and the things that were awesome about it also

have downsides which is the work that is required to be good and as soon as you realize that is work you go through the

change cycle you go uninformed optimism to informed pessimism and then you go through the value of despair and this is

where everyone then jumps to the next opportunity and they just do this forever and they just never achieve what

they want so it's an excellent way to stay busy and poor all right just keep trying new stuff and never see anything

through okay number 22 believe what other people think about you more than what you think about you all right it's

a great way to stay poor i think it's just it's it's easily stated there so i'm not going to belabor the point but

that's what you need to do to stay poor just keep believing what everyone else thinks about you and not what you think

about you excellent way to do it number 23 way to stay poor make a mistake then wait repeat the mistake do it again and

again and again and you've probably seen people who stay stuck in their life like this like they keep dating the same

person they keep making the same business mistake they keep getting the same bad partnerships whatever right or

they keep trying to do something that stopped working and they keep doing it over and over again because they think

that for some reason that's going to work somehow or they just don't have the wherewithal to realize they keep making

the same mistake and so if you keep doing the same stuff you're going to keep getting the same outcomes right

like we kind of know this but the thing is is that people still do it it's like well whatever you're doing right now has

gotten you to being poor so don't do that right and when i say poor poor can be whatever you want to be you could be

a billionaire and be poor it might be whatever whatever that amount is it's not as much as you want it to be right

which of course gets into the deep things of like maybe you should decide not to want it to begin with and then

whatever we won't get into that number 24 be replaceable all right this is a great way to stay poor because if and i

heard this from navarro i kind of like it a lot which is if you can if you can get a degree to do the job you're never

going to be unwealthy doing it because everyone can do it right and so you have to be able to learn things that other

people can't do right and that therein makes you irreplaceable or less replaceable right at the very least less

replaceable you want to be replaceable by a marketplace of people lined up behind you ready to take your job and do

it for less all right because they're also poor and they are willing to do it for life which is a terrible way to do

business it's also an excellent way to stay poor though do what everyone else is doing do it for less unless you have

an operational strategy which is you know like walmart and whatever and that's probably not you right now so

number 25 way to stay poor find something that works dear god find something that works and then stop doing

it think about it how many of you have needed to make

money last minute you had to pay payroll you had to pay taxes you had to some bill unexpected you know surgery iphone

whatever right some bill comes up and you need to pay for it and you find a way to make the money because if you're

watching this video you're still alive right so you found a way to you found a way to pay for it what did you do there

when you needed to make money you heard something messed up you were willing to make money and you

had the ability to make money when it was for someone else and not for yourself

think about that you had the ability you knew what to do and you just chose not to do it you

stopped doing it as soon as you paid someone else's bills because you were willing to pay other people's bills

tonight your own interesting which leads me to one of the most retweets i had recently which is most people know what

to do to achieve their goals most people do know what to do people like i don't know how to lose weight i'm like yeah

you do stop eating [ __ ] and move you know how to you know how to do that you want to make money start making calls

start reaching out to people start promoting the thing that you are trying to sell

not i mean not complicated i got this thing do you want to try it no cool talk to somebody else got this thing you want

to try it no cool call somebody else right it's not it's not complex it's not complicated but people just don't do it

it's because they're not willing to do it right and so excellent thing to do find something

that works so a lot of you do know something that works and then stop doing it number 26 we're rounding off we got

two more hire dumb people excellent way to stay poor and have a bad business all right

really really highly recommend it it's also really good for if you have a job too if you have the ability to hire

people hire dumb people it's just it's just a great way to make your life miserable there's very few ways that are

better than this one like if you just want to be surrounded by dumb people just hire people i mean just hire people

don't want you you know i mean and um you'll you'll feel good but you'll be poor and so

don't do that number 27 this is a huge one that i see all the time for staying poor and it's a

really good strategy it might be one of the top ones on this list assume you are always right how many people here right

you're watching this know someone who always just think they're right and they're not successful they get advice

from somebody who might be successful more successful than them and they're like no that's not going to work for x y

and z because they assume they're always right they assume they know everything well if you know everything then why

aren't you achieving what you want hmm and i will tell you this from the people that i've met who have been far ahead of

me they have a voracious desire to learn and a voracious interest in learning from anyone and every single possible

source they can and those people have the humility to say that everyone knows something that they don't know and so in

that way they can learn of them which is i think an emerson quote if you cannot learn

then what's the point so you you give yourself zero advantages like there's no way that you can learn from other people

if you think you're always right and i know this sounds [ __ ] obvious but a lot of you guys do this

why like you'd rather be right than be rich and it's silly but it's an excellent way to stay poor so that's why

it's number 27. and then the last one and this is the simplest of the economics around it i'm just gonna drive

this baby home is make money period spend more than you make and the beautiful part about this

is that it doesn't matter how much you make if you spend more than it you can be poor which is why this is such a

great one it's a great way to stay porous doesn't matter how much you increase your income just spend more

than you made right go into debt and adjust your lifestyle to your new income at all times or rather above your income

so that you can always stay poor no matter how much money you make it's just an awesome way to stay poor and so i

highly recommend doing that all right um just and honestly the more you can do it the the more you can outspend your

income the poorer you will be and so again highly recommend it and it sounds silly but you know a few people like

right now i think it's like the bottom 50 of america like doesn't have any savings and what's crazy is that like

you can you can control like these these things are controllable like you can always downgrade your lifestyle but the

thing is you care more about the opinions of others than you do about your own right you care more about

looking rich than being rich right all these things and that's why all of these things go together and so to wrap this

up the reason that inversion thinking is so powerful is that we can use our brains to find threats more easily than

we can find solutions and so if we think about your business career or you think about your marriage or you think about

your body or you think about whatever it is your money goals think about the ways to destroy it i just gave you 28

different ways that you can be poor when you reverse them and you make those the rules for living that you have

then what happens is you succeed by accident because you avoid the pitfalls because the thing is if you don't make

many mistakes you succeed without trying because all you're doing is just focusing on just not making these stupid

mistakes that most people do right if we if we were to reverse these and this is what i'm going to hit this with hard

enjoy we're hitting it right now start today read books do the stuff that's in the books take advice from rich people

on how to be rich pick a spouse who makes you feel awesome about working fail once try again think the world is

unfair and act accordingly never blame your circumstances thank your circumstances for making you who you are

instead of complaining do something expect no one to save you except for yourself

value your opinion over those of other people seek out discomfort tolerate nothing but excellence make promises

keep promises wait for the worst conditions wait for imperfect conditions and act anyways on what you want right

avoid working on the stuff that doesn't matter work on the things that matter most ignore the rest say you're going to

do something and then do it do what no one else is doing do your best and make it above what it

takes to be successful talk less do more start something new today and keep at it until you are good do it so long that it

would be unreasonable for you to be bad don't believe what other people think about you more than what you think about

yourself be irreplaceable find something that works and don't stop doing it keep doing it until you're bored out of your

mind because you're so good at doing that thing that worked hire smart people assume that you were always wrong and be

willing to learn and make money and spend less than you make and that is the 28 rules of poverty flipped on its head

and you can make your own conclusions about where that'll take you i love you mostly nation keep being awesome i'll

see you guys next video bye