How Do You Define Success as an Entrepreneur: Randy Gage

Summary

In this episode, Randy Gage shares his inspiring journey from a troubled youth to a prosperity and mindset expert. We explore the importance of mental health, overcoming limiting beliefs, and empowering entrepreneurs to create a prosperous life.

Key  Topics

• Randy Gage's origin story and early life challenges
• The three levels of prosperity consciousness
• The role of mental health in entrepreneurial success
• Coping mechanisms and their impact on entrepreneurs
• The importance of deep work and focus in business
• The influence of childhood programming and beliefs
• Strategies for overcoming limiting beliefs about wealth
• The concept of divine discontent and gratitude
• The importance of questioning societal premises about success
• Practical steps for mindset transformation

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.474)
Welcome to another episode of the Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, the esteemed Randy Gage. Randy, welcome to the show.

Randy Gage (00:10.19)
Hey, thanks for bringing me in. As I told you. My mom thinks so.

Christian Brim (00:12.098)
Did you know you were esteemed?

Christian Brim (00:16.31)
Okay. Yeah.

Randy Gage (00:17.434)
But as we as I told you in the in the green room, I was as soon as Sam, my assistant, sent it to me, I was very intrigued with like, wow, somebody is doing a show about mental health skewed to entrepreneurs. And I think that's really important work. Cause I I end up doing a lot of work like that with what I do.

Christian Brim (00:43.596)
Yeah, so you you started two in the green room, tell me what you do with the Accelerator University, so let's let's start back there.

Randy Gage (00:53.688)
Right, so three levels. Level one, people, they just they don't have prosperity consciousness. They got a bad operating system. They're self-sabotage and they're they're just every time they take a step forward, they take two steps back because of the bad programming they got. Step two or level two is people like the they're after it, they're working, but they can't quite break that million dollar a year barrier, let's say. So that's the middle level.

Christian Brim (01:22.253)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (01:23.832)
And then the top level is what I call the anarchist level. And these are the rebels and the misfits and the, you know, crazy people, the delusional dreamers who are crushing it. They they could be flying private with five homes. They could be got a social media guy who's doing 15 billion views a year. I mean, whatever they do, they're doing it at a high level.

Christian Brim (01:28.556)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (01:34.988)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (01:48.258)
Right.

Randy Gage (01:53.298)
And a big part of what brings them to me, I think, is the mental health side of it. Because I have this little niche that I've staked out of the holistic view of success, the holistic view of prosperity. And it isn't just about

Christian Brim (02:02.125)
Mm.

Christian Brim (02:12.615)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (02:18.753)
your next IPO or what your valuation is or how much how many exotics you can park in your garage. And 30 to 40% of the like the one-on-one time that I have with them, I would guess 30%, maybe it's 40%, is dealing with this the mental health issues.

Christian Brim (02:20.875)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (02:44.299)
Okay, so let let's clarify something. When you say I you know, 'cause I I I'm not an expert, so let's define terms. When you say mental health, what do you what do you mean by mental health? Because I that could be a lot of things. You're not necessarily talking about clinically mentally ill.

Randy Gage (02:54.945)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And let me be very clear to everybody listening or watching, I am not a mental health professional. I am a high school dropout. So I'm not giving any psychological advice to anyone. What I am is a guy who has spent decades studying the science of human behavior. Why do we do the things we do?

Christian Brim (03:24.237)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (03:28.565)
And I'm a guy who started in a jail cell for armed robbery at 15 years old, who went on to build a multimillion dollar worldwide empire that and a life, more importantly, a life I love.

Christian Brim (03:47.042)
Right.

Randy Gage (03:47.326)
And relationships I love, and peace and harmony, and that stuff that I love. And that's kind of that niche I kind of carved out is that okay, great, you're doing $300 million this year. You haven't made love with your wife in a year and a half. You know, what's wrong with this picture? Okay, great. You're

Christian Brim (04:08.619)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (04:14.169)
gonna go public in six months and you know, and your kids couldn't pick you out of a police lineup. What's wrong with this picture? You know, or okay great, you got the health, you got the you know, or you got the relationships, but you're two Big Macs away from a heart attack. what is all that money gonna do for you then? So my mental the the mental when I say I'm

Christian Brim (04:21.163)
Mm. Right.

Christian Brim (04:32.513)
Right.

Randy Gage (04:39.373)
Dealing with mental health issues, what I see is a lot of entrepreneurs come to me and they they haven't figured out the purpose element. They're like, hey, I brought my son into the company.

Christian Brim (04:52.045)
Mm.

Randy Gage (05:00.317)
He's the CEO now. I'm giving him, you know, I've given him all kind of rain and leash and he's growing the company and we're up twenty percent year after year year on year and

But I kinda don't know what I'm supposed to do. Or yeah, I just had an exit. Money thing is completely out of the way. I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know my wife doesn't want me around the house anymore, or my husband doesn't want me around the house all day. I don't know what to do.

Christian Brim (05:18.262)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (05:35.138)
To do next. So there, the I believe there's four quadrants to prosperity, and one of them is what I label in my books as significance. That as entrepreneurs, if you really get after it and you do it and you excel at it, you will reach a point where you will want to move from success to significance. And no, like

Christian Brim (05:47.405)
Mm.

Randy Gage (06:02.571)
Hey, my life mattered. If if I leave the planet tomorrow, the planet is better because I was here. Or, you know, I I altered the trajectory of the universe, even if it was only by two millimeters, it's two millimeters better. And and so those would be the things, like when I say the mental side of it, those would be the kind of things that I'm seeing. And sometimes just depression, just

Christian Brim (06:18.934)
Right.

Randy Gage (06:30.643)
just deep depression because they're chasing one quadrant success, meaning just the money and success part of it and they're not looking at the health and the you know, the other three quadrants.

Christian Brim (06:47.711)
Yes, I I think my observation and my own experience is that

I don't think entrepreneurs really understand their their motivation, internal motivation, starting out like why why are you even doing this, right? It it in in some sense it's it's innate, like the ability of an entrepreneur to see an opportunity and envision a solution where the world is different, right? that is innate. And so, you know.

But then once you you decide on a problem like I'm gonna fix this and I'm gonna, you know, solve this problem and and create value, there's it it becomes the tail that wags the dog. It it it it because there is no internal motivation beyond this is just who I am, right? like what w you know, to your point, how is the world better by me solving this problem, right? Is this a problem I even really care about?

and that's different for everybody. But what I s what I think happens in in a lot of cases, and it certainly happened in mine, one of my two-time guests on the show, Dr. Patel, he exited his company for nine figures, was depressed. he was he was in his forties and he's sitting around with generational wealth, and he's like, Well, what do I do?

And what he did was he went back and got a doctorate in in psychology and is working to open his own clinic for entrepreneurs, right? yeah, but in in in those conversations, we've we've talked about how, as he put it, entrepreneurs don't have good coping skills. And and I never heard it put in a in a clinical sense like that, but I'm like, yeah, that absolutely is right.

Randy Gage (08:32.546)
Wow.

Christian Brim (08:49.761)
And then I had this insight, and I immediately said, and the business is oftentimes their coping mechanism. I know I know for me personally, like I I can see this backwards. There were a lot of reasons and motivations to be an entrepreneur and to build a business, but the the foundational thing that was underneath it that I I didn't see until much later in life.

was that it was a coping mechanism for me to not deal with those fears. I was I was covering them up with success.

Randy Gage (09:25.378)
Right, so let's just make sure 'cause I'm a writer, so words are everything to me. Let's make sure that everybody listening knows that when you say it was a coping mechanism, it was really a not coping mechanism. Right. You know, 'cause you in other words,

Christian Brim (09:41.691)
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah.

Randy Gage (09:46.199)
Like that's what our brain does, right, when it buries a a traumatic i thing that we just can't deal with. That's a a coping mechanism, right? It's the language we would use, but we're not really coping with it. The brain is saying, Let me close this down for the moment because you don't have the resources to cope with this appropriately right now.

And that I s what you're saying, I you're describing I see that a lot with my clients, that that they're workaholics. And I'm like, okay, great. You you you're proud of being a workaholic. I I don't know why. Would you be so proud to be an alcoholic or a drug addict? Why are you so proud of being a workaholic? Because it's the same shit. It's just a different venue, but it's not a good thing.

Christian Brim (10:27.564)
Right.

Christian Brim (10:33.016)
Yeah.

It's social and it's socially acceptable, right? It it's socially acceptable to be a workaholic. Ul I mean, that may be changing a little bit now in the current environment, but all of my adult life as a male, like that was perfectly acceptable behavior.

Randy Gage (10:51.374)
You were alpha male. That was a good thing.

Christian Brim (10:54.71)
Right. It it another guest on here that I I would recommend if you don't haven't read his book, Matthew Michael Brody Waite. He wrote a book called Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And he took his addiction recovery and the things he learned in that.

And then when he became an entrepreneur and eventually sold his company, you know, the book is about how he the principles that he applied. And reading it and implementing those things into my business, what what I've come to this th thesis and see what you think about it. I think in in some sense, all of us are addicts in that we have things that

we use as coping mechanisms, some socially acceptable, some not, to avoid the fear that we're we're not dealing with. What do you what do you say?

Randy Gage (12:00.599)
I do. I agree with you. We do that. It's and I think it's a self-protective mechanism. And sometimes it's healthy. And then but the real work comes when you find somebody qualified enough to work with you so you can work through that and realize, okay, no, the the there was a that that there was a time this served me.

But that time has passed, and now it's time to let it go and move forward and do the deep work and the difficult conversations. Some, I mean, I have people that I have to say, okay, we have to we have to start with a baby step here. I need to introduce the concept of a no-device day to you. And they look at me like I just called their mother a whore.

Right? 'Cause they're like, Are you cr do you have any idea? I'm running a

Business over 27 countries, 200 million dollars from this cell phone in my I'm on call 247, satellite, I don't go anywhere, I'm off Wi-Fi. I'm like, that's miserable. That's not a way to live. We you you have to learn to create a self managing business at some point if you want to create peace and prosperity in your life. And it's gonna start with you telling

your team. Sundays is a no-device day. You can text me, call me, email me all you want. Just know I'm not gonna see any of it until Monday when I go back to work and I open it up after my off day where I was with my spouse and my children, and I unplugged from the drama and the trauma and I lived the life like the real people live.

Christian Brim (13:59.266)
Yeah.

Randy Gage (13:59.84)
And you start with that and then you like, okay, it's been seventeen years since you actually took a vacation. Let's start making a plan for how you could create a vacation. It's like step by step.

Christian Brim (14:13.728)
And and how resistant how resistant to that are they?

Randy Gage (14:18.165)
like a cat you're spraying a garden hose at. I mean, they are just fight me tooth and I have, I have, I gotta word this carefully because I don't want to throw anybody under the bl the bus. I love the guy, I love him. He's one of my clients at the high, the anarchist level, and he's got a company worth of fortune, and he's 25 years old.

And it is weighing on him so heavy because he has no experience in management. He's just he's a brilliant genius in what he does, but he doesn't know the company side of it. He doesn't know the business side of it. And he's a typical 25-year-old. He spends 16 hours a day on his phone watching 30, 60, 18.

90 second video clips all the time. And so he has the attention span of a gnat on Double Espresso. And he's talking about something with his company, and I'm saying, God, you know, Ben God, what's his name? Horowitz. Ben Horowitz has got an amazing book.

Christian Brim (15:25.12)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (15:41.88)
For CEOs that, or God, Mark Andreessen has this, you know, or hey, there's a book called The Messy Milla Middle by Scott, I forget his name, but you know, this. And he's like, I can't read. I'm saying, I just can't read. You know, I can't, I try, but five minutes, I can't. And I'm like, we have to get you.

To the point where you can do 20 minutes of reading every morning. Because there are resources here. And you can't go to Claude and say, give me the summary of this book. It's not the same thing. You have to read. Synthesize. Yeah, synthesize, percolate, right? And then the other thing is.

Christian Brim (16:08.255)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (16:18.572)
You have to read it, you have to analyze it, synthesize it. Yeah.

Randy Gage (16:27.511)
that I'm just on a war path with all my people is i deep work. You've got to have the mental capacity to do deep work, which means

Christian Brim (16:33.72)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (16:41.473)
devices off or phones off and just one device. If you're like me, I'm a writer. So deep work for me is often writing my next book on my laptop. But if I'm checking my phone every time there's a CNN breaking news alert and Facebook cause you know your ex you know went out on a water ski trip with you know whatever. It just or you're watching a bunch of TikTok videos and tw 30 seconds each

Christian Brim (17:05.709)
Right.

Randy Gage (17:11.387)
you lose that ability. And you can't build a great company if you can't do deep work. You can't, I believe you can't build a great life if you can't do deep. Because sometimes the deep work is with your spouse.

Christian Brim (17:25.389)
Mm.

Randy Gage (17:29.921)
Or you could go to dinner together, have a date night, leave the phones off, and like have a conversation with them without a device in the room. You know, that's how relationships grow and nurture. But, honey, you gotta take this one. This is, you know, the president of the board, he wants a quick thing. well, let me just handle this email. No, that's that's not gonna work.

Christian Brim (17:30.08)
yeah.

Christian Brim (17:37.326)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:49.741)
Right.

Christian Brim (17:59.246)
I want to hear your origin story before we we go any further. So I've got snippets of it from the videos I've seen. If if you wouldn't mind summarizing your origin story for our listeners.

Randy Gage (18:14.988)
Single mom raised three kids. I was the middle kid. She raised three kids by herself, knocking on doors, selling Avon back in the day when you really knocked on doors. Hi, I'm Kay Gage. I'm your Avon lady. Can I leave you this catalog? And then I'll be back next week and see if you would like to try anything. I mean, that's what she did. And

Christian Brim (18:28.088)
Right.

Randy Gage (18:41.578)
I didn't know it, she didn't know it, but I'm on the spectrum. We didn't know what the spectrum was in those days. So my mother, my teachers, my counselor, they just like, Randy's just weird, you know. Maybe he's slow, maybe he's a little retarded, maybe he's different, I don't know, but

There was you know, autism wasn't even a diagnosis until like eighty-five. So I just and I didn't know how to articulate it, but I knew I was different and I didn't fit in. I mean, I had my theory, which was the you know, the aliens from another planet had dropped me on her doorstep in a basket and she opened the door one day and said, let me raise this baby

Christian Brim (19:29.359)
Did you l did you look like your siblings? I mean you didn't have any reason to to no f no evidence for that.

Randy Gage (19:33.627)
I look kinda like my brother, but not like my brother. And my and I had you know younger kids sister, very young at that age, and I just knew I didn't fit in with these other people. I wasn't like the other kids in school, I wasn't like the other people in my family. I just knew something was different.

And that kinda came to a head when I was fifteen, so I was a teenage alcoholic, teenage drug addict, and ended up in jail for armed robbery at fifteen. And one day there's like a

Keys jangling and the cell door opens and this guy comes in. And he is the father of a girl that I had gone to school with. She dated my best friend. So she was like, Go help Randy, he's in jail. So he comes in. I have no idea who he is. And he tells me, he introduces himself. His name was Baxter Richardson. And he was a school teacher. And he told me, You don't belong in here. You're capable of great things.

And I told him he was full of shit. And he should have slapped me into the next week, but he didn't. He said, No, you really, you're I s I in I called every single one of your teachers for the last two years. They tell me you skip school for three or four weeks straight, you show up the next day, there's a test, and you ace the test. Do you realize your reading comprehension level is higher than college people?

And I didn't know that. I just knew, like, God, this stuff in school is so stupid. Why are they wasting everybody's time? Why would I hang out here, you know? but so that was kind of a seminal turning point where that was the first time somebody ever told me that I might be capable of great things. Because I was just believing all the labels that society was given on me, you know, addict.

Christian Brim (21:13.804)
Right.

Christian Brim (21:33.166)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (21:40.003)
Dropout, delinquent, you know, criminal, loser, whatever adjective, whatever noun or whatever they were assigning to me. And so I went out in the I I was blessed. I had a public defender who believed in me, a judge who said, let's give this kid a chance, give him probation if he makes it to adulthood without any trouble, expunged his record.

Christian Brim (21:44.898)
Right.

Randy Gage (22:08.634)
And I took that chance. And being autistic helped in the sense, I mean it's it's a blessing and it's a curse. It's definitely both. Ask anyone who suffers from it, benefits from it, it's both.

And but I knew like, okay, just working for somebody nine to five is not gonna work for me. I need to, I need to have agency. I couldn't have articulated it that way, but I knew on a like subconscious level I had to have agency. I had it to be I needed to be able to create my own destiny. And so I became an entrepreneur. And so I have for forty-five fifty.

Christian Brim (22:34.232)
Right.

Christian Brim (22:48.334)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (22:56.654)
47 years or something, been an entrepreneur.

Christian Brim (23:02.031)
How did you land where you are as writer, speaker? I'll use the term coach. You can use a different label if you want. how did you end up here?

Randy Gage (23:19.148)
Serendipity, I got introduced to network marketing when I was 20 years old with the Amway Corporation. they drew those circles and showed exponential growth, and that was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Because every if you took my family and traced every generation back to the Mayflower.

Christian Brim (23:28.803)
Yes.

Randy Gage (23:44.738)
Every generation worked for somebody. Every generation traded ours for money. And this idea of being an entrepreneur and and practicing leverage, it just you know, I was intoxicated with it. and I struggled for five years. I didn't make any money with Amway, but it was an incredible.

Introduction to leverage for me. And then I became successful in network marketing. And then I became, I started doing training for my team on, hey, here's how I did it. And then other teams started to say, hey, could we come to your training that you do? And I'm like, yeah, you know, give me five bucks to cover the meeting room and the donuts and show up. And then people started saying

Can we hire you and fly you to Chicago and you train our team there? Or, you know, and so then I became a professional speaker without thinking about it. And then I so I'm doing all these trainings, pretty much in just the United States at that point. And then everybody said, You gotta write a book. You gotta, you know, you gotta put your system in a book.

Christian Brim (24:51.268)
Right.

Randy Gage (25:03.841)
So I think it was ninety-six I wrote my first book about how to be successful in network marketing. The book has sold more than two million copies in eighteen different languages. It's you know, it was re re what do you call the ex next printing like eighteen times or something.

Christian Brim (25:15.609)
Wow.

Christian Brim (25:24.984)
Right, right.

Randy Gage (25:27.853)
And then I wrote other books, and then I started getting doing marketing seminars and that weren't just for network marketing, but just marketing, direct mail, those kind of things, social media, I got big into that when it came out, and internet marketing, those kind of things. And then I kind of had so at 40 years old, I had my first midlife crisis right on schedule.

And I said, I'm just, I'm not gonna do this anymore. If I if I have to do another seminar on how you get a prospect's phone number, I'm gonna just stick a fork in my eye. So I quit and I retired. I said, I'm gonna race my viper, I'm gonna play softball, and I'm gonna drink out of a coconut. I got the money thing out of the way, I don't need anything, I'm just gonna retire.

And that lasted like nine months. I went going crazy. Yeah, I was going crazy. So then, so what kind of prompted it was there was a guy named Bill Gove. Bill Gove was the first president of the National Speakers Association. And he just

Christian Brim (26:27.78)
Well, that's that's pretty long. That's that's impressive.

Randy Gage (26:48.673)
adopted me when I joined that organization. For whatever reason he saw something in this arrogant, obnoxious kid who well, you know, joined the profession.

Christian Brim (27:00.464)
So you had joined this per this group before you retired? Okay.

Randy Gage (27:04.411)
Yeah, I joined National Speakers Association in 1991. And these were a bunch of speakers who were like going around doing $3,000 speech gigs and you know doing 80 or 100 a year flying. And I joined and I'm like

Are you people crazy? You know, I charge twenty thousand dollars for a speech. You're charging three thousand I need a million five last year, and you guys are like scuffling along, so

I was really arrogant, full of myself, and so that put off a lot of people in that as but Bill, for whatever reason, he like, no, this kid's got it. And he just adopted, he was like the father I wished I would have had, maybe. And so he calls me up one day, he says, We gotta meet for lunch. All right, so I go and meet him for lunch. He says, he looks me in the eye and he says, You are the greatest speaker in the world.

world and I know because I used to be him.

Christian Brim (28:13.018)
Okay.

Randy Gage (28:14.233)
I get chill even now thinking about it, right? And I'm like, I I I I get what you're saying, Bill. I love the platform, I love the impact, but I I c I can't do this marketing.

It's it's just too boring. There's no meaning there for me. And he's I said, to me, the important work is the prosperity work, the mindset work, the the the what you have to wrap your brain around to be good in business. And he said, so teach that. Like, wow, I never thought that. So I opened up the business again, rebuilt a new multi-million dollar speaking business.

Christian Brim (28:49.142)
Randy Gage (28:59.493)
Coaching, training. You know, I ended up to, I just published my 16th book, that one behind me there, Wealth Without Apology. And I started just teaching and working in the the principles of prosperity, and then just found like, well, I really am just kind of skewed toward entrepreneurs. I'm that's my tribe, and I want to help.

speakers and authors and solopreneurs and then later bigger companies, those execs, the founders, like I wanna show them how they can create a prosperous life.

Christian Brim (29:46.266)
I love that. I I'm gonna ask a question and you are are welcome to demure. did you ever have a relationship with your father?

Randy Gage (29:59.557)
No, I never met him.

Christian Brim (30:01.2)
Okay. i if you well let me tug on that thread for a minute. how do you think that because you you talked about two men in this interview that that had an impact on you and said they saw something in you that you didn't see in yourself, potentially how is that thread played out? Like what what how do you think the the

Absence of a father relationship has impacted your journey.

Randy Gage (30:37.148)
I mean you can't know, it's like you watch the Star Trek show where they go back in time and this person didn't get hit by a bus and that changed the whole course of human history, right? You never know. what I can tell you is that I wouldn't change anything about my life. Getting in jail, being an addict,

Christian Brim (30:46.158)
Right.

Right.

Randy Gage (31:02.99)
losing a business, being diagnosed HIV positive, getting shot and left for dead. I have had a fascinating life with a lot of drama and trauma along the way.

But I wouldn't if I was doing it all over again, I wouldn't want to change any of it because I'm so happy with the end, not the end destination, the current destination that I'm at right now.

Christian Brim (31:39.472)
Okay, let me rephrase phrase it this way. Do you see a impact of any of those traumas that you described? that has so so you you you s stipulate that you wouldn't change it because you see how it has formed you. is there a a common theme among those

events that y you you see a commonality or a thread that has shaped you to be who you are.

Randy Gage (32:16.924)
For sure. Both those guys we talked about saw greatness in me before I could see it myself. And so I have taken that as my crusade to pay that forward. That's what my work every time I write a book, that's what it's about. Every time I record a podcast, that's what it's about. I believe the world is in a very difficult place right now.

We need to make the world more prosperous. and after a lot of reflection, a lot of zigs and zags and detours along the way, I have come to the belief that the only way we make the world more prosperous is we get the eight billion people who are on earth to think more prosperous. And I don't think we can do it with charity.

I give a lot of money to charity. That's one of the biggest line items. That is the biggest line item on my tax return every year. I, you know, and I believe in mentoring and all of that stuff, and I do a lot of that. But we can't do it with charity. Charity's a bandage. It's not the solution. It's not the cure.

Christian Brim (33:33.475)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (33:36.953)
And we don't do it with entitlement programs. We do it by empowering people. So all my work for maybe the last five years, it's all to that end. How do we empower people to create a better operating system that they use for their life so that they can be more prosperous? Because

Christian Brim (33:39.695)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (34:00.699)
We're you know, look what's happening in the States right now. We have the wealth taxes, we have the billionaire taxes. I went to my softball practice and my center fielder shows up with a t-shirt that says billionaires shouldn't exist. I'm like, okay, what's the plan here? If 'cause I'm trying to become a billionaire right now, is the plan

If I become a billionaire, then we're gonna kill me? Or is the plan when I become a billionaire, we're gonna take all my money away? I mean, how does this work exactly? What's your theory of the case? You know, right? Why is all this happening? All this is happening because the gulf between the wealthy and poverty is so vast. It's happening because all of the money is going to my generation, the baby boomer generations.

Christian Brim (34:26.244)
Right.

Christian Brim (34:33.134)
Right.

Randy Gage (34:53.104)
The people who are millennials, Gen Z, they're, you can bleep this out later, they're fucked.

They're just if you're a Gen Z trying to make it in the world right now, you're fucked. That system is so stacked against you. For the ability for you to own a house is so much worse than it was for your grandparents. The ability for the the credit card debt and the student loan debt you're gonna have by the time you're 22 is so much worse. Bigger percentage of your income.

Yet we live in the greatest time in human history. Like these kids in my entrepreneur program, I told you about the 25-year-old guy. Have another one. I'm like having a contest, like, okay, who's going to be a billionaire first in this program, right? I, in this latest book, I propose that I think it might be easier to become a billionaire today than it is to become a millionaire.

Christian Brim (35:35.289)
Right.

Christian Brim (35:56.664)
Hm.

Randy Gage (35:56.679)
Just because of the magnitude of scale. Right? Yeah, if you

Christian Brim (36:00.41)
Interesting.

Randy Gage (36:02.882)
If think about it, if you get a call from someone and they say, Hey, Christian, I've got an AI project and we think we're going to be able to solve protein folding or predict heart attacks two months before or blah blah blah blah blah. And we need you know, we're looking for investors and we could give you a slot for $200,000 or for two million dollars.

Same day you get a call from your cousin, he said, Hey, I've got this Italian restaurant and looking for investors, and I need ten thousand dollars, and I'll give you thirty percent of the equity. This you don't want the fucking Italian restaurant. You don't want the ten thousand dollar one, you want the two million one, right? It's easier to raise two million dollars than it is to raise ten thousand dollars.

Christian Brim (36:44.345)
Right.

Christian Brim (36:49.092)
No.

Christian Brim (36:52.623)
Right.

Randy Gage (36:58.252)
It is, and I've proven this by the way, it is easier to run a million dollar a year business than it is to run a hundred thousand dollar a year business. It's easier to run a hundred million dollar a year business than it is to run a million dollar business, right? And so what I'm trying to get across to these later generations is: hey, the system is totally stacked against you.

Christian Brim (37:07.223)
yeah.

Randy Gage (37:27.184)
But you don't have to play that game. You can learn the rules of the game, that they change all the time, that are stacked against you, and you can set your own rules.

And you could become a billionaire, or you could start the nonprofit that transforms the world, or you could achieve this level of success in this particular artistic endeavor. And that's that's the game today, the empowerment game.

Christian Brim (37:59.835)
Yeah, I think you you s you use the phrase question the premise. Christopher Lockhead uses the f the term reject the premise. and it it this applies to both entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, but th the the the belief that you have, and you you alluded to this earlier, you know, you are not your beliefs. Your beliefs are

something that you have been given, you've someone's given them to you either consensually or not consensually, right? We all come into the world as blank slates. And so the things that we know to be true, and I'm not talking about science here. I'm talking about, you know, even around prosperity, like, you know, we shouldn't have billionaires, right? That's a belief, right? And and the question is, is it a belief that serves you?

And and and you know, someone that that said, well, you know, there shouldn't be billionaires, like, okay, but how how does that serve you, right? Like that doesn't change your life, does it? And as a matter of fact, it could change your life in ways you haven't even considered if if billionaires didn't exist, right? but but questioning the premise re and and and rejecting the premise, because I think a lot of times

The premise is predicated on a system, you know, whether it's education or healthcare or you know h home ownership or whatever, that is is built by somebody else for somebody else, right? It it it's not for you. You it doesn't have to be for you. I mean, like, when's the last time, you know, and I'm not I I'm I'm not arguing anything you said about that, but like you talk about home ownership. when's the last time you heard

of people going and going out into the country and building their own house like the Amish, you know, where the community comes in and puts it up in a in in a week and and it's done, right? Well that rejects the whole premise that you've got to go buy a house that's already there and that's you've got to use a mortgage to finance it and you know be indebted. Like that those are the whole that's that's what needs to happen more than

Christian Brim (40:26.444)
any time in human history, I think, right now, is we need to question the premise. We need to to make sure that we understand why we're acting and why we believe what we do.

Randy Gage (40:39.108)
100%. If forgive me for doing a shameless plug, but let me give a shameless plug for that book, Wealth Without Creation, Without Apology. Wealth without apology. It's my thesis kind of distilled into we have to stop feeling guilty for wanting to be wealthy and healthy and happy and successful. It's all bullshit.

Christian Brim (40:46.49)
Please.

Randy Gage (41:08.13)
mind viruses you were infected with before you were eight years old.

Christian Brim (41:13.04)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (41:13.498)
Money is bad. Rich people are evil. It's spiritual or noble to be poor, to be a have a successful career. You have to be a bad mommy to run a successful company. You have to rip off the employees and plunder the environment. These are mind viruses. And most people have are infected with, like you said, we're born clean, but we got them somewhere, voluntarily, unvoluntarily. I believe it's unvoluntarily.

I actually call this, I'm working on a new book about this, and I've got my blog. For anyone interested, just check out the blog on randygage.com. But I define it as the inherited memeplex encoding, I-M-E. Because you inherit that when your parents say, we may not be rich, but at least we're honest.

Christian Brim (42:11.076)
Right. Right.

Randy Gage (42:11.992)
What have you just been programmed with? You have been programmed that rich people are evil and poor people are noble.

You didn't know you got that programming because you're five years old. But you've got it, and you don't know that you have it. So now you're 27 or 37, and you're working to create success, and you self-sabotage yourself because you don't know the programming is there.

Christian Brim (42:26.074)
Right.

Christian Brim (42:39.184)
A hundred percent.

Christian Brim (42:42.946)
A hundred percent. Yeah, one of the seminal books that I recommend is an old one is Rich Dead Poor Dead by Kiwasaki because I read that right out of university and I I graduated with a degree in accounting and I thought I was a you know a financial professional. And I start reading that book and I'm like, huh. I started questioning the things that I had learned as a professional. Like, maybe and and you know that that's

That's how wild it can be. Like you you can you can you can choose to learn something and then be taught something in correct anyway. Like from the establishment and it's supposed to be for your benefit, but it's it's like yeah, wild. How do

Randy Gage (43:27.834)
You know why this book is blowing up right now? Financial planners. They are buying them 100, 200, 300 at a time. Some of them are giving them to their clients and saying, if you want me to keep working for you, you have to read this book.

Christian Brim (43:33.04)
Mm.

Christian Brim (43:48.73)
Yeah.

Randy Gage (43:48.839)
Because you your ideas on money and wealth are so crazy that I'm not going to be able to help you if you don't read this. Some of them are gifting it to wealthy people that they would like to have as clients and say, hey, I just think this book, I think you'd appreciate it. You're you swim in these waters, you would get a lot out of this. I'm I'm actually, is is it USB, the big company financial planning?

Christian Brim (44:04.196)
Right, right.

Christian Brim (44:17.06)
Yes. Uh-huh.

Randy Gage (44:18.446)
I'm speaking for their clients in two weeks. They said, we want you to talk to all of our clients, 35 and under.

Because they are, they have no idea about the money game, and they we want you to teach them the principles in this book. So that my this book is blown up in big part because of financial planners who would be the first to agree with what we've talked about this whole show. Like, yeah, the money system is skewed against those people. Most people don't know they're rigged, the rules are against them.

Christian Brim (44:29.688)
Mm.

Christian Brim (44:38.266)
Yeah.

Randy Gage (44:57.936)
You know, when those nice credit card companies send you the letter and say, Your balance is fifteen thousand dollars, but we like you so much. If you just pay eighty-one dollars as the minimum payment, that's fine with us, cause you're you're nice, we're nice. Those people are not your friends. Those people want you to be an indentured servant for 40 years and pay

Christian Brim (45:13.945)
Right.

No.

Christian Brim (45:22.255)
Yes.

Randy Gage (45:23.216)
You know, eight times that amount with all the interest and carry in charge, right? So my book is about blowing that up for people. And so it's it's getting a big lift from the the financial planning sector right now, which is a pretty cool thing. Because they could have they could have rallied against it, right? They could have felt threatened and they'd like you mentioned Kiyosaki's book. I

Christian Brim (45:37.774)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Randy Gage (45:50.171)
I think it's a great book, but when I first read it, I didn't even know what to do with it, because my financial literacy was so non-existent that I didn't even understand what an asset was, you know?

Christian Brim (45:57.102)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (46:02.542)
Right.

Christian Brim (46:06.265)
Yeah. Well, and and going back to the mindset thing, it w wealthy is a hundred percent a mindset because I'll use my father-in-law as an example, but you you know these other there are other people out there that d this describes. He's in his 80s, he has more money than he could ever spend.

And he won't spend it on himself. My wife is like, Dad, you've been talking about getting X, Y, and Z. Why don't you just do it? Well, I I you know, and starts making excuses. Why? Because he has a poverty mindset, even though he's wealthy, right? And and that happens. You I mean, you you see this all the time, especially

Randy Gage (46:59.802)
You're you're given a book report on one of my chapters. I mean that I see it all the time. My own mother. I'm like, mom, my brother's died. My sister's doing really well. She's met a guy who's wonderful, second, you know, her f for her husband died of a brain tumor at a young age. Now she met a guy like eight years ago.

Christian Brim (47:04.431)
I still need to read it.

Randy Gage (47:24.838)
They're both successful. She just retired. She's doing great. I'm doing great. I'm like, mom, we don't need any help. You don't have to leave us anything. We're both doing great. You've got a house that's completely paid for. You've got a retirement fund. You can do this stuff. Let's just sell, you know. And she's like, my dishwasher is broken. And I just, you know, I just bought it two years ago. I'm like,

Christian Brim (47:36.451)
Right.

Randy Gage (47:52.591)
It's eight hundred dollars. Buy the f you know, I don't say fucking with her, but that's what I'm thinking. Just buy the fucking dishwasher. It's eight hundred dollars. I don't need your eight hundred dollars when you die. My sister doesn't need your eight hundred dollars when you die. But she's not gonna so my sister and I have to buy her the dishwasher and make it a birthday present or a Christmas present or whatever, because that's the only way she'll take it.

Christian Brim (48:01.722)
Right.

Christian Brim (48:19.95)
Right. And and and I I guess I th I I what I would reflect back is if you don't change your mindset, you'll never have enough money anyway. Like i i if you don't have a prosperity mindset, then you're you're never going to have enough.

Randy Gage (48:33.796)
Right, 100%. That's the other mental side of the equation, is t in the book I call it divine discontent, which I believe is the ability to live in gratitude about where you are right now, living in total gratitude and having the desire to do, have, and become more.

Christian Brim (48:36.121)
Randy.

Christian Brim (48:44.144)
Mm.

Randy Gage (49:04.024)
And that's the sweet spot that sorry I'm knocking over my mic. That's the sweet spot that I live in and I want the people I work with to live in. Because in nature, in every part of nature, stasis equals death.

Christian Brim (49:22.863)
Mm-hmm.

Randy Gage (49:24.012)
Stasis equals death. So if you just say, okay, I'm I'm you know, I'm gonna be what do they call it, the ascetic and just be I'm gonna keep lowering my needs until they get to the point of my income and then I'm gonna be happy.

I don't begrudge anyone who wants if you want to go live in a monastery and pick berries and it makes you happy, I love it and I'm happy for you. That's not the life for me. Although I considered it at one point. the life for me is I wanna know that my greatest years are in front of me, not behind me. And that's what that's what I think.

will pull the world forward when we have more of us who think that way.

Christian Brim (50:16.814)
Yes. Yes, with with with like you said, gratitude for for where what you have. you know, I I I think we have the most well off, historically speaking, poor people in this country than than in all of human civilization, right? But it's in that comparison to others that you end up with, you know, no billionaires. It's like

And and and again, it's it's just it's a mindset, right? It's not it's not about what you have or you don't have. It it it's that's not it. It that's not that's not it. Randy, where do people find your book? I mean, I'm assuming rent Okay. Randy Gage dot com. Buy it there.

Randy Gage (50:57.88)
Amazon's the best place.

Randy Gage (51:02.586)
Randy Gage dot com is my Starfleet command site, my podcast, my blog, my entrepreneur accelerator, all that stuff is there, my social media tags. And but the book, yeah, Amazon is the best place for the book.

Christian Brim (51:18.33)
Perfect. Listeners, I'll have that link in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, and until next time, remember you are not alone.