The MILLIONAIRE MINDSET Explained (Become Successful Today!)| Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary

Things that interest you give you lots of energy. Things you don't want to do, you keep procrastinating, which is horrible. Nobody says, "Hey, you're doing a great job." I just want to send you an email. They say, "Here's five problems I'm having right now and here's the storm I'm in today. Go fix it."

The key to motivation is routine. Now, that may sound boring and mundane, but it's not. [Music] You know, Muffy really misses me because I haven't been in the office for eight months. It's the first time I've been back in the office since the whole COVID thing started. Now, this office is just full of memorabilia about Shark Tank, all of our products and deals, Emmy Awards. But the award I'm most proud of—I got to show you this one—this award says "Reality Wanted Awards: The Male Villain." Like, you know how hard this is to win? I've won it twice. I got it first in 2014, then I got it again last year.

And in the interim, I don't know what villains were winning, but it wasn't me. So, I had to get mean again, and now I'm back—I'm top villain. I just love it! Sure, there's enemies, share this critic's choices, but are you kidding? Male villain? That's what I'm talking about!

Anyways, I want to do a little rant about staying motivated because it's not easy. It's not easy to stay motivated, particularly in these crazy times. I mean, we've had—you talk about COVID and, you know, not even being in the office and working from home all these months—it's been nuts. The key to motivation is routine. Now, that may sound boring and mundane, but it's not. If you get into a healthy routine, and that includes a lot of things, like for me, it's getting up early, you know, working out 45 minutes to an hour every day, and then really getting into the routine of taking care of yourself too.

Now, this video, as many others, is being sponsored by Tiege Hanley, and I want to tell you about them. Yeah, exactly, Tiege baby! But the whole idea with Tiege Hanley is that men's skincare is something that's kind of new. A lot of men didn't care about their skin, but as you age, and as you expose yourself to the sun, and your skin starts drying out, and you're working out a lot and stuff, you got to care about your skin. So, you get a box, right? You're in a subscription service—very, very simple. Some products.

Hey, Muffy, so look, for example, here's a couple that I use all the time. The deal about going outside is in the morning, just put a little SPF 20 on with moisturizer. That really helps. And the one I use all the time to take makeup off is the wash because it's got a little pumicey thing going on in there. So, I use this wash at night, and I use it also in the morning.

And so, you know, there's nothing you can do about that. You got to put that powder on; otherwise, your skin's too shiny for the camera—it's a trick of television. But I've been using it for years and years and years. So, my big faves are protection with moisturizer, 20 SPF, and the wash. And the reason I let them, you know, sponsor my podcast and my YouTube stuff is I use the products. I do not talk about stuff I don't use. So, Tiege Hanley, check them out—if you're a guy, it's really great stuff.

And of course, when I talk to these Hanley guys, I always say, "Hey, listen, what about my followers? Let's give them a special offer every time you sponsor one of these videos." So, if you click on the first description, you'll get a free toiletry bag—you can keep all this stuff in—and I travel with this stuff. I take it everywhere with me.

Let's get back to motivation. So, routine is part of motivation. Every day you're going to get thrown a ton of [ __ ] that is going to hit you, particularly if you're an entrepreneur. Even if you're just working in a job, you're going to get emails and texts about... nobody says, "Hey, you're doing a great job." I just want to send you an email. They say, "Here's five problems I'm having right now, and here's the storm I'm in today. Go fix it." That's generally 99% of your communications.

So, when you're working, you have to kind of categorize what you're going to deal with first. Now, to stay motivated, here's a little trick that I've used: start your day with the biggest problem. When you've got all your energy, take it right out of the gate. Whatever it is, it's going to be some horrific problem you've got to deal with it—get it done first. Generally speaking, there's going to be five to seven things you have to do every day. You won't get them all done every week and every day, but you want to take the top three and nail them.

And the trick to that is to do nothing else until you solve those problems. That's a big trick. I learned this years ago; I actually post this stuff the night before—a little sticky note, you know, right on the mirror—it's very, very useful. So, what I do every night is I take a little MC Squares—you know, that product, that's one of my Shark Tank deals—wonderful company, and I write down the things I got to get done the next morning.

There's no tech here; I actually write it down, stick it on the mirror, get up in the morning, you know, work out, come back from the shower, start nailing down those things. I always have my phone with me, so if I can start working on one of those things when I'm shaving, I'll call the guy up, and I'll be shaving, getting it done. One of the biggest tricks of motivation is if you actually solve a big problem first, when you have all the energy at the beginning of the day, it actually motivates you to keep going, no question about it.

Now the other issue you've got to deal with motivation is being able to take a minute off. You know, sometimes when I'm just fried, frazzled—could be two in the afternoon—this is a trick—you just go sit in a chair and do something completely different: listen to some tunes, take a snooze, read a book. It has nothing to do with the stuff you're doing during the day.

Now, the people in the Mediterranean know this trick—they call it a siesta. They always take a snooze at one to two, and the food they... it's really great, which leaves me a great segue into the next piece: do not eat shitty food. You know, people say, "Oh, it's too expensive to eat good food." Not so! You really, really don't want to eat crap.

Crap drags you down. What's crap? Look, everybody likes to snack, but you can't eat crap. And you know what I'm talking about—overly fatty, too much salt, too much sugar, too much snacking, too many chocolates—all that stuff. You can indulge a little bit, but your core base of the three meals you eat during the day has to be good food.

You cannot run the body with crap food; it just doesn't work, and you will learn this pretty damn fast. Now, that also means I like to drink wine—you got to drink it in moderation. So, I have a little rule for myself: I never drink before I go on television. I never drink until four o'clock. I'm involved in the financial markets, so they're open till four.

I never drink till four o'clock; usually, I don't even drink till about five when I have my first glass of Montrachet, which is a white, beautiful wine or Chardonnay—my own wines, obviously I like to do that. And then for dinner, I'll have a glass or two of red. So maybe I'm talking about three glasses here. Now, for a lot of people, that's too much, but you got to really be careful on how much alcohol you consume—not just for the booze, the calories are a [ __ ]!

You're talking about 160 calories for an eight-ounce glass of white wine, sometimes 220 for a red, depending on what it is and how sweet or dry it is. But just think about that—three glasses of wine; you're talking almost a thousand calories in some cases. You don't want to do that. Now, if you're going to drink, call it 800 calories—that means you got to work out in the morning for almost an hour and a half to burn that off.

Otherwise, you're going to gain weight, so alcohol is something I love, but you want to stay motivated. Nothing really drags you down more than gaining weight, watching that scale move up. I'll tell you what I really love to do: after I work out, after I've had my shower, I weigh myself, and if I'm right where I was the day before, I'm loving it. I haven't gained any weight; I'm not trying to lose weight—I just don't want to gain any.

Another motivational factor... now here's something else: one of the big challenges over the whole COVID thing was losing touch with people—you know, even your own family. It was tough; it was a really tough time, because generally, you have, you know, compadres out there that you used to hang out with, maybe see once a month, once a week, went out for business dinner, whatever—all that stuff shut down for the majority of people.

So, what I really made sure I started doing—and I got into this last March—is each evening, I would touch base with two friends. I would text and say, "Hey, give me a minute to talk," and we just communicate, staying in touch with my network. And some of these people are business associates; it's just that I haven't talked to them in a while. I'll just call them up, say, "Hey, listen, just want to check and see what's cooking," talk about the industry, what if it's in television or one of my Shark Tank deals.

I want to eat, you know, my businesses—like, you know, something I've invested in—just to touch base with the CEO for only a couple of minutes. But I find that's very motivational in the sense that it keeps you connected in the network; you're still communicating with people. You know, there's a lot of raw books about motivation and, you know, Patton-like stuff—all this military discussion. I'm not into that; I'm not against it. I'm just saying in terms of things that you find to motivate you—they have to be things you can build into a routine.

You don't just drag off the bookshelf after three months of being depressed or something. You got to get into the daily routine of keeping yourself motivated, and I'm telling you, communicating with other people is a big factor in that.

Now, something else to think about also—and this really speaks to the whole COVID lockdown—I try and find a way to be able to get outside and walk for 45 minutes. I didn't say run; I already worked out in the morning. I got that piece down—I'm talking about just getting outside and walking. Walking 10 blocks, 12 blocks—whatever it is. If you have a dog, whatever, take the dog for a walk. Very important.

If you have to wear a mask, I understand it, but just getting out. Otherwise, you get this crazy feeling after a week of being inside, and it... you know, it doesn't matter where you are—even if it's in cold weather, put on a jacket—get outside! I do that every day, even if it's really crappy weather. I just get out there—part of the routine.

And when does that happen? Sometimes it's the break I'm taking at two o'clock in the afternoon. I just go for a walk—doesn't mean you can't work when you're walking. You know, you put your earbuds in or whatever you use, and you make a couple of calls—you're outside. It's just keeping you motivated to keep doing stuff. And you know, you think to yourself, "I'm looking forward to my walk again." Part of the routine!

This is the key. You know, there's another trick I use: some goals take much longer. It's not something you're going to get done in a day; it could be three months, whatever it is. Maybe it's, you want to break in with a new client, or maybe you want to achieve some goal that, you know, you're a guitar player, you're a painter, or something that you want to achieve on the Internet.

You talk about the yin and yang side—play guitars. You see some guitars hanging up around here. Let's say I want to learn a new riff—a really complex lead, something in Steely Dan, which is really tough; that might take me a week or two to really nail it. So, you know, I can get through the whole thing perfectly, and then you've got to keep practicing it. Otherwise, you'll forget; you'll forget the whole thing; you'll forget the riff.

But the point is, if you're going to get there, set up a reward for yourself. Maybe you say, "Okay, if I can play that perfectly, I'm going to buy myself another guitar." Now, I'm guilty of that because I got like 35 guitars, but it's kind of one of those things that you reward yourself by.

And the other one, in deals for me, when I work on a big deal—like something a company that I'm starting up and I eventually take it public—that could take four, five, six years. Or I do a big financing—what do I do? I always do the same thing. I buy a new watch. I got a lot of watches, and you know why I do that? Because I remember that deal with that watch, so that watch becomes part of that thing that I rewarded myself for.

Now, the only problem with it is watches aren't cheap, but I buy good watches, so they appreciate in value. And after you buy about five, you don't need any more, but I keep buying watches. It's sort of like a little bit of a disease, but I love buying watches. And for most of the manufacturers now, they know I would need a red band because that's what I wear on television.

So, I got to go through the whole hassle of finding a perfect fitting red band. Now, I don't own any of Rubber B; they're not a sponsor, but I only use Rubber B because the integration with the watch is perfect—just a little sidebar there. But that's part of my motivational trick.

Now, there's a watch I want to get. It's a tourbillon; it's made by FP Journe—it's a vertical tourbillon, very, very rare, and whoa, is it expensive! The other problem is they probably are only going to make 10 of them. Now, I cannot buy that watch for myself until I achieve a great financial outcome in one of my deals, so that motivates me to go get something done.

Now, in this case, I'm very optimistic about a certain deal that I'll probably be selling in a couple of months. And when that happens, what am I going to reward myself with? That FP Journe! Now, I know that sounds crazy, but in my mind, that's a goal, and that watch will always be associated with that deal, and I'm working on that deal right now. I'm working on it every day; sometimes, I'm working on it at midnight. You know, it's just one of those things that motivates me as an investor/entrepreneur.

But I know when I achieve success—bingo, derby!—I'm going to love that! Okay, another motivational hack: don't do everything yourself. You just won't be successful. You can't do everything on your own because you don't have a 100% skill set—nobody does. You got to find partners; you got to find allies; you have to find compadres that you're going to work with—particularly in business.

You know, all of my deals now, I never do them alone—I form a team. It will often seat a company together; we're investors together, and we work together toward success. I do that all the time—generally twice a year.

But I wrote about a lot of this stuff. I never plugged my books, but these have been best sellers—Kevin O'Leary: The Cold Hard Truth. I like it; it took me forever to write. I mean, it's hard work, right? People think, "Write about quickly." This thing took me like a year and a half. Then I wrote a follow-up: Family, Kids, and Money. A lot of the things I'm talking about are in these books; get them on Amazon if you want. They're interesting, but it's from the perspective of making mistakes, learning from them, not making those mistakes again—that kind of thing.

So, motivating yourself to engage with people—people enrich your lives. Even people you don't like to work with that you work with enrich your lives. They give you a different perspective, a different set of eyes. In investing, it's very important. You know, people ask me, "Why do you have advisors that you work with?" I say, "Because I want to hear their perspective on my investments. I want to hear what they think."

If all you do is listen to yourself, you'll make lots and lots of mistakes because you won't take those challenges; you won't take risks the same way. But you've got to hear from other people. So, motivation is about keeping a network of people to help you motivate yourself—very important.

One more motivational hack for you—this is a good one. Someone taught this to me years ago: make your goal public. In other words, tell a lot of people about it, which forces you into the commitment. Broadcast it! "I am going to achieve this! I'm going to do that! I'm going to get this done!" You know, it even could be weight loss. "I'm going to lose five pounds!" Whatever it is—broadcast it, and all of a sudden, you own it, because everybody's expecting you to deliver.

It becomes part of your own personal accomplishments. It's a hack that really works, and you continue to broadcast it, because you're committed to it, because others are going to say, "Hey, you said you're going to lose five pounds. You said you're going to do this deal, or you were going to invest in that, or you're going to learn how to play that riff, or you're going to paint that painting, or you were going to read that book. Did you do it?" Believe me, when others call you out on it, it really motivates you.

Try it! It definitely works! When you set a series of goals up—if you're going to do your five things a day, make sure at least three of them are things that interest you. And two are things you didn't want to do but you have to. If all you have are tasks you hate, it's really hard to stay motivated. So, you've got to blend them together.

It's really, for me, it's usually five a day, three of which I really want to do, and two really suck, but I get them done anyways. You're always going to have things you don't want to do; you have to do—you got to call this guy or call this person, whatever you have to put it in there, but blend it in with some stuff you want to do. You know what I mean?

The other day I wanted to make crepe flambé. I love to be a chef, and I love to cook, and I'm pretty good at it. And I was thinking I'd stick that in with two calls that I really didn't want to make about business. So I said, "I'll do one call pre-crepe flambé and one afterwards." You know what I'm saying? I kind of forced myself into it; it was something in the middle I really wanted to do.

And by the way, my crepes were spectacular! They were spectacular! My trick is Cointreau. Anyways, I don't want to get into a cooking lesson, but the whole—see, I'm interested in that, I'm motivated to tell you about it. That's my whole point.

Things that interest you give you lots of energy. Things you don't want to do, you keep procrastinating, which is horrible. You've got to deal with the tough stuff too, but mix it up! Mix it up! If you like that video, wait till you see my next one. Don't forget to click right over here and subscribe!