Jordan Belfort finally explained what “Sell me this pen” really tests, and most salespeople fail it in 1 sentence. The moment they hear the line, they start pitching. The pen is great, it writes upside down, it’s the best value for the money. To Belfort, that’s the clearest sign someone doesn’t understand selling. The right answer doesn’t mention the pen at all, at least not at first. A fan in the audience asks Belfort to sell the pen. He jokes that no one has ever asked him that before, then explains what the test is really for: before you pitch anything, you ask questions. How long have you been in the market for a pen? What have you used before? Is it for business or personal? How much do you usually spend? Pitching without asking, Belfort says, tells the buyer you don’t give a shit about them. You’re just ramming the product down their throat. The questions also tell Belfort who to walk away from. If someone says they’re not looking for a pen, he says “Great, have a nice day” and moves on. To him, the biggest rookie mistake is trying to sell to everybody. Only then does Belfort pitch: “Based on what you said to me, this pen is perfect. Let me tell you why.” And the pen, he says, is just a stand-in for any product. Rookies sell the pen. Pros sell what you just told them. Be honest: would you have pitched the pen, or asked the first question?

Your mother's warning about bad company was the best financial advice you ever ignored. The people closest to you quietly decide what you think is possible, and your bank account follows. Spend your days with people who smoke, and you'll start smoking. Spend them with married people who cheat, and you'll start cheating. And if the 5 people around you make $50,000 to $70,000 a year, Kevin Trudeau says, that's your ceiling. Start listening to people who earn 2, 3 or 4 times what you do, and your idea of what's possible starts to expand. The catch is that most of those 5 people aren't your friends anymore. They're the faces on your screen, and they're shaping your money every time you scroll. A century ago, people said your income was the average of your 5 best friends, because that's who you spent your evenings with. Today you spend them with YouTube, X and Instagram. Whoever you watch and listen to most is who you slowly start to think like, talk like and earn like. That's why your phone can't lie about where you're headed. Open YouTube and look at what the algorithm keeps recommending. If it's gossip, drama and people who are just as stuck as you, that's the room you've chosen. If it's world champions, builders and people who've made real money, you're already sitting closer to the table you want. Your 5 best friends used to live on your street, and now they live in your recommendations. Open YouTube, screenshot the first 5 videos it shows you, and post them in the replies so we can all see your future income.

The man who turned McDonald's into a global empire first had to deal with the biggest skeptic in his life. She wasn't an investor doubting his numbers or a rival trying to beat him, she was the wife waiting for him at home every night. There's an old saying that behind every successful man is a good woman. At 52, Ray Kroc was a broke milkshake-mixer salesman who had failed at almost everything he tried, and the woman behind him talked down to him, resented every failure and wanted him to quit chasing dreams and live a normal life. When even your own home is against you, no deal can save you. He divorced her. The person you share your life with is either pulling your dream forward or quietly pulling it back. Kroc saw the difference every day in his own business. Most McDonald's franchises were bought by young married couples who signed together, worked side by side in the store and cheered each other on. They were proud of each other and built each other up. When he married again, he chose a woman who ate, drank and slept McDonald's, worked in the stores, made the burgers, talked to the franchise owners and brought him ideas. She was a partner, not a spectator. Today the saying sounds different: behind every successful person is a supportive partner. And the lesson works both ways. Do you build up your partner and talk about them with pride when they're not in the room? Do you support their dream, or do you keep reminding them how risky it is? Whoever has the dream, the other person is either helping build it or stealing it. Think of 2 horses pulling a wagon. Together they don't pull twice the weight, they pull 3 times as much. A couple pulling for each other doesn't add their strength, it multiplies it, and that's a force very few competitors can match. Before you build anything, find out whether the person next to you is a partner or a dream stealer. Tag the person who pulls the wagon with you, and if nobody comes to mind, read this again.

Your social feed might be the reason your income hasn't moved in years. A former member of a secret society says the rich start fixing that long before they have any money. His name is Kevin Trudeau, and his rules are blunt. Watch YouTube videos only from very, very wealthy people, and follow only the very wealthy and successful on social media, because whatever fills your screen is what you're programming yourself with. Then put the phone down, and once or twice a week, go wherever wealthy people actually are. It sounds expensive, but it costs about as much as a club soda. The simplest places are bars and restaurants with Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris parked out front. Sit at the bar, order a club soda and stay for an hour. That's exactly what the Altman brothers did when they were broke and sharing a 1-bedroom apartment. They sat at a Beverly Hills bar with club sodas, because they couldn't afford a real drink, and listened to rich people talk. They walked out angry: if those people could do it, why couldn't they? Today, by Trudeau's account, they run a $1.5B real estate empire and star in Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. There's a catch. A busboy can work in a room full of millionaires for 10 years and never earn more, because he isn't paying attention. It only works with deliberate intent: join a club where successful people are members, build real relationships, and then do the hardest part, which is letting go of the friends who keep you where you are. If you want to change your income, change the room you're in. Open your YouTube recommendations right now, because Trudeau says they already know whether you'll ever be a millionaire, and save this before the algorithm buries it.

Its funny, i quit porn… masturbation… 1.5 years ago (very disgusting and energy sapping vices and everyone knows it) i have none of those impulsive degenerate behaviors anymore. And when i say i quit… i literally mean zero transgressions. I cured myself from this affliction through sheer will power (religious reasons for restraint is a crutch imo). In that same timeframe i became much more productive and co-founded a profitable startup (currently quarter mill annualized revenue) Anyways these bad compulsions do much harm. This energy should be saved for your significant other, or converted into productivity. Stay hard on yourself… shame yourself, hold yourself to the highest of standards.

A former member of a secret society says sex drive and wealth come from the same place. The hunger that keeps people up at night, he says, is the same hunger that builds empires. The man is Kevin Trudeau, and he says it plainly: those who create a lot in life have a large sexual drive as well. Sexual energy is creative energy, and making money is just another way to spend it, the same as painting, cooking or building anything at all. What separates the builders from everyone else is what they do with that energy before it’s gone. Trudeau calls it transmutation. Take a strong desire and push it into work, a business or a deal, and that work suddenly has “a lot of juice behind it.” Things move faster and come to fruition stronger. He claims the super wealthy don’t rely on business plans at all, but on rituals like this one, passed down in the secret society he says he was part of. Of all the rituals he learned there, this was the one he was most excited to practice. The idea isn’t new. In 1937, Napoleon Hill gave a whole chapter of Think and Grow Rich to “sex transmutation,” and generations of salesmen have read it since. Trudeau adds a warning Hill mostly skipped: with very powerful people, the same drive can turn into a slippery slope. The fuel is the same, and the only question is whether it ends up in a bedroom or a bank account. So the next time it’s 2 AM and you’re too wired to sleep, open the laptop instead of the apps, and save this post for that night.

The richest man in the world in the 1960s said the way back from $0 starts with 1 uncomfortable step. It's free, it takes no skill, and most people would rather stay broke than take it. Aristotle Onassis said that if he ever went flat broke, he wouldn't look for a job or a loan. He would go wherever wealthy people gather, a restaurant, a club, a yacht club, and simply sit in the same room with them. No meetings, no pitching, not even a conversation. Kevin Trudeau says Onassis learned it inside a secret society. The reason sounds strange, until you remember how Walt Disney started. Disney was flat broke when he started telling people he was going to build a city. He couldn't even pay his rent. To anyone listening, it made no sense: a man behind on rent, describing a whole city of his own. That city became Disneyland. That's what Onassis would have been after in those rooms. Sit long enough near people who think in big numbers, and your own idea of what's possible starts to stretch. But a big dream and a dream world are different things: one builds Disneyland, the other just makes you delusional. So the room has to be full of people who have actually made money, not people who only talk about it. The plan was never about getting a seat at their table, only about being close enough to hear how they think. Somewhere tonight, a broke 24-year-old is nursing a $6 coffee in a 5-star hotel lobby, listening to strangers talk about deals worth millions. Find your lobby this week, and save this post for the day you need the push.

Jordan Belfort finally explained what really closes a sale, and most salespeople spend their whole career working on the wrong 10%. A buyer rarely remembers your exact words. What stays is a feeling about you: sure or nervous, sharp or sloppy, worth trusting or not. Belfort says that feeling comes from your tonality, and it carries 45% of everything you communicat.e On the phone, it carries even more, and the buyer starts picturing you before you’ve made a single point. Here’s Belfort’s full split: words are about 10% of human communication, tonality is 45%, body language is the other 45%. On a call, the buyer can’t see you, so your body language vanishes and everything collapses into your voice. People literally build a mental image of what you look like based on how you sound. Words still matter, Belfort says. They carry the logic, the part the buyer consciously weighs. And 1 of his rules for charisma is simple: don’t say stupid shit. But whether you come across as an expert, sharp, on the ball and enthusiastic is decided by your tonality. That’s what lets you take control of the conversation. By the time a buyer hears your price, they’ve already decided whether you sound like someone worth buying from, and no script can fix a voice that sounds unsure. What’s the last thing you bought just because the seller sounded certain?

In 1987, Howard Schultz was weeks away from losing Starbucks to one of his own investors. The man who saved the deal was Bill Gates' father, and Schultz says he literally changed his life. Schultz had no money. Starbucks founder Jerry Baldwin was selling the company, 6 stores at the time, for $3.8M, and gave Schultz 60 to 90 days to raise it. About a month in, Schultz had a third. Then Baldwin called with bad news: an all-cash offer with no due diligence, from one of Schultz's own investors, a titan of Seattle. Schultz had never met Bill Gates Sr. The next day, Gates Sr. fixed the whole thing with 1 walk across the street. The door opened through a basketball league. Schultz told the story to a teammate, Scott Greenberg, a young lawyer at Gates Sr.'s firm, who got him a meeting the next day. Back then, Microsoft was still a small startup. "No one knew Bill Gates, but everyone knew Bill Gates Senior." Gates Sr., about 6 foot 7, asked Schultz 2 questions. Was everything he'd said true? Had he left anything out? Then he stood up. "We're going to take a walk." They crossed the street, rode to the top floor and walked straight into the other man's office. Gates Sr. stood over his desk. "I'm going to walk out of this office and you are going to stand down. And Howard Schultz and Starbucks Coffee are going to never hear from you again." The man wilted: "I understand." Outside, Schultz asked what had just happened. "You're going to own Starbucks Coffee Company. And my son and I are going to help you." The son was building Microsoft. The father was saving Starbucks.

Sylvester Stallone sold his dog because he was broke. Not long after, he turned down $360,000 for a script nobody knew yet. He had $106 in the bank. His $40 car had just blown up, so he was taking the bus to work. The script was Rocky, a boxing story he wrote in a 3-day frenzy after watching a nobody named Chuck Wepner knock down Muhammad Ali. The producers loved it. They just didn’t want Stallone anywhere near the lead. He only got the script in front of them by accident. Producers Irwin Winkler and Bob Chartoff had called him in for a casting call, and he wasn’t right for the part. On his way out, he mentioned he did a little writing. “Well, bring it around.” They wanted a star in the lead: Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford or James Caan. So the offers came for the script alone. First $25,000, then $100,000, a number Stallone had never even heard of. By the end, the offer was around $360,000. He said no, and his reason was strange. “You’ve really managed poverty very well. You’ve got this down to a science.” The money scared him less than watching Rocky become a hit with someone else in the ring. “I may be totally wrong. And I’m going to be taking a lot of people down with me, but I just believe in it.” The producers gave in. Rocky was shot for about $950,000, often in 1 take, with Butkus, the same dog Stallone had tried to sell, in the cast. In 1977, it won Best Picture. Everyone wanted Rocky. Only Stallone wanted Stallone.

Anyone who bought every new iPhone since 2007 has spent about $22,000. Tony Robbins checked what the same money would be worth in Apple stock, and the answer is hard to look at. Robbins matched the retail price of every model to Apple's stock price on the day it came out. Put the same amount into shares each time, and today you'd have $326,000. One version of you has a drawer full of old phones. The other owns a piece of the company that made them. The world’s best investors don’t focus on making money. They focus on not losing it. Lose 50% of $100,000, and you need a 100% gain just to break even. That’s why they never bet everything in 1 place. Most people sink it all into their business or their house, and to these investors that’s “the kiss of death.” Your iPhone money is a perfect example: it went into the one thing that loses value fastest. The rule Robbins calls the most valuable is asymmetric risk and reward. Paul Tudor Jones wanted 5 to 1 on every bet: risk $1, make $5. While most people hope for a 12% or 20% year, a 5-to-1 trader can be wrong 4 times out of 5 and still finish ahead. Giant risks make a few people billionaires. “They don’t usually stay billionaires doing that.” $22,000 bought the phones. $326,000 would have bought a piece of the company. Smart lesson, or just hindsight math?

The Vanderbilts once controlled $1 of every $20 in circulation, and Anderson Cooper knew no pot of gold was waiting for him. At about 15, he overheard his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, on the phone with a friend: "Well, I'll always be able to make money." He froze on the stairs and thought: we are doomed. When 120 Vanderbilt descendants gathered in 1973, not 1 of them was a millionaire. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877 with $100M, more money than the US Treasury. By 1885, his son William Henry had more than doubled it, to about $230M. That's close to $6.5B today. Then the next generation decided the Vanderbilts would take over New York society. The spending began. Cooper calls the money "a kind of a pathology." Every generation grew up thinking it would always be there, so no one needed to work. By the time Gloria was born in 1924, there was far less left, and no one taught her how to keep it. Cooper's father died when he was 10. By 13, he was the one telling his mother to open a bank account. "Saving money is making money." Around then, he got a job as a child model. He's glad nothing was handed to him. "That kind of money infects and changes who you are." Gloria Vanderbilt inherited a fortune. Her son got a job at 13. Should rich parents leave their kids everything, or nothing?

Warren Buffett is worth $150B, and his breakfast budget tops out at $3.17 every morning. He pulls his 2014 Cadillac XTS into a McDonald’s drive-thru and orders a Sausage McMuffin with egg and cheese. “That’s it. Thank you.” The money is already counted out in a little cup next to him. How much is in it depends on the stock market. Every morning while shaving, Buffett tells his wife 1 of 3 numbers: $2.61, $2.95 or $3.17. She puts that exact amount in the cup. Today it’s $2.95. “The market’s down this morning, so I think I’ll pass up the 3.17 and go with the 2.95.” The Cadillac came with hail damage. His daughter had to decide it was time to replace his old 2006 Cadillac, which had about 19,000 miles on it after 8 years. He drives about 3,500 miles a year. He drives it home to the same Omaha house he bought in 1958 for $31,500. Berkshire Hathaway pays him a salary of $100,000 a year. It has for decades. On a trip with Bill Gates, he once offered to pay for their McDonald’s lunch with coupons. Worth $150B. Still saves 22 cents when the market’s down. Genius habit or billionaire theater?

Simon Sinek explains how Apple, Amazon and Netflix took trillions from 3 industries, and none of it came from better technology. Publishers didn't build the Kindle. Hollywood didn't build streaming. Record labels didn't build iTunes. Outsiders did, and Sinek calls it embarrassing. The music industry is the worst case, because it lost to 1 word. People had moved from an album culture to a song culture, and the labels never noticed. They were still trying to get everyone to buy whole albums at Tower Records. Apple saw it differently. "No, no, no, songs. People want to buy songs." Then came Spotify and playlists built from single tracks. "Great album is not a thing," Sinek says. "Great song is a thing." That's the 1 thing. Apple, Amazon and Netflix paid attention to the culture first, then asked how technology could fit into it. The old industries were so hell-bent on protecting what got them there that they missed how the world had changed. Forget about the technology, Sinek says. They missed the people. Tower Records sold albums. Apple sold songs. Which industry is still selling albums right now?

Patrick Bet-David breaks down who really holds the most power in the world. You might expect presidents, world leaders, or even billionaires at the top of the list. But some of his picks might surprise you, and his reasoning reveals a different way to look at power. Mark Zuckerberg. Elon Musk. The people behind Google. Jeff Bezos. Then come the financial and media power players, including Larry Fink, Alex Soros, and Rupert Murdoch. Different industries. Different roles. But one thing connects them: influence that extends far beyond a single company or position. Presidents have political power. But the people who control major platforms, capital, and media can influence what millions of people see, what they pay attention to, and how they understand the world. Bet-David even brings up Ted Turner, arguing that if Turner had continued running CNN, he could have become one of the most powerful men in America. The bigger question isn't just who holds the highest office. It's who has the power to shape what everyone else sees. So who do you think is the most powerful person in the world today?

Jordan Belfort finally explained what “Sell me this pen” really tests, and most salespeople fail it in 1 sentence. The moment they hear the line, they start pitching. The pen is great, it writes upside down, it’s the best value for the money. To Belfort, that’s the clearest sign someone doesn’t understand selling. The right answer doesn’t mention the pen at all, at least not at first. A fan in the audience asks Belfort to sell the pen. He jokes that no one has ever asked him that before, then explains what the test is really for: before you pitch anything, you ask questions. How long have you been in the market for a pen? What have you used before? Is it for business or personal? How much do you usually spend? Pitching without asking, Belfort says, tells the buyer you don’t give a shit about them. You’re just ramming the product down their throat. The questions also tell Belfort who to walk away from. If someone says they’re not looking for a pen, he says “Great, have a nice day” and moves on. To him, the biggest rookie mistake is trying to sell to everybody. Only then does Belfort pitch: “Based on what you said to me, this pen is perfect. Let me tell you why.” And the pen, he says, is just a stand-in for any product. Rookies sell the pen. Pros sell what you just told them. Be honest: would you have pitched the pen, or asked the first question?

IBM needed an operating system for its first PC, and the company that already had one wouldn't sign 1 non-disclosure agreement. So the job went to Bill Gates. Microsoft didn't have an operating system. It didn't even write the first one itself. Gates tells the story himself. IBM came to Microsoft because Microsoft had written the software for nearly every personal computer. Gates told them to put a disk in. IBM wanted to ship fast. Digital Research already had an operating system for 8-bit machines and was starting a version for the new 16-bit ones. But Digital Research hadn't finished the work. And it wouldn't sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. IBM was getting frustrated. Inside Microsoft, Paul Allen and Kazuhiko Nishi, a colleague from Japan, pushed back: "No, no, no, we should just do that ourselves." There was no time to build it from scratch. Microsoft licensed code from another company and turned it into MS-DOS. Then MS-DOS went head to head with Digital Research's CP/M. Within 2 or 3 years, MS-DOS was "far, far more popular." Microsoft later added graphics on top of MS-DOS. Windows still carries all of it inside. Digital Research had the head start. Microsoft said yes.

IBM paid Bill Gates a flat fee for the software that ran its first PC, and walked away thinking it had won. No royalties. No cut of every machine sold. Just a fixed payment. But the money was never in the fee. It was in 1 restriction Gates and Steve Ballmer wrote into the contract. IBM couldn’t sell the software to other hardware makers. That didn’t sound like much at the time. Then IBM PC-compatible machines started showing up, and every one of those companies had to come to Microsoft directly. Gates explained it in 2010. The deal was very complicated, and he and Ballmer had thought about it a lot. On the other side of the table, IBM sent a fairly junior team. Microsoft believed personal computers were going to be hyper popular. So they built the deal to make sure Microsoft would get a lot of that upside. IBM thought it got a very good deal, Gates says. And it did. But the industry kept growing, and every new PC maker was another deal for Microsoft. IBM won the contract. Microsoft won the industry.