Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/youtube-video-transcript-298/ Learn 28 ways to stay poor and how to avoid them by applying inversion thinking from Charlie Munger's philosophy. ## Key Takeaways - Use inversion thinking to identify and avoid behaviors that lead to poverty. - Action is more important than endless preparation or consumption of information. - Surround yourself with supportive people who empower your goals. - Failure is essential for growth; persistence is key. - Self-belief and personal responsibility are crucial for financial success. ## What the video covers - The video introduces the concept of inversion thinking, solving problems by identifying how to fail and then doing the opposite. - Starting tomorrow instead of today is a key way to stay poor. - Reading many books without taking action leads to stagnation. - Taking advice from poor people on how to be rich is counterproductive. - Choosing a spouse who discourages your ambitions can keep you poor. - Quitting after a single failure prevents success; failure is a learning opportunity. - Believing the world is fair and blaming circumstances leads to inaction. - Expecting government or others to save you results in continued poverty. - Valuing others' opinions over your own undermines self-confidence and success. - Success is a mindset and process, not just an outcome or financial milestone. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction to 28 Ways to Stay Poor and Inversion Thinking 2. 01:20 Common Mistakes That Keep You Poor: Procrastination and Inaction 3. 02:42 Influences That Harm Your Financial Growth: Advice and Relationships 4. 04:06 The Role of Failure and Mindset in Success 5. 06:06 Accepting Hardship and Avoiding Complaints 6. 09:39 Defining Success and Valuing Your Own Opinion 7. 12:32 Continuous Learning, Persistence, and Hiring Smart People Answers ## Questions about this video What is inversion thinking and how is it applied in this video? Inversion thinking is solving problems by identifying how to fail and then doing the opposite. The video uses this method to list ways to stay poor so viewers can avoid them and achieve success. Why does the speaker say starting tomorrow is a way to stay poor? Procrastinating by always planning to start tomorrow delays action indefinitely, preventing progress and keeping you poor. How does the video suggest dealing with failure? Failure should be seen as a learning opportunity rather than a reason to quit. Persistence after failure is essential for eventual success. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A In this video, I'm going to talk to you about the 28 ways to stay poor. 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. 00:13 Speaker A 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. 00:23 Speaker A What's interesting is that our brains are much better at finding problems than they are finding solutions. So what 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 evolutionarily we're designed to look for, then flip that in reverse to find our solutions. 00:32 Speaker A All right, and this is a process of thinking that I've applied to business, I've applied it to merit, I've applied it to a lot of different aspects in my life, 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, 00:44 Speaker A 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 00:54 Speaker A 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 01:01 Speaker A 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 little mini thread here got over 5,000 shares on 01:11 Speaker A my Twitter, and so that is why I decided to make this video because it seemed like a lot of you guys liked that. Okay, so the first and best way to stay poor is to start tomorrow. So whatever it 01:20 Speaker A 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 01:31 Speaker A 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 01:40 Speaker A 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 01:51 Speaker A 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 01:58 Speaker A 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 02:10 Speaker A 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 02:20 Speaker A 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 02:30 Speaker A 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 02:42 Speaker A yourself and you go to your marriage to, hey, pick people who are not going to 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 an incorrect view of failure, because failure is a necessary part, and the thing is you learn from failure. And so it's either 02:50 Speaker A 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 get, you know, 03:00 Speaker A 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. 03:12 Speaker A 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: blame your circumstances and complain. All right, complaining about things that 03:22 Speaker A you cannot control. And the thing is, is like these sound so obvious, but think about these in reverse again. So if the contrary of thinking the world is fair is assume the world is fair, it's unfair, excuse me, assume the world is 03:32 Speaker A 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 [expletive] that you have gone through, right? There's a, there's a saying: 03:41 Speaker A 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 03:53 Speaker A 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 the beating of the hammer to 04:06 Speaker A 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 as for complaining, I think you can just accept and move on. So 04:19 Speaker A 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 04:30 Speaker A 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. 04:42 Speaker A 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 04:53 Speaker A 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 05:04 Speaker A right. It's our choice. And I can promise you that if you try and give yourself a number, you will just move the goalpost. I promise you that from the depth of my soul you will move the number and make 05:14 Speaker A 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 05:27 Speaker 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 05:39 Speaker A living your values of pursuit. That can mean success if you choose to define th... 05:50 Speaker A 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 05:59 Speaker A 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 06:12 Speaker 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 06:22 Speaker A 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 06:34 Speaker A 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 06:43 Speaker A 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 06:53 Speaker A 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 07:02 Speaker A 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 07:17 Speaker A 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 07:28 Speaker A 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 07:39 Speaker A 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 07:50 Speaker A 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 08:04 Speaker A 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 08:12 Speaker A 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 08:23 Speaker A 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 08:33 Speaker A 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 08:43 Speaker A 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 08:50 Speaker A 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 09:01 Speaker A 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 09:13 Speaker A 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 09:23 Speaker A 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 09:37 Speaker A 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 09:46 Speaker A 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 09:58 Speaker A 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 10:10 Speaker A 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 10:20 Speaker A 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 10:30 Speaker A 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 10:43 Speaker A 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 10:51 Speaker A 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 11:01 Speaker A 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 11:14 Speaker A 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 11:26 Speaker A 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 11:36 Speaker A 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 11:47 Speaker A 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 12:00 Speaker A 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 12:11 Speaker A 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 12:18 Speaker A 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 12:30 Speaker A 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 12:41 Speaker A 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 12:52 Speaker A 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 13:03 Speaker A 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 13:18 Speaker A 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 13:32 Speaker A 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 13:42 Speaker A 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 13:52 Speaker A 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 14:05 Speaker A 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 14:14 Speaker A 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 14:26 Speaker A 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 14:36 Speaker A 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 14:45 Speaker A 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 14:55 Speaker A 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 15:03 Speaker A 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 15:13 Speaker A 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 15:21 Speaker A 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 15:32 Speaker A 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 15:40 Speaker A 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 15:50 Speaker A 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 16:01 Speaker A 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 16:12 Speaker 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 16:22 Speaker A 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 16:33 Speaker A 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 16:43 Speaker A 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 16:51 Speaker A 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 17:01 Speaker A 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 17:11 Speaker A 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 17:21 Speaker A 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 17:31 Speaker A 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 17:41 Speaker A 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 17:53 Speaker A 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 18:02 Speaker A 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 18:12 Speaker A 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 18:22 Speaker A 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 18:35 Speaker 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 18:46 Speaker A 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 18:56 Speaker A 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 19:07 Speaker A 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 19:17 Speaker A 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 19:28 Speaker A 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 19:37 Speaker A 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 19:48 Speaker A 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 19:58 Speaker A 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 20:09 Speaker A 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 20:21 Speaker A 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 20:32 Speaker A 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 20:48 Speaker A 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 21:07 Speaker A 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 21:22 Speaker A 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 21:33 Speaker A 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 21:47 Speaker A 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 21:58 Speaker A see you guys next video bye Topics: inversion thinking Charlie Munger financial success poverty mindset self improvement failure and success personal responsibility wealth building motivation Oxford Moses --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/youtube-video-transcript-298/ — the same content, without the markup. 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