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Have you ever felt like you’re doing everything right, but your finances just don’t add up? In this episode, Sharran reveals the three traps that prevent even the brightest people from achieving financial success and how you can break free and start winning every week.
He shares practical strategies, such as taking responsibility, simplifying communication, and embracing generosity, to help you achieve what you want out of life.
Get ready for transformative insights that will help you break free from the cycle of financial struggle and pave the way for true success
“The only true test of intelligence is if you can get what you want out of life.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:10 – Why smart, hardworking people often stay broke
03:21 – The accountability trap and how to overcome it
06:40 – The power of communication in achieving success
09:45 – The scarcity loop and how it keeps you stuck
14:08 – How to use money for generosity to break the scarcity mindset
16:01 – The importance of knowing what you truly want in life
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. And this is what we know that the only true test of intelligence is if you can get what you want outta life. And I’m making this episode for you, the ex extra smart person, the extra hardworking person, because I’m really bummed out by my smart and hardworking friends who are broker than they need to be.
[00:00:20] I want you to, huh? Not be broke anymore. So this is about why smart people are broke and how you can fix it. And I break it down all for you. Starting right now.
[00:00:35] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:00:57] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:10] I want you to picture this picture a, a room full of insanely smart Ivy League geniuses at Goldman Sachs, the sharpest people that you can imagine. I personally had 39 one-on-one interviews to actually get the job at Goldman. These are the beginnings of advising billion dollar companies moving capital across the globe.
[00:01:27] These are the best of the best, right? And here’s the part that floored me during. Several of my interactions may be they’re the high life that they want to live, or maybe a cobbler skids doesn’t have shoes. Several of them couldn’t even pay cash for a car. Many of them were just living paycheck to paycheck until their January bonus hit at Goldman all while working on Wall Street.
[00:01:50] Like that’s insane, right? And it made me realize that the only true test of intelligence is if you can get what you want outta life. Say it again. The only true test of intelligence is if you can get what you want out of life. So by that definition, most quote, smart people will probably fail, right?
[00:02:05] Because being clever I, I guess, doesn’t mean that you get freedom or while thorough happiness or six pack abs. So, so let me show you kind of the. I, I call it the three traps, if you will, that keep smart people broke. Because I will tell you, I have way too many smart friends who are bored, not doing well financially.
[00:02:23] I have friends. I’m not joking. I have friends that I went to college with, that I’ve talked to recently who make, I can’t even tell you this, who make less than what I make in a day. Like, that’s crazy, right? That’s crazy. And so, and, and I know several people that make what their annual salary is, is what? I make in a month Now.
[00:02:46] We all came from the same place. We all went to the same schools. We all. We’re smart enough in the same classes. We all dated the same people. Why should I make so much more and like I’m not, what I’m trying to say is these people are just as smart, probably smarter. They were just as hard, probably harder, and this is the reason I’m making this episode because.
[00:03:05] There are some traps that you gotta like figure out. You have to listen, you have to work harder. You have to figure it out to stop being broke because I’ve seen too many like ripped broke people, too many smart broke people, too many hardworking broke people, and I just don’t want that for you anymore.
[00:03:19] And so here’s, I don’t know, I’m calling it Trap one call, the accountability trap. Smart people love structure. We know that they, they kind of sign up for, I did this too. I signed up for coaches and mastermind groups and accountability partners, and I did that for a year. Like we have coaching programs right now that say, you know, we are your paid accountability system.
[00:03:36] Like, come on, you really need somebody else to tell you to do your work. Like, that’s crazy. You don’t deserve anything if that’s the case. But the crazy part is you, if you really need the accountability, you really didn’t want that goal. You just liked the idea of having that goal. If you want six pack abs and you need to be held accountable to not eating junk food to get six pack abs, then I’m sorry.
[00:03:56] You just don’t, you’re not that accountable. You don’t, you’re not that responsible. You don’t really just want it, y you know, test this out, right? Like, you can write your goal down and then ask, ask like, write down this goal and say, eh, let’s say whatever your goal is. Say you want to buy a jet, right? And then ask, would I still do this?
[00:04:12] If no one ever knew, think about that. The easiest way to battle test your goal is to ask this question. Would I still do this if no one ever knew? And the answer, if the answer is no, you’re just not committed. That’s it. Because I, I’ll tell you this, like it makes me think of the 5:00 AM Club. If you are not part of the 5:00 AM Club, it’s a five minute call at five in the morning as 5:00 AM Pacific time.
[00:04:31] If you’re on the East Coast at 8:00 AM no excuse right now to be on five minutes at 5:00 AM. It’s three to five minutes of a message, and we have tens of thousands of entrepreneurs on the call every single day. It’s five days, it’s seven days a week, five minutes a day. So when I started hosting this 5:00 AM club call, I didn’t need a coach to text me Reminders.
[00:04:48] At 5:00 AM thousands of people were waiting live for me. The responsibility pulled me out of bed every day. I set two alarms and. Every single day, so I don’t miss it, which I have in like, I dunno, 10 years. I’ve actually missed and slept through three of these calls and I had thousands of people waiting.
[00:05:04] The, the micro command here is this, do not buy accountability, manufacture responsibility. That’s all I have to tell you. You’ve gotta manufacture some responsibility because that is how you pass a test, because the, the only true test of intelligence is that you get what you want outta life. And if you are not getting what you want outta life, I’m, you just need to work on your intelligence.
[00:05:25] Because the only true test of intelligence is to get what you want outta life. Now, you may say, well, Sean, I don’t know how to do that. Well, if you’re smart enough to know how that you don’t know how to do something, then you can go get the help to go do that thing. Being the, you know, I, the, the phrase that I hate the most is, oh, I don’t know what I don’t know.
[00:05:42] Like, duh, bro. Like anybody tells you, oh, I don’t know what I don’t know. Like what does that mean? Like that means nothing like it. The person that says, I don’t know what I don’t know is dumb shit is dumb. You know why? Because I know that you don’t know what you don’t know, bro. Like I know. Why would you say that?
[00:05:58] Why would you say duh things instead, you can say, Hey, I don’t know what may happen when I launch this product. Who would know that? Great. I know that I don’t know that I’m gonna go find somebody that does. So the, I don’t know what I don’t know is a nice, cool thing to say, but the more you say it, that is a victim mindset.
[00:06:19] So please stop saying that. And someone else says that, hit ’em over the head with a banana. Like, that’s so, so dumb. It, it makes no sense. It doesn’t give you any behavioral leverage to do something better with your life. So that’s why you shouldn’t say that. The the job is don’t buy accountability, manufacture responsibility, because that’s how you pass the test, because the only true test of intelligence is to get what you want outta life.
[00:06:38] Here is, I’m calling this trap number two, which is like this communication gap hiding behind technical skills. You know, a lot of people sell these, you know, the, the high income skills, those are good. Those are good baseline. You need some high income skills to actually get paid. That makes sense. But your compensation depends way more on your communication than your technical ability.
[00:06:57] If like parents, if your kids are around, I’m just gonna use a bad word here, an asshole with skills is still just an asshole. Okay. An asshole with skills is still just an asshole. Okay, I’m done. No more bad words. Back in real estate, like I, I, I knew everything about deals, but no one really cared. I couldn’t raise money.
[00:07:15] I couldn’t win partners. I couldn’t until I learned how to pitch and I could package and I can persuade and I can be warm, I can be kind. When I started literally living by this work hard be kind mantra, that energy totally changed for me. People actually wanted to work with me. Like your communication, your warmth, your compassion, your energy, you being human is way more important, especially in this AI driven world.
[00:07:34] And here’s the wild part, like I’ll, I’ll tell you this, if you have not. Kind of done any research on the story you should think about. Nikolai Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison, Tesla, and Edison. By the way, I hope you know that Tesla and Edison are like people, right? So think about Tesla and Edison, by the way, both were really smart.
[00:07:51] Tesla was a genius, and Edison was an genius communicator, right? Edison died wealthy and as remembered Tesla died, broke in a hotel room. I’ll say it again. Tesla was a genius. Edison was a genius communicator. Edison died wealthy and is remembered for everything, even the things that he probably didn’t do.
[00:08:10] And Tesla died. Broke in a hotel room. Yes. Cool. I’m sitting in a Tesla right now, which is awesome. But my point is it doesn’t matter if you’re a genius. It doesn’t matter if you have technical chops. You still, I need to be a great communicator. Your warmth is really important. So, by the way, the same story with like Jeff Bezos in the nineties.
[00:08:25] People laughed at his like quote, online bookstore, blah, blah, blah. But Bezos explained it, explained it that it is so much clearer that we sell books cheaper, faster, and everywhere. What did Borders do? Nothing. What did Barnes and Noble do? They’re barely around, right? It was simple enough for anyone to get that.
[00:08:42] That clarity is what got him. Investors. Amazon was, wasn’t built on the best code. Like by the way, you go to amazon.com it is a ja, it is a terrible website. Like it is. It’s so like the reason we deal with it, it’s so bad, like compared to every other site of that is so fancy and so nice looking and has great interface on all of that.
[00:09:02] Amazon sucks. They’re terrible. That entire site, which is one of the largest what probably the largest company on the planet, was built on communication. We sell books cheaper, faster, everywhere. So here’s the big idea. If you’re, if you’re, if a 10-year-old cannot repeat your idea back to you, you’re not clear yet.
[00:09:20] There’s a, there’s a lot of these, right? If you can’t put it on your bumper sticker or whatever, what are they saying? They’re saying that as a leader, your job is to continuously iterate on, on saying the thing over and over, saying it better over and over, saying it tighter over and over. Saying that having the right language pattern over and over, because the only true test of intelligence, if you can get what you want outta life, and nobody gets what they want if they can’t make others understand what they want.
[00:09:41] Big idea number two, here’s the, kind of like the last one, the trap number three, or the gap Number three is the scarcity loop, right? And. The, this is actually kinda the most dangerous thing because you, you believe a lot of ways that money is evil. And what I mean when I say this is that I used to think so too.
[00:09:59] I thought that wealth made you greedy and literally, I’m not joking that that belief kept me broke is a bad word, but like not in a good place for a long time. I wanna tell you the shift that happened for me, and maybe it’ll help you. I realized that money doesn’t corrupt you. When people say more money, more problems, like sure that’s not true, but money amplifies the thing that you, who you are and what you really want.
[00:10:23] I’ll give you my, what I wrote down for myself, right? I really believe that kindness is good, and I believe that kindness plus money is better. So when I think about this like work hard, be kind mantra, I think about, I think it’s missing three other words. It’s work hard, be kind, make more money. Because if kindness is good, kindness plus money is better.
[00:10:43] Money lets you over tip. Money lets you invest in a friend’s company. Money lets you buy back your time with your family. Kindness is good, but kindness plus money is better. So I’ll give you like a simple topic every time you like, earn something, spend like a small size on being generous. Like I, I’ve just made it my life’s mission to be an over generous person.
[00:11:02] Like I tip more than normal. I just, I it, I. Good, bad or ugly, I just do it. I gift if I can. I just try to make the gifts really good. Whatever number I think I should gift somebody, I give them double that person. If I need to donate something, I do double of of that. I over tip, I over gen, over overtrain, I over donate.
[00:11:20] You want you to train yourself to see your brain as fuel, not guilt because I dunno if I’ve ever told you the story, the, when I first came to the US I didn’t have a lot of money and I was one day. I was hungry. I didn’t have money for food, not for any other reason. This is the truth, by the way, not for any other reason.
[00:11:36] It was like a logistical thing that my, my check didn’t clear. So I didn’t have money for a few days and I was too embarrassed to like ask my parents whatever. I thought I would be fine. And then I went a couple days without money, food, and I was walking by the dumpster one day and like I was hungry and I saw, you know, these.
[00:11:53] I, I saw these people throw some pizza and subway sandwiches in the dumpster and I was like, you know what? It’s fine. It just got tossed in the dumpster. I’m just gonna jump in. So I waited till nightfall, I jumped in the dumpster, I grabbed this thing and then I saw a box of Poptarts and all American box, box of Poptarts, of course, like strawberry.
[00:12:11] And suddenly I gr went to GR reach for the popups and something. Hit me in my face and I started bleeding and I looked, and then the corner of a dumpster was this raccoon. So I was literally fighting a raccoon for a box of pop darts. And that’s when I realized something. I realized that, you know, this, there was more to life that I, that, that, if that was rock bottom, I.
[00:12:30] The, the, I didn’t need to have any scarcity. Scarcity made me selfish like I am was gonna be just fine. If I could go through that and that’s what life was all about. Like I would be okay. Like there are, there are kids in Somalia with no water and malnourished and living a great life. Like we if, if you are able to listen to this podcast, you are doing just fine.
[00:12:50] Sure it could be better. Sure. You could have a hundred million more dollars. Sure. You could have a jet and a yacht and a Bentley. Sure. You could, you know, have six pack abs and be super hot. Like what? I don’t know. But the point is, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re okay. And it like, I love Harry Potter. J Rowley amazing, right?
[00:13:08] She went from welfare, she was in welfare to, she’s like, what the number one? Non-fiction author of all time, like, that’s insane. She’s the goat. And she built schools and then she funded charities and she, she showed, she gave back. And I think that when you flip outta the security mindset, the more you give, the more you get to give.
[00:13:26] I’ll say it again. The more you give, the more you get to give. And I just realized that it’s not about giving, it’s about the more I give, the more I get to give. And so I would use money instantly for generosity when you make some money. I would give the money away. I would I, I. The entire reason for you to make money is to over tip, to invest in your friend’s company, to to spend, buy back your time, to spend more time with your family, to, that’s what it’s for.
[00:13:48] And that’s how you rewire scarcity, like this whole scarcity to abundance thing, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know what it means. It’s like, what is scarcity? Like there’s not enough clearly look around. That’s not, that’s false. Uh, what is abundance? There is a lot. Sure, but I don’t have any of it. So I don’t love the whole scarcity, abundance word because I can’t really do anything to have an impact my life.
[00:14:06] But I do know this, that. I can use money instantly for generosity. Anything that I can say to myself or come up with a law for myself that is behavior oriented that I can do, I feel empowered to do right. When I say use money instantly for generosity, like when I get a, if I get a wire for a hundred thousand dollars, I want to give some money away right away because I am wired for generosity and that I, I always tell myself, I always over tip and like, it’s just wired for generosity.
[00:14:32] Just the more you do it, the just the, the more you give, the more you get to give and. I think that’s important, and once again, it’s circle back. It’s not like I’m not talking about karma or anything like that. I’m just saying that the more you give, the more you get to give and that the only true steps of intelligence is to get what you want outta life.
[00:14:49] So less part of this puzzle. I always wonder like why smart people stay broke and main reasons. One, they try to buy accountability for their goals that they don’t want. I just talked about it like buying accountability instead of just accepting responsibility, manufacturing responsibility. Number two, you, you hide your value behind complexity.
[00:15:06] Like, we don’t know, we don’t need to know your technical skills, like be warm, be kind, say it simply. And number three, if there’s mistrust of money, like money’s all money’s evil. You know, rich people are evil. Like I don’t have money. Like, well, no, it’s just. The more you give, the more you get to give, so you, that you, you’ll have more of it if you believe that.
[00:15:22] And the, there are simple ways out, which is don’t buy accountability by manufacture responsibility. They, there’s a, if a 10-year-old can’t repeat the thing back to you, you probably need to simplify it more and think about it more. Use AI more and find a way to say the thing that you wanna say better.
[00:15:36] Because if you, if you typed or talked your whole thing into AI and said give it to, give it back to you to like 10 punchlines, it would, you don’t even have to think about it anymore. You can get better at this stuff. I would just say use money instantly for generosity. Just use money instantly for generosity because you want to operationalize generosity.
[00:15:55] I can give you challenges before you go to bed, et cetera, to, to write down the thing that you really want. And, but, but most importantly, the big question is this. Do you really want something? Like if nobody else knew, would you still want it If nobody else knew, would you still want a bent leaf? Nobody else knew.
[00:16:08] Would you still want six pack ab if nobody else knew? Would you still want a jet if nobody else knew? Would you still want a billion dollar? They talked to this guy and he’s like, I wanna have a $55 million net worth firm 55. And I’m like, why? Well, you know, the, the 55 55 sounded good. I’m like, it sounded good.
[00:16:21] That is your reason to change to, to, to reorient your entire life towards something. That sounds good. That’s insane. The, the only, like, what makes you happy is what makes you happy. What makes you happy does not make me happy. Like I don’t want a Bentley. I don’t want a Rolex. If you like it, good for you. I like, I have way more of what I want.
[00:16:41] Like I’m super happy with what I want. I’m very like, I’m good. But if I’m not content like I am, I still got a lot of fire in the belly, but I don’t want what most people want. I don’t hold valuable. What most people hold valuable, the question is what is the thing that you want? Because the only true test of intelligence is to get what you want outta life.
[00:16:59] So my question for you is like, if you write your top three goals from memory, not from your notes, from memory. Then you, you looked at it and I said, and you, and you said, Hey, if nobody else knew that I got this thing, would I still want it? Then you know that you really want it. Then you know that you’re committed.
[00:17:14] Then you know that you feel responsible. Then you know that you’re gonna do the work. That’s why it’s important, because at the end of the day, the world doesn’t pay you for being smart. It doesn’t pay you for being ripped. It doesn’t pay you for being technical. It doesn’t pay you for being competent. It doesn’t pay you for any of that.
[00:17:27] It pays you for using your smarts to get what you want outta life. And it pays you even more for making life better for others, right? So please don’t forget this, the only true test of intelligence, I think this is in AAL quote, the only true test of intelligence is to get what you want outta life. So I really hope that you get what you want outta life.
[00:17:44] Hey, um, I hope this was helpful. If you like this, please screenshot this and tag me and that we all know you like this and I can make more like this for you. So please take a screenshot, take a picture, screenshot this, tag me on social media. That way I can make more like this for you. Catch you the next one.
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