Why Some People Become Ridiculously Rich - William Leith - #183

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is William Leith, and we are talking about money, specifically why some people can make it and others can't. During the course of researching his new book, The Trick, William got to spend some time with the real wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, asking how he made his millions and why he continued to try and make them when he had more money than he could already spend. You get to learn what the true cost of wealth is from a Russian half-billionaire who lives in a beautiful mansion on his own with a butler and from the hottest thinker on the planet, Nassim Taleb, on how to mitigate risk. It's a really interesting journey through the true price that people have to pay in order for ridiculous material success. If you haven't already learned it from this podcast, it reminds you that being rich might not make you happy, but being poor can make you miserable. In other news, the response to the Ultimate Life Hacks List launch happening this Monday, the 15th of June, has been insane. I've never had so many messages and so much support. So thank you to everyone that is saying that they can't wait for it to release. It's going to be out this Monday. It will. It might not change your life. It might not change your life, but at the very least, it'll teach you how to make an unbelievable toasted sandwich or convince you to buy an automatic car or anyone of 200 ways that you can upgrade your existence. So make sure that you tune in on Monday to find out how to get your copy for free. In other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Tailored Athlete. My favorite shirts and jeans come from this company. You know what it's like if you're a guy who starts going to the gym or has been going for quite a while, you start to look amazing with your shirt off, but a little bit worse with your shirt on. You've got to try and size up all of your clothes. They're all boxy around the midriff and your jeans are either too tight around the thighs or too loose around the waist. This solution has been found by Tailored Athlete. All of their clothes, casual, smart, stuff you could wear for work, stuff you could wear for a night out. Everything they make has stretch in. So not only does it fit your physique properly and look great, but it also feels super comfortable. Simply head to link.tailoredathlete.co.uk/modernwisdom. That's link.tailoredathlete.co.uk/modernwisdom. And you get free shipping automatically applied at checkout. This deal is available nowhere else. And I know that's a.co.uk URL, but if you're in America, it'll redirect to your site and you can get the same deal in the US as well. link.tailoredathlete.co.uk/modernwisdom. Or simply follow the link in the show notes below. But for now, it's time to work out what the real price of getting rich is with the wise and wonderful William Leith.
William, how are you?

**William Leith** (3:13)
I'm okay. I know the world's in a... This is what I say to everybody. I'm fine. I dread to think what's gonna happen next. The world is in a very peculiar state. For me, it's the same. I'm doing the same thing as I always do, which is try and think of things to write, sit at home, go for walks, meet the same few people, socially distance. Now, although obviously not things like my son and that sort of thing, but my life's more or less the same. But I know that loads of people are either, I just had this conversation, I suppose I must have it every day because it is the conversation to have.
Some people are locked in a situation they hate. Some people have to go to work and put themselves in terrible danger. Anyway, so I keep thinking of that. But like you said, it's lovely weather, you can go for walks and my life's the same.

**Chris Williamson** (4:16)
I agree, I keep on saying it to people that I appreciate for some, it might be challenging. But for me, it's not a massive difference from what I'm used to. I've got slightly fewer people to see, slightly more time to read, and a little bit worse internet connection because everybody's online. But other than that, it's all good. So today we're talking about money, very sort of passionate topic, a very viscerally emotion-inducing topic. We're talking about why some people can make it and others can't.

**William Leith** (4:53)
It's a very weird thing, money, because you think you know what it is, you spend your whole life with this concept of money. You know, you've got it, you haven't got it. What is it? Oh, it's what's in my pocket. And then when you try and sort of drill down into it, try and understand what it is, how it arose, what it does to your head, then it becomes this very weird thing. And I realized that quite quickly. That's why I wanted to write about it, because I didn't understand it. There was a big, you know, the global financial crash. And I think that wasn't the very first time I'd thought about money, because I'd once tried to write about it. And found after writing, I wrote a 1200 word article on the origins of money from first principles. And I thought, God, I'm not going there again. That is so weird. And then we had this big crash. And I realized that there was something wrong with, you know, money was something that really helped us and really enabled all sorts of things to happen. But there was something deeply wrong with it. And I wondered what that was. And was there a way I could simply understand it? Was there a simple way to understand what was wrong? So after that, I began to think about it a bit. And I was thinking, yeah, money, God, I could write about that. No, I couldn't, no, no, no. And then one day, and I realized all this time, I kept interviewing these people who made tons of money. And I would say, you know, how did you make this money? And it's almost like you're asking somebody, hey, your garden's tidy. How did you do that? And they say, well, you see that grass? I got this mower, I mowed it. And then I painted the shed, like all this. And you ask people how they make money and they go, well, first of all, I thought, yeah, I don't know what's going on in the hi-fi market. And then I thought, yeah, I could make it a bit cheaper. I think, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. And then I made it a bit cheaper. And how much did you make? Oh, you know, like 10 million. So you think the people who make a load of money, they sort of understand it and it seems like this logical thing. But for 99.9 percent of us, it's not logical. And, you know, obviously, if you could do it, if you could do it, you would. And I couldn't do it. And I actually had some pathological problem with money, which is that even when I made a load of it, it would somehow get into me and change me. So I'd become this person who had some money and then it would all be gone. Because identifying yourself with your money is terrible. You've got to be the person who doesn't have money and then have the money.