Episode 203 Scott Adams: Kanye’s Idea of Teaching the Black Community to Think Like Rich People
Date: 2018-08-31 | Duration: 21:14
Topics
Methods of success How to think like a rich person How to learn the basics of business
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## Transcript
## [Thinking Like a Rich Person](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=11s)
Hey, is anybody around? This is a special bonus Periscope. You weren't expecting it this time of day, but when I come on at weird hours, it's the good stuff. So, I'm going to bring you the good stuff.
One of the benefits that I've realized from having conversations with a number of prominent Black activists and people who are working in that area, as well as observing what famous successful Black people say—one of the things that I would not have known a year ago—is that according to Black folks who are studying what you do about helping the Black communities, this is their opinions that I'm echoing. I've heard this from everybody from Hawk Newsome to folks working with President Trump on urban revitalization.
I just tweeted a link to an interview with Kanye in which he says something along these lines too, and I wanted to solidify this thought. The idea is that what the Black community needs is—I wouldn't say education, training I guess—on how you think like a rich person. Some training on how to start a business and how to keep your business running if you've started it.
The idea is that there are some basic life skills that sort of get handed down generationally, or at least by association, in the white community and maybe in the Asian community and others, that for whatever reason is not being transmitted or spread in any effective way in the Black community. If you fix that one thing, it would be one of the biggest levers.
## [Systems vs. Goals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=135s)
Now, here's what I like about that: it's a system as opposed to a goal. One of the places that I differ with Hawk Newsome and Black Lives Matter is that they tend to talk in terms of goals. "I want to make things fair." "I want to maybe have reparations of some type." Those tend to be fairly discrete goals. "I want the police to never kill any people who are unarmed." Those are goals.
But what about the system? What are you doing to get to those places? That's the part that seems to be missing. I wanted to talk about that a little bit. I wanted to call out some of the rich person thinking that I observe Kanye does. This is based on things he said in interviews, so I'm not trying to read his mind, and you can fact-check me if any of this seems off-base. But just by observing, this is what I see in him.
## [Kanye’s System: Talk to Anyone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=195s)
Kanye, first of all, has a system in which he will talk to anyone. He'll talk to President Trump and show him respect. He'll talk to anyone. That's a system. Rich people think that way. Rich people will talk to anyone if it will move the ball forward. Poor people think, "I'm not going to talk to those jerks. I'm not going to even associate with them in any way." That's the difference between rich person thinking (Kanye) and poor person thinking (Black Lives Matter).
Again, I'm not painting all Black Lives Matter as having the same opinion. I'm just trying to show a distinction between how rich people think and poor people think in terms of a system versus a goal. So, Kanye's first system: talk to anyone.
## [The Talent Stack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=258s)
Here's another system: you see Kanye developing one skill after another and just stacking them. He wasn't born as a musical prodigy; he just keeps stacking talents. Each time he stacks a new talent, he just gets more powerful. Now you see him stacking political talent. You see his public speaking coming online. It's a little stop-and-go because he's saying some things in public, like on TMZ, that he needs to retract and apologize for, but you see him learning in public. You see him adding to his skill stack as he goes.
Who does that? Who adds new skills to their skill stack all the time and never stops doing it? Rich people. Look at Jay-Z. Look at anybody who's successful. Look at me. We're stacking our skills, and we're stacking them in ways that make sense together. Is Kanye learning how to do falconry or archery? Probably not. Everything that Kanye learns, from producing to style to everything else, is very complementary and very additive. That's the system.
## [Managing Ego and Public Rejection](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=320s)
I've talked to you about managing your ego. You need to be able to take rejection. You need to learn how to do that. You need to put yourself out there. You need to put yourself at risk, get shot down, slapped around, beat up, and then just come back. You do that by practicing doing it.
You saw Kanye recover from the Taylor Swift thing. You've seen him now recovering from his comments about slavery on TMZ. You've seen him recovering from talking about his bipolar situation. You're seeing him take a level of public condemnation, shame, and humiliation that would just destroy most people.
What does Kanye do? "I think I can find a way to use this." He transfers the energy to something better. The energy he gets from even the provocative stuff that people are criticizing makes him more interesting. It makes me want to spend an hour looking at an interview with him, which I just did. I won't spend an hour looking at anybody's interview, but he's so interesting—and I'm sure that's intentional—that you can't look away once you start. He's fascinating from beginning to end.
## [Risk Management and Unlimited Upside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=441s)
Here's another thing that Kanye does: he seems to understand risk management. He takes risks that don't kill him, but if they work out, it could be really good. There's unlimited upside. If Kanye had tried to start a clothing line and it hadn't worked, he'd still be Kanye. He would still be rich; his life would still be great. That's a risk that could have an unlimited upside, but it wouldn't kill him if it didn't work.
That's how rich people think. Poor people say, "I don't think that's going to work out." Kanye has tried many things. I assume some worked and some didn't, but as long as he's doing lots of things—and you see President Trump did the same thing—he tried lots and lots of things. A lot of them didn't work out; some of them worked out great. President Trump thinks like a rich person. Kanye thinks like a rich person. He thinks other people should learn to think this way; he said that in the interview.
## [Networking and Alliances](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=501s)
You also watch Kanye forming alliances. He does it in music. You see how many times he's produced for other artists? That forms an alliance which stays with you. Then he has more resources, more connections, more love coming in. He forms an alliance with President Trump in a way, just by being nice to him.
In the interview that I mentioned, he talks about meeting with Elon Musk. He said he met with Jack Dorsey from Twitter. We've seen pictures of him with Candace Owens. You can see that he's really doing this; he's forming alliances and contacts from all over the place. He's networking like a mofo. Who does that? People who think like rich people. You don't have to be rich to think that way, but it will certainly help you get there. If you're locked into your community and you're not talking to people outside of your community, you're thinking like a poor person, and you're probably going to stay that way.
## [Generosity as a System](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=565s)
Here's another thing that rich people do: they are generous for nothing in return immediately. Rich people will do you a favor and ask nothing in return. Why? Because if you have that as your system—"Yeah, I'll help you. I'll introduce you. I'll make this contact. I'll give you some advice, no charge. I'll never ask for anything from you"—what happens? They're going to get a favor in return eventually; it's just they're not asking for it.
Rich people do things for people without asking for an immediate return. It's part of a system. I learned that as a kid; it serves me very well. Poor people, they're not going to give anything to somebody without getting a return. Now I'm generalizing, of course. There are plenty of great people who are also poor who are also generous. But in terms of what will make you rich versus what will keep you poor, if you're never generous, it's holding you back.
## [Leading with Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=625s)
Here's another system that Kanye uses: love. He leads with love. He talks about love. He phrases everything in terms of love. He tells you how love will smooth over the bumps. He tells you he can talk to President Trump with love and somebody on the other side with love. He loves Bernie Sanders. It's a powerful system. When he leads with love, good things happen. I didn't hear anything from Kanye about anybody else doing something wrong. I didn't see him criticizing anybody.
That's important. That's a system. If you are a criticizer—and let's use Black Lives Matter as an example—they are primarily a criticizing group, meaning that their whole point seems to be to criticize, raise awareness, and then once that awareness is raised, try to come to some solution. Black Lives Matter would certainly like solutions, but the path that they're taking to get there is through criticism.
Now, let me ask you this: two people come in for a job. One of them has a Kanye personality where he just leads with love; he doesn't have a bad thing to say about you. Another person comes in, and you know that they've criticized someone else, maybe their last boss. They haven't criticized you—in fact, they're saying nice things about you because they want you to hire them. Who gets the job? Not the person you know to be a criticizer, because that's going to come back to you sooner or later. You're going to be the target of that criticism. You're going to hire the one who says, "Somebody did something bad to me, but I got over it. I just love that person now." That's who you hire.
## [The Now vs. The Past](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=747s)
Another thing that Kanye does, and he mentions it often, is that you should think less about the past and focus on the "now" and what the now can do that'll help you in the future. That's a rich person's point of view. If you focus on the past, you will lock yourself into the past. Black Lives Matter focuses on past injustices and reparations. Kanye says, "What could I do today to make this stuff better?" That's a rich person's thinking.
Now you say to yourself, "Well, how easy is it to learn to think like a rich person?" It's not easy. I spent the first 25 or 30 years of my life trying to absorb everything I could about how rich people think. I specifically targeted that as my primary strategy for success. My primary strategy from the moment I could think was to look around and say, "Okay, these people are not successful. They don't seem to have much to teach me. These people are making everything work. What's the delta? What are they doing that the others are not doing?"
I would read books on it. I would talk to people. I would look for examples and patterns until I had enough of those that I could succeed as well.
## [Success Resources](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=874s)
If you're just starting that path, let me recommend some books. This will seem terribly self-serving, but I don't know any other way to do it. I wrote this book for people who want to know how to think like a rich person. I didn't use that kind of branding because I didn't want "rich person" to be any part of it, but the idea is: how do you succeed if nobody taught you the methods of success? If nobody taught you strategies for success? If nobody taught you how to think like a successful person, how the heck would you just figure it out on your own? It's pretty hard.
But you don't have to. There are books. This is one of them. It's not the only book to tell you how to think like a rich person. You could easily find a number of them. Here's another one: Tim Ferriss' book, it's called *Tools of Titans*. It's thick. It's all interviews with rich people who tell you how they think, why habits they use, and what techniques they use. If you read one book, is it enough? No, probably not. By the way, lessons from my book are included in that book—some of the better parts.
If you've mastered those books, I would recommend that you start looking at books about persuasion, sales, and influence. Once you get the basics right of the math of success—and what I was talking about was really the math of success—your odds of success are better. If you stack several talents together, your odds are better. If you network with people who you normally wouldn't want to talk to, your odds are better. If you lead with love, your odds are better than if you lead with guilt or anger.
But once you've mastered the math of success that you can get from these books, then you want to get to the next level, which is persuasion. How do you learn how to influence people? You could have a great product, but if nobody buys it, you need to be able to persuade. The first book I mentioned was written for somebody who's 14 and up. If you don't get kids young, it's hard for them to catch up. If you get them young, they're going to start building their talent stack and networking reflexively. You don't want to give this book to somebody at 45 and say, "Hey, go fix everything you did wrong for 45 years." It still works, and it's a lot better than not, but you get most of the gains if you catch them early.
## [The Basics of Business](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=1059s)
On top of the generic skills of how to succeed, there's a real need—especially in the inner cities, places where there are big pockets of people who don't have the same resources—to learn the basics of business. Imagine training for how to use QuickBooks and how to do your own books. Training about—and I know this sounds weird—how to have a banking relationship, how to get credit, how to keep your credit good, how to find a mentor, how to get a first job, how to dress for your first job. There's this whole body of knowledge that is absolutely necessary to acquire wealth and, more importantly, to hold on to it once you've got it. These are the things where maybe the government could be involved or private citizens could be involved. These are the biggest levers.
## [Interacting with Authority](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfccA3_X5O8&t=1119s)
Somebody mentioned a bootcamp on how to talk to the police. Yes. If you want to be successful, one of the big skills you need to learn is how to stay out of jail and how to not get beat up by the police. Now, I'm not going to say the police never make mistakes—individual police of course do, like individuals in any other large group—but you can learn how to control other people's actions.
You think you can't, but I wrote a book on it. Other people have, too. You can control how other people treat you. Do you know who knows that? Rich people. Rich people know how to control people in the room because they know that the way they act will change how the other person acts. Staying out of jail has a lot to do with making sure that you're controlling the other person productively, not maliciously. By "controlling them," I mean helping them get to a good place where they feel safe and they're respecting you.
Rich people learn how to talk to authority. Sometimes you just have to suck up your ego. Sometimes you have to lay down. Sometimes you just have to take it. You don't want to have many of those situations, but you have to know when one is presented to you, and you have to know when to take it.
That's all for now. I think you got the general point of this. I hope it's helpful at least a little bit.