THIS is My BIGGEST SECRET to SUCCESS! | | Tilman Fertitta

you know i think that you can pick up from from talking to me that that i'm not on a different level okay these are pretty simple basic tools and so nobody out there is listening to him and saying god dorn he's just he's just using words and he's just so much smarter than me so i'm not going to become worth 5 billion dollars that book is booked okay he's just naturally smarter than me i think you can see that i'm no smarter than anybody else in this room i just use certain little basic tools to be successful every day take the word no out of your vocabulary worry about your customer no spare customers use the 95 5 rule separate yourself from everybody else be the bull at whatever you do and on and on and on you can be the bull at any position you're doing and it's just telling yourself i'm going to do this better than anybody else i don't care what the job is i don't care what you do you be the bull at what you do well you just gotta keep punching and just take care of your business and you just realize until they come and shut you down or lock the doors or you can't get product or whatever until you can't make a payroll you'd be surprised what you can take though and and you just keep punching and punching and believe it or not times you know get good and it goes back to what i once again preach when times are really bad we forget they're ever going to be good again and when times are really good we forget they're going to be bad again i don't fear anything but i worry about everything and the day you stop worrying in good times the paddle will get you behind and and and so as great as things are in life i know you're only a few steps or a few incidents away from something bad happening you can never forget it i'm taking the next steps right now to get to the next level because always that's my sport let's go play pick up basketball let's go to the office and play business and that's what i do every day i go to the office and play business you got to know what you know and what you don't know and and i knew that i understood business now don't ask me to you know go win an emmy i took guitar lessons for four years and i still struggle playing a guitar i can't draw a stick person very good but i knew that i understood business so i i know what i know and i know how to do due diligence on a deal i don't worry about making a bad deal because i feel like that's what i know i think you know if you know business or not and people ask me should i go get my mba and you know what i usually tell them you know if you need to go get your mba if you don't have it inside of you and you understand economics and finance and and operations of business then you need to go get it i knew that i didn't need it it was just a god-given gift you've got to know your god-given gifts and everybody has it everybody in this room has it right here so do what you know was your god-given gift and find a way to use that as your path you you know you know if people know what they're doing and and uh but it's my job to make sure and bring everybody up to another level and i think that's probably one of the greatest compliments i've ever gotten is that i'll take somebody good and make them better is that is that a conscious process for you like what are you doing is it just kicking people in the ass inspiring them all by example all the above i think i do you always know where you stand with me uh i have all my top vps probably have been with me an average of 25 years my two assistants have been with me 27 and 26 years and everybody will tell you that is the hardest son of a in the world to work for but i would never work for anybody else what would you have to see in them to think it's worth the risk i think one of the best things that i ever did was i will i will look at somebody's resume and i can say you know what you've never been with the right company and that's why you haven't excelled and and you are that's why you're in here today and so many people choose the wrong company to go to work for and i look at people all the time and i look at your resume and say why did you go to work for this company i knew they were screwed up when you went to work for them okay and so some people just are not good at choosing the right company and also the person interviewing makes promises that never happen and i think that's one of the biggest mistakes that people make is choosing the wrong company to go to work for do they really have good liquidity are they going to be in business are they an acquisition target where all of a sudden that they are and you're going to get bought and probably laid off uh you know everything is is uh are they do they have a product that is going to be around for a long time so everything from liquidity to product acquisition target growth where you're going to go everybody should always ask themselves if they want to grow and they just don't want to just whatever is is say where can i be in five years if i can't be at this position in five years then this isn't a good career path for me even today it's it's all about somebody said why are you so successful because i sell and even when you go out and you raise billions of dollars in debt and you're meeting with debt holders you're still selling yourself that's what it's all about you're not just selling the deal when i was public for 18 years okay and you're selling equity i did five follow-on offerings to most a restaurant company ever did when i was public and and you're selling yourself and and and you know you know your numbers you know your business and you make yourself that you know more than everybody else even if you don't let's do it another way let's go back to 10 years old i walked around with my my business my briefcase uh full of business there was no business in it but i wanted to be a business guy but you really didn't know what it was by junior high i was buying candy and reselling it at school by high school i was already trading on the stock market that's just hey doing whatever it took to make money i always wanted to make money i always had money even when i was a kid because i always worked whatever job i could find whether it was mowing somebody's yard or washing cars or selling lemonade to the construction workers it was just always about making money so at 21 i sold vitamins i start building homes building shopping centers by the time i was 26 i built my first hotel by the time i was 25 i told myself i'll have my first jet at 35 and i did you tend to know more about any deal anything going on in your company than anybody else i want to know how how do you master it to that level well i mean i can't get into some details that people know that i don't know but but if you walk into my office for a meeting i don't care what department you're in i will pick apart whatever you have and and you better know your numbers when you walk in there with a spreadsheet or you better you have your ads right if you're the