Steve Forbes and the Billionaire's Mind

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[00:01:33] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

[00:01:46] This is the James Altucher Show.

[00:03:17] Also remarkable is the turnover on the list.

[00:03:19] Each year people drop off not just because of the Grim Reaper,

[00:03:22] but because they may have had setbacks or others are just doing better.

[00:03:26] And we get people who come on again.

[00:03:29] We like to call them retreads.

[00:03:31] It's nice to be a retread billionaire.

[00:03:33] But so it's really a good portrait of how the world is doing.

[00:03:38] And what is another thing that's remarkable about the global side

[00:03:42] is how many people from around the world are doing big things.

[00:03:46] It's not just the West, it's everywhere.

[00:03:49] Right.

[00:03:49] You could almost track the economic development of continents

[00:03:52] by how many of their citizens get on the Forbes billionaire list.

[00:03:58] Like this year is a lot more from Africa, for instance.

[00:04:01] So you can see.

[00:04:02] And then you look at other things like you go to the World Bank website,

[00:04:05] you can see, oh, suddenly Africa has much more access to clean water

[00:04:09] than they've ever had before.

[00:04:10] And of course, it makes sense then that economic development

[00:04:14] spreads into other areas of development,

[00:04:17] whether it's billionaires or access to clean water or whatever.

[00:04:20] So I have a couple of questions, though.

[00:04:22] One's a spurious gossipy question about the billionaire's list.

[00:04:26] Did it surprise you that Jeff Bezos was the first to hit over 100?

[00:04:31] Not really.

[00:04:31] I mean, Warren Buffett could have if he hadn't given the money away.

[00:04:35] Bill Gates could have if he had stayed with Microsoft

[00:04:38] instead of doing his efforts in numerous areas in philanthropy.

[00:04:43] But Bezos is an example of an individual who took a fairly simple concept

[00:04:49] and has expanded it relentlessly.

[00:04:51] And one of the things that's interesting about these people as they achieve size

[00:04:55] is how do you stay nimble as you get bigger?

[00:04:58] Not so easy to do.

[00:04:59] Warren Buffett, for example, has done it in a way in which he allows people to run

[00:05:04] these numerous large companies that he takes huge stakes in or buys them out outright

[00:05:09] and has not fallen by the wayside the way General Electric has done in recent times,

[00:05:14] where it had a portfolio of businesses and it's faltered badly.

[00:05:18] Buffett's made it work.

[00:05:19] How did he do it?

[00:05:21] Bezos is a big, among other things, a big believer in teams,

[00:05:26] eight to 10 people working on projects, coming up with ideas or executing ideas.

[00:05:32] And he has a two pizza rule.

[00:05:34] His two pizza rule is if it takes more than two pizzas to feed a team when they're working at

[00:05:39] night, the team is too big.

[00:05:41] When a team gets bigger than 10 or 12 people, it loses that spark of creativity that makes

[00:05:48] a team work.

[00:05:49] So Amazon, huge.

[00:05:51] Bezos' wealth, huge.

[00:05:52] But he's tried to make sure he doesn't lose the ingredients, so to speak.

[00:05:57] And you see it in the cloud.

[00:05:58] No one ever thought that Amazon would be the biggest player in the cloud.

[00:06:02] And he is.

[00:06:03] Well, one time I visited Amazon and they told me another rule he has is if you have an idea,

[00:06:09] write the press release first as if the idea was already completed.

[00:06:13] And then you could start to feel, is this press release impressive?

[00:06:17] It's kind of an interesting way to let's determine what the success of this idea is

[00:06:22] before we start working on it.

[00:06:23] How do you define success for this idea?

[00:06:25] Because that'll show up in the pre-press release that you write.

[00:06:29] It's an interesting strategy.

[00:06:30] It is an interesting strategy.

[00:06:31] And again, it's enabling people to focus on what is it you're trying to do.

[00:06:36] Peter Drucker, the late great management guru who wrote books about managing entities,

[00:06:42] organizations, businesses, still read in many business schools today, said every organization,

[00:06:47] including businesses, should always ask themselves, what is your purpose?

[00:06:51] What is it you are trying to do?

[00:06:53] If you focus on your purpose, you get less hung up.

[00:06:55] If the means to achieve that purpose change.

[00:06:58] And the era we're living in now with the web and all the mammoth changes coming from

[00:07:04] a blockchain and 5G, every CEO now knows that disruption is coming his or her way.

[00:07:11] So how do you cope with it?

[00:07:12] So what Bezos and others do, highly relevant.

[00:07:16] Well, I'm going to ask you about that in a second in the context of Forbes.

[00:07:21] On the billionaires list though, right now I think you list there's about 2,200 billionaires

[00:07:26] in the world.

[00:07:26] Right.

[00:07:27] And you're able to list that because there's a lot of public records.

[00:07:31] Like Bezos or Gates is a great example.

[00:07:34] We could see exactly what their shares in Amazon and Microsoft are worth.

[00:07:38] They might have billions from other sources, but we might not know what those billions

[00:07:42] are.

[00:07:42] We can guess, but we don't know.

[00:07:44] How many actual, I know many billionaires, for instance, who are not on your list.

[00:07:49] And that's just me randomly knowing people who are not on your list who happen to have

[00:07:54] maybe many, many billions.

[00:07:56] How many actual billionaires do you think there are in the world?

[00:07:59] Well, the number changes because asset values change.

[00:08:03] And we're always coming up with new names.

[00:08:07] They're not publicly listed.

[00:08:09] And most of the information is from other sources because it's not always in the public

[00:08:14] record.

[00:08:15] Most people are cooperative.

[00:08:17] Others are not.

[00:08:18] Some always try to inflate their wealth.

[00:08:21] Why would they try to do that?

[00:08:22] Because they feel it's a source of power.

[00:08:25] Wilbur Ross, we have a story now how he exaggerated

[00:08:29] his wealth substantially.

[00:08:30] And you get in fights with some people.

[00:08:33] Donald Trump always feels we underestimate his wealth by about 60% each year.

[00:08:37] What do you think Donald Trump's actually worth?

[00:08:39] I think you have him as $9 billion right now, right?

[00:08:41] Or I don't know.

[00:08:42] No, we have him a little over three.

[00:08:44] We have him between $3 to $4 billion, sizable by anybody's standards.

[00:08:47] Maybe he claims $9 billion.

[00:08:49] He says, oh no, my brand is worth $9 or $10 billion.

[00:08:53] We always take the position that a brand, we don't monetize or give value to a brand

[00:09:00] unless you've monetized it.

[00:09:02] So Oprah, yes, her name is extremely valuable.

[00:09:05] But unless she's monetized it, which she has in a number of areas.

[00:09:08] And she has shares of CBS worth X.

[00:09:11] We want to see, OK, how you've turned that into money.

[00:09:14] It's like having a chicken and saying, well, that's a dozen eggs.

[00:09:16] Now the chicken's got to lay the eggs before we count the eggs.

[00:09:19] Right.

[00:09:20] So yeah, but I didn't mean to say your list is not accurate.

[00:09:26] I just think there's probably many people.

[00:09:28] Yes, well, it's a big world out there.

[00:09:31] And so we're always constantly trying to dig and find.

[00:09:34] Most people don't volunteer because they don't want to have more light shown on them than

[00:09:41] already is.

[00:09:42] But you don't want to be a target.

[00:09:44] Not a target of bad people, but a target of tax collectors and fundraisers.

[00:09:48] Every development office in the world gets our billionaires issue and the Forbes 400

[00:09:53] issue.

[00:09:54] It's the first thing they look to.

[00:09:56] What prospects can we find now?

[00:09:59] And in China, years ago, the Chinese government, when we came out with our list of the richest

[00:10:05] 100 Chinese, said everyone will be subject to a tax examination.

[00:10:09] So sometimes the attention is not wanted.

[00:10:12] But if you have names, we'll be glad to take them and check them out to see if we can find

[00:10:20] the sources that are billionaires.

[00:10:23] We'd love to have them.

[00:10:24] Well, let's just guess.

[00:10:25] Let's say instead of 2,000 billionaires, I would say there's probably more like 10,000

[00:10:29] billionaires in the world.

[00:10:32] Does that seem wildly off or reasonable?

[00:10:35] I think we have people, sources in most countries around the world.

[00:10:41] So I think if there was somebody very, very wealthy that we haven't heard of, I don't think

[00:10:46] it would number 8,000.

[00:10:49] And a lot of people, some people may think they're worth more than they actually are.

[00:10:54] In their own minds, this is a priceless thing.

[00:10:57] But in the marketplace, it may not.

[00:11:00] And the market is always changing.

[00:11:02] Market is a consumer of preferences, what works or what doesn't work.

[00:11:07] So you see it, especially startups and new drugs going through the various trials at

[00:11:13] the FDA.

[00:11:14] They can be worth billions one day and nothing the next day.

[00:11:18] You come up with a new way of making a product.

[00:11:21] The old machinery may still work, but it doesn't have the value that it did before the better

[00:11:26] new ways came along.

[00:11:27] You saw most dramatically in my business, in the print business, where the web threw

[00:11:32] out just about everything we thought we had learned in the past 150 years.

[00:11:36] And so what Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction, everyone loves the creative part,

[00:11:42] but the destruction is there destroying old capital, destroying capital.

[00:11:47] You take the New York Times, they bought the Boston Globe decades ago for over a billion

[00:11:52] dollars.

[00:11:53] Sold that and a handful of other Massachusetts papers a few years ago for what, 50 million,

[00:11:57] depending on whose numbers you look at.

[00:11:59] Number six on your list, Carlos Slim.

[00:12:01] And so it was a billion dollars of capital destroyed by the advent of new technology.

[00:12:07] So you always have this changing.

[00:12:11] It's not a stable environment.

[00:12:13] So let's say there's 2,000 billionaires, the guys on your list, the men and women on your

[00:12:18] list, and there's 38 million millionaires in the world, which is, of course, a great

[00:12:24] achievement.

[00:12:25] This is not detracting from them.

[00:12:27] In your mind, what's the difference?

[00:12:29] What are the habits that are specifically different between a self-made billionaire

[00:12:35] and a very successful millionaire?

[00:12:39] Only zeros.

[00:12:40] You think that's it?

[00:12:41] You think there's not an extra habit?

[00:12:42] Because like when I interview a guy like Ken Lagone.

[00:12:45] It depends.

[00:12:47] Some people are not good executives, but they know how to get people around who can make

[00:12:52] things happen.

[00:12:54] Warren Buffett is not a micromanager, but he makes sure he has metrics to keep track

[00:13:00] of how these individuals are doing and running these various companies.

[00:13:04] So what it takes you to get to a million doesn't stand in the way of going to the next step.

[00:13:10] A lot of it is just the kind of business you're in.

[00:13:13] It doesn't have the scale to reach up.

[00:13:17] Some people are great dealmakers.

[00:13:19] Others like to focus in their own what we call your own wheelhouse.

[00:13:23] Your own sandbox.

[00:13:29] I don't think you're going to find huge differences.

[00:13:34] There's an innate ability in there, but I don't think it's something you can quantify.

[00:13:39] I don't think you're going to be able to come up with the metrics in a business school

[00:13:42] to say, aha, millionaire, billionaire, zillionaire.

[00:13:47] You don't think there's an extra like, and I don't know the answer.

[00:13:49] You don't think there's an extra amount of persistence?

[00:13:52] I think probably the hardest workers in the world are people scratching out a living in

[00:14:00] parts of Africa with obsolete tools in terms of the sweat they put in.

[00:14:07] And because they don't have the right tools, they're still always struggling.

[00:14:11] So it's not the amount of work per se.

[00:14:13] Not the amount of hours per se.

[00:14:16] Not the amount of drive per se.

[00:14:18] I could spend 10,000 hours trying to play golf.

[00:14:22] I wouldn't get to break 100 no matter what.

[00:14:26] Me neither, by the way.

[00:14:29] Some may have a real knack for something that also meets the needs and wants of hundreds

[00:14:33] of millions or billions of people.

[00:14:36] So I don't think it's a sweat equity or drive or ambition.

[00:14:41] It's a combination of that intangible thing of seeing something that somebody doesn't.

[00:14:48] And then if it succeeds, everyone says, well, that was obvious.

[00:14:51] And if it doesn't, boy, that was a stupid idea.

[00:14:54] As a matter of fact, most new ideas, somebody once said, if you have a great new idea, you

[00:15:00] don't have to patent it because most people think it's stupid until it works.

[00:15:05] It's interesting.

[00:15:06] A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of saying, well, I'm going to patent this.

[00:15:12] Of not wanting to share their idea because they think people will steal it.

[00:15:15] And I always say, don't worry, no one is stealing your idea.

[00:15:18] A, if you're passionate about it, you're going to beat everyone else anyway.

[00:15:22] B, it's like what you just said.

[00:15:24] If your idea is unique in the first and it's space or whatever, no one cares about your

[00:15:28] idea until you've already succeeded with it.

[00:15:33] That is true.

[00:15:34] And so you can steal a lot of ideas, but it doesn't mean you're going to make them work.

[00:15:41] The classic case is seeing what others don't.

[00:15:45] Steve Jobs goes to Menlo Park, Xerox's great research laboratory in the late 70s,

[00:15:51] sees what we later called the mouse, saw possibilities that Xerox did not, ran with it.

[00:15:57] He didn't invent the mouse, so to speak, but he saw the possibilities of what was there

[00:16:01] and developed it.

[00:16:03] Take a nutritionist gag at this, but take Ray Kroc.

[00:16:06] He saw what the McDonald brothers had done in a business that everyone knows and still

[00:16:11] is today has the highest casualty rate, the restaurant business.

[00:16:14] They come and they go like you change your shirt and or underwear and tough, tough business.

[00:16:20] But the McDonald brothers had stumbled on a way through simplicity, especially at that

[00:16:25] time and back in the 1950s when diners were prevalent.

[00:16:28] Nice thing about diners is the wonderful menus.

[00:16:31] They're about 800 pages, every conceivable thing.

[00:16:34] You can spend your whole day reading the menu.

[00:16:36] But the McDonald brothers had to focus on a few key things and Kroc saw the possibilities

[00:16:42] of actually doing a real national chain, which really hadn't been done before on the scale

[00:16:47] he envisioned.

[00:16:48] So the McDonald brothers invented it, but Kroc saw the possibilities of it and made

[00:16:53] it happen.

[00:16:58] Take a quick break.

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[00:17:19] Ah, the sizzle of McDonald's sausage.

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[00:18:00] Medela, the mark of the fight.

[00:18:02] Drink responsibly.

[00:18:03] Be reported by Crown and Port Chicago, Illinois.

[00:18:08] If you look at your, the top 10, 20, 30 on your list, a lot of them take old, older concepts

[00:18:15] and then kind of maybe combine it with other concepts.

[00:18:18] Like Ray Kroc takes the idea of the diner, but then thinks to himself, okay, we could

[00:18:25] almost make this like the assembly line of diners.

[00:18:29] Like we could take this exact concept and just plant it down everywhere and think huge.

[00:18:33] And he focused on a couple of popular things, cheeseburgers, hamburgers.

[00:18:37] I don't know whether they ever served hot dogs at McDonald's.

[00:18:40] I don't think so.

[00:18:41] Burger King once did.

[00:18:43] And soda pop and milkshakes and focused on that.

[00:18:47] And people love the simplicity.

[00:18:48] Didn't have to have 800 items on the menu.

[00:18:51] And so this ability to see what others don't, you ask yourself who made the most money from

[00:18:56] mainframe computers?

[00:18:58] Wasn't the company that invented the computer during World War II in the 1940s or IBM, which

[00:19:03] dominated the field.

[00:19:04] IBM nearly went bust in the early 90s.

[00:19:07] One who made the most money on it was Sam Walton, who recognized in the early 60s, one

[00:19:11] of the time when Kmart and others were 50, 100, 500 times the size of a Walmart, that

[00:19:17] if he managed inventories using specialized software in a way that the other big boys

[00:19:23] didn't, he'd beat them at their own game.

[00:19:26] And he did.

[00:19:26] He managed inventories and then supply chains in a way that hadn't been done before.

[00:19:30] And he became the biggest.

[00:19:32] He didn't invent the PC, but he used it in the software that could be developed in a

[00:19:37] way that no one else did.

[00:19:38] So again, he didn't invent it, but he used the tools in a way no one else did.

[00:19:42] But there was a passion there too, in that he would go to other big box stores that didn't

[00:19:48] have necessarily the ideas of distribution that he was thinking.

[00:19:52] He'd go to like, I don't know, the woman's lingerie rack and say, oh no, it's a little

[00:19:56] messy here.

[00:19:57] Or here's what they're doing right.

[00:19:58] Like he was, he had an extra passion.

[00:20:01] He didn't just want to make money.

[00:20:02] He had an extra passion about big box retail.

[00:20:04] Most entrepreneurs, most are not out to make money.

[00:20:08] They like it.

[00:20:10] And they succeed in part because we have financial markets that can supply the capital to grow.

[00:20:18] It's nice to have an idea, but if you don't have the means to develop it and continue

[00:20:23] to improve it and distribute it, you're not going to get very far.

[00:20:26] So yes, he had that passion and he was obsessed with it, which is why oftentimes entrepreneurs

[00:20:33] may not make the best dinner partners for a conversation or perhaps a spouse or something.

[00:20:40] They are devoted to something.

[00:20:42] They're obsessed by it.

[00:20:43] Ray Kroc, when he was asked, why don't you expand into other kinds of foods or diversify?

[00:20:51] He would say, can you guarantee that every restroom in our thousand plus stores, this

[00:20:56] was back in the 60s, is absolutely spotless clean?

[00:21:01] Can you guarantee me that right now?

[00:21:03] No.

[00:21:04] Then we're not going to leave what we're doing.

[00:21:07] That's interesting.

[00:21:08] So Forbes and Forbes.com, I'm going to just pitch you a quick idea.

[00:21:15] Think about CNBC.

[00:21:16] Why was CNBC so successful?

[00:21:18] They early on got in with all the cable companies and got a low channel so it was easy to find

[00:21:23] and they got some good programming and so on.

[00:21:27] Tell me if you disagree.

[00:21:28] I feel like now anybody that has traffic to their website can become a Netflix.

[00:21:35] Anybody can create original visual programming and the world is moving towards visual programming

[00:21:40] instead of written, which is how storytelling happened 10,000 years ago with photos or not

[00:21:46] with photos, with hieroglyphics on a cave wall.

[00:21:51] Now Instagram is the most popular social media website.

[00:21:55] Forbes.com has an enormous amount of traffic.

[00:22:00] You should produce TV shows.

[00:22:02] Get on a set-top box.

[00:22:03] Doesn't matter what your channel is.

[00:22:06] We're producing a video now and everyone is doing it and everyone says, well, if Netflix

[00:22:13] can do it, why can't anyone else?

[00:22:15] Well, people are finding out.

[00:22:17] Yes, anyone can write anything online.

[00:22:19] Anyone can take pictures online.

[00:22:21] But finding the right content, right audience, easier said than done.

[00:22:27] So our traffic is going up.

[00:22:29] We're now averaging according to Comscore, which is much more conservative than some

[00:22:33] of these other measuring firms.

[00:22:36] We're over 70 million unique visitors a month.

[00:22:39] So yeah, we're doing video.

[00:22:40] We're not going to do Game of Thrones, I don't think, or some of the other series.

[00:22:47] It's really a golden age for cable in terms of the content, much more than traditional

[00:22:51] television or even movies.

[00:22:53] Now it's what you can do with streaming, what you can do on cable, less and less cable

[00:23:00] in the future.

[00:23:01] So the means of entertainment is drastically changing.

[00:23:05] But everyone now is a publisher.

[00:23:06] Everyone now is a content producer.

[00:23:11] In more than one medium.

[00:23:12] It's not just written.

[00:23:13] You have to do everything.

[00:23:15] Because people take information in various ways.

[00:23:19] And more and more it'll be video.

[00:23:21] And one of the things that has been phenomenally growing, as you know, is handhelds, smartphones,

[00:23:28] whatever you want to call them.

[00:23:30] If you said 25 years ago your grandmother could learn to operate a supercomputer, you'd

[00:23:35] have said, are you out of your mind?

[00:23:37] Well, granny today with a handheld is operating a supercomputer.

[00:23:41] Right.

[00:23:41] And the nice thing about those handhelds, you hit it and things happen.

[00:23:45] It's funny because the phone now is just an app on your phone.

[00:23:50] That's basically what the traditional phone is, it's just an app on the phone in your

[00:23:54] pocket.

[00:23:54] This gets to another thing about these entrepreneurs is if you don't get in the way of free markets,

[00:24:00] which is another word for free people, markets will always, people always turn scarcity

[00:24:05] into abundance.

[00:24:06] As somebody once said, if you want to see how poor people will live tomorrow, see how

[00:24:10] rich people live today.

[00:24:12] Because today's luxuries will become tomorrow's commodities.

[00:24:15] And we see the process time and again, and we don't think anything of it.

[00:24:19] Handheld, first one, you mentioned voice, telephony came out of Motorola 35, 36 years ago.

[00:24:25] All it did was voice.

[00:24:27] Big as a shoebox, weighed like a brick, first one for Motorola cost $3,995.

[00:24:33] Even with Apple's increases on the Apple, I don't know, Apple 11, maybe it's Apple 21

[00:24:39] coming up.

[00:24:39] They try to jack up the price and so they have these deals where you lease it for a

[00:24:43] certain amount and get a certain credit if you turn it in for the next new operation,

[00:24:48] model of it.

[00:24:49] But anyway, it's nowhere near $3,995.

[00:24:53] As you pointed out, voice is almost a sideshow compared to all the other things it does.

[00:24:58] The only thing that's missing now is hair growing capabilities, where it will put an

[00:25:02] app to grow your hair, but maybe they'll come up with that in the next model.

[00:25:06] You make a good point though, because everybody views inflation just in terms of how much

[00:25:11] does it cost?

[00:25:13] But you basically said, okay, instead of having something with just voiced capabilities,

[00:25:18] that's $4,000, you now have a supercomputer that's $1,000.

[00:25:22] So there's almost no way to really qualify that kind of deflation and I sort of feel

[00:25:28] like-

[00:25:29] Well, this gets to a fundamental point and that is too many economists confuse price

[00:25:34] change and inflation.

[00:25:36] Price changes because of supply demand, changes in improvement productivity with trashing

[00:25:43] your money, making it either too abundant or too scarce.

[00:25:47] And if you have a normal free market and the authorities stay out of the way, prices will

[00:25:54] go down unless you add improvements to them.

[00:25:56] You see it in Moore's law.

[00:25:58] You see it in if you take a handheld today, it would have cost millions of dollars a few

[00:26:03] years ago, even if you're assuming you had the technology to make it.

[00:26:08] So these price indices like the consumer price index, they seem so precise 2.25% and blah,

[00:26:18] blah, blah.

[00:26:19] They aren't.

[00:26:20] They are all estimations of changes because people's buying habits change, people's

[00:26:27] preferences change.

[00:26:28] What is a luxury today is a must have tomorrow.

[00:26:31] Everyone must have measuring productivity, not so easy to do.

[00:26:37] So yeah.

[00:26:39] Would you say we're experiencing deflation now?

[00:26:42] No, I think right now you're not experiencing anything.

[00:26:47] The Fed is somewhat behaving itself, not because it wants to, but because sometimes it stumbles

[00:26:55] on not doing too much harm.

[00:26:57] But the fact that something becomes cheaper is not deflation, which economists say, oh,

[00:27:02] that's bad if you have deflation.

[00:27:04] No, it's called productivity.

[00:27:06] So when you see big changes in commodity prices, usually because the Fed and the government

[00:27:11] is messing up.

[00:27:12] There was no supply demand reason why in the early 2000s oil went from $20 a barrel to

[00:27:19] over $100 a barrel.

[00:27:21] That was simply weakening the dollar.

[00:27:23] So let me ask you this.

[00:27:24] Now that Donald Trump, for better or for worse, has sort of opened the door to billionaires

[00:27:31] applying, running for office.

[00:27:34] I feel like actually he didn't open the door.

[00:27:36] You opened the door in 1996 when you ran for president and you could say, look, I have

[00:27:41] experience being an executive.

[00:27:43] I know an enormous amount about economics and economic reality because this is what

[00:27:49] I've been doing my whole life.

[00:27:51] You basically said you don't have to be a senator or governor to run for president.

[00:27:55] And Donald Trump then became the first one who wasn't a senator or governor or whatever

[00:27:59] to become president.

[00:28:00] Who on your billionaires list now do you think should run for president?

[00:28:04] Give me a president VP ticket of billionaires that you think would be successful.

[00:28:09] Who knows who will be successful because succeeding in the Oval Office, even those who have experience

[00:28:15] in politics often become a cropper in that office.

[00:28:18] It's unique from anything you've done before, whether you're involved in politics or some

[00:28:22] other walk of life.

[00:28:24] But there are plenty of billionaires who are ready to run in 2020.

[00:28:29] No surprise, Michael Bloomberg is seriously looking at it.

[00:28:32] I don't know whether as a Democrat or independent.

[00:28:35] Howard Schultz of Starbucks, he's left that because he's seriously considering running

[00:28:40] either as a Democrat or an independent.

[00:28:42] Perhaps the head of Disney, Iger.

[00:28:44] Robert Iger is certainly sniffing around about it.

[00:28:48] Mark Cuban has made noises about it.

[00:28:51] So there's no shortage of potential candidates.

[00:28:54] But they all will find that just because a person they may not like very much has done

[00:29:00] it doesn't mean they're going to have an easy time of doing it.

[00:29:03] Who would you vote for?

[00:29:04] I have to see what they stand for.

[00:29:06] I have my own views on taxes, on health care, trade and the like.

[00:29:11] And so what are you going to put on the table?

[00:29:14] I like what Trump has done on deregulation, what he's done on taxes, what he's done

[00:29:18] in terms of the quality of the people who's proposed for the judiciary.

[00:29:23] I'm a free trader.

[00:29:26] Tariff is another word for sales tax.

[00:29:29] I'm not sure those are the best ways to putting sales taxes on products Americans

[00:29:33] buy is the best way to deal with the very real trade abuses from some of our trade partners,

[00:29:39] i.e.

[00:29:39] Beijing.

[00:29:41] In the tax bill that's out there that Trump got through, the tax repatriation of dollars

[00:29:50] for companies that have a lot of cash abroad, that seems to me to be the biggest part of

[00:29:55] that in terms of if you add that to the economic money multiplier, it could be another trillion

[00:30:01] dollars added to GDP in the next year or two.

[00:30:04] Do you think that's going to be just this huge, huge mega growth on the economy or not

[00:30:11] so much?

[00:30:13] Well, it's good to have companies be able to move cash where they think it's going to

[00:30:18] be most useful.

[00:30:19] Not have to worry about what are the tax consequences.

[00:30:23] In this country, if you want to buy something in New York City, you may have a sales tax,

[00:30:29] but you don't have to worry about withdrawing your deposit from Chase Bank if you live in

[00:30:34] New Jersey.

[00:30:35] So yeah, removing those kind of barriers is a good thing.

[00:30:40] Some people have estimated companies artificially kept over $2 trillion of cash deposited elsewhere

[00:30:47] because they didn't want to pay a 35% tax here.

[00:30:49] So those changes were good.

[00:30:52] Reducing the corporate business tax from the worst in the world to a little better than

[00:30:56] average, very good thing to do.

[00:30:58] Removing, not forcing write-offs, tax write-offs for investments you make.

[00:31:04] That's a good thing.

[00:31:05] Instant write-offs, they I think have to make that cleaner in the next tax bill.

[00:31:11] But so it was a good start.

[00:31:13] But to me, the word, key word is start.

[00:31:16] I want to see more.

[00:31:17] All right.

[00:31:18] Well, Steve Forbes, head of Forbes magazine, thank you so much for shedding some light

[00:31:25] on the billionaires list and other aspects.

[00:31:29] I really appreciate it.

[00:31:30] Where does Forbes look like 20 years from now?

[00:31:33] If I knew that, I'd be on the billionaires list because I'd be able to see the world

[00:31:37] 20 years from now.

[00:31:38] But the key thing is on all of those people, it's about meeting the needs and wants of

[00:31:44] other people.

[00:31:45] And if you don't do that, you don't succeed, unless the government's behind you, which

[00:31:51] is not the way you make progress.

[00:31:53] Right.

[00:31:54] Well, thanks again, Steve.

[00:31:55] Thanks for joining the show.

[00:32:10] Ah, the sizzle of McDonald's sausage.

[00:32:13] It's enough to make you crave your favorite breakfasts, enough to head over to McDonald's,

[00:32:19] enough to make you really wish this commercial were scratch and sniff.

[00:32:25] And if you're a sausage person, now get two satisfyingly savory sausage McGriddles,

[00:32:29] sausage biscuits or sausage burritos for just $3.33 or mix and match.

[00:32:33] Price and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal,

[00:32:37] single item at regular price.

[00:32:44] So Steve Forbes had a limited amount of time, but we threw out one more idea, which is,

[00:32:51] you know, I just finished this book, Think Like a Billionaire.

[00:32:55] We asked him, Steve, can you give just one comment on some of the billionaires whose stories

[00:33:01] I feature in Think Like a Billionaire?

[00:33:03] Here's that few minute segment.

[00:33:05] Go.

[00:33:15] I'll just ask you a bunch of billionaires what you think of, you know.

[00:33:19] Yeah.

[00:33:22] Okay, Ray Dalio.

[00:33:24] A guy who saw how to take money and make money with the money.

[00:33:30] Sarah Blakely.

[00:33:32] She saw something that women needed and did it in a way that hadn't been done before

[00:33:38] and succeeded brilliantly because people, women wanted what she was offering.

[00:33:43] And she had no experience in fashion before then.

[00:33:46] You don't have to have experience in something to succeed to see a need in an area.

[00:33:50] Oftentimes it's outliers, outsiders who see something that those are in the business

[00:33:54] miss seeing.

[00:33:55] They were focusing too much on the tree.

[00:33:57] She focused on the whole forest.

[00:34:00] Mark Cuban.

[00:34:01] Mark Cuban, very colorful, outspoken.

[00:34:04] That's what people remember him for, but he is also a guy who knows how to get things done.

[00:34:08] Richard Branson.

[00:34:10] A wonderful guy, provides a lot of copy, and I hope he succeeds in the space venture because

[00:34:15] I don't think government can do what he and others can do.

[00:34:19] Elon Musk.

[00:34:20] Elon Musk should focus on not things subsidized by government.

[00:34:24] He is a genius, but focus it on other areas.

[00:34:28] Space is fine, but on the electric car, I wish he had focused his energies on something

[00:34:34] more fruitful for the rest of us.

[00:34:37] Like what?

[00:34:38] Whatever.

[00:34:39] He applies his genius to whether it's conquering diseases, coming up with new software, new

[00:34:44] hardware.

[00:34:45] If he likes cars, coming up with the true driverless car.

[00:34:49] Some people right now want to take the existing vehicle, put a lot of software on it and turn

[00:34:54] it into a driverless car.

[00:34:56] There are entrepreneurs, including some teenagers who believe you have to have whole new different

[00:35:00] hardware to make that happen and that the people are doing it, trying to do it through

[00:35:04] software are going to be an exercise.

[00:35:06] That's going to be an exercise in failure.

[00:35:09] Peter Thiel.

[00:35:10] Peter Thiel recognizes that you don't need a college education to do great things, so

[00:35:16] he goes against the grain of giving awards to young people with great ideas who are not

[00:35:22] in college or going to drop out of college to do it.

[00:35:26] He is a great entrepreneur, a great doer and realizes it's the brain and the imagination,

[00:35:31] not a piece of paper on the wall that determines what you can do for yourself and for humanity.

[00:35:36] Steve Case.

[00:35:37] Steve Case saw things very early and cut some good deals and is always worth talking to.

[00:35:44] We love having him at our conferences and he's also, he and his wife are involved in

[00:35:48] philanthropy, which is also about meeting the needs and wants of other people.

[00:35:52] Philanthropy and commerce are two sides of the same coin.

[00:35:56] Ken Langone.

[00:35:57] Ken Langone, great achiever, also a great philanthropist as you can see at NYU and in

[00:36:04] terms of what he's done in medicine.

[00:36:06] He defends friends when the head of the New York Stock Exchange went on the crosshairs

[00:36:11] of a rogue attorney general in New York.

[00:36:15] Langone didn't slink away, he fought and eventually he won.

[00:36:19] He's a guy, as they say, you want in a foxhole.

[00:36:21] He's not going to run away.

[00:36:23] Well, once again, thanks so much, Steve.

[00:36:26] This has been great.

[00:36:27] Really useful.

[00:36:28] Good idea, Steve Cohen, to bring this up.

[00:36:30] Thank you.

[00:36:32] Thank you.

[00:36:49] Ah, the sizzle of McDonald's sausage.

[00:36:53] It's enough to make you crave your favorite breakfast.

[00:36:56] Enough to head over to McDonald's.

[00:36:59] Enough to make you really wish this commercial were scratch and sniff.

[00:37:04] And if you're a sausage person, now get two satisfyingly savory sausage McRiddles,

[00:37:08] sausage biscuits or sausage burritos for just $3.33 or mix and match.

[00:37:13] Price and participation may vary, cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal,

[00:37:16] single item at regular price.