Health: Your $100M Foundation
The first billionaire I worked for, Mike Milken, nearly died trying to focus on work first, then health later. He ate poorly and only walked to his car on the way to work. He made $550M at Drexel Burnham in 1987 and $1 billion over 4 years, the most ever earned by a banker at that time.
Soon after, in 1990, he went to jail for two years for securities fraud (he was later pardoned by Trump). In 1993, the year after he was released, he insisted on getting a PSA test. He had advanced prostate cancer. He was given 12-18 months to live.
In 1994, I worked for Milken in his family office and saw him daily. He used the gym, went for walks, and ordered the entire office healthy food. He still worked long hours, but he was a changed man.
He beat cancer but it was close. Too close.
Health is the First Step to Money Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
When I’m interviewed about my book, one of the first questions is: “If someone is young and wants $100 million, what’s the first step”
It’s not to network, not get straight As, or go Ivy League.
The path to $100M is like running a marathon dragging a bag of weights behind you while people try to steal your running shoes.
Anytime big sums are involved, competition is fierce. You need to build your energy, stamina and grit. Look at any baby, and you’ll know that no one is born with these qualities. You develop into a person with energy, stamina, and grit the same way you develop your mind.
The first step? Build a foundation of healthy habits.
In horseback riding, there’s a saying: “no hoof, no horse.”
In life, that translates to: “No health, no wealth.”
In the pyramid of building huge wealth, health is at the bottom because it’s the foundation for everything.
This pyramid has many steps. Networking, building a CRM, knowing the potential paths, matching those with your personality, and looking out for chances to skip ahead using your well-honed compass.
You can’t think, hustle, and network better than the competition if you are exhausted, run-down, and weak.
That’s why health is the foundation of wealth.
Health is the minimum entry fee to your goal of a $100M career. You’ll have the energy to compete every day. You’ll have the health to enjoy the $100M destination.
People often associate healthy bodies with balanced lifestyles.
In a balanced lifestyle, you get enough sleep. You cook and take time to eat with family and friends. You have leisure time. This is NOT the lifestyle of someone aiming for a $100M career.
If you are looking for balance and 40-hour work weeks, you should not read my book.
To shoot for $100M, you need to work hard and smart.
When you’re working 80+ high stress hours a week, you need a foundation of health even more than if you were living a “balanced” lifestyle.
Health and money aren’t a trade you can make. It takes too long to make $100M, and by the time you have, your health may be irreparable.
I’ve worked for 4 self-made billionaires. And worked alongside many who have more than $100M. Every single one of them worked daily on their health (although Milken waited until his life was threatened by cancer, and then he focused on his health).
What about you? Where do you start? And how can you fit health into your busy life?
Your foundation of health should be daily habits of:
Eating healthy
Moving your body
Connecting with others
Engaging in micro-moments of love
These are simple, yet not easy when working 80 hours a week.
Eat Healthy
I have written nutrition courses and a nutrition chapter in a medical textbook. Here’s the short version: You get 85% of the way there using these simple steps:
1. Eliminate sugar and processed foods - ie stick to the outside wall of the grocery store. Don’t buy anything in a package with multiple ingredients.
2. Eat whole foods - Too busy to shop/cook? You can eat raw veggies and raw fruit/berries, perhaps yogurt, plus some protein and fiber without any prep time at all.
3. Optimize and iterate for you. Notice I didn’t say use the Mediterranean, Keto, Vegan, etc diet? Your best diet depends on your microbiome which depends on your environment and genetics.
There are ZERO benefits to eating sugar and chemicals, so no matter who you are, you’ll get to a healthy diet by removing sugar and processed foods.
Move Your Body
For a decade, I worked many 100+ hour weeks.
How?
Four twenty-hour days (6:30am to 2:30am, then 15 minutes commute both ways, 15 minutes getting up and 15 getting in bed, 3 hours of sleep).
Friday I would work 10 hours - my “half day”
Then I would catch up for 10-20 hours of work over the weekend.
We were fed all 3 meals at work, but HOW did I get in my workouts?
We had a gym at the office, but I didn’t have time to stop working.
During earnings season (those were always 100+ hour workweeks), I’d review the earnings report and listen to management comments of each company I covered. I covered 300 companies. The earnings calls are 1 hour long. I’d be at work until 2am to finish listening to the recordings, then back in the office at 6:30am.
So, I listened to and took notes on those recordings in the office gym as I walked on the treadmill and lifted weights.
Keeping moving everyday signals your body to stay able to move the next day.
Optimize Your Mental Health
Your physical health and mental health are intertwined. 85% of your satisfaction neurotransmitter, serotonin, lives in your gut. So if you aren’t taking care of your mind, it destroys your gut and happiness. And if you aren’t taking care of your gut (ie you eat sugar and processed foods), that will affect your mind.
Steps to build mental health (this is not medical advice. It’s common sense geared towards healthy people trying to stay that way)
Start with brain and gut health (see section above on moving and eating well)
See yourself as worthy of love and self-care
Build healthy relationships with others
Feeling worthy of love and self-care is inner work worth doing.
Some ways to build self-love and self-worth:
Meditation even for 10 minutes can quiet your inner critics
Eating well is a way to signal to yourself that you are worthy
Journalling your gratitudes and wins once a day can build your sense of worth.
Building loving relationships with others may seem too time consuming. Yet these skills are also the foundation of effective networking. Finally, it’s a myth that if you are always working you have no time for friends or family.
In 2006, I was a speaker at a Cisco Director conference where Bill Clinton was the keynote. His secret? Treat each person in front of him as the center of the universe, for that moment.
This is how you inject massive leverage into your ability to connect.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson calls this focused attention on another person a micro moment of connection. She studied people’s brain waves. Our brains build “love” for another through a series of micro-moments of connection.
Her book is called Love 2.0.
The breakthrough here is love and connection are not built over massive hours and expensive grand gestures. They are built through short bursts of treating the other person as the center of the universe, as the only person on earth, in that moment. Love is a physical reaction in our brains that is the accumulation of these positive moments.
Building authentic connections doesn’t need to take tons of time.
Stitch together wonderful moments where you concentrate on the other person fully. You can build love and connections in the same way.
Listen actively. Reflect. Mirror.
Watch your network and net worth flourish. Enjoy love along the way
Now you have your complete healthy foundation for rocking your $100M Career for decades to come!
If you ever feel off-track, go back to the pyramid. Start at the bottom and ask yourself: are you tending to your physical and mental health each day?
If not, what can you do to get back on track?