How Billionaires Actually Work | Authorized Account | Insider — Transcript
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- 0:00My name is John Morgan. Forbes recently named me a billionaire after I started the largest
- 0:04personal injury law firm in America. This is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
- 0:10I don't like to say I'm a billionaire. When I started out as a lawyer, I was driving around
- 0:15in a Nissan Maxima with a sunroof and the leather package and I felt like here I am today. You know,
- 0:23I have 7,000 people at Morgan and Morgan, 1,400 lawyers. Nobody's gonna outwork me.
- 0:35My life is really not a billionaire's life. The only thing that makes it a billionaire's
- 0:43life is the way I travel and I have a G5. That's the ultimate luxury. Other than that, and I do
- 0:51have houses, but they're not the houses you would think. You know, my house in Hawaii is very nice,
- 0:56but it's not I don't think it's a billionaire's house. The house I live in here, you know,
- 1:02it's big. It's nice, but I bought it built it a long time ago. I built a bunch of houses for
- 1:07me and all my children in Ponlet, which is 40 minutes from here on the beach. I have a house
- 1:12in New Hampshire. And I started going to Maui and I'm like, you know, this is unbelievable.
- 1:20It's like if there if if heaven was a place, it'd be Maui. It's like the air was just born.
- 1:27Everything's brighter. It's everything's vibrant. There's whales coming out of the water. It's like
- 1:33you're like in Jurassic Park in your backyard. My wife and I were driving around looking at
- 1:38houses and there was a house under construction. We pulled up and we looked at it and I said,
- 1:42"What do you think?" because it wasn't a bit it wasn't very expens I mean it was expensive but
- 1:45it wasn't expensive in it was 6 million bucks you know beautiful you know 6,000 square foot 5 acres
- 1:54listen I get high every single night in Maui I float to sleep so if you're out there fellas
- 2:03guys everybody come see me'll smoke a joint and drink some rosé you know I grew up in Kentucky
- 2:13and I like simpler food. For example, you know, I'm just I'd be just as happy with, you know,
- 2:21to dinner for tonight if you know if I had cube steak smothered in onions and fried potatoes and
- 2:28cabbage. I'm like, I'm you want filet minan? No, I I'll I'll do this. I I'll choose this. So, I get
- 2:38to eat cheap, too, because that stuff doesn't cost that much. So, that's lucky. My clothes,
- 2:44I look I walk out my closet, I'm like, "Will I ever buy another shirt? Will I ever buy another
- 2:50pair of shorts? Maybe just on vacation." Like, well, that looks but not really. There's nothing
- 2:57really that I want. And uh that's a good thing. Here's my week. This Friday, I'm going to go to
- 3:06Keeland to Lexington where I grew up. I I now own raceh horses, so I'm going to see my raceh
- 3:12horses run. The following week, I'm going to go cut a commercial with John Daly in Arkansas and
- 3:17then I'm going to fly to Delmare to see one of my horses run in the Breeders Cup and then I'm going
- 3:23to have some fun in California. Then I'm going to come back. I don't own the whole horse. I own
- 3:28like 25% or 50%. I do a deal with these guys who own American Pharaoh and Justify. So I bre I breed
- 3:36my mayors to Pharaoh. So I get a Pharaoh cult or Philly every year. I haven't lost that much money,
- 3:45but I'm from Lexington, Kentucky. And you know, can you imagine growing up poor in a city and then
- 3:54coming back and owning raceh horses in that city? So, I got a lot of nice things, but it's not like,
- 4:02you know, the houses are already paid off. There's there's not really money going out now. I spend
- 4:09about $2 million a year living and most of it is insurance and upkeep of my homes. And, you know,
- 4:17I these dogs that travel with me, you know, I never leave without the dogs to live exactly
- 4:22what I'm living now. If I had 50 million, 4%, two million tax-free and not not not the jet,
- 4:32then I'm okay. I have always told my children to say we're comfortable. That they used to ask
- 4:39them my my kids would come and say, people are asking us if we're rich. What what I said, you
- 4:43just tell them we're comfortable. And that's all they need to say because they were comfortable.
- 4:50And look, if you have a hundred million or a billion, you're basically living the same life.
- 5:01Before I went to law school, I sold yellow pages for 18 months and I made a load of money. I was I
- 5:08was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, yellow page seller in the history of AT&T. I
- 5:13could just sell it because I believed in it. you know, the yellow pages with Google back
- 5:17then. And so I made money, was able to go back to law school. When I graduated from law school,
- 5:25all I applied was to personal injury firms because I knew what I wanted to do. You know,
- 5:29I'd made like almost $70,000 selling yellow pages. My first job doing personal injury, I had a
- 5:35$10,000 base and a 10% of whatever I would close. And I think my first year I made like $15,000.
- 5:421982. And then the next year I made 32,000 and the next year I left and started my own firm.
- 5:48I started my own firm in ' 85. Advertising was just starting with lawyers. There was a Supreme
- 5:55Court case called Bates versus Arizona 1977 that allowed lawyers to advertise. Up until that time,
- 6:02lawyers could not advertise even though we had a first amendment. Bates versus Arizona said, "Look,
- 6:08the first amendment applies to this commercial speech." Sometimes you can just see the future
- 6:16and I saw it. So it was still very verbaten to advertise as a lawyer. You're like, "My god,
- 6:22you're a lawyer and you're advertising. That's so beneath you." It kind of was.
- 6:27I was embarrassed about it cuz the people who were advertising were the people who were kind
- 6:32of and the people who weren't advertising were the good lawyers. I went and borrowed $100,000
- 6:42remember the flipping the coin. And so is it going to work or is it I don't know. I've thought many
- 6:49times, what happened if that $100,000 had not turned into some cases? What would have happened
- 6:54to me? I don't know. That was just a left turn that worked out. I was so embarrassed that I had
- 7:01a friend of mine who's one of my best friends. He owns a bunch of Cadillac dealerships now in
- 7:07Sarasota, Manatee. and uh he was real good-looking and I said, "You know, I'm not good-looking." So,
- 7:14I said, "You know what? I had Vance do my first commercials." But then what happened is the
- 7:20Florida Bar mandated that if you were advertising, you couldn't have someone else. You had to do it.
- 7:28And then reluctantly I had to take, you know, my fat face, which I, you know, I've always
- 7:34felt like my face is fat and I couldn't use Vance anymore. So then I had to be the face. And when I
- 7:40look at those ads now, I'm like, who the was calling this kid with advertising, you know,
- 7:46it was just a total paradigm shift. I mean, now I'm talking to everybody. They weren't
- 7:51great cases, but they the phone was ringing. If I started today, I wouldn't be John Morgan.
- 7:57I had it all to myself. I didn't have competition. Today, you know, I have 7,000 people at Morgan
- 8:03and Morgan, 1,400 lawyers. I'm in all 50 states. We have 100 to 200 trials on the docket a week.
- 8:17What I kept doing because I was young, and this is what a lot of people make a mistake,
- 8:21is I kept feeding expansion out of my profits. I didn't want a boat. I didn't want a plane. I
- 8:29didn't I just wanted to grow. I was in Orlando and I was doing well and but then I started thinking,
- 8:35well, am I hitting diminishing returns? In other words, could I get more money if I took this money
- 8:43and went to Tampa? And so I went to Tampa. I used to call it the teacups. When the teacups
- 8:50seem to be pouring over, when I when I seem to be thinking I was at diminishing returns,
- 8:55I go to another city, another city, another city. That's why I bought my partners out.
- 8:59They wanted to keep the money. And I said, "Why don't I just buy you all out?" They go,
- 9:03"Okay." I got a call one day and my receptionist says, "Johnny Cochran's on the phone." So,
- 9:10I pick up the phone. Hey, John. What is Johnny Cochran? This is Johnny Cochran calling you from
- 9:15Los Angeles, California. Hey, man. How you doing? I'm like, who the is punking me right now? I mean,
- 9:22it this can't be Johnny Cochran. And he was telling me that he was going to start his own
- 9:27firm and that he had heard that I was a marketing genius and would I be interested in helping him
- 9:34with the Cochran firm. And I I was so convinced it wasn't really Johnny Cochran. I said, "Well,"
- 9:40I said, "Give me a number. I'll call you back." Okay, man. Listen, I'm getting ready to go to I'm
- 9:45getting ready to go to New York. I have a I have a a condo at the right above the Russian TA room
- 9:51and I'm like, "Oh, this he just call me." So, he gives me the number. So, when I hung up from him,
- 9:58uh when I hung up from Johnny, I called the number in New York City and I the answering machine. I'll
- 10:04never forget it. It's his voice and it's the greatest answering machine of all time. Voice
- 10:10message. Hi, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you
- 10:16in a court of law. If you decide to give up that right, leave your name and number at the sound of
- 10:21the tone. I'm like, it's Johnny Cochran. I I threw in with him, which kind of exposed me to doing
- 10:29things nationally. We were in Memphis and DC and LA and New York. And so when I got with Cochran,
- 10:38I I was outside of my comfort zone. And uh we had a lot of fun. We grew the business. I have
- 10:47two things will go on my tombstone. One of one or the other. Grow or die or nothing is about
- 10:55today. Everything's about tomorrow. Those are the two guiding principles of my business life.
- 11:02Grow or die is very important to me. Uh and uh so I just kept growing so I wouldn't die.
- 11:17There are certain people that are born with an entrepreneurial seed. I'm an entrepreneur. It's
- 11:23not I don't just do law. I have attractions and hotels and shopping centers and uh those types of
- 11:29things. But I'm always looking for opportunity. A lot of people see these things go, you know,
- 11:35why bother? Well, if you say why bother and don't bother, you end up sitting at your desk eating a
- 11:45peanut butter and jelly sandwich by yourself. Being a paper boy, being a paper girl is the
- 11:51ultimate enterprise cuz you're little, you're small, but you got to be up every day, 7 days
- 11:57a week, 365 days a year, you got to go deliver those papers in the snow and the sle and the rain
- 12:02and the heat, whatever. When my kids were little, I used to go to the science center. I was like,
- 12:07"This is These science centers are the kids didn't like them. Nobody liked them. I go, you know,
- 12:13here's what's missing in science centers. They should be interactive. Touch and feel and doing
- 12:20it. That's what I'll do. I'm going to build a an attraction. I'm going to build a science center,
- 12:26but I'm going to turn it upside down called Wonderworks. That was 1997. And today I have six
- 12:34of them and an EBID of 33 million with no debt. I built a a small little theme park on ID Drive
- 12:41out here called Magical Midway and it was had multi-level go-kart tracks and rides and stuff.
- 12:47But my mistake was I didn't have enough parking. I thought because I was so close to all the hotels
- 12:54that I didn't need parking. Thank God that I had one ride that basically carried the whole thing.
- 13:00thrill ride and I was able to sell the park and lose a million bucks. That didn't work. At one
- 13:07time, I owned a lot of Marriott hotels. Why did I keep building Marriott hotels? Money. To make
- 13:13money. And uh I have these attractions. Why do I have them all over the country? To make money.
- 13:22And I enjoy business. I don't hunt. So, I never understood hunting. I really don't understand
- 13:31fishing. That's where most people off and they call it recreation. To me, it's total
- 13:37boredom. I hunt money. Nobody's ever built an attraction for crime of punishment really. So,
- 13:45I built an attraction that I call Alcatraz East in Pigeon Forge. It's looks like a 1980s prison
- 13:53and I have all this memorabilia. It's a history of crime and punishment. When you get to the end,
- 13:58the grand finale is the, you know, Ted Bundy's VW, John Dillinger's sedan, Bonnie and Clyde death
- 14:08car from the movie, OJ's Bronco, John Bernay's bicycle, and I just recently got the Murdoch golf
- 14:17cart from the murders. It takes people three and a half, four hours to go through this thing, and it
- 14:25prints money. I'm giving America what they want. And by the way, if you're offended, stay the out.
- 14:39Before I was out hustling business, I would look when I worked for the phone company,
- 14:45I was a member of the union. I was so I joined I thought I might go into politics, so I joined CWA,
- 14:52AFL, CIO. When I got out, I spent a lot of time at in union halls at meetings and then we go out
- 14:59drinking, throwing darts, shooting pool, and these union people were sending me their business. So,
- 15:06I was getting tons of business because I'm a union guy. I'm I'm AFL CIO. And so, plumbers,
- 15:12pipe fitters, brick layers, uh hotel motel, and these are the people I'd rather be with. I I I to
- 15:20this day I don't like walking in a country club. I feel like I don't belong. But I do belong in
- 15:28a pool room with a cocktail. Are you any good in pool? No. But I'm good at the cocktails. If I went
- 15:38out back in the day, if I went out and got drunk and went to bed at 4:00, but had a six o'clock
- 15:44breakfast, I was at the six o'clock breakfast. I might have been wreaking of uh ketosis, but
- 15:50uh I was at the breakfast. I show up. And so, you know, it keeps you hungry. I consider myself a a
- 15:59catastrophic thinker. I feel like I this could all disappear in a minute and and it's it's still with
- 16:06me. It's these I've had dreams where I've lost everything and it's a recurring dream. I'm I'm
- 16:14out in an old car and I'm out of money and I'm almost out of money but I'm not out of money and
- 16:21I don't know how I'm gonna make it and I'm just, you know, just out there and then I wake up and
- 16:31it was a dream and uh you're happy to wake up because you're back here instead of back there.
- 16:40Every morning I wake up and get numbers. I get numbers from my attendance and at my attractions.
- 16:49I get numbers from new cases signed up the day before. I get all sorts of leaderboard reports.
- 16:58There's two emotions. The emotion of winning and the emotion of losing. The emotion of
- 17:03winning is powerful, but the motion the emotion of losing is like this. To give you an example,
- 17:14if you walk out of this room and you find $1,000 in an envelope, you're going to be like, "Wow,
- 17:20that's an emotion. Nobody's okay. It's mine." But if you go to your hotel room when you get
- 17:25back and the safe is open and the thousand's missing, you're going to turn this city upside
- 17:32down. You're going to be the cops are coming. I mean, your day is the emotion of losing,
- 17:40the emotion of winning. The the power of of both is totally different. So when I lost, I you know,
- 17:47I I was very upset. Some people are born lazy. And we we get mad at him. But it's not their
- 17:55fault. You I say it all the time. You know, a lion is born, he's king. A sloth is born,
- 18:00he's all he was all he did was be born. Just can't get out of bed. Can't get out of the
- 18:05tree. Comes down the tree once a day just to go back up. Collapse. I'm a lion. And listen,
- 18:13everybody wants to be a lion until it's time to do lion. and lying is taking down the gazelle,
- 18:24ripping the carcass open, taking the meat out, face bloody, take the food back to
- 18:29the pride. I'm also uh someone who has what they call impostor syndrome. In other words,
- 18:39I don't know how this happened, and I'm going to be found out one day. They're going to find
- 18:44out that I really didn't know what the f I was doing, but I'm still pretending like I'm
- 18:51doing it. It's weird. Uh, but it's also good because when I found catastrophic thinking and
- 19:00uh imposttor syndrome, it made sense that I was an only the paranoid survive guy. I believe luck
- 19:08has had an incredible amount to do with what happened to me. Life is a thousand left turns,
- 19:18a thousand right turns, a thousand U-turns. And a lot of times those turns come when you're just at
- 19:24the stoplight and you flip a coin. It's not like you knew where you were going.
- 19:29You just went right instead of left. But one different turn could have changed everything.
- 19:40And I'm not arrogant enough to not understand how many times I flipped a coin to go left or go
- 19:48right and ended up here. So I think it's helpful because I think when people start making money,
- 19:57they think they're not a lot smarter than they actually are. And that arrogance is how they
- 20:04lose. But I also understand this that you don't find luck unless you're looking for luck. My
- 20:14leadership style is this. I understand that you can't buy time. But you need time. So how do you
- 20:24get time? If you can't buy it, how do you get it? You get it by finding people in your organization
- 20:30that e that emerge that just emerge and you go there's something about that guy. There's
- 20:40something about that guy. There's something they are send people. There are people that
- 20:46I send something to and I delete it and I don't think about it again because I know it's going
- 20:52to be done. And then I test it by delegating a little bit more and a little bit more and a
- 20:59little bit more. I then ruthlessly ruthlessly delegate. This is your job. This is your job.
- 21:07This is your job. This is your job. And I know it's done because they're send elite people.
- 21:14And you know what? That has given me time. time to do the strategic things that I want to do for the
- 21:25law firm. Once you learn to scale and delegate, then you get what you can't buy, which is time.
- 21:38My childhood was it was good until it wasn't good. Both of my parents ended up having bad
- 21:46drinking problems and I was the oldest of five and my dad lost, you know, every job possible.
- 21:55Was one of these, you know, you come home, his cars in the park in the driveway, you're like,
- 22:00here we go again. I didn't have a bad childhood, had a great childhood. I had a huge paper out so
- 22:06I always had my own money. And then ultimately my dad uh ran out of opportunities and had to take a
- 22:14job. We moved when I was 14. And then when we moved that's when I understood that we were
- 22:23financially insecure and because the house we'd been in was a house that my grandmother had died
- 22:29and left us money to move in. So was nice and now you're in Florida. But it was it's it was real.
- 22:35It's like, okay, we're not we're not financially secure. And then it went downhill from there. The
- 22:43our mother finally left. My dad kept drinking, but we just kept we kept moving on. But the great gift
- 22:51that my dad gave us was every time he would get fired, I'd walk in, he'd be sitting at the table,
- 22:59stocking feet, one ads. This is when there were one ads. And uh he would say these words,
- 23:09"Whatever you do, be a professional. Nobody can fire you." And it was seared in my mind that I was
- 23:18going to be I was going to do something where nobody could fire me. I wasn't going to be in
- 23:23his position. The big part of my life was when my brother Tim was 18. and he was paralyzed in
- 23:29a diving accident as a lifeguard at Walt Disney World. And that injury is what changed all of our
- 23:37lives and what made me go into personal injury. I didn't know what a personal injury lawyer was
- 23:43until Tim got hurt. But I was a sophomore at the University of Florida. My dad called me
- 23:49up. He said, "U Tim's been in a diving accident, lifeguard. He's paralyzed. He can't move anything
- 23:57from the from his head down. We were poor. So when you're poor in the medical when you're poor, it's
- 24:05a bad place to be. Whether you're trying to get medical help or legal help. So you're vulnerable
- 24:11to be powerless, hopeless, helpless. It's the worst feelings in the world. Then you walk
- 24:16into the hospital and your brother's on a gurnie spinning 360 and you look at him and you're like,
- 24:24"How the are we going to get out of this?" He was injured on the job. It was a contentious deal
- 24:30with Disney. Disney was the the became the enemy because they were the ones trying to to to fight
- 24:37Tim for his benefits or claim or whatever. and he hurt himself trying to rescue they thought a
- 24:45little girl had drowned in the Polynesian lagoon and they treated him like the Taliban and they
- 24:51just litigated and I became enraged enraged and I said to myself I said everybody then I'm going
- 25:02to come back one day and I know what I'm going to do now and it was just very crystal clear Disney
- 25:11was a big enemy. Disney was a big enemy just because the way they treated him, you know, and
- 25:18uh and then I saw, you know, there's so many Tims out there cuz most of us are helpless,
- 25:25hopeless, and powerless. You know, when I met with the doctor when Tim was being discharged,
- 25:29I said, "Uh, what's the prognosis?" And he said, "If he lives to 30,
- 25:36I'll be surprised." And I said, "Wrong." From that day forward to this day today,
- 25:44my life has been inextricably linked to Tim's injury. He passed away last summer,
- 25:5865, and he worked with me every day.
- 26:12The good thing about all the bad that happened to me is it made me more empathetic,
- 26:20more compassionate, and I think more caring. And I think that that has been a benefit to
- 26:29me and my business. There's so many Tims out there because most of us are helpless,
- 26:34hopeless, and powerless. You know, 40% of us don't have $400 in a bank. 60% of us do live
- 26:40paycheck to paycheck. You know, when when I made all this money, that's why years ago I
- 26:45spent my money to raise the minimum wage in Florida to $15 an hour. Then I passed
- 26:51the minimum wage. They all told me that wouldn't happen. I passed that with 60some% of the vote.
- 26:56Income inequality is what will take this country down. At the end of the day,
- 27:04I don't care what civilization you're talking about. At the end of the day, people finally have
- 27:10enough and they just come and take it. The minimum wage, the federal minimum wage is $8 an hour.
- 27:20It's in our best interest to pay people more so they don't come and take it. So even the $15 an
- 27:29hour that I've done in Florida, still not enough, spent the same amount of money twice to legalize
- 27:37medical marijuana in Florida because that's what gave Tim relief. It was just so crazy that here's
- 27:46this plant that's put into earth by God for us and it works and we're going to say you can't have it.
- 27:53I took some of my money and tried to do good with it based on, you know, my life experiences and
- 28:01temps and me and Tim barnstorn the state and u passed. They told me that would never pass and I
- 28:11passed medical marijuana the second time with with 73% of the vote. I' I've got some free clinics
- 28:19that I support around the state of Florida. I'm building right now uh a women and children's
- 28:27pavilion for the homeless in Orlando. They need health care, too. Uh healthc care should be a
- 28:36civil right. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you should be the one that lives and the ones that
- 28:42are poor have to die. Every day I'm David versus a Goliath. I'm Goliath in my space, but I'm not
- 28:49Goliath compared to who I fight against. Remember, I I'm in the opioid litigation for 10 years now.
- 28:54I've represented states and cities. I'm on the big team in Cleveland. I was on the BP oil team when
- 29:00the spill happened in the Gulf. I represented the fires in Hawaii. I settled that case for $4
- 29:06billion. I where I live is Lahina. That's where the fire burned every those are my neighbors. I
- 29:12represented black farmers and I recovered $1.2 $2 billion for black farmers who were discriminated
- 29:18against in the 50s and 60s. You know, last week my son got a, you know, $11 million verdict against
- 29:24Target. They'd offered us $200,000. Target's a Goliath. I see myself as a David because I do have
- 29:32finite funds. I can only, you know, I can only spend so I can only spend so much on these cases.
- 29:37Like, you know, a big case can cost, you know, millions of dollars just in cost. And I don't get
- 29:44paid till the end. I have never I still haven't got paid on opioids in a lot of these cases. I'
- 29:49I've sued tobaca so many times for what they've done to us that you know this tobacco industry
- 29:56is in the business of premeditated murder. Premeditated murder. They call new smokers
- 30:03replacement smokers. They know what they were doing. They laced their cigarettes with additives
- 30:09to hook us as kids. They gave cigarettes away to children. They gave cigarettes away to servicemen
- 30:16because they knew they would hook us. They come up with a filter. Oh, we got a filter that's going to
- 30:21that's going to solve all your problems. Look at this brown stuff. See, it's the tar and nicotine.
- 30:26You're like, "Oh, good." No, that's not stopping anything. It's what they do. They spray a chemical
- 30:32on the cotton that when it gets hot, it turns brown. And you think it's it's But they're in the
- 30:37business of killing people. That's their business. They know everybody's that all these people are
- 30:43going to die from lung cancer. And so, but they have so much money. And when I try the case
- 30:50against tobacco industry, they take me all the way to the United States Supreme Court. When they come
- 30:58to try a case against us, they come, they take a whole down. When they bring their witnesses,
- 31:04they have people who go pick up the witness and bring them to the trial and take them back. It's
- 31:07like a it's like a novel. and they have unlimited money because of public company and and that's why
- 31:14I'm David and that's why they're Goliath. A lot of these cases take years and years and years. So,
- 31:19in a sense, I am David because they have unlimited money and the insurance companies can get more.
- 31:25They just and just raise your rates and fill their coffers back. I can't do that. I have to
- 31:31win every single day. I got to keep winning every single day. It seems like that's the new thing.
- 31:39It seems like everybody's a billionaire. If you know what you're worth, you're not worth. And it's
- 31:47true. Eat the rich. Eat the rich. I would say I understand where you're coming from. I understand
- 31:54it because I've been it. I've been you. I've been in places where I didn't know how I was going to
- 32:04get out of it. I didn't know how I was going to make it. I've been up against the wall and it's
- 32:12it's a terrible feeling. You know what I talked about earlier, the hopeless, helpless, powerless.
- 32:18It's like, you know, where do I go? I would tell them to keep peacefully demonstrating. You know,
- 32:28the no kings thing they had. I didn't see that coming that there's all that many people that are
- 32:35upset. I didn't think anybody was that upset. But I also understand that there's a limit. You know,
- 32:41I'm not a I'm not a democratic socialist because I don't believe socialism works. I believe what
- 32:49works would be compassionate capitalism where we try to do the most for the most with the least. We
- 32:58kind of just take care of them. The arguments that pissed me off were the people say, "I don't want
- 33:03to pay a dollar more for a hamburger." I'm like, "You selfish. Why? Why?" And then they would say,
- 33:15"Well, if you raise the prices, then the wages are going you're going to need more because the
- 33:20prices if you raise if you raise wages, you're and you then prices are going to have to be raised and
- 33:24you're it's going to be an endless battle, an endless circle of people suffering and which
- 33:32I don't buy. I think at a certain point people make enough money that they can have happiness.
- 33:45My three children are lawyers work for me. My son Matt is unbelievable. My daughter has a structured
- 33:51settlement company called Monarch that structures settlements. And uh my son-in-law works there.
- 33:58And why is because I love them and I want to be with them. And that's why I built all the houses
- 34:06together at the beach. That's what moves me is my family and being with them. I don't I would
- 34:15not understand life without them. And now I got all these grandchildren. We always used to go to
- 34:22see movies on Christmas Day. And we went to see this movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And
- 34:28at the end of the movie, they were all living on the same street, the families were. And then the
- 34:34lights go up and my my daughter go, "Oh my god, look, daddy's crying. Look at look at everybody.
- 34:39Daddy's crying in the movie." I'm like, "Shut the but I was like, you know, that'd be a great thing
- 34:46for all of us to live on the same street." What I never did is like these rich people buy their
- 34:53kids great cars. I never did. You know, I gave them like a eight-year-old navigator and they had
- 35:03to work and they had to pay for their insurance. Now, look, they live my lifestyle. So, you know,
- 35:10if I'm at the Four Seasons, they're at the Four Seasons. So, there's a, you know, how do you
- 35:14do it? But first of all, you got to spend a lot of time talking to them about what's important.
- 35:21One time it was Christmas time and I said to the the boys, I said, one was 17, one was 15. I said,
- 35:29"Have you all got your schedule for Wonderworks for this Christmas break?" And Mike goes, "Nobody
- 35:37from Bishop Moore is working over Christmas." I go, "That's" And Matt goes, "No, nobody's working.
- 35:45Nobody's working." I said, "I know that's not true." "No, it's true, Daddy." I go, "Here's why
- 35:50it's not true. You two are working. You two mfers are working and you're going to work 40 hours."
- 35:58But here's the good news. Because I own it, you can work from 8 to 5, 12 to 9, 5 to 2, but you're
- 36:06working. You don't have to work on Christmas Day cuz I own it. If I didn't own it, you might
- 36:11have to work on Christmas Day. But there will be people from Bishop Moore working this Christmas.
- 36:17Mike Morgan and Matt Morgan. And you know, I had to fire Dan once. He was just a screw off at
- 36:25Wonderworks and they thought he was the father's son. And I said, "Hey, man, you're fired." And I
- 36:29said, "You're not going out until you get a new job now. You got to go get a new job." Well, I I
- 36:36said, "Dan." So, he gets a job at Boston Market, you know, cooking chickens or something. He comes
- 36:44in like a week later, he quit Boston Market. I said, "Why'd you quit?" "They had me washing
- 36:48dishes. It made me vomit." I said, "Really?" I said, "I thought you were supposed to be cooking
- 36:53chicken." "No, they had me in the They had me dishwashing." I said, "Think about that, Dan. They
- 36:58got you doing the worst job in the place. That's what they think of you. And now you've quit." But
- 37:04here's another thing, Dan. You're never going out of this house except to school and to look for a
- 37:08job. And then he got a job at Firehouse Sub and he excelled at Firehouse Sub. It's interesting
- 37:16because I I was always very envious and and kind of like pissed off that people had money just
- 37:24born. You're like that doesn't seem fair. And nepotism I've never liked. And now my children
- 37:33are the people that used to bother me. They're the spoiled people with the silver spoon stuck
- 37:40up their ass. And you know, you just keep hoping. And you know, you know, I I had a thing with Matt
- 37:50the other day. He's like, I said, "Are you coming to Hawaii?" "No, we're going to the Breakers after
- 37:55Christmas." I'm like, "What are you doing at the Breakers?" Just walking around being rich. That
- 38:02kind of turned me off that he's just going to go down to the Breakers in Palm Beach. I said,
- 38:06"But my children have become the very people that I used to look at and go, that's not fair." So,
- 38:16what I've done with that is I just hope and pray that they and I think they have. I think they have
- 38:24heard me loud and clear. And what I have told them is this thing, the money belongs to God.
- 38:36Don't think this is your money. This luck that's come our way. I don't know why. And I I think
- 38:43they've heard it. I hope they've heard it. They certainly they certainly talk like they have.
- 38:48So I you know I won't know until I'm dead and looking down to see if they're really doing it.
- 38:59If you have a hundred million or a billion, you're basically living the same life. I don't
- 39:04like change. I got the same wife. I got the same kids. I got the same friends. All of my money is
- 39:14going to go into a trust, Morgan family trust. My daughter is going to run it. And then what I hope
- 39:21to do is to say say this is a trust. What I hope to do is to have other silos where my children
- 39:27can put their money inside silos. So I'll have my silo and then their four silos and that we could
- 39:34have money going out for the things that that that we think are important. I'm not I'm not up
- 39:41for I'm not up for trying to start something from scratch. I'm up for, hey, there's a food bank to
- 39:49be built in Appalachia and then I build it and then I'm done. Other than, you know, donations
- 39:55I give. I mean, I still give money to the Morgan Morgan Hunger Relief Center, especially now. Look,
- 40:00this new administration, we we're we're losing funding for food at the at Morgan Morgan Hunger
- 40:07Relief Center. So, I've stepped up my giving there. I'm 69 years old. I have had more fun
- 40:15and seen more people and I've met popes. I met all the presidents. They've all been in my house.
- 40:22I've raised hell. My best time has been in union halls and drinking beer and drinking whiskey and
- 40:28throwing darts. And my children's childhood was unbelievable. And my high school was unbelievable
- 40:33and my college was unbelievable. Sadly to say, my best days are probably behind me if I'm being
- 40:40honest. But I I I got good days ahead of me now because I got these six grandchildren which has
- 40:47which has transformed my life because I'm getting to do it again and I'm getting to enjoy this
- 40:53innocence and this love when your grandchildren are running to you. There's no love like that. So
- 41:02I got that to look forward to. Hi, I'm a producer on Authorized Count. If you like this video,
- 41:08please subscribe and comment below with more topics that you would like us to cover.
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