“You won’t be shackled to the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the challenge of it, how hard it is. But you’ll never be free. And that’s the debate: Do you want personal freedom? It’s the only path.”
Despite his nationwide fame as “Mr. Wonderful,” O’Leary doesn’t think everyone can replicate his success—nor do they want to.
“Two-thirds of [my students] want to become consultants…and lead a life of mediocrity, and never make a decision of consequence in their lives. And after 24 months, they are tainted with that disease forever,” O’Leary continued on the podcast. “They’ll always be good consultants, but they will never achieve greatness in any way.”
“I’ve always said it’s not about the pursuit of money. It’s not about the pursuit of greed. You will fail if you do that,” O’Leary said. “It’s the undying love of freedom.”
Fortune reached out to O’Leary for comment.
For the one-third of people who do go on to become entrepreneurs, O’Leary says the best of the best all have one quality in common: They can tune out the “noise” of their personal lives, to get the day’s three to five most important things done straight away.
“This signal-to-noise ratio to be successful, for Steve Jobs, 80/20—80 signal, 20 noise,” O’Leary explained. “If you go back in history, you’re going to find out that the geniuses of their time were close to 100% signal.”
It’s something he saw not only in his former business partner Jobs, but also in Elon Musk.
“Elon Musk, he has no noise. He does not deal with noise,” O’Leary said. “60 seconds of every minute, 60 minutes of every hour, the 18 hours he’s awake, it’s all signal. And look what he’s achieved.”
