The Mindset That Took A Shark from Poverty to Millions

From Immigrant Roots to Abundance: A Conversation About Mindset and Value

Robert Herjavec’s interview with the School of Greatness unpacks a life shaped by immigration, grit, and an insistence on joy. Born into a situation of material poverty but raised in a community that celebrated everyday life, he explains the subtle but pivotal difference between being poor as a situation and adopting a poverty mindset. That distinction became the hinge on which his later choices turned: curiosity, relentless discipline, and an emphasis on value over time.

How a Poverty Situation Became a Launchpad for Purpose

Herjavec traces the arc from a childhood of hardship to teenage clarity, describing how early ridicule for being an immigrant revealed a choice point. He didn’t internalize poverty as identity; instead, he treated it as a condition to change. That mental pivot—seeing scarcity as temporary rather than personal—opened the door to learning practical skills and seeking mentors who modeled different possibilities.

Sales, Mentors, and the Shift from Hard Work to Smart Work

He credits early jobs at a men’s clothing store and Avis Rent-A-Car with teaching him sales as a craft. The single most important lesson: markets and people pay for value, not hours. Herjavec emphasizes selling outcomes and feelings rather than features, a strategy that transformed technical conversations into emotional connections and helped his businesses scale beyond incremental gains.

Pivot Points: Training, Teaching, and Emotional Intelligence

• Discipline and habit give you a baseline, but purpose fuels relentless execution.
• External role models and deliberate learning accelerate expansion of potential.
• Smart work means packaging your knowledge so it produces outsized returns.

Joy, Faith, and the Price of Losing Purpose

Herjavec candidly discusses hitting rock bottom in 2014—loss, divorce, and suicidal despair—and how a month serving at a homeless mission reset his perspective. The experience reunited him with faith and a sense of service, showing how contributing to others can restore personal value and generate lasting joy. He frames joy as a non-negotiable: success without joy is incomplete.

Practical Takeaways for Entrepreneurs and Creators

Robert’s advice reads like an entrepreneur’s playbook: be brutally honest with yourself, obsess over one narrow skill, be curious, and develop systems that sell feelings and outcomes rather than technical features. He also warns against tying identity to net worth and suggests that financial success is a tool for creating impact—not a final identity.

Lessons From Billionaires and Everyday Greatness

From his encounters with ultra-successful founders, he distills three shared traits: obsessive expertise in a specific field, curiosity that drives problem-solving, and discipline applied where it matters most. Greatness, he says, is the fulfillment of potential—using whatever you’ve been given to create more for others and yourself.

Across memory, mentorship, and a string of business pivots, the conversation underscores a consistent thesis: abundance begins internally and scales outward when paired with practical selling skills, emotional connection, and a life oriented around joy and purpose. Key moments—from buying a used Ferrari that revealed a ceiling to an epiphany at a Tony Robbins seminar—illustrate the moves from working harder to working smarter. In the end, Herjavec’s story is a reminder that the work of building wealth, purpose, and a legacy is both practical and profoundly human.

Key points at the end of the article summarize concrete takeaways for readers seeking to shift mindset, sell value, and reconnect with joy and purpose.