Smart Investing and Unconventional Wealth with Todd Tresidder

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo and I want to first of all thank every one of my listeners who is back for more. Everyone who is a subscriber to the show on the newsletter and has followed the show for a while. I love getting emails, I love hearing from you and hearing about some of the impactful topics we've talked about. It's interesting. I've talked about, I talk about a lot of tactical, very implementable business and marketing advice a lot of times because quite honestly, I want to know those. And I bring some of the world's top guests on the show to talk about that. And at other times I talk about some big philosophical concepts or that has to do with your mindset about really overcoming a lot of the struggles that we entrepreneurs deal with. And I get a lot of amazing feedback when I do those. And today I'm going to talk about something that kind of bridges those, which is wealth. Because there's a very tactical way to create wealth, but then there's an entire mindset that goes along with it and you absolutely cannot have one without the other. In my previous life, prior to being an entrepreneur and prior to really focusing on marketing, I was a financial advisor for years and I was in a, I was a finance major and I was with Prudential Investments and I had a pretty long career there. And I have made a lot of money with investments. I've lost a lot of money with investments. And even when I was advising people, I stumbled around, didn't quite know what I was doing. And throughout my career as an entrepreneur, I have, as I said, I've made some great, I've made some great strides, but I've had some big setbacks. And now as my career is doing much better, I'm starting to look at everything that I've got in terms of assets and real wealth building and not just how do I put cash in the bank. And it's something that I think is important for every single person out there, whether you're just starting and you don't feel like you have assets or you do have assets and you just don't know how to deploy them. So that's why I invited Todd Tresiter onto the call today. He's a well known expert on the subject of building wealth and has graciously consented to this interview to share with us all of the strategies that he's used and some of the very unconventional methods and things that buck the traditional system that you're going to hear, you know, in the mainstream financial press talk about. Todd is a, is a serial entrepreneur. He was a hedge fund investor retired at age 35 and he's been coaching and educating people and business owners and others on how to build wealth. So I think you're going to really enjoy this, especially because I've got a lot of questions that I really want to know the answers to. So if you are ready, let's bring Todd on the show. Todd, welcome to bacon wrap business.

Thanks Brad. Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, it's gonna be fun. You know, this was a topic that I've, as I said, I've been thinking a lot about lately. Just today I started the process of setting up a self directed solo 401k qualified retirement plan for my own business, which is a strategy that a client told me about. And then one of my recent interviews with Damian Lupo, who was just on the show, we were talking about it and I'm a big fan of alternative investments and everything else, but I could probably talk to you for hours on this subject. But give me a little bit about that background. I was really intrigued when I saw that you said you were hedge fund manager.

Yeah. So it goes back to a long time before they were even called hedge funds. So back when I started the business, they were called private placement partnerships and they didn't have the sex appeal that they have today. And what they were, it's a name for skill based investment strategies where you can make money regardless of market direction because the returns are more a function of skill than the traditional passive asset allocation portfolio that most people are accustomed to, where if the market goes up, you make money. If the market goes down, you lose money. In my background, my specialty was quantitative investment systems. So I'm a quant geek. So I developed, I was one of the early pioneers actually of quantitative investment methodologies, risk management methodologies. So I was programming them on one of the early IBM 8088, probably even before you were playing with computers. It's one of the original boat anchors. It had a processor that was slow as snails. There weren't even any databases back then. I had to hand key punch in There was a book called the Dow Jones averages. 1880 to 1985, I think was the date back then. And, and I had to handkey punch in the entire book into a computer in order to have a database to even work with to start programming and developing trading systems. And I had a hand program all the trading systems stuff that would take me a month or two months to program, you know, because you'd have to do all the database programming and then, you know, you'd have to all the algorithms to sort the data and I mean, huge problems. And now you.

Doesn't that feel like another world? Like just a complet. Another time? Like, can you even imagine having to do all that now?

Yeah, no, I mean, nowadays. Well, back then I had a massive competitive advantage. Nobody knew this stuff, you know, and now everybody else. Yeah, yeah, you can point, click on an ETF website and test all kinds of stuff that take me months to figure out. But the, you know, the difference is I know it cold. I mean, I really learn this stuff at a deep level in ways that people are insulated from it because they're pointing and clicking mouses to, to do this research. They don't get to know it in the same way.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So, you know, being a wealth advisor, being a financial mentor, that is such a very broad topic because there are so many ways to build wealth, so many ways to make money, and there's. Or really even not even make money, but preserve money and grow it, you know, wisely.

Yeah, probably the first distinction. Let me just cut in. The first distinction we should do is what I do versus what people probably think I do. Listening to.

Exactly. Okay, great.

Okay. I'm not a traditional financial advisor. I was a hedge fund manager, which means I was on the wealth management side of things. I was just managing other people's money as a private placement fund. Like you couldn't even access me unless you were what's called a qualified investor, which was high net worth, high earnings investors, because none of this stuff was standard securities. When I left that business, we sold the hedge fund and I was, quote unquote, retired at age 35. I then went on to start building Financial Mentor, which is the site I have now. And the whole premise of that was that it's an education website. And the idea was, and this was revolutionary back in its day, again, it's mundane now. All these things that I was doing were crazy in their days and now they're like almost normal conversation because it was way ahead of its time. But I was building a financial education website. Pure education, no investment, product sales. I wanted to separate the educational component from the product sales component. And so that's what I did with Financial Mentor and that's what I still do to this day. So all I sell is books and courses. I don't sell investment advice or, you know, investment management systems or anything like that.

You don't have to deal with compliance and SEC and all those regulations anymore. Don't you miss that?

Yeah, not at all. I used. I've always lived in these beautiful areas, you know, Lake Tahoe, the Sea Ranch, California. I lived in all these gorgeous areas. And so amazingly, I always got audited late Friday afternoons. Right? So I would get audited every single year and the audit would always start on a late Friday afternoon. Like nobody that I knew got audited every single year and nobody that I knew got audited consistently starting on a late Friday afternoon. The reason why was they would get a paid for weekend in these resort areas that I lived because the audit would naturally run over into the following weeks. Yeah, they'd get a free weekend out of it. Because it's cheaper to put them up in a hotel in a swanky resort area than it is to fly them back home and back out.

That's funny. That's funny. So let's get into the meat of this. What are some of the. Before we went live on this, we were talking about you're somewhat unconventional in some of the, you know, your approaches. And I wanted to talk about that. Like, you know, a lot of people have heard, save your money, stock away 10%. And this is, you know, the general, you know, advice. Sock away 10%, get out of debt, put your money in index funds, put the money in the market, etc. Etc. And I'm sure that you've probably got a slightly different approach to this. Give me the. What is the foundational belief or core principles behind growing wealth the way that you advise people to do it?

All right, let's first of all be clear that the traditional model isn't broken, it's just very slow.

Correct.

Okay, so the traditional model, we'll call that the spend less, save more model.

Yes.

Right. And then the non traditional model is make more, lose less.

Yes.

Okay, so make more, lose less versus spend less, save more. All right, so those are just cute little acronyms I made up to characterize the two models. One I call the traditional wealth planning framework and the other is the advanced planning framework. Okay, so the traditional model, let's just kind of go through it for a second. I mean everybody knows it, right? But basically you're supposed to work like a dog for 40 years, make as much as you can, spend as little as you can. Scrimp and save, slave and save. Yeah, yeah, you send that all over to your financial advisor who's going to put it in this magical asset allocation. And then at the end of 65 years, you're going to have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And so that model is actually valid, despite all my cynicism in the way I characterized it. It's valid. It works, right? That's why it's been around for so long. The people in the profession aren't idiots.

It's better than not doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it does work, but it requires a couple things to work. You either have to have a whole lifetime of career with discipline, right? So you get what I call normal financial independence in old age, otherwise known as retirement. Right. Or you have to go through extreme frugality, which is what you hear on the quote unquote FIRE blogs, right? FIRE is an acronym for financial independence, retire early blogs. Those guys are almost preaching the same choir, which is about scrimp and save. Spend really low and they try to get their spending levels down. Because financial independence is always a multiple of your spending level. And so the lower your spending level it has a double edged effect, right? Because or compounded effect. Not double edged, compounded effect because you're saving more from what you earn by spending a lot less. And you have to put away a lot less in order to be financially independent. Because again, financial independence, it's. Your assets have to be a multiple of your spending level. Right. And so the non traditional or the advanced model is different. And we're at point starts with being different is it starts with different asset classes. The traditional model uses the paper assets that your advisor can sell you. Gee, what a coincidence. It's things like stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, insurance, all the things that they can sell you is what happens to go into their financial plans, the traditional plans. The advanced model is all the stuff they can't sell you. As everybody listening to this will know. Business owning your own business, business entrepreneurship is an asset class. And while it's different in its characteristics from stocks, bonds, it's not different in principle. It just has different characteristics. And we can go into that if you want to. And then the other non traditional asset class is direct ownership of real estate. So when you put those asset classes in your non traditional model, what happens is there's very different math involved. So let me back up a second. The math of building wealth is always the same. There's two equations that govern your wealth growth equation. There's the mathematical expectancy, which is the growth rate of your assets, and then there's the future value equation, which is growth rate times time. So it relates it in function of time. And so those two equations govern the growth of your wealth. So it's all math. It's inviolable math. There's no way around it, and that's just the way it works. So wealth is math, but it's not complicated math. And there's ways in which you can play with the assumptions. So for example, the traditional paper assets have a limited growth rate assumption. There's only so fast you can grow a paper asset portfolio. And again, I can go through the data on that and why that's true. Whereas there's literally no limits to the growth rate for a business entrepreneurship or the growth rate from direct ownership of real estate. And in addition to that, there's tax advantages in business entrepreneurship in real estate that don't exist in passive asset allocation of paper assets. So there's a lot of different characteristics in the different asset classes that goes into the different frameworks that determine why one is faster, the other is slower. And they have just different principles to them.

Okay, so are there. Like I've been. I've got a relatively cynical, but somewhat realistic, I'm not a sky is falling kind of guy, but with the stock market, I made a really great call. I made one really amazing call in my life, right? Which was I got completely out of the market. Sold everything I owned in May of 2007. Dow was at like 14,000. I just said, this is way too rich. I'm out of here. And it was one of the best decisions of my life. Saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I never fully got back in. Right. I was just like, I never felt a good time to get back in. I know the dangers of market timing. I know that, like, I made one good decision, but then I missed out on everything from 2000 up. Now I've made other financial investments in real estate, in business and hard money, loans, etc. But never with the stock market. And it just seems as though it's much more like gambling these days. And it's just there just seems to be so much risk in the system. So I've been really reticent to just dive back in, whether it's even with a slow and steady strategy or whatnot. So I've tried to focus more so on alternative investments. What is just overall, I'm really interested in your macroeconomic viewpoint about what's going on in the economy these days. And there's so many, you know, especially right now with tax reform potentially on the table or not. What is your overall macro view? Without getting into like market timing but general health.

Yeah. Okay, so let me first, I'll give a caveat to what I'm going to share, which is I don't take a macro view. Okay. I'm a quant. Right. I shared that earlier when I explored. Yeah. The money, I managed my own money the exact way I teach it, which is I'm a pure quant and I do that for a reason. I've studied this stuff my whole life. I've invested my whole life. If you could, if you had a picture on me right now, you'd see I'm a gray haired guy, I'm 56, but I've been doing this real time, day in and day out in the markets since I was in my early 20s with millions of dollars at stake. So I've got, you know, I've taken my share of bruises, I've been through my share of having opinions that turned out to be true and some turned out to be not true. So I understand. I've got enough humility to know that one cannot predict the future of the market. And so I don't. And yet I have enough ego and enough entertainment value in it to do it anyway.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

The difference is I have the discipline not to. To put any money on it.

Right, okay. Or especially not to bet the farm on it.

Well, I just don't put any money on it. So I don't have an opinion, is the honest answer that I would put money on. What I will say is this. So you and I have a fairly similar story. So for example, my first round, because I'm older than you, my first round of clearing out of the markets was back in 98. So I sold the hedge fund in 98 and exited the markets and reallocated all my assets in 98. Now that was two years too early, but ultimately it proved to be right. It was just two years too early. And that's the nature of using a valuation discipline, which is what I use to exit is. Valuation discipline is a very blunt edge tool for market timing. Ultimately it will prevail because the markets do mean revert. And so valuation at extremes is a very important Indicator, but it can take years for it to do that. Or as the markets have a slogan, the markets can be insane far longer than you can remain solvent.

Very, very, very, very true.

So anyway, so I did that in 2000. I had some allocations into other markets that were early. But again, I have methodologies that manage risk. So I did fine over that time period. And then 2005, I started getting really uncomfortable with real estate. I had reallocated heavily estate back in 98, which proved to be really good because I put me right in front of the huge real estate bubble that burst at the 2007 top, which was ultimately the demise of the stock market. Right, because that's what caused the credit collapse, stock market decline. But the driver was the real estate collapse. And so going to 2005, 2006, I got uncomfortable with that bubble, started selling. I had liquidated all my investment real estate, which was a lot. I mean, it was 160 apartment units. It was some houses, it was some acreage. I liquidated everything. The only investment real estate I owned was not even investment. The only real estate I owned was the house I lived in at the top. I probably wish I'd sold that too in hindsight, but nobody knew that was coming. All I knew was the risk reward made no sense. People were paying me twice for my buildings what I was willing to pay for them. The numbers made no mass sense at all what people were paying for properties. So I gave them to them, as any good investor should do. Right, absolutely. And there were some other reasons behind it too. I mean, I'd made some mistakes in how I put the portfolio together. It was working, it was making money, doing well. But it was also a bubble in real estate. I just kind of looked at it and said, you know, I just want to get out. I was done with it. And so it was as much personal reasons as market timing or financial risk assessment reasons. There's two bubbles in a row. I had another third bubble that I've made a call on and you can find it publicly on my website, which is the current bubble du jour is the bond bubble, credit risk bubble. Obviously 0% interest rates makes no mass sense and negative interest rates is even dumber. You can look at interest rates on bonds and inflation and real rates of return and it doesn't take a genius to understand that that makes absolute, absolutely no math sense whatsoever. And so I published a post and I've left it live on the site. It's dated and I haven't changed the wording. On it. So it documents the track record.

Where is this post?

It's called the Bomb Bubble is here. What to do next.

Is that off of financialmentor.com yeah, it's.

On financialminter.com I believe it's on the homepage and I believe you can find it in Most Popular or Todd's Favorites in the sidebar on any page on the site. But it documents my reasoning and how I go about these things of calling the bubbles successfully each time. It's a little different getting back in, and that's where you were coming in. This is a long story. Getting to that point. Getting back in is different because you can exit pretty safely as a risk manager. Getting back in with a risk management bias can leave you on the sidelines quite often, which is actually fine in hindsight. And you kind of touched on it and what we were saying, which is you had allocated to other markets, other specialty investments, so you'd made money along, but you missed the rise in the stock market. I did the same thing with real estate. Right. I had exited near the top. I had gone ahead and paid taxes on the gains. Everybody told me I was an idiot for doing that. Right. Because in real estate you can do a 1031 exchange and not even pay the taxes.

But there was just nothing for you to get back in that you saw. Right.

Everything was overvalued. Why would I reinvest and actually reinvest larger in order to avoid a taxable gain? It just, it made no sense. I was like, well, wait a minute, this is a profitable dollar. I'd sooner have $0.70 or $0.80 on the dollar net of long term capital gains tax than a negative dollar for holding on and losing. Right. And I didn't know it was going to go down that far. I just knew that none of the numbers made mass sense, that the risk reward made no sense. And I prefer to reallocate to other markets. And that's the key. So, like you, I missed the rise up in real estate that began at the 2009 bottom. And I'm okay with that. I've missed lots of opportunity. My slogan is the opportunity of a lifetime comes along every day.

Yep.

Actually, I said that wrong. The opportunity of a lifetime comes along every year, not every day.

It'd be nice if it came along every day.

Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get that good opportunities, but I do get the opportunity of a lifetime every year. And so I'm okay with missing opportunities if it means also missing major slaughterings. And so I will always defer to risk management. And so in the example the 2009 bottom, I simply wasn't willing to make the bet that all those government bailout programs was going to work. To me, I saw a massive deflationary monster unwound. And it's amazing that the government actually managed to turn it around.

I know, right?

I didn't think it was going to work. And I certainly wasn't willing to bet my fortune in real estate because, see, real estate, the thing about real estate is it's illiquid on the downside.

Yeah, very much so.

And so once you own it, you can get really taken, you know, taken apart with it, and particularly if you own it with financial leverage, that is mortgage financing, you can lose your shirt fast because it's, you know, you're leveraged. And so I just chose to stand to the side. You know, to me, it was just too risky. Now, those who are willing to catch the falling knife and believe the government would do their job, great, more power to them. They made a lot of money. Congratulations. So that brings us to your original question, which is the macroeconomic viewpoint. As of right now, I think this is one of the riskiest periods. We're recording this in November 16th of 2017. And the reason I'm dating is because it literally appears that risky. You know, I cannot call final top, but what I can say is the market's in the top, what, 5 or 4% of historic valuations for U.S. stock valuations. And the only time that's been higher valued is the period immediately preceding the 2000 top. And all the periods around, they're even lower valued than this. Or who's who are the worst times to invest. In addition, you've got various indicators that are starting to come unglued. You've got unemployment hit the lowest level in the entire movement, and so it's hit record low levels since the prior market highs. Historically, as soon as that takes a turn, usually 18 months later, you'll see downturns of as much as 30% in the stock market.

So repeat that you said, because unemployment.

Is at record low, record low. So employment is at a record high. In other words, the percentage unemployment is at a record low for this move. And so, you know, that's a really strong indicator of somewhere near a top. Okay, again, you don't know the exact top. You never do. You just know that you're in that high risk range. We've had transports rollover, right? And so that's another indicator you've got non confirmation across related indices. And now just this month in November, we've seen the junk bond market roll over.

Right.

And that often precedes final market tops.

And so for my, for my, for my listeners, when you say roll over, can you explain what you mean for that?

Making lower lows and lower highs. Right, right. So an uptrending market is higher highs, higher lows, downtrending markets, lower lows, lower highs. And so you're getting divergences in markets that should normally correlate in a healthy situation. Now again, this can go on for a period of time. Yeah, all it's showing and they can revert. Right. So all of a sudden the junk bond market and the transports could suddenly come back and go back to new all time highs and suddenly everything looks healthy again. But again you got that unemployment number that's already hit records and this thing is really long in the tooth. So again, I'm not calling a final market high here. I don't do that. But what I can see is the risk is to the downside.

Well, like you said as a quantitative analyst, when you looking at the things you're looking at the simple math, is this a good deal? Is there more upside in this than downside? And right now I think I know I, this is what I felt sounds like what you're saying and what a lot of the people that I listen closely to is that there's just so much more downside, like very visible downside than there is up, you know, potential upside because of these things that you're, that you're saying. And I know this has been one of the things my, my wife and I have, are sitting on more cash right now than we ever have. Probably simply because I also, you know, I want to be, I like to keep my powder cake dry and I do deploy it when it's, when I, when I find something that I feel relatively good about. And she's kind of wondering like, well, why are we sitting on more, you know, more cash? Like this much cash right now? And it's quite literally because I just don't feel comfortable with most of this stuff. Although I do know how comfortable I would feel if things, you know, if opportunities start to arise where it actually makes sense.

It brings up a fun point like there's a culture of cash hatred.

Oh yeah. Out right now.

People don't understand cash is an asset class like any other. And they understand that everything's priced relative to something else. And cash is the pricing term. And that's why it gets the lost in translation here. But, you know, when the markets go down, effectively, cash is going up in value. Right. Because cash is buying more of those assets that are declining. Yes. And so you can either say, oh, stocks are going down, or you can say, cash is going up.

That's a great point. And, you know, ultimately, you know, the people that you hear, or in my history that I've heard talk the most negative about cash are financial advisors. Because the one thing I know as a former financial advisor is I. I didn't get paid when my clients were heavy in cash.

Bingo. Yeah. So that's part of the culture that's killed. Cash is, first of all, cash pays zero interest rates. So first of all, it's the one thing nobody wants to own. But typically, I kind of like things that nobody else wants. It's the natural contrarian in me. And so when you have an asset class that's universally hated, which cash is, I tend to get kind of fond of it, actually.

Yeah, me too. I'm so glad you're saying that as well. And it also is an amazing. It's amazing for you, the psychology. You know, if you're nervous on stuff, there's nothing like having the cash in the bank to where you're like, I'm okay, if something happens. Nothing's going to take me down, but if something happens, I have the opportunity to make some amazing purchases. If. And this is a big if, because this happened to me before, I just still never felt this good about getting back in, whether it was real estate or. I mean, you remember back in like, 2000.

I don't. First of all, let's replace a word here. There's nothing in my lexicon that's about feeling or intuition or anything. If you listen to me go through everything, it was all analysis based on quant. Right. So when I was going through explaining those divergences and I was explaining, that's all stuff that can be quantified, and you can look at what that impact has on future returns. You can look at the results subsequent to the unemployment rate hitting those levels and then reversing. All these things can be quantified. There's no feeling in here. It's all stuff that has a positive mathematical expectancy and is provable with data and research.

Did you see during that time period from 2009, 10, 11, it's et cetera, did you see any quantitative data that told you that we were going to have the bull market that we have?

Well, no, because nothing predicts the future. All you can Know is statistically what's valid. And so you know, if you've got a strong uptrend, a strong low volatility uptrend that the probability favors, the strong low volatility uptrend will continue. Okay. And so again that's why trend following is a valid methodology as an example of one methodology is because statistically it works. I mean it doesn't take any more complication than that. So did I have any idea that would run this far and be one of the longest, greatest bull markets in history coming off the 2009 bottom? Of course not. I didn't. Of course not. I mean anybody who claims they did is a liar or self deceived. Exactly right. Because I mean at that time it was this, this horrid deflationary collapse. The government was playing the most insane games. I mean they're basically violating their own laws to try to bail the thing out. It was unprecedented what was going down in terms of government intervention. They were transferring, you know, private debt to public balance sheets, you know, through the Fed and on and on and on. I mean it was, you know, if somebody's going to run and claim they knew how this was going to go down, I certainly didn't, you know.

Exactly.

To me it was just crazy, insane risk environment. And those people that pulled the trigger got paid handsomely for it. So congratulations to them. I'm a risk manager. I don't, I don't step in front of bullet trains or. And I don't run around grabbing, falling knives.

Right. So, so fast forward to today.

Somebody wants to throw in. Jimmy Rogers has a great quote that plays into your felt thing and that is, he says it's where you were going. It was just because I'm not trying to pick on your language because where you're going was actually pretty valid. Which was Jimmy Rogers had a quote. He says, I don't do an investment until it looks like a bag of money sitting over in the corner of a room and all I got to do is walk over and pick it up.

I like that.

Yeah, I think that was always very telling for me. That to me is that idea that you're getting at around how it feels or how it felt. It's gotta, it's gotta look like a bag of money sitting over in the corner and all you gotta do is walk over and pick it up.

Mm. Yeah. So, so what, what advice do you give the, the students, the clients, etc that you work with right now who are trying to build wealth in a.

Really.

Uncertain, highly uncertain, highly let's just say, you know, you could say overvalued market who really do want to not just sit on cash. Because right now you can either just say screw it and jump in and try to ride this bull market as long as it's got. Right. You can start, sit back in cash and do nothing, or there's probably a third or fourth Avenue, which is maybe to systematically deploy it to really diversify into different asset classes, alternative assets. What advice are you giving people right now who are trying to build wealth in a, in such an uncertain market?

Well, I'm an economist. So what would the joke answer be?

It depends.

There you go. It depends, but actually it does. Yeah, right. I mean, it's a joke, but it's also the truth.

What would you tell. Okay, let me tell you, what would you go through? 43 year old podcast host, business consultant and entrepreneur.

Let me go through it. Let me go through it and explain where I'm going with it. Okay. Yeah, so. So it depends on the characteristics of your life, which is where you're going, right? You're a step ahead of me, but I just want to give the overview so that people can understand it. It depends on the unique characteristics of your life and then you have to tie them back to the unique characteristics of the individual asset classes. So the way I teach wealth building is that there's three asset classes, right, which you talked about earlier. Business, entrepreneurship, direct ownership of real estate and paper assets. Each has unique characteristics. And so the way wealth building done, right. Is you match the unique characteristics of the asset classes and the opportunity that presents themselves at any given time in those asset classes to the unique characteristics of your life. And, and so the analogy I like to use, it's like Velcro with hooks and loops. When you get it right, it hooks together just like Velcro, right. Where the hooks of your particular life situation map into the loops that are on the characteristics of the asset classes. And that's how wealth is done, right?

Yeah, and I agree wholeheartedly. So my situation, somebody who's in their 40s, so who has a good income, who. I'm single, I'm not single, I'm married. With. Gonna edit the house on my wife.

Gotta get that one right.

Freudian slip.

Right.

I'm. Yeah. Married, no kids. But. And as I said, I'm cautious, but I like to keep my money moving. I like to do things like that.

So what would.

But somebody like myself, what advice, what strategies would you give to say, you know, how to build wealth in such an uncertain economic environment that we're in right now and still manage risk in a way that, you know, not complete. I'm not looking to completely eliminate risk, but I'm looking to invest more prudently.

Yeah. So there's not enough information there to give good feedback. I mean, obviously one thing your business is, your primary asset right now is what I take from that. And so that's fine. You'd look at ways to harvest more from the business, and then you've got the wealth. Translation, how do you get it out and into your personal balance sheet? So we'd be looking most likely at things like real estate. I don't know where you work from. You probably work from your home, right? Yeah, I do. Yeah. So you might. Again, we'd be looking at real estate on the wealth translation, because that has certain tax benefits. But again, where you're at in San Diego, real estate's horribly overvalued.

No, I typically buy in Dallas.

Yeah, see, now that's a great example. Right. So the other thing that would probably come into the conversation would be to go outside the obvious markets. So, for example, real estate's overvalued in San Diego, but it does cash flow in Texas, which is what you're just referring to in Dallas. You can also look at just because the US Market is horribly overvalued. There's international markets that are really well valued. Like, for example, Russia right Now is a CAPA5, as we record this, which is extraordinarily low.

Did you say Russia?

Yeah, Russia. Okay, I'm not recommending Russia, but if you look at the historical returns subsequent to a CAPA 5, you'll see that they're off the charts. So take it for what it's worth.

Nice. I remember a few years ago, I bought Gazprom and been sitting on a loss for a little while, but. Okay, so what about in the real estate market? Obviously, you mentioned the bubble, and a lot of things are tied together. Do you see, and I know this depends on a lot of aspects in the market. Do you see holding, especially like residential rental real estate? Do you see that as being a, you know, in a precarious spot right now based on some of the analysis you've done?

Oh, let me grab my crystal ball.

I love it.

Let me see if I can get the Ouija board to show the truth. I have no idea.

Right.

Here's what I do know. If you buy real estate, right, and it's positive cash flow, the margin of error.

You know, you make your money when you buy.

Yeah. Okay. So yeah, the old slogan, you make money on the buy. So if you buy it right to where your positive cash flow with a margin of error net of your operating and financing costs, as long as you got a decent margin of error, you can weather a pretty decent downturn. If it goes prolonged and serious, you might go to negative cash flow, but hopefully not so much that you can't carry it for a short period of time to get back to conventional business operations. So you might get hurt if you buy it right. You might get hurt in a major, major downturn that goes on for quite a long time. But if you buy it right, you should be able to, you know, survive most conventional downturns. It's the rare credit collapse and or banking panic that can really nail real estate. So the way I teach real estate is I start with macro environment and I state that basically because real estate is leveraged play on inflation. Inflation is predominant, is the predominant situation because government ultimately controls it, is the predominant situation 90 some odd percent of the time. And there's extremely rare instances of banking panics and credit collapses such as we had in 2007, 2008, we had in the Great Great Depression back in 29 to 32. You'll get these rare credit collapse banking panics where real estate gets slaughtered. And if you own it on leverage, which most people do because they carry mortgage financing, it can destroy your entire wealth. Are we sitting in front of one of those right now? Well, it's possible. It's possible, right, because the system is so incredibly leveraged and there's so much bad debt in the system that got tabled from the last downturn that never got worked off. The conditions are there, right?

Well and it also depends like, you know, kind of like we're alluding to the. Are you buying, are you buying off the MLS for at market price and hoping to make money on the appreciation, especially in places like out here in like California where it has gone up quite, quite a bit in the past couple years. Or you're buying from a motivated seller who needs to sell their house and might need a little bit of work in it, but you're getting it for 70% of the after repaired value and ideally putting down a larger chunk of cash, if not all cash to buy it, whether the storm, in case, you know.

Well, yeah, if you're all cash and you don't have any financing costs, you'll weather the storm.

Bingo.

Yeah. And you will cash flow because you have pricing power that nobody else has. You can keep lowering rents to, to keep that thing full because nobody else can because they have debt service to carry. So there's ways to do it where you can weather the storm. But again, valuations can make sense in foreign countries, in emerging markets, there's different countries where it works and valuations can make sense in different locations within the US on real estate. So there's ways to do this. It's not like we're all stuck just because the S and P is in record valuations and because San Diego real estate's overpriced. You just have to be creative and look elsewhere.

I agree. What are some of the strategies you're using with your own portfolio?

Everything's liquid. Everything stays liquid and nimble. So I never, as I already said, I never reinvested in real estate at the 2009 bottom. I wasn't willing to do that. So I've remained nimble and liquid throughout the rise.

What are some of the more, are there some non cash but nimble and liquid?

It doesn't do any good to say it. By the time you publish this, it could be different. Yeah, right. So it's not going to do any good for anybody to hear where I'm at right now because it evolves all the time. I've got multiple methodologies that I, that I do, multiple portfolios I'm running and they're all doing different things because again, I want non correlated returns, right. And so I diversify not only by asset class, but I also diversify by strategy and source of return for those strategies. And so again, mine's completely different from how most people look at this stuff and it's for a reason. But my point is, if you want to look at what I have done that people can mimic is I've not committed in any way. Everything is liquid, everything's nimble, everything's pure cash flow. I don't, I don't carry any debt anywhere and I'm not leveraged anywhere. So like even if my. In my business you can look@financial mentor.com and on that business it's completely portable. I can take it anywhere with me. It sits in my laptop. It's all pure cash flow. The margins on the products that are sold, everything is just 100% cash flow.

The beautiful part about information marketing.

Yeah, but let's not overblow it, right? It's a huge amount of work and it takes a long time time to build it and blah blah, blah, blah.

At least four hours a week, right? That's what Tim says.

I'm basically, I'm basically getting returns on work that I've been delivering for a decade now.

You're right, exactly.

You know, that didn't pay me for the first nine years of that decade, you know, so I don't want to overblow it as like this dream thing and everybody needs to go this way. You know, they're all trade offs and they all have different characteristics, which is what I was saying earlier. But what I am trying to point out is you asked me what I'm doing, I'm trying to be transparent and say that on, I have no investment real estate. And that was a mistake in hindsight, but it's a mistake I'll make again and again and again because I always defer to risk management. So the valuations weren't there to buy in my opinion, at least in the markets. I was in some markets there were like, in Florida, I had clients in Florida. I said, back up the truck, man. I mean, they were picking up houses for, you know, I mean, they could almost put them on a credit card.

This is after the crash, like 2009.

And yeah, yeah, I had, I had a couple of clients in Florida and basically, you know, they were like, Todd, what should I do? And I was like, man, at those valuations, if I had those, I'd back up the truck. You know, I would just load up because those, those are amazing. You know, you're talking houses that are running for 1200amonth that they were getting for 30 and 40,000 bucks.

Wow.

Yeah, it was, it was crazy. And they, and they weren't fixer uppers, they were serviceable homes at 40 grand.

And I remember those days and I remember like just being so dear in a headlight with some of that stuff going, but. And this was where the emotions got the best of me, just thinking, well, but this is the end of the world. It's gonna go lower, it's gonna go lower. Then it turned around pretty darn quickly and I never got back into it.

So, yeah, see on a cash flow basis, those were a no brainer, right? How to own it for three years at those level of rents to pay for it for, you know, I mean, it was, it was such a no brainer. And so, you know, I just didn't want to own clear across the country. That's why I wasn't doing it. I was in Reno, these deals were in Florida. So. But anyway, so, you know, what I did was I switched out of real estate and I switched into focusing on my business in 2008. That's why I said, it's been 10 years of work. Right. Because we're recording this almost as we roll into 2018. So I've been at this 10 years. So that's. I chose to pursue different types of leverage. I got rid of financial leverage because I really feel the system's fundamentally unstable, despite the low volatility. I feel the system's fundamentally unstable due to the leverage and the bad debt and all the reasons it causes instability in the systems. I don't think risk is properly priced in the system. That's another source of instability. And so I chose to remain with extremely safe stuff. So I'm leveraging my knowledge, I'm leveraging technology systems, I'm leveraging all these different things to build wealth in my. In my education business. And I'm remaining extremely nimble and extremely liquid with highly diversified methodologies that are not buy and hold methodologies. They can sell and they can go to cash, as they do frequently. So. And that's to manage downside risk in these markets, which are highly overvalued. Right.

Speaking of, just to go off topic a little bit, but in the financial, like the hottest, hottest discussions today these days are all around crypto.

I almost could anticipate it when you started saying, and I don't want to.

Go down this rabbit trail, but I.

Mean, you talk about a risk discussion. It is light of what we've been talking about. It's actually relevant. Right. Because basically it's the hot thing du jour. Right? Okay. So like, I can go back because I'm the old dude here. Right. So we can go back in. In 98, 99. What was the hot thing du jour? It was Internet stocks and. And dot com bubble. Right.

Cisco. I had a client who, I remember her saying, buy Cisco at any price. And that was January of 2000.

Bingo. And they didn't make money for a decade and a half after.

Exactly.

Right. And so that was the bubble du jour. And I remember everybody that came to me was in tech stocks and wanted to get rich in tech stocks, and there was no way there was any downside. And of course, that proved to be ridiculously wrong.

It's different every time.

Right, Right. And then the bubble du jour at the 2000, kind of 2006, 2007 period was real estate. Every client that came to me wanted to get rich in real estate. Right. And so now the latest, coolest thing is bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and so there's always something that grabs the public's attention, and there's a corresponding, what we'll call asymptotic bull market to go with it. Right? One that's just growing geometrically. And so you got bitcoin going off the charts with growth in 2017, and it's grabbed the public's attention. And it's this magical ethereal thing called a cryptocurrency that not one person in a thousand can wrap their heads around. And so my analysis is I think bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are very risky, very dangerous. I'm not. I have no money in them and I'm not going to touch them.

I put back in May, I put $5,000 split between Ethereum and bitcoin in it, and for only one reason. I wanted to force myself to learn about it. Because obviously, if I've got a little bit of a financial stake, I'm much more likely to try to figure it out. And I promised myself I would not dump a whole bunch more into it. I've been glad that I put that money in. It's done well. Even though at the time when I was doing it, I was like, what am I doing? I am such an idiot. I know better than this. It turned out good so far, but it has forced me to actually get educated. It's almost like when you're betting on a sports game, it makes you pay attention to the game a little bit. A little bit more detail.

Right. I think. I think the blockchain technology is absolutely revolutionary.

Right?

And the blockchain technology is. Today is the equivalent of what the Internet was back in 1995 or something, where people hadn't even wrapped their heads around it. They didn't even know how big it was going to be. And the applications for how it was going to be revolutionary hadn't even been thought of or figured out. So I think the Internet bubble is a great analogy for. For what we're seeing with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in that ultimately people lost their shirts in the technology stocks that didn't have some magical way to get out at the top. However, the Internet fulfilled its promise and it has been a complete revolution in our lives. And I think the same thing is going to happen here. I think people are ultimately. I think bitcoin and these others are ultimately going to be a massive disappointment in some way, shape or form. And I don't know exactly how that's happening, going to go down, but I think blockchain Technology will fulfill its promise and it will revolutionize our lives. There's just a couple logic things here that people got to look at on this stuff before they throw money at it. One is if anybody can mine coin, and by that I mean they can create their own cryptocurrency. Right. I mean, these things are created out of thin air. And so if anybody can create currency out of thin air, intuitively, that's got to tell you something's wrong. And then the other thing, too, about it is that I really can't see any way that government's gonna allow themselves to lose control over currency.

No, there's too many other way. Yeah, there's too many ways that they can step in and make it a pain in the butt. I mean, it's. It's the lifeblood of any government.

Well, it's their power. Yeah, that's their power, is their control. They tax through. I mean, people think they tax through income tax, they tax through inflation, if not more.

That. Well, that's. That's why the American empire actually exists, because there is an empire. Because we've caused the world to be dependent upon US Dollars, the reserve, and we then, you know, devalue constantly.

Yeah. So I just. I don't believe they're going to give up. They're going to give up control over currency to allow the national currency to become Bitcoin. That just strikes me as laughably absurd. And there's no precedent for it. And there's every precedent to show that something big is going to go down eventually, where a lot of people are going to get hurt, but I have no forecast for how it's going to happen. I can just look at the bubble du jour. I can look at the underpinnings, which are valid, which is the blockchain technology. I can look at the speculative fever in something that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Now, people can make the case that gold has no intrinsic value or that our currency itself has no intrinsic value, but, I mean, bitcoin takes it to a whole new level.

You're absolutely right. Well, I don't know anybody who's actually using Bitcoin as a currency. It is quite literally only being used as a commodity right now because you buy it. Who's going to just go spend bitcoin? I mean, you could make 20% on your money tomorrow. Like, you know, you have to have a stable. Isn't that one of the fundamental underpinnings of currency?

Yeah, let's be clear. It's not a commodity. Right. Because it doesn't fit the definition of, of a commodity. It's purely a speculation.

Well, that, and that's kind of what I mean, as opposed to like versus a currency. Because if people aren't spending it and trading it for goods and services, I mean, I'm sure there are some of the, some purists who are doing that, but everybody else like me, I bought it and I'm just sitting there going along for the ride with it. God forbid I sell it and it goes up 20% tomorrow.

Right. And it only takes, it only takes a percentage of the population to do what you did to fuel a speculative bubble.

Absolutely.

And that's what we're seeing now. Let's be clear on something. So this is consistent with the rest of the conversation. I have no idea where the top will be and I have no idea what level it will top out at. Right. Bitcoin could go to 100,000. It could go to a million per coin. I have no clue. Right. But that doesn't, it doesn't change the conversation at all. Right. You can look at it and go, is it an investment or is it purely speculation? It's purely speculation. It might work, it might not. But that's not what I do. I'm an investor.

Right? Well, yeah. And the 5,000 I put down, it was quite literally a trip to the roulette table. I said I believe in the underlying technology and I know if I put money on it, it will cause me to get somewhat educated on it. But it is. I played with my speculative cash on it and I realized that as opposed to throwing everything in and treating it like, hey, this is a potential home run, because I've actually done that twice in my life before. I have. Well, back in 2000, I mean, I was a 26 year old, maybe financial advisor and everything was just rocking, you know, 99, 2000. And I decided I started playing around on margin. This is too easy. So I margined up and I lost my shirt.

Right.

I made a bunch of money back in real estate and I tried to swing for the fences again. And this was this. It took me two times to really realize the fallacy of my ways, which was I found I had a friend who was selling interest in oil and gas drilling projects. Not wildcatting, but relatively proven, lower risk profile than, than traditional. And it's still. I lost $100,000.

Yeah. So what, what's happening? Like as a financial coach. Right. As a wealth building coach, what I'm noticing is you're not having a risk Management discipline.

I did. Not at all.

And that's the death knell of. Excuse me, I'm going to cough. That's the death knell of wealth building. And it has to do with the asymmetric math behind compound growth, right? And so a 10% loss requires an 11.1% gain to get back to even, right? Because you go from 100 down to 90, you have to have a larger gain to get back to even. 25% loss requires a 33% gain to get back to even. This is where it gets interesting. 33% loss requires a 50% gain. 50% loss requires 100% gain. A 90% loss requires a 900% gain. And so what happens is the gain to loss ratio is asymmetric and there's a point of no return. Now that point of no return is in that 20 to 30% range is where it starts really blowing out. Again, this is just math. What it does is it tells you that risk management has to become central to your investment discipline in order to consistently grow wealth. Otherwise you're going to have highs and lows like what you're quoting here. Again, it's not me making this stuff up. It's all implied in the math of how wealth grows, right? All I'm doing is bringing practical rules to it based on what the math tells you is true. And I stumbled into this, right? I mean, this isn't taught in college. Nobody teaches you this in investment scores. But where I stumbled into it is when I was developing all these risk management systems in the markets and I started noticing something peculiar. The smoother the equity curve, which of course is the mathematical definition of risk, right? Standard deviation of returns. The smoother the equity curve, the more the system made. Now that's backwards of what conventional wisdom teaches. Conventional wisdom is that you have to take risks to get reward, right? Yeah, that risk equals reward. Well, that's a half truth. The way it works in practice is risk equals reward at the asset level. So in other words, specific assets. Because what they're doing is the equating the volatilities of the assets and then you get the risk premium, right? So like the equity risk premium over bonds or duration risk premium where the long bonds have pay more than the short bonds. You've got these different risk premiums that go on that give you this concept that risk equals reward. It's only true at the product level. As long as you're looking at investment products, it more or less holds true. There's exceptions to the rule, okay, but it More or less holds true enough to call it a basic truth. Where it falls apart is at the investment process level. And see, that's where almost everybody fails at investing. They don't understand that investment done right is a process, not a product. What almost everybody's doing is they're looking for a good investment. You can even find it in this interview, right? If you listen back to this interview, you'll notice that you're asking me about good investments. Or you can even look at your investment history and see you're looking for that investment opportunity. And I keep backpedaling on you and I'll talk about investment processes like valuation, mean reversion, how to find, you know, good risk management opportunities, things like that. Those are all investment processes that I follow that over time work. That's how investing is done. Right. It's not speculative.

No. And that's, that's a really critical point as well to understand. And like you said, yeah, they just. Because an asset has a lot of volatility. But yeah, it's got, it has the risk premium, meaning it's got the potential to, to have big moves. But those big moves come on the downside as well. And if you get it wrong, I mean there's also those studies, I'm sure you've seen it where they, you know, they say, well if you, if you held the A stock for the past 20 or 30 or 40 years, whatever, and you wrote it out, you know, 10,000 would turn into 10 million. What? You know, whatever. But they also show at different times where that volatility, you know, it can absolutely murder your returns. And it, it kind of goes back to the market timing, but not, you know, exactly, but it just says that it depends on what you're looking at.

Yeah, there's a lot of things that are thrown around the markets that are true, but they're only half truths.

Yes.

So for example, like here's another, and this always relates back to wealth building and living off your assets. Right. So for example, you were just talking about one, which is the stock market always goes to new highs if you just hold it long enough. I forget what the numbers are, but some 80, some odd percent of 15 year periods are profitable in 20 year periods. It's almost close to 100, but not quite. Depends on how you crunch the numbers. If you include dividends or not and if you inflation adjust or not. There's a lot of ways they crunch the numbers that come up with slightly different stats. The point being the market does go to new highs and there's a math reason why. Right. Which is your stock market returns are dividends plus economic growth. Wait a minute, I'm getting this wrong. Dividends plus. Yeah. Plus or minus. Plus economic growth. Plus or minus change in market valuation. Right. So that's the return equation for stocks, and that always holds true. And so what happens, though, is you'll get in these periods where the reason it always goes to new highs. The point I'm trying to make, the reason it always goes to new highs, is those dividends and economic growth are constantly compounding. They're constantly giving a plus sign inside that equation. And then what causes these temporary downturns that can be quite volatile is that plus or minus change in market valuation, that third component of the return equation. But over time, it will always go to new highs. And the math reason why is the source of returns. Right. So they're right. The problem is it's a half truth, because the only reason you invest in the stock market and the only reason you build wealth is eventually you want to live off your assets.

Yes.

And so what happens when you live off your assets is it changes the math of the compound growth equation. And what happens is. So you've probably heard of the 4% rule for safe withdrawal rates in retirement. It's not a truth, but we'll just throw it around as a simple number because it's a reasonable ballpark estimate. So we'll use the 2000 top as an example to show that where the problem comes in, if you're a retiree at the 2000 top and the market comes back to new highs in 2012, it doesn't matter to you, you're still screwed. Because when you're living off your assets, drawing them down, spending from them, which every retiree wants to do, the market will go to a new high, but your portfolio won't. And the danger in volatility? Basically, the pundits always tell you to ignore volatility, right? Because eventually the market comes back. The danger is not in the sharp downturns, like an 87 crash. The danger is a 2000 decline that results in a prolonged comeback period. So you end up with like a decade, 10, 15 years where the market's coming back. Yes, it goes to a new high. But when you're spending from your portfolio, your drawdown is so large, you know, somebody in the 20 in the 2000 top, they can end up with half their net worth by the time the market goes to a new high. Go through two rounds of that, you're toast.

Yeah, that's eye opening.

Yeah. The math is just really different and a lot of people don't understand the depth of the math and how it affects your wealth growth and your wealth, you know, your wealth building and what strategies are required. That's why risk management is essential. When you're living off your assets. You can't take a prolonged downturn and you can't have a prolonged flat spot of non performance when you're living off your assets. You have to have consistent, reliable performance and it requires very different structures.

Yeah. You know, one of the things I really like about your approach to this too is it really is process driven. And that's one of the things I learned a lot in the past. And this doesn't matter if it's a investment or in business. You know, money loves processes. That's how you make the money. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, as I said, you're an entrepreneur if you don't. If you're an entrepreneur without processes, you're probably a broke entrepreneur. Money loves systems and it does depend upon. It does depend upon your situation, your risk tolerance, your place in life, and a whole lot of things that can be really confusing to people, especially if they haven't spent a lifetime studying this. Over on Financial Mentor. You look like you've got a lot of resources here that people can, you know, can utilize to help figure this stuff out. If there's a listener to this podcast who is just really like, yeah, you know what, this has been amazing and I need to start to get myself back on track and to start educating myself because I just, I've not spent my life learning this, you know. What resources do you have that you would recommend that they start with?

Well, come over to the site. It's financial mentor.com two words mashed into one. Financial mentor.com I have one of the largest collections of free calculators on the Internet. There's 80 of them in there. So you can. Yeah, yeah. Because again, wealth is math and. But a lot of people have problems with math. So this makes the math easy. It does it all for you. So I have tons of free reading resources, over a thousand printed pages of free content, all educational. Very detailed, too. I'm known for extremely detailed analytical posts that go through it in its entirety and then also if they subscribe. So what I'm saying is get to know me for free. Right? You can get a free subscription on the website and I'll send you a free ebook. It's called 18 Essential Essence of a Self made millionaire. And also you'll get a free mini course. It's called 52 Weeks to Financial Freedom and it goes through and it gives you the framework for how financial freedom works. You won't get rich in 52 weeks, but it teaches you the whole framework of the process you'll go through to get there in the various steps. And then if you like that. I have paid resources, I have books on Amazon and I have also one course that's available now. It's the Step three Wealth Building Course. I call it Expectancy Wealth Planning. And it goes through a very different approach to how you design a wealth plan. And people probably got a little hint of it here in this interview with little tidbits, but the course is the whole enchilada and it's totally affordable. So for anybody that has money at risk, it's a no brainer purchase. It's my step three Wealth Building course.

Fantastic. Well, thank you Todd for such a great interview today. And I'm sure that all my listeners and our audience have a much clearer understanding of some of the necessary, necessary skills to succeed at building wealth, since you've laid everything out so clearly. So thank you very much for sharing that expertise with us. And I want to thank all of my listeners for tuning in to a topic that is a very heady subject at times and there's not always an easy answer, but it is probably the number one thing on the top of everybody's mind, quite literally is money and health. Those are the two biggest drivers and relationships of our society. And if you don't really understand the way that money and wealth and you know, financial, financial health really works, then you're, you know, you're going through life kind of blindfolded. And thank you for putting so many resources on financialmentor.com and being a, you know, source of education for folks. So guys, I highly invite you to check out financialmentor.com and go down the rabbit hole and see if there's some things that you can glean from this and really kind of turn your life into the direction you want it to go. I know that this is an area that I'm always studying myself. For all of my listeners who want to reach out to me and ask a question, make a suggestion, whether it is a topic suggestion or you just want to get my brain on your business, if there is something that kind of as a sticking point you'd like a second opinion on how it can work better, shoot an email over to ask bradaconrapped Business and let me know about it. Todd, thanks a lot for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Brad. It was good talking with you. I hope the conversation was helpful for your listeners.

Absolutely. And guys, stay tuned for the next episode. You're not going to want to miss it. If you're not a subscriber, hit the subscribe button. And if you'd like it a lot, share it on social media and tag me. Tag Todd on there as well. And I will see you on the next episode.