Understand this ONE Concept and Win in ANY Market

Should you be investing right now? Should you be buying stocks or selling stocks? Should you be buying real estate? Or should you be waiting for things to fall even more? These are the questions that I asked my mentor, JP Newman, who has hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. We did an entire podcast about how to invest in uncertain times like this and exactly what he is doing during a market like this. And I'm using what he says as sort of a filter for how I make my decisions during this current downturn. This was a podcast we record for the Investing on Purpose podcast. We don't share all these episodes on this channel, but if you want to see all of the episodes that JP and I record, just subscribe to the Investing on Purpose podcast. Enjoy.

But we are in a very interesting time right now. You just brought up the point of like in the world of the economy, we are going through such vast shifts so quickly. And I always say the comedy of human beings, no matter what part of the cycle you're in is you always have this irrational fear or irrational exuberance at the top and you make these really stupid bets and there's always irrational fear at the bottom that it's a depression that's never going to end. And I think right now, Ryan, we're in a moment where we're basically in that moment of exuberance is turning to fear as we speak. Yeah.

Where do you think we are in that? Like, I have a lot to say about this.

Yeah.

But where do you think we are in the downturn?

Well, I think it's just the. Just beginning. You do? I do. I think, I think this has been overdue, this correction. I think that we're down.

I mean, stock market's down 40%.

Yeah.

50. Almost 50%.

Yeah.

Stack.

So. Yeah.

And you think we're just beginning.

I do. It doesn't mean that things are going to crash. I'm not trying to spread that irrational fear at the bottom thing, but we were just so overheated for so long. And I think that when you print trillions of dollars, sometimes it's not good. And it does cause that inflation. And so it's, it's a cycle that. And again, this is really healthy capitalism. Capitalism. Capitalism is cycles and I think it is healthy. I, I hate to see the pain it causes on some people.

You know, I was asking, my housekeeper has been a big crypto investor and she did really well. It actually was like life changing crypto. And I asked her what did she do? And she's holding on.

And so you Know, those are the people you know, I know how important that was to her. Basically her savings got wiped out during adjustments and that's disturbing.

So I have, I have a different opinion because I think that when, you know, we're down, NASDAQ's down 40ish percent, Dow Jones is down about 35. 30, 35. Crypto's down 75.

Oh yeah.

So I think that when we're down 75 or 40% and people are saying, oh, it's just the beginning, I think that's when we've overcorrected to thinking, oh, it's never going to end.

Oh, I agree.

So, so I think we're actually like 10 to 20 points from the bottom. So I think the stock market will probably fall another 10 to 20%. So I think my prediction is NASDAQ bottoms between.

About, about 8,000, I'll say between seven and between eight and 9,000. And the Dow Jones bottoms at 26, which would be about a 15 on each.

The only thing that we always forget about sometimes the amount of time it takes to recover. Ryan, before we go too far, of course.

Oh yeah, a long time to recover. But I think we're almost to the bottom.

I hope so. I hope so.

But jp, I experienced a time I was really freaked out about all these downsides, right. Because I watched everything like I was watching my, my net worth just.

Into the toilet. And something that I discovered on the other side of that is I started, I started selling my holdings of low conviction and I started to look at, okay, the things that I have low conviction in. Why do I, why am I in them if I have low conviction about them?

Right.

And then what is there about the things that I'm holding or that I'm keeping that makes me want to keep holding them?

Right.

And in and across the board, the things that I sold, I was in for the money. Yeah, that's it. And that's it. The things I held on to and have conviction about, I'm in for at least some other reason.

Yes.

And it's not that there's not financial incentive or financial, financial decision making behind it, but that there's always some other reason for holding it. For example, I've got one, one investment in my portfolio that financially has done really well and I'm keeping it. And I definitely did it because there was an exciting financial return behind it. But even that one, there was a team that I wanted to connect with, there was a team that I wanted to build a relationship with which made me interested in the project for something more than just the short term financials of it.

Right.

And I just noticed that trend across the board. And it made me wonder what my life would be like if I only invested for meaning and for other reasons behind finances. And I think I would have a very low stress life.

Yeah.

And a very meaningful one. And I suspect that I might make money too.

Yeah, yeah. No, I laugh. I think sometimes we use our mind or we over. We overuse the Excel spreadsheet. And so much of it sometimes is in our. In our. You know, you want to have your fundamentals, but then you also like, you can tell yourself a lot of narratives, which is why human psychology is such a big part of investing. But the idea of using your gut, your mission, your why even if you fail. I would say, like, I got pretty hard on Luna, which was that crypto. That kind of. But I didn't mind. I mean, not that no one likes losing money, but I was really interested in this. This idea of what it stood for. So even though it kind of sucked to lose, and you never want to lose, it's always more fun to make money. But because I actually had some actual genuine interest in the potential of the product, for some reason, it's not bothering as much as one that you just pure speculation, like Pepsi qualified bought stock in Pepsi, like where you're just kind of trading things just because it has.

I own a lot of Pepsi. Did it happen?

No. Don't worry. Okay. I just got back from Europe. Everyone is drinking and smoking. It is all good. I can't believe how much Pepsi they drink everywhere.

Well, jb, I'm reading a book right now. I'm telling everybody about this book because the price premise of it is so interesting. The book is called why Greatness Cannot be Planned. A friend of mine recommended that I read this and the. It's written by these two AI scientists who run a bunch of computer simulations and models about goal setting. And they conclude, or they at least propose, that the worst way to accomplish great things is to set a goal and work towards it.

Mm.

And you hear that, you're like, what sounds so. Make any sense at all? Of course, the best way is to set a goal and work towards it. But if you think about it in the context of this conversation, the idea of setting a goal and working towards it is the idea of I want to have $100 million, so I will pursue it. And I will pursue the things that are most advantageous financially for me to have $100 million net worth. Yeah, that's how that logic gets played out. And what we're talking about here is the things that I sold off or the things I was just in for, the perceived financials of it. Well, if that is the worst way to accomplish a goal, what's the best way to accomplish a goal? And what they propose is that the best way is to pursue what they call novelty or interest, curiosity. Pursue what genuinely interests you. Novelty is newness, surprise, which. And service doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't make any sense at all why pursuing surprise would be the best way to accomplish a goal. They. They talk about a test that they ran where they, they put these. They put these robots. Imagine a Roomba and. And they programmed the Roombas differently. The one Roomba was programmed to reach an end point, and it. They put it in a maze and it was go to this end point. Your job is to get to this endpoint. The other Roomba was programmed to pursue novelty things that were new. Well, the Roomba, and they ran a bunch of different tests on this. The Roomba that was told, go pursue this goal just kept running into the wall, same wall, over and over and over again because it's close to the destination. So it's going dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, trying to get to the destination.

Right.

But the Roomba that's pursuing novelty goes dunk. Oh, I gotta pursue something new. Donk. Oh, this is interesting. I'm now in a hallway and it's just pursuing newness and eventually gets to the end because it pursued something surprising, something that hadn't done before. And in my own life, I've. I'm trying to find a hole in this logic because it shouldn't be true. But in my own life, when I pursue something that's new, my energy goes up, my curiosity goes up. I'm somehow able to connect it to business or connect it to a new idea. And like a sponge, I'm absorbing all of this.

Yeah.

Even my interest in Web3 and crypto was just a genuine curiosity of like, how is this going to.

Which is my exact point about the. Yeah. When you have a genuine curiosity. Yeah.

And now I feel like I'm ahead.

Yeah. You know, when you talk about this. Right. It kind of reminds me of. Because I don't think. I think we take of, like, this idea of money and then like, the basics. We've all heard at this point about the laws of attraction, that, you know that a lot of times it's not what you say or what you think. It's like kind of the energy behind it. I think what you're talking about sounds a lot like literally merging the idea of a business, like a business goal or mission with Law of Attraction. And I can only tell you I found it whether I like it or not. My best successes sometimes come just because I'm naturally curious. And some of my worst failures have come from that Excel spreadsheet that it made total sense and logic, but missed, but lacked mission or lacked the curiosity or to be honest, lacked the purpose or passion. And I'll give you an example if it's okay. You know, I decided four years ago, you know, I saw a change emerging trend in real estate where I got out of apartments and I started doing some senior living. I actually own some memory care centers and what have you. And it was kind of like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong as much as well as I've done in my business. For Thrive, this is just one asset class. Of course, we've had. We've gone through a pandemic which has not been good for caring for old people. We've lost, unfortunately, we've lost a quarter to half of our, our people there. But beyond what happened with the pandemic, what I realized in hindsight is I never had a passion. In fact, when I go into these places energetically, when I go to Chicago or Austin.

Was. It was actually repulsive to me and only because it was an energy. I was not only not interested, it was actually an energy. It was like. It's very hard to watch people losing their memory and their identity. I can't think of anything more sad. And so I didn't want to go to my own centers now if it's workforce housing and we talk about everything we've talked about in the past, Ryan, I'm like all five a vision of what it looks like. It was like a totally different thing. So on a spreadsheet, I should have made about.

20% more profit margin I should be making in my apartments. I could have, I could have penciled that out for you on a whiteboard. But that's not the way even, even before the pandemic, I won't bore you with all the details. And I realize in hindsight I sold myself on an idea that really lacked everything you were talking about. And I think that was the lesson that I'm learning from it.

And everything that we're talking about is the curiosity and the interest and the passion.

Is that what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.

It's funny that you bring up and.

Intuition, or like intuition, passion, curiosity, it was never a topic I was really interested in.

It just looked good on a spreadsheet.

It just looked good on a spreadsheet. It looked like a nice move to do. As for a risk adjusted return, I just didn't even realize in that moment. It's. Sometimes you got to get hit in the head by a two by four to realize that. That's kind of where I was coming from. I wasn't consciously doing it.

The major financial ouches that I have made, and I have several, and I mean, I lost at least $1 million. There were several of them. All of them I started only for the money.

Yeah.

All of them I did because they made sense or because the return justified what I was doing.

Yeah.

Every single one of them. And the things that have worked out the most, I had the least attachment to the money.

Yeah.

It's wild.

It is wild.

And, and in some way I, in some way I wish it wasn't so. But now that I'm realizing it, it's actually very liberating to think about.

Yeah.

Because I can't tell you how much energy I have spent in my young life thinking about how to maximize the money.

Yeah.

And it's never exciting to think about. It's kind of like it's. I actually feel stressed thinking about it.

Yeah.

But if I'm just pursuing my own curiosity, it's actually this very liberating feeling.

But I think I'm going to say I'm going to add to that Ryan, though, because I think that, you know, curiosity and you're talking about is important. I also think, though, intuition, I think when you marry that idea of energy, interest, curiosity with like, how many deals have you done now? At this point it's very different. What you did at 26 versus what your ability to do now. You can look at a deal. I can bring you a deal right now and you can say yes or no in about two minutes. Your gut will tell you I can look at any real estate deal. And it's almost. It's gotten so fast in my head. I know the answer in about a minute right now, what to do, whether it can be worked or not. So I would say if you marry the skill of both, I mean, you marry. Marry the skill of intuition with your experience, ideal experience. But then you're also paying attention to that aspect of it. And there's one more piece I want to throw at you that I think fits in this, that I've also had to learn the hard way. The law of attraction or the law of curiosity or interest also relies to your business and your partners. So many times I've. It's almost like dating. It's like you. You try to project on that first date how great that person is, and maybe you realize by the second date there maybe weren't exactly who you thought they were. I think a lot of times we. Because we get so excited with an idea of who the person is.

That's true.

I've actually learned, like, if you actually marry those things of bringing in the deal with the curiosity, the passion, and then really, really taking a look, is this team or is this partner really not like who you want, who you think they are on a first date, but you really get a feel for them and say, that's the person, then ultimately not only can execute it, they share the energy, but they also share the skill set. I really learned this because sometimes I just did a $50 million deal where we shared the energy, but his execution was a little rough and I kind of knew it. And I was in first date mode versus second date mode, and I wish I was in second date mode. So we learn incredible experiences from our mistakes, but I really think in hindsight, the winning formula would be those items all put together. So it's. It's mind. It is mind and heart combined in some beautiful way, in my opinion.

So you've experienced the same thing where if you are too mind driven, too logic driven, financially, it hurts.

Oh, yeah.

And so we're going through this time right now where it feels very uncertain. And the lesson that I hope to take away from all of this is that regardless of if we're in the next bull market or we have more downside that I never. That I never compromise that again.

Yeah.

And. And I propose that if, like I propose to myself that if I follow that as a rule, that the rest will kind of take care of itself.

I can only tell you back to that law attraction, that that's completely correct. That's my. In my life, that's what I experience now. But I am being like, it doesn't matter what the market is anymore, Ryan. Like, even today, I got a phone call about a deal, and I met this guy for 15 minutes, and I knew he had something like it was that quick because it was like my brain just automatically is processing brain power. His deck didn't matter to me. I just kind of got it. And then he tells me today one of the top people in the world just endorsed him this week. But it didn't Surprise me. And he called me back. He's like, I want you to be like an early investor in this thing. And I just feel like so it doesn't matter the market. It's almost like once you put that out there, people also feel your energy. Why did he call me? I mean I'm not going to certainly be one of his biggest investors.

But I knew I need you to.

I want you to say more about this. What do you mean when you put it out there? I'm 50% picking up what you're laying down and I want to get the other half of this.

People are the law of attraction. People get attracted to you. And so when people feel that you're actually like they can feel your energy when you're transmitting something like I get your deal. I think it's a. I, I knew in 15 minutes that he was on to something special. I knew and I've seen the same. This thing could.

And what does special mean to you?

I've seen the same. I've seen the same business plan 10 times and it was the 11th guy that he was. The guy was going to execute the business plan when the other 10 weren't. Kind of reminded me of the days at Sony. Things always went in trends. If people were doing puppy films, I'd see 10 puppy films. And I don't know why it is, but things like go in cycles. Like I would see the same ideas happen within like groups but in this case I saw the same idea which is basically this new idea of going into deeper states of happiness and healing and mind brain waves through Somatic, which is sound healing. And a bunch of people are doing this. There's bunch of different people are doing this different ways. I've seen a bunch of demos. I just knew his energy, his experience and this is exactly what I learned from my Sony days. He was the guy who was going to win because of his vision, because of his energy and also his brilliance kind of combined together that he'd be the one. So when he called me today out of the blue and told me like the number one person in the world in this area just endorsed him and he's going to do something and he's going to. It's like pretty cool. It didn't surprise me. But it didn't also surprise me that he called me out of the blue and he didn't even ask me for money today, which was interesting. He wanted me to know and he's met me for 15 minutes.

The other deals that you looked at and passed on yeah. Were they financially driven or heady in some way?

They were more heady and I knew. I can't explain you why I'm trying to get too woo woo on you right now. But when you've done this enough, you can look someone in the eyes, you can see their product and everything you're talking about as far as that underlying passion, energy, your gut will inform you if you actually. And it's a muscle just like your bicep.

I follow.

You just get so informed so quickly on the right answer and most of the time it's no by the way. Most of my answers are no. It's not something I want to do. But I'm getting very, very quickly informed on like. And I'm almost right. I won't say all the time, but I've had a pretty keen, I've worked, worked it up and it happens to me all the time now.

Yeah, I'm going to try and process this out loud of what I'm understanding. You say when you say put this out there, you're actually looking for something. You're looking for the heart or the operator. You're looking for that thing below the surface beyond just the numbers and the strategy. You're looking for the person behind it, the heart behind it, the purpose behind it. And this person, this person has that and you recognize that in each other.

Remember, with transmission, with energy, it goes both directions. Yeah, that's why he called me. Because he also on some level wants an investor to not only it's not just about the money, but he wants someone like. And I think a lot of, I think a lot of people want this. You want mission aligned investors, particularly in the beginning, otherwise bad things can happen to your company too. You know, somebody wants, you know, it's the wrong kind of money. I think people who are mission aligned, people are mission aligned or social impact entrepreneurs who have a great mission and who also are visionaries. They're looking for whether they know it or not, if they're really, if they're that kind of tapped in. The law of attraction is going to bring the right money together with the right, with the right business plan. Does that make sense?

I mean, it makes sense. It makes sense.

I mean, I know it sounds strange, it just keeps happening. So it tells me like there's something about this that actually makes sense.

Well, I think, I mean, just to bring this home, the central theme of this is we're both expressing that when money is the driver.

Just is a.

Crapshoot as a soul driver.

But when we are motivated by something else and we can talk about what that something else is all day long. Those are the things that actually bring us closer together. End up working and being financially prosperous.

And what I would say, Ryan, like, if somebody wants to develop this on a bicep, because I know we're supposed to like, also have some good tips here because it sounds like again, so what do I do with this if I'm in the audience? And I think going back, Ryan, to kind of ultimately knowing as a human being and as a business person, what are you trying to accomplish for your company? And then, you know, you might, if you're lucky enough, you've gone to the point where you know what your personal legacy is. There's really a lot of themes I find in my life between my personal why now and my business why they're not really, they're not that different. And I think the more you actually develop that muscle of kind of knowing, like what interests you, like, for instance, for me right now, a lot of it's about communities. So I just got back from, I think I told you, I was 12 days and I was at a conference with kind of a lot of high energy business leaders that I would describe that are exactly this. They're brilliant geniuses who are already having their first, second or third successes. And they're definitely balancing exactly what we're saying, their intuition, their heart, their mission, with dynamic brain power that's creating. So like, community is important to me on every level, whether it's my real estate communities, my personal communities. Like building strong foundational communities where human beings can connect seems to be my why. So they start to overlap. So what I would say is just as advice is the more you know about kind of what brings you joy or what brings you that connection, it just easily starts to you just, you kind of like check in and you start with small things like, am I repelled by like, like just small little notices. And if you just keep doing it, the, the signal just gets stronger and stronger. And I think to your point.

It'S easier to make money, it's easier to succeed in business because you're not following that maze. The first thing you referred to, or instead of trying to be the Roomba going through the wall.

There'S a study right now, I know this sounds weird that people can literally put on a blindfold and if they really get good at intuition, can go through a maze where with a blindfold on and use their other sensory perceptions to get through a thing without their eyes. And I know it sounds crazy, but I've actually watched two or three people do it. If you want more information on this, by the way, I can send you to the group that's training you how to do this. But people are now going through mazes.

There's a group of trainers.

There's a group of people.

If you want to navigate a maze.

In a blindfold, it's just a Jedi trick. It's just a Jedi trick of how not to use your eyes, to use other sensory things, to be able to navigate things we can't see. I think we're saying the same thing as beautiful.

Like, once I've really accepted it, it's a very liberating idea.

Liberating because then it's not about market cycles. It's not about. It's like you kind of know that there's abundance all around you. Yeah.

Amen, brother.

Amen. This is good. Good stuff.

Good to see you, buddy.

Great to see you.