Derek Moneyberg - Why Sacrifice Is The Key To Success

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All right, what is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we are joined with the one and only Derek Moneyburg. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Derek.

Thanks for inviting me.

So we got connected through a mutual friend, Ryan, and when he told me about who you are and you know, we talked about coming on the podcast, I was excited because I know from what I can see on social media, when it comes to your coaching business and everything that you've done in the, in the investing world, I was just fascinated as not only someone that's looking to always learn more about that, but I think for the audience is going to be a great conversation and again, I'm excited to have it. So I appreciate you coming out.

Nice. Thank you. Happy to help.

So for people that may not know who you are, what you do, I'd love for you to give them A high level, 60 foot view of where you spend your time on a day to day basis.

I spend a lot of my time with doing boring things that most of them don't want to do. And I have to read financial statements and think about, you know, like serious business decisions. And you know, I was an entrepreneur since I was 7. I made my first entrepreneurial money, you know, walking dogs and cutting grass and shoveling snow, raking leaves, trimming bushes, painting a fence like Huckleberry Finn for the neighbor. And that's 35 years ago. I'm 42 right now. So I spent my life and you know, involved in entrepreneurial related things. And I quit my last job. I had a couple of temporary jobs for short times and I quit my last job when I was 19. And I thought why the hell would I ever want a job? I knew I failed badly. I knew I failed really badly if I ever had a job again, any job. I never wanted A job again. So, you know, my life story intertwines with thinking through entrepreneur. How do we, how do we build this entrepreneurial dollars? And how do you do that? You know, everybody wants to do some trendy bullshit right now.

Yeah.

And the Internet says that everybody that does some stupid trendy bullshit. You don't have to work, you don't have to think, you don't have to do anything. And magically you're going to be 100 millionaire or maybe a multi billionaire. And it's just stupid. It's a stupidest thought. And the people that have those stupid thoughts perpetually deserve the terrible outcomes that they're about to have. And you know, the people that I really enjoy working with are people that already have, they value education, they have a real work ethic, they want to do something significant with their lives. And they had the calling that I did that they, they knew if they, if they learned the right things, if they had the right social networks, if they put themselves around the right people, that they could build a much better life for themselves. They have a lot more freedom. And I, I won't dominate the conversation here, but I'm a bit long winded. But no, and there's the people that have a special place in my heart is like, you know, even, even if you have a job, even if you had a job, heaven forbid, but even have a job right now, you still need to know about entrepreneurship. The things that you're helping people understand are very important that you need to understand about entrepreneurship. How are you going to advance in an organization if you just show up and do the bare minimum?

Yeah.

You can't even get a raise or a promotion, let alone have a significant savings that would make you an investor long term. So those are a couple of loose thoughts and you can zoom in as you care to. But a few loose thoughts I had is that, you know, entrepreneurship is, means that even within an organization that you might be working in now, that'll get you a raise, it'll get you a promotion, it'll get you additional income and additional confidence to do more things by yourself. Like, like an adult, like a responsible, independent human. And if you did that over time, you know, pretty soon you're going to have a surplus of cash and you'll be able to invest that. And you know, beyond entrepreneurship, I think entrepreneurship is a level. There's like, there's like bomb. There's bomb. There's like employee of various gradients and there's entrepreneurs of various gradients and then there's Investors. And, you know, ideally, I think I would suspect you and most people that you associate with are they're already investors in something or they want to be investors long term, that your money is making money for you. And if you're doing some sort of work, you're doing it out of love because you enjoy doing that, not because you have to for the money.

Yeah. When did you first get involved in investing and what type of investment vehicles did you really, like, start with? Early on, I was a little kid.

And, you know, some people, kids were watching, like, cartoons and I was watching cnbc. And CNBC is not what it used to be. CNBC actually was informational television that you actually used to learn things, and now they've turned it into political theater. Like a lot of television, it's become, unfortunately. But, yeah, I wanted to understand, you know, how. How does the economy work? And I was thinking that way since, I don't know, I was four or five and kids wanted to watch cartoons and I wanted to watch business television. I called it the business channel. Like, mom, turn on the business channel.

Does that come. I'm just curious, does that come from your parents or your upbringing, or was that just, like, naturally inside of you based on what you know?

My mother was not a very ambitious person, so I couldn't attribute anything to her. Honestly, I'd say she was more of a negative role model than a positive role model. That is one of those people in your life that you learned a lot of things that you like, oh, shit, I don't want to do that because that leads to this bad outcome or that bad outcome, you know. And, you know, my father was in prison for a lot of my childhood. My father was convicted of cocaine trafficking, so he spent 15 years of my childhood. He was gone. So, yeah, maybe I got an entrepreneurial bug from him, but I also wanted to avoid that prison part. I can't endorse that. So there's a lot of legal ways to make money and a lot more money than, you know, doing anything nefarious or criminal.

Absolutely. So when. When you look at your life now, you've worked with tens and thousands of individuals when it comes to the, like, helping them learn about investing. Is that correct?

Yep.

When did that start in terms of the. The education to help people and to build a community around people that you can help.

Funny thought, I never said this on camera before, but funny thought is, you know, I'm a high school dropout. I was never going to take an order as much as I was always very Motivated, I was, I wanted to learn things, I wanted to work hard. I always had that bug in my head, you know, But I was never very good at taking orders or doing things that I wasn't self inclined to do. So I was probably, I think my first teaching gig, if you will, is when they would send me for tutoring, you know, in high school. And instead of paying attention to the tutors, I would just like tutor the other kids in math. And I was very good at it. I was naturally gifted at math. So instead of doing what the, what I was there for, I would end up kind of being a teacher aide, if you will, and helping other kids learn math and some social studies and history type things. So that's probably my first unofficial teaching gig. And then I think over time, I had managerial positions in my work when I was a teenager. I think over time, if a person's naturally inclined, that you have a natural curiosity and ambition, that you want to learn things and implement pragmatic knowledge, you kind of naturally fall into some of those roles. And I was involved in a friend's public speaking company earlier in life and I helped him grow that from Nothing to over 100 million in revenue.

Wow.

And then, you know, I built my own business. Business helping people understand investing, entrepreneurship, you know, mostly investing in global markets, primarily stock market and real estate. And then understanding like, how do we get that entrepreneurial money to make that transition from, from employee, you know, through gradients of entrepreneurship to go on to be a full time investor?

Absolutely. Question for you. I know, you know, the last year and a half just regarding the economy has been all over the place, Covid. And all these different things in your eyes, like when you look at the market, like is it a healthy market? How do you analyze it? Like, what should the younger people know that are, let's say first putting the first dollar in the stock market today? Because I think as investors you see all these crazy things, right? With the, the AMC short squeeze and all these different things. It's like, what is going on here? But when you look at the market today, like, how do you analyze it? And what are some tips and tricks that you would recommend for people that are just getting started?

If you don't understand the nuts and bolts of how financial markets work, you're going to lose your ass. And I spent nine years in universities. I went to University Chicago. It's the number one ranked MBA program out of 416 at the time I was there. And if you can't understand, if you can't Read financial statements. They don't want to hear this. Nobody wants to hear this. They don't want to hear, hey, you have to learn accounting if you want to be a real business person. You're going to learn accounting or you're going to be robbed. You're going to, those are your choices. If you're going to be involved in business and you don't understand accounting, you're going to make terrible investments and people are going to steal from you. Or you're going to learn accounting, you're going to learn economics, you know, and you don't have to have a PhD in economics, but you better have a pretty good grip of, you know, how does, what's the micro and macroeconomic theories and how do those intertwine with one another and how do you know fundamentals of finance? And if you don't have a legitimate education on if you don't understand statistics, then you don't understand probability and if you can't understand probabilities, how the hell do you make an investment in anything if you don't know the probability of an outcome? So people don't want to hear these things. They want to hear get rich quick bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And that's why they stay poor. And people that I know that are wealthy, they value education, they have a real work ethic. I don't know a super successful CEO that can't read financial statements. And if there is one accidentally, then he has, you know, somebody very close to him that he trusts that can read the financial statements. And you know, if you want to rely on somebody else to do that, there's, I mean, you're putting a lot of faith in somebody that doesn't necessarily have your back long term. So I think it's a terrible idea. So you have to understand business fundamentals. And regarding what you said about the, the COVID hysteria, which is the greatest hysteria of our lifetime. And whenever there's a great hysteria, there's a great opportunity, People get scared, people panic, sell. And I could talk for two hours on the mechanisms of like why, why the market can drop so much and really erroneously. There's a lot of ways, you know, the brief version, there's, there's people get scared and sell, but there's a lot of mechanisms in the market where they, you know, funds have to unwind leverage and some funds have to, are forced to sell because it's in their covenants where they, they agreed when they took investor money that if a Stock goes down 10%, for instance, then we sell that Stock. And that's good marketing, but it's actually bad for the. For those investors, you know, during those times, because they're selling a company that might be a very good company, but they're selling it not because they want to or based on fundamentals, but that's what they said. And, you know, to. To create confidence to get investment money to begin with. So you have these cascading events where, you know, market prices can collapse like they did in, you know, April. March 20, 2020. April 2020, things started to turn around. And, you know, if you. If you understand how the market functions and if you understand how a business functions, which, again, is if you. You have to understand entrepreneurship to even be a good investor. If you don't, what is entrepreneurship? It's like, how does a business work?

Yep.

How do we build a business and the various functions of a business from. From nothing into something significant? And that's a fantastic foundation. To be an investor, you have to know these things when. When the market collapses like that, there's tremendous wealth changes hands. I made over $20 million in a year and a half during that time, and I'll make a lot more in my lifetime. So that's a year and a half.

Yeah. That's incredible.

They don't want to hear about financial statements, but if I couldn't look at the numbers and understand what's happening in the company, you wouldn't be able to do that.

Yep. If someone does want to better educate themselves in that specific language of reading financial statements, where do you recommend they start?

I mean, you could take. I don't want to teach people accounting. I do. Okay. Like, you could. You could take a community college class and understand, you know, basic financial accounting, basic managerial accounting. They might call it something slightly different. At your local school. You could take a. You could take a community college class and understand those things. I don't want to help people. It's not my goal to be an accounting professor.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't particularly love the topic, except it made me a lot of money.

Yeah.

And you can't run a business if you don't understand the numbers. But, you know, as far as understanding how the various functions of entrepreneurship fit together, I do help people with that. I have a mentoring course that I help people with that. And I'm not here to pitch courses. You have a casual conversation. If somebody wants to do something, they'll find me and.

Absolutely.

But I have a mentoring course around, you know, fundamentals of entrepreneurship. I have another one around real estate. I have a third one around global markets. I'm not making a fourth one. I don't need a, there's not a fourth or a fifth one coming. It's like, if you understood those three areas, over 90% of people that have a net worth of a million dollars or more made at least some of that money in real estate. And in my opinion, I don't know a better way in the world to move again to earn your freedom, to be able to spend your time before you're dead. If you don't value your time, you don't value your life, by the way. So be able to spend your time the way you want to. The little bit of time you have before you're dead. That sounds pretty good to me. Anybody else is interested in that? Like, you'd probably like to not have a job. You'd probably like to have a lot of money without having to show up somewhere for 40 or 60 or 90 hours a week to go get that money. And the best way to do that is you have to understand entrepreneurship. And then long term, you have to be an investor and let your money work for you.

Absolutely. When did you get involved in real estate and what was your first real estate deal?

I was 19. I bought my first house when I was 19 and there's nothing spectacular as I was, I was going to college and I thought, well, you know, I could either rent a place for whatever $800,000 a month at that time for an okay place and your university that was going to, or I could just buy a house and I could rent out the rooms in the house and, you know, live there for free, essentially. Have a better place. You'll be the landlord or the, you know, control the environment better. And so, yeah, I said, you know, three bedroom house plus attic. Yeah, you know, I went to that attic too.

I love that.

And then I bought the neighbor's house and then I bought some other things and then I bought some other things. And I hate being a landlord, by the way, and depends what state you're in. But some states the, the courts won't enforce your contracts very well. And it's, it's a maddening experience when you have a contract that says that you and your tenant are going to behave with each other a certain way and you hold up your part and they don't pay you. And then you go to court and the judge says, well, let him stay there a few more months. As Christmas, so you can't tell your banker, you know, hey man, it's Christmas. I'M not paying you for a few months. Your bank don't want to hear that, but the judge might tell you that about your tenants, you know.

Yeah.

So that's a rougher business. But there's a lot of ways to make money in real estate. There's a lot of ways to make money in real estate. A lot of wealthy people do.

Yeah. Are you more involved in the, like single family homes or commercial or. Where do you spend your time now?

I really like distressed investing. I like to, again, I like to buy things. There tends to be a lag in the market if you have. Well, let's rewind to, you know, the, the 2008, 2009 financial crisis is, you know, December onwards, December 2008, I start buying stocks and the market continued to go down and continued. You're not going to get your market timing perfect. You're never going to. So the market continued to go down, turned around, you know, first week of March 2009, and I bought a lot of casino stocks, a lot of several other things, but primarily casino stacks. Well, the stock market will tend to rebound before the real estate market rebounded. And you know, that happened in the past. I think that'll happen to some extent in this re. In this current recession of, you know, that started in 2020 and if you can get some money, you know, in, in those distressed times when everybody's panicked, if you can get some money in the market and people say, derek, but I don't have a lot of money yet. Yeah, and you're never going to unless you start. So, Derek, how much do I need to start? Whatever you have, start there. Wherever you're at, start there. That's reality. Wherever you're at in life, start there. But whatever you have that you can invest, you need to be in those market opportunities. You get to multiply that. And you know, I found that the market tends to lag. The housing market will tend to lag. Recovery in a housing market. And you know, so I had, I mean, there were still good deals in real estate in some places until early 2013. We were buying things aggressively. So. And you can buy things with leverage. It's normal to get a mortgage. It's normal that you're buying things with leverage in real estate because it's considered a lot more secure than a stock or, you know, a bond, etc. So I think that's a fantastic. I don't want to have rental properties personally in the future. I know a lot of people that do. There's a lot of money made that way. But I was, I was buying like land parcels. I was buying some single family homes. And you know, some of these things you're paying, you know, $0.15 on the dollar, $0.18 on the dollar for land and. Because nobody wanted land at the time.

Yeah.

And you could pay 40, 50 cents on the dollar for nice homes at that time. And you know, you're just making a down payment. So you're, you know, if you made a 20% down payment and you bought the thing for half off, then, you know, you sold it later after it recovered. Your cash on cash returns can be very significant.

Absolutely. Where do you spend your time on a daily basis and how do you manage your time? I know, like this interview, the way you operate your life, the content I've seen, like, as you said before, like, time is of the essence. You have to manage your time to be very particular in how you spend it. How do you spend your time?

I tried to, I try to make sure I never spend my time with people that don't keep commitments that if we make a plan, I'm going to follow through with that plan. If I'm not dead, I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do. If somebody else isn't going to do what they said they were going to do as a good indicator that I don't need to spend time with that person in the future. And some people think that sounds harsh, but I like to be around smart people, motivated, keep their word. I'm not always nice. I don't, I don't say things nice or gentle, soft, politically correct. So people that value political correctness more than factual correctness, again, deserve the terrible outcomes they're about to have because they're lying to themselves all day. So I just try to think about reality like it is. It's like, you know, if you hang out with people that also value a pragmatic education, they're ambitious, they want to go do something significant, their brain's working well, they're reliable. You know, if you make a commitment to do something, you're going to do that together. You're going to win. You hang around people like that and guess who they hang out with. More people like that and more people like that. And you can't, you can't spend time with people that they're not even serious about their own future. They're not even committed to their own success. And I call them legacy friends. Everybody has a legacy friend or two. I've really cut away, I think I cut away all of mine. But maybe I'm in denial of that, but I sure as hell cut away a lot of them. And let me define a legacy friend is your legacy. Friends are people that if you met them today, you would never start a friendship together. But you met them somewhere in your past and you've allowed them to linger around and they've been, you know, grandfathered into your life, so to speak. And it's a great idea to cut those people off if they're not going to be part of your future, if they're not even serious about their own future, to contribute to it and contribute to yours. Just get rid of these people. And again, people don't want to say, oh, but my brother, it's my brother, it's my family, but it's my friend from back in the day, you know, it's time to get rid of them. When you can only talk about things from back in the day. Because if you talk about things you did recently, they either think you're a liar or they think you're trying to brag to impress them or something. If you just talked objectively about your present, some of those people get offended, you know, those are great people to get rid of.

Yeah, I love that. I've never heard that before, the way you said that. Very cool. So I know we were talking before. You were based in Chicago, born and raised there.

I was raised in Illinois, in Nevada, back and forth in Las Vegas and Illinois a lot of my childhood and I traveled a lot as an adult. I spent several years just traveling, traveling. So I feel very comfortable wherever I am today.

Yeah. What have been some of the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome throughout your journey of entrepreneurship?

Oh, wow. If you look early stage entrepreneurship, you're just going to get your ass kicked. You're going to look stupid, you're going to feel stupid, you're going to make a lot of bad mistakes. And, you know, if you're not willing to tolerate that, then, you know, maybe drive an Uber. Maybe you could be like a Starbucks manager or something like that, you know, but yeah, you have to be willing to look stupid, to feel stupid, to shake that off and, you know, carry on so well, what can I learn from this? And what piece of information, if I knew that yesterday would help me avoid making that dumb ass mistake? So. And that'll inform you, what do you need to learn today so you don't make a dumb ass mistake like that again and you'll make a different mistake. That doesn't mean you're not going to have mistakes, it means you're going to make a different mistake. So, yeah, I just expect even today I don't feel bad about this at all. So I don't anybody to think it's negative. But if you're ambitious and getting things done, you're going to wake up and you're going to fight three wars every day and you're going to win a couple battles and you're probably going to lose a battle somewhere and you got to be in a pretty stable mood throughout that. Probably a couple of great things are going to happen in your day. Probably something shitty is going to happen. And make sure you learn from those things and cut out the things that you don't want more of that in your future. You have to learn from those mistakes and hopefully learn from other people's mistakes first. So you don't make them yourself. But a lot of people have to make a few mistakes first before they're willing to learn from anybody else.

Absolutely. Did you have any key mentors in your life that helped you avoid mistakes?

I had a lot. I had. I'd say I started with a lot of negative role models. If I bring that term back to life. Here is there were a lot of people around me that, you know, they were, they were engaging in, you know, too much alcohol, too much drugs, criminal behavior. And I grew up in an environment like that where that was pretty normal, you know. And, you know, by the time I was, you know, my late teens, I thought, you know, I really got to get away from these people. And I mean, it wouldn't be an unfair thing to say, like, I kind of spent the last 25 years just how do I get further and further away from those people? How do you get further away? So I had a lot of negative role models like that. But what I learned is, you know, at first I just had books. I don't have access to people that were. Were, you know, winning. Winning in a significant way. So at first I just had books. And you know, some of those books you're reading biographies. Not fiction books, not fiction. If you're reading fiction, you're. You're dedicating your life to stupidity. You're dedicating yourself to a life of poverty. If you're reading fiction instead of something that's going to pragmatically enhance your value, something that if you internalize that wisdom and implemented that in your life, you'd have better relationships, more money, etc. Etc. So not fiction. But I've read a lot of Biographies. I've had a lot of psychology or business type books, and that helped quite a lot. And then I got my ass back to school, got myself to, you know, through university. Highest honors, associate's degree because I was a high school dropout. So then I had to go get my. I took my ged. I got. Let me, let's talk about here. I said something earlier about I made a good chunk of money recently, but let's rewind the clock on that. When I was, when I was 18, I was fresh out of county jail from a violent altercation where a young man approached me with a knife and I shot a gun a couple times near his head. Not at his head, near his head. So I spent 90 days in county jail. When I was 17. 18. 18, wow. When I was 18, I got out of county jail. I'm a high school dropout fresh out of jail. And I lied on my application to get a job at Walmart to stock shelves and unload trucks. And the, the value of pragmatic knowledge, the value of learning more every day and banishing a bit of your ignorance. I. You fast forward about 10 years from there. I had my first million dollars, and a few years later I had a few million dollars. And now I have quite a bit of money and I want a lot more. There's plenty of people that have more money than I do, but it's been a long time since I ever had to work another day in my life. And you know that you can't do that by yourself. You have to learn from other people's mistakes or else you're suffering. You have to make them yourself. You have to do one or the other. But that sort of mindset, it qualified me that I went from those books to meeting some of those authors in real life to having some of them as professors in my universities. You know, some of my mentors later on are multi billionaires. You know, not like I met them one time and we, we shook hands with people that I know and if I text them, they're happy to talk to me. You know, had, you know, two of my professors were Nobel Prize winners. Richard Thaler is one of them. Shout out to Richard Thaler, University of Chicago. What up, Richard? I know you're watching right now, what's up, Richard? I know you watch Rise of the Young, so, I mean, that's really quite a dichotomy, you know.

Absolutely.

That would, that wouldn't happen accidentally. It's not going to happen because you were at home chilling. It's not going to happen because you were more concerned about the trendy thing than some sort of timeless wisdom. Just, it's, that's a dream. So you have to, if you're going to be back to your core question, if you're going to be good at entrepreneurship, you have to be willing to look stupid, feel stupid, feel like, and just do a little better every day. And if you're willing to do that, I would say for two to three years, realistically, then you never have to feel that way again in your life. You'll have enough traction that things are way better than you probably thought they were going to be and can continue to be better, better, better, better. And then you can do whatever you want with your life after that.

You know, what does not only a dream life like, what does a rich, fulfilling life look like to you?

You know, look, I grew up poor. I'm half a Jew, so I like money. But what does money mean? Money is your freedom. Money buys you your time. Money gives you the freedom to have the stuff you'd like in life. Money buys you the freedom that you don't have to spend time with people that you think are ass wipes. You got enough money. You don't have to spend time with ass wipes. You got enough money. You see something at the store you like, you buy one. You see something at the store you like, you buy one for you and your friends if you feel like it. The other thing that money means, money means the difference of your kids going to some piece of shit public school run by the idiot politicians we have in our country today, or going to a private school where they could actually get an education and do something useful with their life. Money means the difference between your kids being able to go to piano lessons or dance lessons or MMA lessons. I didn't have any of that shit when I was a kid. I wish I did. Money is the difference between your daughter having braces, being a snaggletooth ugly bitch, and getting made fun of by other girls at school. Money is the difference between your son being able to have, you know, the cool sports gear to be accepted by the cool kids that are going to go play pro sports later in life instead of being kind of bullied and you just some, some little runt poor kid with low self esteem. So people that just think, you know, oh, there's more to life than money. No, there's not fucking much more to life than money. Oh, there's not fucking more. So I don't know any poor people that wouldn't like to have some more money and you know, and the truth is, you know, 80 some percent, 84% I believe, of people that have a million dollars or higher net worth, they got to themselves. So it's not just some rich kid shit. It's like, that's like one out of seven people, one out of seven millionaires were like, you know, inherited that, you know, the other six out of seven went and did something. And if you want to have the freedom to live your life the way you want to, you're going to have to have less freedom in the short term and do what's required so you can have freedom for the rest of your life and do whatever you want to and, and be able to do whatever you want to for your friends, your family, any causes that you might care about, etc. There's nothing noble about being poor or middle class. Politicians pander to middle class. Like, is there something special? There's nothing special. That's mediocrity. It's the middle class. There's nothing special about me and mediocre. There's nothing noble about being mediocre. The most, the most noble thing you could do is go do something significant that you'd be proud of and to be able to provide the sort of lifestyle that you would want to live for yourself and for the people and causes that you care about.

Wow, that was incredible. I appreciate that. Speaking on that, what are some causes that you care about and why?

I like to help other entrepreneurs. I think there's a lot of people that felt like I did that. You know, I went to school and some of my teachers, not all of them, I had a lot of good teachers. They meant well, you know. Yeah, they meant well, but they're middle class people themselves. And you know, I grew up in a different sort of childhood and as I didn't have a lot of structure in my home, so I had to think independently. I had to think, well, you know, Mom's not going to fix anything, Dad's not here, this kind of sucks. And if I don't make the best of it, if I don't find something better to do, it's just not going to be good. If I don't make it good, it's just going to be bad, that's going to be real bad. And that was the environment that I was in. And you know, I kind of have a soft spot for helping those type of people. I don't want to help anybody that doesn't want to help themselves. I don't believe In I'm not a charitable person. I've donated to my universe. I'm the biggest owner for my university, of my graduating class and for my graduate school. I created scholarship money for entrepreneurs, scholarship fund for entrepreneurs, etc at my undergrad university. So I do things like that. But I'm not a charitable person in general. Like, you can't help somebody that doesn't want to help themselves. So I want to help people that have. They're probably frustrated themselves and maybe they came from a much better background than me. And I hope you did, I hope you didn't. Some came from worse background and good for you if you're getting out of it. But I want to help people that are motivated themselves, that they're going to. They value education, they have a good work ethic and they want to go do something significant in life, something that matters.

I love that. When you look back on your journey, if you were to pinpoint like three core lessons that you would take that you want to give to somebody today, listening, what would those be and why?

100% personal responsibility. If you're looking for a savior, your whole life's going to be a pile of shit and you deserve it. So take 100% responsibility for your outcomes, even if it's not your fault, even if somebody fucked you over in some, in some circumstance, you put yourself in that position and learn something from it. So you got to be 100% responsible for your outcomes. Don't be, don't be looking for a savior. That's really pathetic. It's really pathetic thought, especially for a man. It's really pathetic, pathetic thought for a man to be thinking that way. Now I got to come up with two more on the spot. I love that. Fair enough. Fair enough. You know, if you're, if you don't have a curiosity about learning, somebody who does is going to be a lot smarter than you. And smart people have better outcomes than dumb people. And if you don't believe that, you're definitely dumb. So you have to have a curiosity about learning. You have to trick your brain to be thinking about education and product, not education in the terms of some nonsense liberal arts degree of memorizing some bullshit, half of it's a lie and regurgitating on a test. But what are the pragmatic things that would help you get more of what you want in life, that would help your financial situation, would help your dating life? That. What does that mean, your dating life? Well, have something to contribute to. You need to be the type of, if you, if you want a certain type of partner, you have to be the type of partner that that person would be attracted to. And you know, if you want a high quality, smart partner in your life, male, female, or confused, whatever they might be, you're going to have to be their ideal partner too. So anything that would, that would put you in a situation where you're going to have, you know, more options, more opportunities, higher quality options, higher quality opportunities, move towards that. You don't have to know exactly what you want to do right now. And I'm going to use that as a third one, by the way. You don't have to know exactly what you have to, what you want to do right now. If you're directionally correct and you're learning about, you know, economics in general or business in general, if you're learning how to, you know. So let me say it this way. If you were, if you're learning more about, you know, financial markets, entrepreneurship, how business works in general, you know, and additionally, if you're learning about psychology, how humans think, you know, in a lot of what you learn about psychology applies to you more than anybody else. People think they study psychology to learn how everybody else is messed up. You know, two thirds of what you learn in psychology is how you're messed up. So you could, you know, self correct some of your own stupid foibles and, you know, the other third is why everybody else is crazy, but 2/3 is about yourself. And then I'd say third, if you could be a good communicator, that you need to be able to communicate with the other people. So you're going to be dealing with them until you're dead, you're going to be dealing with other humans until you're dead. So if I said those three things again, if you understood how business and economics works, if you understood how the humans are thinking within that economy, and if you're able to communicate with those humans, there's nothing you couldn't have in life. Think that through for yourself. But there's nothing you couldn't have in life. You need to be able to be a good communicator. You must understand how you think and how others think. And you have to be able to deliver the goods. You have to give people things that they want and make their lives better. Or, you know, if you're not enhancing someone's life, you're not going to be hanging out with the best people in the world.

Yep. You know, I totally land with that. I mean, for me, Since I was 16, it's about putting myself in a room with quality people that have not only the best experiences, but that can level me up in life. And a couple more questions before we wrap your wrap up here, Derek. When you think about your future, what. What are you most excited about and what wakes you up every day in the morning? Because like you said before, you don't have to get up, be somewhere you're doing something because you're building on top of what you've already built. So what motivates you and what are you looking forward to in the future?

I'm really building a fantastic financial network. I want to be around other smart people that understand entrepreneurship and are interested in investing. And that's really what I do. I have a business, but I mean, my business is basically someone paying to cover a charge to be around other high quality people like that. I don't. You have to fill out an application. We reject a good chunk of those applications. We don't want anybody who's lazy or looking for some get rich quick. We don't. I'm not worried about that at all. I want to be around people that are, they're smart, they're motivated, and they are serious about getting rich over whatever period of time that takes. And I feel like those are my people. That's how I am. That's how I think day to day. I just want to be around more people like that. So that's really what this, the business that I created a few years ago. And you know, we look, we got all the little click funnels, plaques and million dollars, million dollars, $10 million. Everybody likes to show off on the Internet. Well, I got those two. That's nice. But the social network is worth more than the money. If I sit on my ass at my underwear, I'm going to make more money than I ever need to spend in my life playing around with the stock market or investments on my phone. But the people that I want to spend time with, since I have that financial freedom, the people that I want to spend time with are other people that are, you know, current and future millionaires and people that are serious about living a financially abundant life and we can learn things from each other and have fun together and it'd be unrelatable for me to hang out with other people. Those are my people.

Absolutely. Before we wrap up, I'd love to give you a moment to tell people more about where they can find information about your programs, your courses. Not only just like a plug, but something that's like the true meaning behind the True meaning behind why you started it. And you know, what they could look forward to if they get involved.

Yeah, you can look forward to working your ass off if you join one of my courses. You can look forward to working 150 to 200 hours over, you know, 10 or 12 weeks, depending on the course. And, you know, if you can start with entrepreneurship, you need, you need all three. It's a curriculum. You don't, you don't go to a university and take one course. You go through a curriculum. Okay. And, you know, most of my clients, more than half, if they take one course, they end up joining the other two. So there's a reason for that. They're high quality. It's not for dummies. It's not for people that are lazy. If you're offended by either of those words, you probably are dumb and. Or lazy. So it's not for you, but it is for people that are. They're already smart. They're already, you know, inside that you could be and should be doing more with your life. You know, inside that you're not really supposed to show up to whatever you're doing right now or follow a normal career trajectory, that you're willing to work hard for a period of time to learn timeless concepts, to incorporate those into your psyche and to be able to make, you know, adult decisions, be. Be a serious person and a serious entrepreneur and a serious investor. And, you know, that's what my clients are. Most of my clients are college educated. A lot of them went to graduate school. They have, you know, master's or doctorate degrees. The ones that don't are, you know, there's. I have professional athletes. I have a lot of people that are good at music or, you know, high level artists of some kind, some military people. But the main point, again, you know, good, good education, value education. If you don't have it yet, that's fine, I'll help. But you have to value education significantly. Be willing to work your ass off. And we just get people out of the course. If they don't do the homework, they don't get to reschedule. They don't. It's not a leisure thing. You're going to work your ass off for 15, 20 hours a week. And probably they're going to curse at me at some time. They're going to wonder, why the hell did I sign up with this jerk? He's kind of grumpy. It's grumpy and cheery at the same time. I've never seen anything like it. They're going to curse them, they're going to curse me, they're going to curse themselves. And the key thing that I know I've had a successful relationship with a client is when the course ends after they had some sleepless nights, after they had to make some plans that they would have made, they're like, no, I can't do that. I got to work at the end of the course. You know, the majority of my clients, 75% of them graduate, 25%, we have to kick them out or they drop out themselves. But the 75% that graduated say, you know, universally, they thank me for the efforts that I put in. And most importantly and most happy happily for me is they thank themselves for making the effort because it really changed their confidence and it really changed their life.

I love that. Well, last thing before we wrap up here, Derek. Where is the best place for everyone watching and listening to follow you, to connect with you and to learn more about what you have going on with your programs?

Yeah, I got a few million followers on Instagram. You can find me at Derek Moneyburg also on YouTube. Derek Moneyburg. And you know my website, moneyburg.com. you could find some information, basic information about the courses. But if you want to reach out and do something together, best way would be to send a DM me through Instagram and be happy to help those that are serious.

Awesome. Well, Derek, thank you so much for coming on today. I appreciate your time.

Thanks for inviting me. Casey.

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