Get Ahead of 94% of People in 2025

It's not bad to go after money. I think that we should actually obsess over money. Money is a weapon and either you're armed or somebody else is. I think the best way to take control is to follow in the footsteps of where the data leads you. Seen as the path from the really, really wealthy. What do these guys know that we don't? We are seeing the really rich get richer and the rest get left behind. It's time to play a little bit of a different game today. As opposed to being a dancing bear and making this a really entertaining speech. I thought we'd just make some f cking money. Does that sou. Okay, let's talk about how the rich actually make their money. Because the truth of the matter is they are not getting rich how you think. And I wish people had told me this before, that in fact the way they think is so different than us, that most people 1 have been taught that being rich is bad. I was actually in a room just like this with a bunch of female executives. These are pretty high powered female executives back in my finance days. Fascinating. There's this woman up front, she was kind of touchy feely, not my style, but I'm participating and the woman says, okay, you could imagine this right now. She goes, I want you, I want everybody in the room to close your eyes. So we all close our eyes and she says, I want you to picture how you feel about money. Okay? So I'm like, I don't know how to picture that, but yeah, I'm picturing it. And then she goes, now I want your body to make a physical representation of your feelings when money comes up into the equation. So if you can imagine, you know, I'm in finance, I've been around money a long time. My eyes are closed, I don't see all these other broads. So what do I do? I'm like, yeah, give it to me. Money right here. You know, I'm just like, this is what happens, right? This is what everybody's doing. And then as I turned around, it was like this. I mean, you would have thought an attack happened. Nobody's like this. And I realized in that moment that that is the reason why most people don't make any money. And because it's really hard to get a thing that you hate. And so they were actually wrong. It's not bad to go after money. And in fact, I think you should relentlessly chase your first million to the point where everybody else is uncomfortable at your level. And the reason why is because it Gets a lot easier after you've made your first zeros, after you've made a first couple of zeros, then you actually can afford life. I don't need money to show status. I truly believe that money is a weapon, and either you're armed or somebody else is. And so the idea today is that I think that we should actually obsess over money in some way, shape, or form. I think we should obsess on money because it is the only thing that allows you to push back. If you have money and you don't like something that's happening in your state, what do you do? I don't know, Move? I don't know, Run for office? I don't know. Donate to a local politician. If you don't have any money, can you take your kid out of school? Can you push back on local regulations? Can you quit your job? No. And so what do they want? They want us to be renters while they own everything. Without money, you can't actually have your own independence, and you definitely cannot have ideological independence, which means the ability for you to think for yourself. What is the world missing? We're missing this ability to question things. I think when we think about money, it's about actually getting freedom. Has anybody seen this? The best thing that happens here is New York Times goes, hey, listen, you have said a bunch of stuff, and advertisers have come off of your platform, such as the CEO of Disney, and he said, what do you think about that? And what do you say to them? If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money. Go yourself. Go yourself. And you know why I love this is because this guy is an example of whether you like him or not is kind of irrelevant. He's an example of when you have personal sovereignty and a bank account so big, you get to do the things that you want to do in life. And I think more of us should strive for some example of that as opposed to having to beg for crumbs. So the second lie that we've been taught to win is a really odd lie. And I want to get into some of the numbers really quickly. It's that how many of you guys were told by your parents, you got to go to a really good school, you got to go to a good university, right? And then maybe you got to get a really good job, right? And that's what I did, too. I went to a good university, that's Georgetown. I went to Goldman Sachs and State street and First Trust and all these companies. With guys who have side swoop and their hair like that. We're not friends anymore. I can't imagine why. And I really think that's the wrong game to play in America today. That in fact the university system is another reason that we are really broken. And let me show you why. Numerically, look at this number right here. Student loan debt and the amount that it is compared to, well, the fact that we all have to have a car revolving consumer credit meaning even credit cards living day to day. So you're telling me one stint, four years is worth almost double me having consumer credit debt overall. And then the government doesn't say, oh hey let me take from your parents taxes, put it towards the university that you're going to go to. You still have to pay me by the way. It's one of the only types of loans that you can't kick off with bankruptcy. And so instead of doing anything about that, what are we going to do instead of the government? We're going to give them $174.9 billion in just one to their investment funds. These places aren't universities. What are they? They're hedge funds. They got swoopy haired guys all over them. That's the only thing they do there. They don't actually teach anymore. They take our tax dollars, they put it into huge funds and then they enslave our children. And if you don't think that's true, well look at the numbers, look at the endowments in just the 27 largest funds. Then the last lie I think we were told, this one kills me. I made my millions by brewing my coffee at home, said nobody ever you can't save your way to riches. Now you need to have some sort of savings and that is really, really important that you don't outspend yourself. But here's the next problem with that. Check this bad boy out. US treasury so what do you do when you save? Why would the government want you to put so much into dollars in your bank account to save? Because you're giving it to the government to go spend it at universities to basically enslave our youth and all of us and tell us what to do all day. And then there's something a little crazy that's going on lately. Which is, well, it turns out the safest asset in the world, AKA bonds is one of the riskier assets in some ways. Why? Because on an inflation adjusted basis we're not actually beating inflation with the interest rate of the Treasuries. And so this is just sort of the start of the things that we were taught all throughout our time learning and learning how to make money that maybe we should question. Maybe we're in a cycle or maybe this cycle is kind of continuous. There's five clear signs that we're accelerating. Look at the debt. We got $34.5 trillion. But let's put this in perspective here. Look at this number down at the bottom. $102,000 for every American today. Today right now the average American in the US makes $57,000 a year. But we owe $100,000 in debt. 20 years ago it was $20,000. And if I. You just thought, Cody, I thought we were going to make some money. Why are you over here stomping on my heart and dreams? Let's look at actually what's happening that's worse here. Now this is kind of a confusing graph but basically what this is showing you is that even though here down to this bottom level we had interest rates at 2021 and 20202022 of incredibly low levels. We all should have been buying real estate with zero dollar interest rate loans. But last year what did we do instead? We didn't, we didn't do 50 year bonds like the savant of the financial system, Mexico. We instead continued to lend out at normal rates which means something really bad for our society. It's that interest expenses are now the biggest payment. Our government expense $0.76 on average of every dollar that we put towards our government is now going towards interest expense. If you were to go back and look at a dollar from, let's call it, I don't know, the 70s, your dollar would be worth 25% less if you were to go back and look at it since 1913. Your dollar today is all the way down here at the bottom. So those savings that you have, if you don't have them in cash flowing assets, what's happening, the government is eating away at your money every single day. And the real problem with this is both parties love spending money. They see your tax dollars come in and they see an opportunity to spend a little here and spend a little there so that they can get re elected from the state that seems at most in the middle right now. And we have to push back against this because the problem is overall you can't keep spending more than you earn. Total debt of the U.S. government $34.3 trillion. We have this huge bubble hanging over our head and one of the best ways to push back against it is exactly what you are doing in this Room here today. It is making sure that sadly, you're one of the less than 30% of the population on average that owns assets. Because while everybody else's dollars get deflated away or inflated away, depending on your situation, you guys have assets that grow in value. The last part that kind of freaks me out. But you guys know when you go to the bank to get a loan for whatever your new mortgage is going to be for your property, they kind of look and they go, this guy looks sketchy. What do you guys think? Kind of sketchy. The glasses, I don't know. He's got a button down, he's shaking his head no, that's how, you know, sketchy. And he goes, I'm the US Government. I think he I'm rock solid, baby. Look at these new balances. Just kidding. He doesn't have new balances on, but he. And yet what's happening with our US Government debt, it's actually getting downgraded too. From my days on Wall street during the financial crisis to what happened during COVID to what's happening today, we are continuing to see those who own assets and those who have money get more and more and more. We are seeing the really rich get richer and the rest get left behind. And the way we push back on that is we own assets that they cannot inflate away. I think there is one good part about this today. And the good part is that these people on Capitol Hill, they on forget that we're not dumb because this is going to impact ordinary people. And eventually we stop seeing red or blue and we start wanting some green because that makes our life a little bit easier. And so one of the hopes I have for you after we go through this next section to talk about how to make more money and better ways to do it, is that you spread the gospel a little bit. So it's time to play a little bit of a different game. And I want to run through how I think about if a business is a good business to go into or if it's not. I'm going to use six examples. I'm going to use a six part strategy that works for me and then you can apply it to any business that you want to. So this is the game the rich play today. And the best part about this game is that it happens across industry. Everybody know who these guys are? We got my buddy Mr. Himself. You guys know Elon Musk? Everybody knows Jeff Bezos. What about this guy in the middle? You guys know who this is? I hear him a little Bit designer. Lvmh. Everybody's struggling. All Americans struggling to pronounce. Bernard Arnott. Yeah, I feel you richest man in the world right there. And most people in this room, we don't even know what he looks like. Why? Well, one lvmh. Christian Dior, the biggest single conglomerate holder of fashion and luxury brands in the world. Does he look like a fashion mogul? You think he went out there and he's like, oh, this one. I'm gonna buy that. This is this season. Absolutely not. This motherf er bought those businesses for pennies on the dollar. And he did it with the exact same strategy we talk about ad nauseam. Because even though these guys on screen are geniuses and built big companies, if you pull back the hood, underneath the build was a big portion of buy. Because the rich realize one thing, which is that money is actually all around for the few who know how to use it and if you can, turn it into cash flow. And that's what we're going to talk about now. What's fascinating is that historically, how did these guys make all their money? How did Elon Musk become one of the richest men in the world? At some times, the richest man in the world? Public stocks, right? So back in the day when these guys were going public, which we don't even have on this stage chart, that's how you made your money. You built a company, you burned a lot of people's money, you made it kind of profitable or had a huge market share. Then you went public. Us retail investors got in. You got to take a big payday on it, or you got to take what's called a securitized loan, which is a loan on your stocks, right? But then something weird started happening. Then we started to see year after year after year that IPOs were not as big anymore or as common. That also the number of IPOs was down. The trend's pretty clear. But what's actually happened here, you used to, when you were younger, like, let's say my parents age, when you got in on an ipo, you got in early enough on the IPO to see a lot of their realized returns. These days, IPOs are waiting longer than ever and often have a dip after they go public. The interesting part, the difference between public and private. So stick with me for a second. This is a company called Mr. Car Wash. Mr. Car Wash is the biggest conglomerate of car washes in the country. What's fascinating, though, is look at this IPO price. 15 bucks all time high, 24 current price under 7, it's like 60% of all value over the last three years since it went public. What's fascinating about this though is, is that if you actually went to look at the difference between the two, Mr. Car Wash was traded four times by private equity firms before it went public. Every single private equity firm before it went public made money. Then the company went public. We came in as its normal investors, we meaning all of us. And what happened? We lost 60% of the value. But when you've stripped out hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in value before it gets to the retail investors, it's really hard to recoup that. So what you're starting to see is if you were sneaky and behind the scenes and didn't trust anybody like I don't, you would go and you would look at where those university endowments are investing these days. Remember those guys? You guys think they have more IPOs and public stocks on their balance sheet now or more private companies? Do you think the trend is moving more and more like this or the other way around? The fascinating part is our government actually doesn't want normal people doing private investments. Why? Because they think you're dumb. So you're not allowed to invest unless you're an accredited investor. So increasingly we have another way where the big guys get to earn and we don't. The other thing about private investments is controlled. Less attention, less short term trades. But not only that, the returns are different. So in private markets make about 11% per year. Now obviously up and down markets, no guarantee of results. These are totally performative because an average of everything is not that useful, but versus public market returns. So over time, what you're basically seeing, you're seeing a huge delta between what the average person gets and what the institutional investor gets. There's very few markets where you can play a game the same as institutional investors. You guys, I have a friend, he runs, he's a partner at a company called Sequoia, one of the biggest venture capital firms out there, right? I remember I called him up one day because we were doing some investing in something. I asked his opinion, I said, what's the hardest part for you right now? Here's my hard part. And I go, is it the raising the capital? And he said, said no, of course not. Kind of like that to me. And I thought I was like, oh yeah, of course not. Me neither. I don't know what you're talking about. And I said, why is that not a problem for you? And he said, money is such A commodity that we only take dollars from nonprofits. If you want to go invest at Sequoia and you're a for profit business, they go off, no thanks, don't want you. Because they've realized that the hardest part is getting the deals. The hardest part is not funding them. And yet all of us were told the opposite. I can't do a deal because I don't have enough money. If I only had more money, I could do this. And yet that tends to not be the case. And so you're increasingly seeing some of, let's say, the biggest, sexiest industries out there. Everybody likes AI, right? But if you look at the interest in private investment in the AI space since it started to take off, you'll realize that the AI hype is here. $292 billion in private investments. How many of those companies have gone public? So think about this for a second. The things that make the most money, we don't get unless we start them when they're private. So we have to ask ourselves, what do these guys know that we don't? They know that they want to get their hand on ownership of the assets as opposed to wait for a company to go public after all of the equity has been stripped away from the company and all of the value has stripped away from the company. So I thought I'd go really quickly through my process for looking at do I like a company in a sector? Do I not? Most businesses fail. We all know this, right? How many businesses fail in the first year of business? 90%. Again, average number. Most businesses do not make it past a year. How many businesses ever hit $1 million million dollars in sales? 10% of businesses. How many businesses ever hit $10 million in sales? 0.4%. So if you have an eight figure business, take a little bow, you're incredibly rare. So the question then becomes if most people fail, why? I think a lot of people fail because they pick industries that are missing six key components. We're going to use these examples as a way to walk through them. I like something called the profit triad. It's what I've used to acquire a portfolio worth now hundreds of millions of dollars with tens of companies inside of them. And here's how it works. You basically need three things. You need a business that has a high percentage likelihood of success based on prior history. You need one that has a high profit margin. And then you need one that is less risky. I want to try to spend as little money up front to have the highest ROI as I can in the Future. So the reason why most people fail is because they're playing the wrong game. They're trying to get jacked and look cool, and yet they're playing pickleball. You know, let's break this down. We are going to look at how to buy businesses like some of the richest guys in the world do. Buffett and Bernard Arnott. There are six things that I think you need in order to have a high likelihood for success in a very difficult game. You need leverage, you need velocity of capital, lending effect, simplicity, cash on cash return, and recurring revenue. We're going to break those down. Leverage means as often as possible you can use other people's money, not yours. Velocity of cash flow means how quickly do you get the money back after you have put it in and you want it in your pocket? The Lindia fact is, what is the historical likelihood of a business to stay around based on how long it's been in the past? So has a business succeeded for the last 20 years? It's actually more likely to succeed for the next 20. Simplicity means, is it so simple you can explain it to Grandma? If it is, then it's an interesting business. And last is if you spend money, how quickly can you get that money back in your pocket in a way that you can actually re put back into the business, not just for you to take home in salary. Then we've got recurring revenue, which basically means, do I have to keep working for every single dollar? Or if I get the dollar once, can I have that dollar continue to come to me in some form or fashion? And we could talk about all the different ways that does it. So the way that I like to explain this is I like to go through six businesses. We're going to play a game and you're going to go, yes or no. If you think it follows my six, cool. And we'll see if by the end of this, every time you look at a business, you're going to immediately go, does it have the six yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And if it does, then I know that I'm playing a game that might be easier. So I'm going to use some that are an easy scapegoat. Amazon fba, can you use leverage? When you started your Amazon FBA store, did somebody say, this sounds like such a good idea? Let me give you a million bucks. Now what about you find store in the back? Somebody give you money the second that you wanted to open your store? Okay, so we know it is a no, right? Is it profitable day One why cost of goods? She said, because the funny part about Amazon FBA is you got to pay for the stuff before you can ever see if somebody will buy it from you. So it's not profitable. Day one. Is it a long term game? Why is it not a long term game? Why do you think it might not be? Your supplier can just X you at any time if they want to sell it themselves. She's like, so many reasons. She sounds smart. You're exactly right. Why? Why is it not a long term game? I usually like to use one thing, which is what sort of multiple do I get if I sell this business clean? I want the highest multiple I can get for my business. But she gave you a bunch of insider stats information which was, if you own a car wash, is Cody competing with the Jeff Bezos of the world from my car wash located in Lubbock, Texas? No. I could probably handle those guys. If you're playing with fba, you've got a huge group of people to compete against. Guess who else you have to compete against? Mother. Jeff Bezos. Because that guy likes to white label products and sell against you. Not a long term game. Is it simple? What do you think they're like? We hate all businesses. I actually say yes. And here's why I say yes. This is a simple business because you don't have to create the product, right? Somebody else does. There's a ton of data out there to tell you if the product could potentially work or not. You don't actually have to take inventory of the product. You don't have to have a warehouse for the product yourself. You can do that all third party. So actually, simple business. Can I replace your salary? Yes. She looks rich. It can definitely replace your salary. Lots of people make millions of dollars with Amazon fba. Now can you build once and sell many times? What do you guys think? Possibility. If it's consumables. So the answer to this one is you can't sell it many times, but you can do exactly what she said, which is you can have subscriptions and you can have recurring revenue, but you can't have a SaaS product that you create at once and you have no additional value, no additional spend on top of it for every client that you get. All right, the next one that I want to go through. Affiliate model. Anybody in here run an affiliate business? Everybody's like, absolutely not. Anybody run one? Okay, if you're brave, you can shout it out later. Let's run through this process. Affiliate. Can you use leverage? The answer is no, why? Do you guys know what an affiliate business is? Okay, so an affiliate business is basically when you go out in that room, outside these doors, you see a bunch of vendors, right? Do you think Rob lets those vendors there because he's a nice guy? Kind of. He probably takes a cut, I don't know. But I'm guessing Rob, every single one of those vendors outside is an affiliate. Rob doesn't have to create the product. He finds best in class people who are already doing this separate thing and then he might get a cut one way or another. If that thing works for you. The problem is they're definitely not going to give Rob money to start his business. Right? So no, no leverage. Could it be profitable on day one? What do you guys think? You say yes, I say no. Let me tell you why. Because with an affiliate model there's a game called volume. So unless you are all yacht buyers and Rob somehow is representing yachts, what's your average affiliate commission? 20 to 30%. Okay, so imagine he's selling something that's $50. How many of those are you going to have to sell? You're going to have to have a big volume game, which I say is why it's not profitable on day one. The other reason is if you're going to do an affiliate game, you got to have some foundation to set on top of it. Now is it a long term game in affiliates? What do we think? You say yes. A couple reasons why this is really interesting actually. We have this later on in the slide deck. I'll give you this. It's an affiliate calculator so you could figure out how much money you might make depending on X and Y and Z. What you can basically see in the affiliate calculator is what the average affiliate makes. Most websites get about 60, somewhere between 1 and 100 visitors per day that do affiliate sales. That means your yearly income. The average affiliate marketer makes $27,000 a year, not a ton. And the average yearly income off of a website is this. Now why might that mean that this is not a long term game? The reason why is because. Have you guys played around on Google yet? Have you guys been using chatgpt maybe or Perplexity or other sites Order to get your answers. So essentially anybody who has built an online affiliate based website business, what are they going to have happen? They're going to have the same thing that happened in New York Times, which is their entire database scraped, pulled up to perplexity and zero affiliate commissions given, which is happening all over the Industry. Now, is it simple? Yeah. You're selling somebody else's product. It's linked. It's a pretty simple business. You could connect it straight to your bank account. Could it replace your salary? Hard. We just saw 1,800 bucks. $27,000 a year on average. Difficult to do. Can you build once and sell many? Yes, you definitely can because Rob has zero fulfillment. So what do we think? We've basically seen two models here. And what happens I think with a lot of people on the Internet is we see the 1%. How many of you guys have seen those 24 year olds on the Internet in front of their Bentley with a six pack AB somehow selling you drop shipping. Anybody else seen that? Yeah. They're like, I made all my money by selling you courses. And the problem is, I think if we know how to look at the six levers, we can really quickly tell if a business makes sense for us or not. So we're going to rapid fire through one more. I'm going to skip agencies here and I'm going to go through one that's near and dear to your heart. We're going to go through business buying and then we're going to go through real estate. I like Airbnb in a way that I don't like real estate, and let me tell you why. So when it comes to buying a business, what do I want? I want to be able to use leverage. I want to be able to make money quickly. I want to be able to have a high chance of winning. I want it to be simple and easy to understand. I want to be able to return that money back to my cash and pure purpose profit, not just getting revenue. And then I want to be able to do it continuously. So the business that I determined to hit all six of these is one that you guys are in in a varying way, which is buying small businesses, which could be Airbnb. The same thing. Let's run through why I think Bernard all not why I think Jeff Bezos, why even Elon Musk buys businesses. Because can you use leverage? Well, you know when you go to buy real estate, you can get used a mortgage, right? Now what's the problem with buying real estate with a mortgage interest rate? Okay, that could be one secured down payment. Also, it's dependent on your earnings. Right. Unless you go out and raise third party capital, the bank will not give you more than you earn at a determined ratio. Right. They won't do it. Now, when you go and buy a business, what happens with leverage? They look at the business. You don't get to buy a five million dollar house. And you go, this thing's fucking, it's valuable. Give me more money. The bank goes, what? That's not how that works. Except when you buy a small business, the bank looks at the asset and they say, oh, actually this asset produces $5 million. We will give you a loan that is representative of the asset. Nice. Best leverage out there. The second profitable day one, when you buy a business, if you buy a profitable business, you have a business that is already cash flowing. So day one, you should be able to start returning dollars to your bank account. Long term game. The longest term game in town. I'm a big believer in real estate is there for wealth accumulation, taxes, and I believe buying small businesses and business is there for cash flow. You guys know this better than I do. What's the average income on a single family home? Not Airbnb, but rental. 100 bucks a door. God, it's worse than I thought. I thought it was $164. But you know better than I do. So let's think about this for a second. What's the average cost of a single family home in the US? $270,000 a year. So you get the right to buy a house that's $270,000 a year and make on average $164 a month. You're rich. That's why people in real estate always go, I have 10,000 doors. I'm like, yeah, you make 50 bucks, awesome. You got to talk to all those mother tenants and their pipes are broken and they call you all great business. So that's why I think this is a long term game. Now the counter argument to real estate could be, how many times do you have a house that you buy for $400,000 and then one day the house is like, well, it's only worth 50 bucks now. Doesn't happen that often. Whereas a business can go to zero. So you got to be honest about both sides. That's why I think the game is played really well together. You have something that has more volatility in cash flow. You have something that has taxes and preservation and accumulation of wealth. Now, is it simple? Depends. If you're going to go out and you're going to compete with Jeff Bezos and some of these big boys. I don't buy SaaS companies on average for a reason. Complicated business, really hard to make a lot of capital on. But do you guys think that you can understand a laundromat in which somebody comes in Puts in a quarter, gets out some clean clothes, puts it in a dryer, gives me another quarter. Pretty straightforward business. And yet those sexy, sexy businesses all around us are the ones that everybody thinks make no money. Can it replace your salary? Obviously, the biggest companies in the world all have the ability to replace a salary. And it's just like a layering strategy. Now, can you build once and sell many, depending on the business? Yes, you can. No, you can't. In some ways, I think real estate can be better for building once and selling many at scale. So next time you go and you look at an investment, I want you to ask yourself these questions. If you're not going to have leverage, if it's not going to have been there for a long time, if you don't have the ability to have recurring revenue, if you can't get your capital back quickly, if somebody's selling you on a hot new AI app, if they want you to fund their hopes and dreams, I want you to say opt out. I have a belief that you should not invest in angel investments until you've made at least your first million dollars liquid. Because the best way to make a million dollars and investing in angel investment is what you start with three. And I don't think anybody needs to do that. Now, the question most people come to me, lastly, and this is where we're closed, is what business you should buy. And so I thought I'd give you a little present because Rob's my homie. That sound good? You guys want a little business buying present? All right. I don't actually think that you should spend your time looking for the perfect business to buy. Everybody always asks me the question, Cody, what are the best business sectors to buy? Well, what type of business is best? And that's actually the wrong way to do it. I want you to think about two things. I want you to think about your perfect fit business, which is a business that's so perfectly tailored for you, it's going to be hard to lose. And then I want you to pair that with 130 of the most boring basic sectors, that cash flow, somewhere in the intersection of those two is a business just for you. Here's the last thing I want to say. We used to be a nation of owners. We literally came to this country, country in particular, because we wanted ownership. And we were not allowed to have it in another country. That is the reason. We wanted ownership of our religion. We wanted ownership of our land. We wanted ownership of our ability to earn. We wanted ownership and less taxes. That one Got away from us somehow. I'm not sure we know our history too well anymore. And now we've become a nation of serfs. We've become a nation where only 3% of us own our businesses, only 30% of us own our houses, where layoffs happen massively, where inflation of our actual dollars we've earned is happening all around us. It's a huge problem that I think you guys are the answer to solving. At the top of our contrarian creed, we have one line. I have 13 lessons in my contrarian thinking creed, because I don't believe in luck. And the first one is this, that those who say it can't be done should get out of the way of those of us doing it. And I know you guys have had a moment like I've had. Maybe you've had one here this weekend where you're like, even the baddest that you've ever met, has a sleepless night, has lost money, doesn't believe that they can actually achieve the things that they want to achieve, doesn't feel good enough, doesn't feel worthwhile, and probably has had a dark night. Like my father talks about, where they kind of feel like nothing will work where they're concerned, that what they've gotten themselves into is so bad there's no way out. He calls it the head in the hands in the dark of the night, sitting alone with no idea of what to do next. Have you guys ever felt that? And I remember when I called him on one of those nights, he said that line to me, and then he said, until you have had a moment like this, you were just pretending you were not never even in the game. And I want you to remember that because I think it's going to get hard. And I want you to remember something that, if you can just allow me for the second. Something that my mother always tells me, which is, you know, when I was younger, I was kind of. I was a little shithead, you know, I was a little atheist. And I kind of like. She was like, come to church. And I was like, no. You know, and then as I've gotten older and we've lost people and we've gotten sick and we've seen reality all around us, a little bit of God crept in, you know? And she always reminds me of two things. That when you're worrying you're practicing atheism, and that when it gets really hard, it's because somebody thinks you're capable of it. And so I hope that you feel a truth that I know to be true from seeing hundreds of thousands of you all across this country. Country. That if you're already in a room like this on a Friday, on Labor Day weekend with no windows in Houston, what are we doing here? You're already in the game. You've got what it takes. And in fact, if you do not do what is necessary, we all will not have the wealth and the freedom that we want. And so I salute each and every one of you in this room. Thank you for being a builder. It is more important than you could ever imagine. And I want to say thank you all today for being here. Absolutely. All of you guys.