33: Finding Stability in Finances with Jaden Sterling

Welcome to my podcast called you'd Must Be out of youf Mind. My name is Dr. Don Wood. Everyone has experienced some trauma at times during their life. These traumatic events and experiences create a significant impact on how your mind works on a day to day basis. At the same time creates long term effects on your emotional and physical health. It will interfere with your ability to stay present and in the moment. After years of research, I used my knowledge of neuroscience to create what I call a memory reset. This memory reset reduces and eliminates the impact of the trauma and allows you to experience peace and clarity. My podcast will share many stories of people experiencing similar symptoms to you and how their lives have been positively impacted by our TIP program. I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you must be out of your mind. And there it is.

Well, welcome to another episode of you Must Be out of youf Mind. And as you know, My name is Dr. Don Wood and I'm your host. And I always bring on great guests that have a lot of things to talk about that are relevant to what we do and maybe even relevant to what's going on in our country right now. And Jaden Sterling is coming on here today to share with us his insights as well. He's a financial expert. He's got a lot of good stuff in terms of helping people in that area, but a lot of other things as well. So what? Welcome, Jayden to you Must Be out of youf mind.

Hey, Dr. Don, thanks so much for having me on the show today.

Awesome. Well, I was on your podcast and that was, that was a great experience on there as well. So I'd love to sort of just continue on with some of the things that we did then, you know, and then maybe talk about some stuff that are relevant. But can you share with the audience what sort of areas you are an expert in?

Sure, yeah. Expert. Well, 34 years, is that technically close enough?

Another year under your belt. You know, the apprenticeship should be complete.

Have me back on next year and I can answer that question.

There you go. Exactly. So as a novice, after 34 years.

As a novice in the financial sector, I actually had an epiphany at age 14. And you know, have you ever had a situation like where time stands still and you just. That's what I had, Dr. Don. It was like a deep inner knowing and I, I don't know if I knew or I was told, but somehow I felt deep inside I felt three things. I felt as if I'd be teaching about Money that I would be teaching from personal experience, not from a book I read or a course that I took. And I would be teaching people how to be empowered by it, not enslaved.

Yep.

So that set the tone and course for my entire life. I followed that guidance. It's why I went to school at American University and studied finance. And then from there I worked on Wall street with two major brokerage firms. Citigroups firm have.

Smith Barney. It's been a long time. 35 years. It's been a long time. Merrill lynch and Citigroup were the major ones. And I learned a lot. I had a huge financial education there and essentially I learned that. Shocker. But the industry is set up to make money off of people, not for investors. You know, with all the package products out there, mutual funds and bonds and junk bonds and everything else that is sold to investors. I noticed over time that if my clients had just kept their good quality stocks like John Deere, Proct and Gamble, IBM, big conglomerates back in the day, they just held on to their individual stocks, they would have done far better than if they sold them and went into the package products. So I quickly learned through working with the firms that really the best, the best way to go about it is managing your own money in individual equities. And so that's what I. In fact, that's exactly what I teach today.

Well, it's interesting you said that because it is true. If you have a client and you say buy this stock and hold it, right? That's generally not going to make you any money. It's going to make them some money. But if you can convince them that, well, let's move into here and move into here and things like that, I mean, it's sort of a churn type of a business, you know, so that's not necessarily the best thing for the investor. It's great for the advisor, but it's not really good for the investor. I remember this was a long time ago, but I remember I'm originally from Toronto and you're in bc, so we have that fellow Canadianship, right. Stuff. But I was in Toronto sitting with my guy that was doing investments for me and he said there's this company that's really interesting. I think it would probably be worth putting some money in. And I said what do they do? And he says well, they make software. And I said how does software, what does that have to do with anything? And he says well, they're called Microsoft, right? And I was like, would that have been a good investment? At that time.

Absolutely.

And I'm hoping at one point somebody's going to call me and say, you did put money in it, you just left it here, there's still an account in your name.

Yeah. We just happen to come across a Dr. Don, you're a multi bazillionaire right.

Now and that was about $10,000 you finally convinced me to put in back then. Wow. Imagine what that would be worth today.

Well, I'm going to run the numbers for you and email you and let you know.

Okay. And then I'll be in depression and I'll have to heal myself.

So no, it would have been pretty interesting. So, and I know you've got a, which I loved, I thought was fascinating, was the software program that you've developed to help people with that. So tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know about most investors out there listening, but you know, we all have this thing called money and we have really a responsibility, especially now with such high inflation rates, to earn the highest rate of return on our money. And you know, I've had a 30, as you mentioned, 34 year career of investing as, as a professional investor. And there have been times that I've got caught up in story stocks. You know, I'd hear the CEO out on the squawk box and talking about their company and I thought, oh, what a great stock. Yeah, I need to buy that. And you know, I've had many losses in the past. They haven't all been wins, many losses. And finally at one point I said, you know, I've got to do this differently. I need to create something that takes into consideration some financial indicators and some fundamental indicators and then let's create software that looks at the technical indicators, frankly, to make me a better investor. That was, that was the thing. And I said to my team, you know, if we could create software where a novice investor, someone who has no experience in the markets, if they could in three clicks find a winning stock, I think we'd be on to something. So that's what we set out to do almost five years ago. And it's been incredible the journey that we've had. We recently won a SaaS award for the best financial services company in 2022. So that was a real feather in our cap because we've known the whole time we've got something special here. But you know, it's just nice when it's validated by experts who we're judging our company against many others. So it's Software that is simple to use, easily set up, and we're very proud of what we've created with that. It's called the Sterling Stock Picker, by the way.

Oh, perfect. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you to mention. So. Because that's the biggest problem for the average investor. So they don't do what you do. Right. And don't have that kind of background and knowledge. So they end up, like you said, getting sort of pulled into something that they heard or a friend said. I remember in 1999, you know, we were getting stock advice from the guy at the post office, the clerk at the grocery store. I mean, everybody had a stock for you, right? And they're making all this money and then we get into, you know, we get into the. The bust. So that's what I always say when, when you get advice from everybody, right. Then you're in trouble, right Then. Then something's going to go wrong.

It's such a valid point. I mean, remember back in 07, everyone was buying real estate and everyone had a. A 1 or 2 or 3 or 5, 10, 15 houses at that point. And for sure, I should have known. The night I was at dinner and our waitress was telling me how many investment properties she owned, I should have known, Dr. Don, that was the top of the market and I should have just bailed on all my real estate then. So, yeah, it's. It's a. Warren Buffett said it, best you buy when there's blood in the streets. And although that's a pretty graphic statement, it's true. You know, it's. We've gotta, we've gotta do something totally contrary to what everyone else is doing if you want to have tremendous results.

Well, actually, luckily for me, I sort of saw that in 2006, what was going on. And because everybody was making money. So I said to my wife, I said, you know, I think we could probably avoid, you know, a problem here if we sold our house now and just go rent something for a while. This is 2006, because I saw it. And so anyway, so we said, well, let's go look at it. Because we saw the same thing happen in Canada when we lived up there, similar kind of thing happening. And so I was out on the golf course and there was some couple that was playing with me, and they were from California, and they said, oh, we can't find any houses. Every time I go to look at it, it's sold. I said, well, I live right over there. Do you want to come and look at our house, they came, bought it on the spot.

Amazing.

And I sold it. And that was probably. I sold in June of 2006, and the tip of the needle was July. And how we sort of figured that out is we said, okay, let's go look and see if there are any houses, you know, what the housing rental market would look like. And we were meeting people who had, like you said, four and five houses. And they, they had nowhere near the income to qualify for those houses. So if something went wrong, they were not going to be able to carry five mortgages. They didn't have that stability. So I said, this is the same thing we saw before. And so that's what we did. And my brother was actually moving down as well. And I told him, he says, well, I bought a house from a, if I'm a builder, you know, they're going to be building it. And I said, get out of it if you can. And he says, are you really sure? Because his sister in law was in real estate and she's telling us that everything's going to keep going on. This is. And everybody, you know, Jaden was telling me, you're making a huge mistake. You know, you're going to lose 20% this year alone. And my brother got out of his deal, probably saved himself probably 150, $200,000 by getting out of the deal. So when everybody's making money, right, the system's not developed for that. I mean, it really doesn't work that way. So I love the idea of being able to do what you're doing is to help the average person who does not have the skill that you have. And even though you're still a novice after 34 years. Right. But you have a thousand times more knowledge than they do and that's valuable.

Well, the. Yeah, and thank you for saying that. And the value has come for me so often. I will not buy a stock unless I run it through our stock picker. I look at, you know, what is this? What does the software say? Regardless of how tantalizing the story is that I'm hearing about a company, I want to make sure that everything else is in, in place. You know, the, the fundamentals and financials are so important and we can't overlook those. And you know, I mean, you and I were talking before the show, you know, it's even in today's market. You know, I was just back in St. Petersburg, Florida and that's where I had my real estate portfolio at 125 units there and back in the Day they were, you know, the top of the market was about 150,000 per unit for an apartment building. And I was just there a few weeks ago and I was talking to some real estate investors and they're like, you would not believe how this market has changed. They said units are selling from between 200 and 300,000 per unit. So, you know, everything has changed. My concern in this market is, okay, we've got a system that is built on frankly a deck of cards. You know, it's like a house of cards getting ready to come down because people are over leveraged, overspend over mortgage. And with the 9th interest rate increase recently, when those mortgages, commercial mortgages are short term adjustable three to five years, and when they start to adjust at 4, 500, 600 basis points more than they were originally, we're going to have some big problems. And every single community bank and every community has commercial loans because that's what they're designed to do is lend to the communities. So I don't think, you know, we've heard some issues recently about silly, I call it silly Con Bank.

Seems like that's silly and con.

Yeah, it's totally how it's playing out, right? Like when you have what I'm calling the fox in charge of the henhouse, which is the Federal Reserve telling these banks you have to buy treasury bills, bonds and notes and that same entity is raising rates nine times. As you know, Dr. Don, there's an inverse relationship there as interest rates go up, values and fixed income assets go down. So now they're saying to Silicon bank, you have to mark to market your bond portfolio. And that took them out. It's also what took Credit Suisse out, except they did it differently. They made the bond holders whole and then they, they basically told the equity holders, you know, you're out of luck here. You're, you're, you're not going to. Excuse me. That was Silicon bank with Credit Suisse. They did it the opposite way. They made the equity holders whole with the bondholders. They shut them down. So all of those investors, pension funds were in their bonds on Credit Suisse. And when you take these big. Now if you couldn't trust a big bank like Credit Suisse, then who can you go to in terms of buying their investments? There's not a whole lot out there. And I've always said, friends don't let friends buy bonds. That's the number one thing. And a lot of people say, well, I don't have bonds. And if you have a Mutual fund that says balanced, if there's any balance is in the title of that mutual fund. You've got bonds in your portfolio.

Oh, that's great advice.

So take a look, right? Go through, go through your holdings and see if there's any type of balanced or fixed income in there and get out of it. It's going to, you know, this is only going to continue. This is, the Fed is bent on continuing to raise rates and that will decrease the value of people's portfolios. And it's, yeah, it's really interesting times that we're living through, that's for sure.

Well, I'll tell you the thing that really frustrated me, especially when we had a couple of those, you know, like the 2008 and some of those other things when they would blame the investor because they didn't do their due diligence. Now I know people who are very, very sophisticated, smart people, business people that still don't know how to read, truly read a balance sheet or a financial statement. They understand the basic. They'll look at the bottom line, profitable, not profitable. What the average person doesn't know, it's just what you were explaining is what's in that. And there could be like a whole bunch of like phony, like propped up stock, say, well, the assets look really good, but the assets really aren't. They're valued at what they're valuing them that. And so they blame the investors. Well, you know, that's their due diligence. If the company doesn't provide the accurate information, even if you know how to read it, if you don't know the little subtleties, and that's what I think is brilliant about what you're doing with the software, is to pick up on those nuances that the average person wouldn't know how to do and it's impossible to do. You can't, I don't care who you are, like unless you're, you know, you or Warren Buffett or people like that, that do that on a day to day basis. To go in and look at something like that, you wouldn't have a clue. I don't care how smart you are.

I agree with you. I've, I've often been surprised in the past to someone's business. They may have a high business acumen, but not even certain about numbers and on a balance sheet. And you know, the other thing is with these, with these lenders, they want all your financial information for a loan. And by the way, 75% of all real estate owners are, have Loans, mortgages, but yet we don't have, there's no transparency on their side. We're not seeing their balance sheet. We don't know how many banks or how many bonds they're sitting on that are, once they're marked to market, they're worthless. So you're absolutely right. And it was even, you know, going back to Silicon bank, they even said the reason they were having the issue is because there was a run on the bank. Remember that people wanted their deposits out because Peter Thiel floated. Hey, there are some issues. He tweeted, you know, Silicon bank having trouble get your money out? And he did ahead of time. All the, you know, the cfo, the cmo, CEO, got big bonuses, sold their stock ahead of time. So sometimes it does help to even track when these insiders are selling. And our software, our software does that too. I've often found insiders are not the best buyers of their stock, but they're.

Almost perfect, very good sellers. Yeah.

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For sure. And that's what the average person would know, what to look for, how to look. Because how much time do you possibly spend on your own portfolio? You're really trusting right what the market is telling you. You listen to the talk, the different shows and things like that, but you may not even be giving the right information. I love the statement that I heard that I thought sort of appropriate with this is there's three types of lies, there's little white lies, there's really big lies and then there's statistics.

I love that because you can put.

Anything into a statistic, anything into A balance sheet doesn't mean it's accurate. It adds up. You can add up 1 and 1 equals 2, but if 1 is worth 0, then 1 and 1 isn't equal 2. So if you've got that portfolio inside that asset, that's a zero, but they valued it at a one. It's like the Big Short, you know the movie, the Big Show. I'm sure you watched that or saw that.

Yeah, excellent.

You know when they're trying to say, well, these bonds aren't worth anything, but they value them as AAA bonds. So then you're the average investor, you say, well, they're all AAA rated, why'd they get triple A rated? Because the bonding company rated them. But the bonding company worked for the bank that paid them to rate them.

That's right.

So you would look at that and say, well, you know, Moody's or one of these institutions rated it. They're, they're supposed to be the best of the best, right? But they got, when the guy said that's what they paid us to do, you were like, you didn't have a chance. You were totally smoked.

You know, this whole, if you think about it, I mean we're talking, let's go deeply cerebral here. When we think about how the economy is set up, it's actually set up to separate people from their money. I mean we can, you know, look at every billboard on, in, in New York City, every magazine. We're meant to feel not good enough, not worthy enough. You know, unless you have that six pack abs and all those creams and things that nature right to. And most people don't feel good about themselves, so they're insecure and the, the market preys on that. And same with investments. It's the exact same thing. It's, it's a huge.

It'S a huge eye opener. When you look a little deep, more deeply into like for example, Roku stock. Well, who knew that Roku has a half a million shares of Silicon bank on their balance sheet. And now the stock is dropping today because they're saying, hey, a big part of our portfolio is now worthless. That money isn't available. And as a shareholder going, why was the stock down 10% when the market was up yesterday?

And so most people wouldn't understand that unless they're like me, silly crazy guy. Looking at all these, reading all these articles and looking at these things for our software and, and noticing that it, as an investor today, it used to be you could buy and hold. It was a brilliant strategy. If you bought John Deere stock back in the 70s, 80s, nine, even in the 90s. And you held onto that stock, you would have been. You, a multi bazillionaire. I mean, just, you would have made so much money just from that one company alone. But now, I mean, we have to be much more reactive as an investor. Take profits when you can, and that's what I teach people to do. You know, in actuality, you can actually get your stocks up 30, 40, 50%. They don't want you to know that. You know, most. And I read these articles and it blows my mind, but they're saying, don't expect to outpace the market with your investments. It's like, well, why not? Why, why not? Right? It'd be like, like, because we're making.

Money, don't take our money.

Yeah. Telling your kid growing up, hey, don't expect to make much out of your life. Like, we would never do that. Right. We wouldn't do that to our children. Why are we doing that with our money? I think I'm a big believer in energy. And when we put the energy into working with money, not for it, we work with it. It's, it's a symbiotic relationship. It's you, you've worked hard for your money and now it's time to get your money to work for you so that you don't have to worry about the higher grocery store prices. You don't have to worry about, you know, just this runaway inflation that is not transitory, which we were told. So we have to, as an investor, navigate what's being told to us by lamestream Media and figure out, you know, what's truth, what's real, and then basically do the opposite of what they're telling us. You know, you've got guys on there like Jim Cramer yelling and screaming, buy this stock. He was the one who said, buy Silicon bank stock at $400 a share. His exact words were, it's the buy of a century.

Oh, geez. Wow.

And that stock's worth nothing today.

Yeah.

So he. They keep touting this stuff. They're paid to do it. They sold their soul. At some point you have to ignore those knuckleheads on there. Lamestream Media, get rid of it. I always tell people, look, the news is an acronym for nothing ever worth saying anyway. So just get. Don't. You don't need to watch it. There's other streams of. For media and information out there that's much more helpful. So I think the investor today has to be much more Agile with their portfolios and a whole lot smarter, at least with information that's really important.

What's so funny because you, you listen to those shows and I joke all the time with my wife about it is they'll bring on an expert and they'll say, so tell us where you think the market is going. And then here's, and I've, I got the script for you. Two things could happen here, Jaden. Yes, the market could go up, but it can also go down.

So there's, there's a chance if it goes up. Right. If this could happen. That, and, but, but don't count on that because it could also go down. And I'm like, I hope they're not paying this guy because you could have brought in anybody off the street to say that. You could have just handed that script. Don't say anything. Right. Say absolutely nothing, but give people the hope that it could go either way.

I know, Right.

And that's what they do. And then it's just like you get no answers. They're politicians.

Yeah.

And they, they give you all this sort of mumbo jumbo and they talk about yields and all these different kinds of things and you get absolutely no advice.

That's right.

And then when it goes wrong. Right. Then they turn around and say, I told you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you'll go like you were just saying with Jim Cramer. No, you didn't. You said the opposite. I don't think they understand how recordings work. Right. But it just, you know, and we can look at that even in politics now. It's the same kind of thing as they'll say one thing and then literally say the other thing at another place and deny that they ever said it in the first place. Even if you show, you could show them, here's what you said 10 years ago.

Right.

And they'll deny it. And it's bold faced lying. It's, it's frightening. Like where we are, especially in this country. And I know, you know, right now we're talking about probably the, I think the darkest point in our history right now, apart from maybe World War II and World War I. But I think we're at a very dark time where this country is in a lot of trouble when we start indicting presidents for things that regardless whether the politics. Take the politics out of it. I don't care if this was Bill Clinton or this is Donald Trump. Right. There are certain things that are worth fighting for. I think we're at a point in this country we need to fight for our safety right now. I think we're in a lot of trouble. Yeah.

I mean it's a huge rabbit hole to go down.

I mean I just think one, one thing so simple, open the borders up.

Like why are they not open for you? You know they're open. I'm a US citizen so I can freely travel there. But people who aren't can't freely travel there who don't have taken certain shots that they were told to take. And you know, I mean that's a whole nother issue and conversation for folks and it's, it's just, it's really, really. I used to be so proud. You know you're right. I live up in British Columbia and I'm a Canadian permanent resident and I as people would ask me well are you going to give up your U.S. passport? And I always say no, of course not. I'm a U.S. citizen. I love being, I'm proud to be American and I am. And yet now when I see everything going on it's a real shame. I really, I like lack of infrastructure. All these act. I mean just so many things going on right now and a lot of people are at their wit's end and I keep praying for everyone around the world because we people need a lot of prayers right now and a lot of support, emotional support, hope. Right. We need to really bring that in because there's so much being put out there that's a narrative and one has to do their best to discern what's real and what's not.

I, I think the biggest issue we have and I guess it's always been this way so we just accept it. Right? Is having parties. Why don't we just send the best individuals from our areas to represent us and forget about a party. Can you imagine if you took a corporation just. Let's just take any corporation you want to pick. So you just mentioned John Deere and you had a two party system in John Deere. They would collapse.

That's right.

Because they could never get anything done. One would be working. We're going to expand into this market. No, that's a terrible idea. We can't spend that money. And they'd block any kind of movement. Anytime anybody in the company had a good idea be the other half of the company trying to stop them. How do you can't make any corporation work like that. How could we make a comp or country work like that? Yeah.

And you wonder is it meant. Exactly. That's exactly right. The point that you just made is so profound because then the next question is, what is it really meant to work?

Yeah, like that's what I'm saying. The party system is actually working against us because it creates division. So you start from division. Right. So I just, I just wrote my fourth book and it's about parenting. Right. And how to be the best parent. I'm not saying I was perfect by all means, but now learning a lot more about how the brain works. But it's sort of coming back to this point. One of the things that I talk about in the book is that you can't have parents if they're not united.

Yes.

I don't care whether you agree. And, and that sort of even happened even in my own home. And not to a bad degree, but my wife had a lot more of a disciplined kind of an approach to it where she wanted them to have their chores and do things like that. And my attitude was, well, they've sort of got so much going on in school activities and they got so much going on in sports. As long as they get good grades, why are we so worried about. I'm doing the chores around the house. Right. She was right. And I did not support it. And I think that was a mistake. And so is that a monumental problem? No, but it. The kids could pick up on that and they would divide us on it. So if in your own home, you're not united. Right. You're going to have consequences to it. And so it's the same thing in a company. It's the same thing in any relationship. Get united. Even if. So even though I didn't maybe agree with what she was saying, I should have supported her and held the line on it.

Right, Good point. Absolutely. Be working as one, as a cohesive unit.

Yep.

Kids, as you know, they pick up on everything spoken and unspoken.

Yes.

And they're constantly watching and it's how you show up. And I agree. I'm fully on board with your wife. Like when the kids. So I came into a marriage with my wife. She had two children, 6 and 8 years old. They're 20 and 21 right now. And I got to. To go through building that relationship with them as a stepparent or as my daughter calls me, a step up dad. I love that.

That's good. I like that I call her. Right.

So these are my step up kids. And, and I was in a really unique position to.

To, to raise them with the values that I had. But then my wife has value she was raised with. And then the children's father as well. So we actually raised them together as a cohesive, the three of us as a cohesive unit. So we would have meetings with the children because we knew the most important thing is the kids and their well being, first of all, their emotional well being. We made sure that everything was always harmonious with, with the father in that relationship. And it's always been great. He's one of my best friends in Canada since I've been here. So I think, I think if people can, when they step into relationships, there's so many who have step up kids and step parents. Right. That kids are navigating that experience. Experience. I think we have to adult up and say the most important thing is for these kids. How do we create that harmony and work together as a unit and have family meetings with that other parent that's coming in? I mean, you and your wife, you know, fortunate that you've been married so long and raised children together. But not every, as we know, 50% of marriages don't end that way. So there's a lot of step parent situations out there that need to be navigated well. And when I see it done well, you can tell by the kids because the kids are thriving, thriving. They're productive, happy, you know, they're not having to deal with like when my parents divorced when I was young, I was always put in the middle, tell your dad this or tell your mom that. And I hated it. And I always said I would never be that person. And it's, it's paid off because the kids are really well adjusted.

So imagine if you ran a country the way you ran that situation.

That's right.

There's no. So the, the father was not a different party. He was in the same party. It was the children. Right. So if the country could do that and instead of saying it's a president, a vice president with the Republican or Democratic Party, it's the president and vice president of the country for the people. Right. And then everybody shows up in Washington was saying, we have some things that are important in our community. Right. And then everybody can go, okay, let's see what your community, what we can do to help your community as opposed to, no, if I help your community, then it looks like I'm supporting a Republican or a Democrat, I'm going to lose my seat. How like this is such an. I think if anything, what this whole situation this country's showing us is how bad the system is.

And there's your fifth book, Dr. Don, right there.

Yeah, that's it.

That's it. You are so right. Because that's your, that's your case study. Because you can go back, you know, a long time to get data and how things have been so dysfunctional and then you bring in these ideas that you have because they're brilliant. There you go. There's your fifth book. I can't wait to read it.

Yep, yep, that's a great idea. But like I said, it's so true. So the country's got all these issues with it right now. The financial world is in crisis as well. So we've got all this going on in this country and it's very, like I said, very dark time. And you know, and, and I'm not in con into conspiracy theories. I don't want to promote that at all. But you know, you've got this banking crisis and then we go and indict the former president right now. What's everybody talking about?

That's right.

Not the banking crisis.

No. Bingo. Huge distraction. This is all about two things they're doing. Instilling fear in people with constant, constant news reports, negative news reports, and distracting people from what's really important. And you know, I, I don't know, I think this conspiracy term, I'm, I'm throwing that thing out the window and I'm looking at it saying, hey, these people, the truth seekers, like these are people who can think for themselves, who aren't buying the lamestream narrative out there, who are looking at things in a much more objective way and saying, you know, this is, this is not good what's happening. And, but we also have to remember, without dark there can't be light and without light there can't be dark.

Yeah.

So we have this incredible time that we've started. 1212 12, this portal opened up, a spiritual portal where the veil is thinning with the other side, the non physical dimension. And it's easier now to get guidance from the non physical. Like, have you ever had a question on your mind or on your heart and all of a sudden an idea drops in, you're like, wow, that's exactly what I needed to know right then.

Yep.

That could be from your higher self who you know is tuned into the non physical. And you know, we're here. We wouldn't be put on earth without any help. And we're given help through spirit guides and archangels and angels. I don't know how many most people believe in angels because they're biblical, but there are probably times like I, I love to watch about near NDEs, near death experiences when people leave the physical body and they, you know, ended up somewhere else. And they're. They. The. The stories are always the same. I felt absolute love and peace. I felt safe. I felt. I felt filled up. Like they're. They. And they never wanted to come back to this earthly plane. Right. They're like, no, I'm good. No, I'm staying in there. Not your time.

Yeah.

And they find themselves back in the physical meat suit that we're in and, you know, having to navigate this earthly experience and. And, you know, it's an amazing time to be alive, to bear witness to what is happening, because we are experiencing on every level, a transformation that we may not ever see again. I mean, the banking systems, transforming.

Medical system, everything global. Like, it's incredible what's happening. And things, you know, things get messy in the middle. That's how I like to refer to it. It's like the wash cycle. You're doing laundry. You know, if you were to cut the laundry machine off the middle of it, your clothes aren't ready yet. Right. Let them. Or coming home. Sometimes we come home when the housekeepers are halfway through the house and it looks like a bomb went off, and then we leave and we come back when they're done, and it's like, oh, that's lovely. Okay.

Yeah.

So, you know, in the middle, it gets messy, and that's where we're in. We're in the messy middle moment. And it's. It will play out the way it needs to. And most importantly, we have to continue to really work with our higher self and our spiritual side, to claim that good is going to come from this, transformation will come from this.

Well, you have to get really uncomfortable before we make any changes when everything's going well. Right. It's easy. So when things get difficult is when it gets our attention.

That's correct.

And I think that's where we're at right now is. I think. You know, I'm not sure if. If yesterday was the point where we're getting everybody's attention, but I think we're very close to getting everybody's attention.

And.

And when we do, then. Then the solution should start to come.

Yes.

But as long as we're fighting over everything right now, we're never going to. I think it was Lou Holtz when he said, I never learned anything when I was speaking.

Brilliant.

And I love that. It's so true. So everybody's yakking right now. Everybody. The. Was it Winston Churchill who said.

The parrots will squawk when the eagle is silent, what he meant was like, if the United States. Right. Isn't involved, right. The parrots will start squawking. And that was right during the war, World War II. So until the United States got in, nothing got resolved. We are the country that can solve the world's problems. But right now they have set us on a complete division course and that's that, that's like in your home, if somebody, if the father of those children came in and separated you and your wife. Right. By driving a wedge in. Right. You never would have been able to be successful raising those children. And I think there's where we're at right now.

I think you're right. I think you're right. It's a real shame. And people need to be so vigilant and keep connected to their. I call it a truth meter. We all have it. We all know when there's truth versus lies being spoken. And so it's very important. When you're hearing or reading of anything, ask yourself, does that, does that even feel right? Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Right. Like, like really what's really going on there? Because we know the agenda they're trying to push through. It's getting old now. Now, right? It's like, remove the guns, you know, do you know, get everything, get everyone on a central bank, digital currency, because they want to track your spending. I mean, it's just this, the narrative is getting old. And so now we have to look at how do we create communities that are out of the system. I mean, that's what I'm asking myself this very day. How do I do that? Well, how do I buy meat from the local rancher? I buy vegetables from the person who's got the local greenhouse. And so I'm just doing everything local, bringing it in because I mean, they want to put bugs in our food and they want us, you know, eating bugs. And our bodies aren't meant to eat bugs. So if you know where your food comes from, you know, you vote with your dollars. Stay away from these big chains of McDonald's. Unfortunately, Dr. Donald, we're getting a McDonald's in our little tiny community here. And I'm so upset over it.

I just, I can't believe our wonderful, healthy, healthy minded community has brought that in. And I know I'm going to upset a lot of people. A lot of people love McDonald's and they're more than welcome to eat there, but there's so many other better choices to make and we vote with our dollars. So I Just say, make the best choices. You know, stay local. You're actually making a difference when you buy meat from that local rancher rather than that box store. That's. Who knows where it's coming. Could be coming from China, for crying out loud.

Well, I think, Jane, where the problem's coming in is the fact that. And, you know, it seems so obvious, right? If you have decent information and an ability to absorb information.

Yes.

But the average person doesn't know who to believe now. So somebody's going to come along and say, well, McDonald's is this, this, this, and this. And then somebody goes, but then I hear somebody else go, you know, that's not true. So you get. You don't know who to believe, because I can get an expert that'll tell you that McDonald's is the secret to the fountain of youth, for sure. Yeah. And they'll tell you that. And if you want to hear that, that's what you'll hear.

Yeah, you're right.

So if you really like it, you're going to go, yeah, but I heard, you know, so and so talk about how this food is actually nourishing us and how good it is for us. And you'll never convince them because they heard what they wanted to hear.

And that's why I say go with your internal truth barometer. Everyone's got one. We've just. It's just been dumbed down with, you know, even the fluoride in the water. That. That's. That's a neurotoxic chemical. It's the number one ingredient in rat poison. And yet people are thinking, it's fine to be in the water and I'm gonna drink. No, it's not fine.

Look how clean your teeth will look, though.

Yeah, exactly. Look how clean. Yeah, exactly. The things that are the. The lies that are shared with people to. In order to, you know, to eat their food, drink their water, do things that are really harmful for the physical. And when we're. When we're polluting our brain, when we can't put a. When the body can't. The brain can't link, create new neural pathways, it means you're not going to have another original new thought. And that's a shame. Right? So let's focus on creating the expansion of our brain so that we can actually have cognitive function to process information in an intelligent way rather than go with what's being told to us.

There we go. Perfect. So we're going to let you in a little secret there. So I'm talking to a financial expert. And I told him I had to close out a position. So we just came out of pause so we could do that. And he totally respected it.

I totally get it.

That's.

That's awesome.

Before 4:00'. Clock. So I. I put the trade in. So I'm pretty sure it probably closed because we're not at four o'clock yet, are we? Nope. We got time, so it'll get done. Awesome.

Plenty of time.

Very cool. So, yeah, I love this conversation because, you know, a lot of times now too, when people have, you know, financial stuff going on in their life and they get burnt like that, they also create trauma and then they're afraid. So so many people are afraid to, you know, if they got burnt in 2008 or they got burnt in 99, then all of a sudden you're trying to talk them into making an investment decision and they get paralyzed, they go into freeze. Do you see that happen when you're talking to people?

Yeah. You know, and I frankly, I really liked your take on it. So everyone, you have to listen to Dr. Don on my podcast, Intuitive Investing. The. The interview was brilliant. And I even said to my wife, I said, that's when you want to listen to twice. So you're right. That fear gets trapped into the physical, you know, physical, emotional, spiritual bodies. And it's difficult to get someone outside of that fear. So the only way you do it or heal through in terms of a transaction like we're talking about, is you force yourself to click the buy button when there's blood in the streets, when things look horrible. And so dad and I forced myself in.07. I remember vividly, I was at my home in Black Mountain, North Carolina, at a summer home there. And I was on the sofa with my laptop and I was watching the ticker tape and the headline article back then, Dr. Don was, Is the market going to zero?

I remember thinking, wow, okay, this is that there is so much fear. Like, the market one day was down a thousand points. It was a day when the market was down a thousand points. Back then was a lot on a percentage basis where I had to force myself to buy. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But boy, did I get some good buys back then. GE at $10 a share, Apple at like 22. I mean, it was incredible what I got to pay for these stocks. And I've always said you make money when you buy, not when you sell.

Yes, that's so true. And I was just talking to a guy He's a doctor. And I was talking to him today because I work with some professional golfers, right, who are playing on the professional tour. And he was sort of out. He goes, that must be so difficult. He goes, I am not a great golfer, I'm an average golfer. He says, and I go out and he says, and we're playing for $20. And he says, and I stand over a four foot putt and I'm absolutely terrified. My hands are shaking. And he goes, I don't need $20. Right. He says, why does that happen? Right? Well that's coming from something else that's not coming because I'm going to lose my house if I miss this putt. That's coming from something else that has created fear about making a mistake or fear about made, made to look like you're foolish or something, you've gotten called out on something. There's all kinds of things that could come into that four foot putt. And so the key is to be able to close that out. That's what I work with the professionals on is one, clear the trauma first, right. But then also clear the neural pathways, the patterns that got formed from that so that they can keep their mind quiet. You can do the same thing in investing, right. If you can learn to quiet that, that old pattern from showing up which would make it hard to push that buy button.

Yeah, brilliant. I love that, I love what you just said because you're right, you have to get to the root of the trauma if you want a long term result and you know, you can band aid it. Like my band aid was, okay, I'm going to force myself to click the buy button.

But that doesn't mean that, you know, trauma from other trades, it hasn't gone away. I mean it's still there. I was in vet, I was, you know, very candid with you. Before when we invested in up here in Canada, the big talk was these marijuana companies, medicinal marijuana and how it was going to be a multi billion dollar industry and you know, it's just going to take this, take the world by storm and Canada was the one leading the way. And a lot of these Canadian companies have gone either bankrupt or gone to zero or the stock was 40, 50, $60 a share. And that's why I say when I got caught up in story stocks. So now I don't do that anymore. So you can either, you're right, heal the root trauma or find something that you can go to as a tool so that you don't have to be stuck with.

These patterns of behavior, Here's.

A really simple way to explain it, and I think this will really help is it's just the way our brains work. And so when we have a traumatic event or we have something that was disturbing to us, what I call it can even be an emotional concussion. That was sort of a term I used. When we have one of those, our mind uses those as resources. And so it's as simple as this. You have to convince your mind. Right. By doing the kind of work that we do, that then is not now.

Because the mind sees then as now because it operates in the present. So every one of us think that the key to be successful is to stay present. And that's true. Here's the problem. Old data from 10, 20 years ago. The mind sees in real time. So then is now. So your mind is actually doing what you want it to do is to stay present. It's just dealing with old data.

Wow.

So it's like looking at a stock chart from 1995 and saying, I just can't pull the trigger on that John Deere stock. But if then was now, you do it exactly as you would know. So it works in the reversal. So on the positive side, if you said, like, I could have said, wow, if I had bought Microsoft, then what it would be worth now? Your mind sees it the same way. Then is now. So you see why if you have a bad situation and your mind is seeing then is now, why it'd be hard to pull the trigger, why it'd be hard to push the net, the buy button. That's what you have to eliminate. Now is now. Then is not now. Then is then. Now is now.

That's profound. And then turn the TV off so you're not getting external stimulus telling you that you're not making a good decision.

Yep. It's like watching a. A recording of the 1975 Super bowl and trying to decide whether or not you want to put money on the game.

Yeah. Right.

That's the confusion that the mind looks at with trauma. Yeah. Because the 1975 Super bowl does not exist. It's information about something that happened in 1995 or 1975, but your mind sees it in real time, so it's trying to decide whether or not it's a good bet or not. Right Then is not now. That's old information. It's history. We can learn from history. And that's what you're doing with your program is you're saying, let's take the history and bring it into now, that's right. Would you make the decision now based on what you knew then and apply it to now?

And it makes sense because that's all we have to draw from, like something very mathematical, financial, financially speaking, is the past. And that's what I love about bringing in more of the spiritual component and the ethereal component too, because your guide, your spirit guide, this might be a funny topic for a finance, you know, from a financial guy. And people sit, tell me it all the time. I'm like, I approach it very differently and it works for me. So that's why I share it, because I only share what works. And so that's like your higher self knows. If we look at time as a dot instead of a line, then we can say everything's happening now, past, present, future. And your higher self knows because their vantage point is much greater. It's like having someone stand on the top of the building versus on the street level. You can see a whole lot more from the top of the building than you can down at street level. So we're connecting with that higher self that's standing on top of the building, looking out and saying, okay, consider this right move, go in this direction, marry this person, take this career move here. And if we follow that guidance, chances are really good, things are going to work out way better than if we listen. It's kind of like, remember the movies, long time ago in the, you know, like, I'm 55, so back a long time ago, there was previews and they had a little angel on the shoulder and a little devil, right. So if we're following that angel on the shoulder, we're probably going to be experiencing a much different result than we would if we followed the devil on the shoulder. So I just say to the folks, you know, you've got that angel on your shoulder. It's. It's always trying to get your attention, always speaking to you. And you know, now's the time to, to tune into that frequency a little bit more.

Yeah, that's. That's really wise. And, and the same thing about whether it's investments or it's relationships or it's anything else, everything else that you've experienced in your life, you can use it to move forward or you can use it to go backwards.

That's right.

But that's using it in the present. And so you. Yeah, and so that's what you have to do. And that's very hard to do just based on the science behind how our mind works. Because your mind is. When people say to me, I sabotage myself, Right. So I could have said, well, look, I just sabotaged myself. I could have bought Microsoft, you know, and in 1990, and, and I didn't do it, right. I just sabotaged myself. No, my mind probably said, we don't know anything about this. Don't, don't take a chance on this. So it was protecting me, not hurting me.

So, you know, I've had other people say that to me before. Oh, I could have bought Apple when it first started trading. And I always say, and you know, and then they still holding on to the fact that they didn't buy Apple when it first started trading because they would be worth that 10,000 would be worth, you know, 10 million. And I always say, you know what? You would have never held it to 10 million.

Right?

Yeah, right. Like once you're, once you doubled your money, you would have said, sell that thing. I don't even know anything about it. I've doubled my. I'm good. So, you know, it's kind of one of those things we have to remember. I love this. There's a sign in an English pub that says, free beer tomorrow.

Yeah. Does anyone ever get free beer? Dr. Don? No, no, no, no, because we have.

Because if you come back tomorrow, be free burial tomorrow.

That's right. That's right. You only have the very present moment, and you're right. That's the only way you can affect change in your life is to make, make a new decision. I always say, you know, you're doing well in life. If new ideas come to you, if you're making a new decision, a different decision, do something different than you have in the past. And, you know, even with finances, you know, if you're, if someone is listening or watching the show and they're thinking, oh, I just let my broker do this, or, you know, I don't even read my, my statements when they come in. I've had many students who say they, they used to get their statements and put them in a drawer, wouldn't even open the statements. Dr. Don. They couldn't even look at their statements.

Yeah.

Now they're managing their own portfolios and doing really well. So, you know, for someone out there with money, especially now, you've got to start taking an interest in your own finances. This is so important. In fact, it's critical. We are at that critical go time here where you got to start waking up and taking control of your money.

And, and your program that you're offering is years of experience that the average person doesn't have to go through.

That's right.

So yeah, you had to eat a lot of McDonald's hamburgers to get to that understanding that McDonald hamburgers are not good.

So rather than having to do that, just listen to what you're telling them because you've got the background and experience to do it right.

Yeah. And our, and our software is free. They can just go in and do a, do our basic plan and you can work your way around the software. And I'm in there every Monday doing a live stream Monday at 12:30pm Mountain Standard Time. Given my ideas of what's going on the market, sharing what I openly share what I'm buying and selling and I give the reasons why and you know, I think there's a lot of value there.

So what, how do they get to that place? Give us the website address.

Sterling. Like my last name Sterling. Like sterling silver. Stockpicker.com sterlingstockpicker.com Perfect. We'll get you there and you can look around and see if that interests you. Like we don't even ask for a credit card to join you. Like because I can't stand services. They're like, oh it's free but give us your credit card. I'm like no, let's not do that.

As long as you cancel within 30 days. Then you forget.

Yeah, we don't do that. We're, we're pure play here. Now we have a basic free and then we have a pro version which we do charge for but it's only 29amonth US and you know, for less than a dollar a day you're going to have some incredible information available at your fingertips. We even have what we created, what's called a portfolio assistant. So we walk someone through what their risk tolerance score is. You take a, a 5 minute 12 questionnaire, gives you your score of what you can handle in terms of risk tolerance. And then we show you stocks that are aligned with your risk tolerance. And then you type in if you have any cash available to invest and we'll create an entire portfolio for you of stocks that we vetted and that are four and five star rated.

Yeah. So that's you can't lose. And I always trust the people that are willing to show you first. Right. Whenever and wherever I've gotten burnt, it's usually the guy that says, well you have to pay me this much and it's going to take six months before you start realizing any return on your investment. And then six months go by and you never got it. And they, well well, you know, nothing's guaranteed. So you're basically saying, come on in. What have you got to lose?

Yeah.

Can you set up a, A note. This is the wrong word. Not fake portfolio, but a.

A test portfolio.

Yeah. So you and we have, we use that terminology, portfolio versus watch list. You can click through and stocks to your portfolio. You can add cost basis information. We'll track all that for you. We even have little nice fancy meters to show what percent your portfolio is up or down and what dollar amount. And yeah, you can do all that and track it easily on your phone. Our app rolls out. Oh, Dr. Don. Fingers crossed. Within two months. Two more months. That is a huge undertaking because we created the software first. So on your desktop it works fantastic and it works great on the phone. But we realized we had to make sure make it for an actual app. So it worked well on every mobile phone. So we're so close to having that complete. And once we do, you'll have access to it on your phone.

I love it. So anybody listening out there, if you want to work in this area, I think this is just a no brainer. It really is. You can't really lose. And somebody with your experience, Jaden, I think is. Is so valuable. So I thank you for sharing your wisdom on our show. I got to share mine on yours. And so everybody check it out. And certainly if you're looking for some really solid ideas, I think this is a great place to go. I know I am.

Awesome.

Thank you, Dr. Don. I appreciate it.

I appreciate all your time here and thank you every. Any last words, anything else you want to share before we wrap up?

I think the thing is, especially now, I mean, we've pretty much covered the important parts, but I think it's really important to start really waking up to, to recognizing, you know, start making some financial goals. We only, we have this very now moment. So if you make a goal, keep working toward it, I think it's really important to stay disciplined and on task during this time. Try not to get distracted or, or too fearful.

Yeah. And it's the same thing. So I just made a trade there. So what'll happen is the typical thing is on Monday morning, if it opens up higher, I'll go, oh, why did I do that? You know, but that's that human nature, right? And if it goes down, I'm gonna feel like I was just brilliant.

So brilliant.

Oh, man, I just can't lose. It's just so good at this.

But congrats for taking control of your money. That's what you're doing.

Yeah. And I had made the decision that's what I was gonna do today no matter what. And. And I think a lot of that has to do with the times as well. I thought. I just don't want to hold anything like what I was holding there over the weekend because I don't know what's.

Going to happen exactly. Too much uncertainty. It's a really good plan. Way to go.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for being on you must be out of your mind. And thanks, everybody, for listening to another edition of you must be out of your mind. And there it is.