The Financial Matrix: Buy, Borrow, Die with Mark Quann

You're listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, your host, guide, and coach on this journey. Today, we're cutting through one of the most powerful and most misunderstood subjects in our lives— money. My guest today is Marc Kwan, a founder and CEO of The Perfect Portfolio, financial educator, investor, and bestselling author of 4 books including Be Smart, Pay Zero Taxes, and Rich Man, Poor Bank. Mark's financial education didn't begin in a classroom. He left school early, worked his way through difficult circumstances, built success, lost it, and found himself roughly $700,000 in debt. Rebuilding from that experience led him to challenge much of what ordinary Americans are taught about earning, borrowing, investing, taxes, and retirement. Today, Mark teaches financial strategies commonly associated with wealthy families, ideas such as building income-producing assets, using debt strategically, and understanding what he calls buy, borrow, die. His mission is to make those concepts understandable and useful for everyday people. This isn't merely a conversation about getting rich. It's about questioning the stories we've inherited, learning the rules of money, and making choices that can change a family's future for generations. Mark Kwan, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Thanks for having me, Wayne.

Yeah, yeah, this is going to be fun. Um, I've had the pleasure of speaking with you ahead of time. We've had a couple of conversations back and I just appreciate who you are. So, I want to start. There will be leadership lessons that we tease out of this. This isn't all about finance. This is, you know, but we do need to challenge the myths. Before we do that, before we talk about financial strategies, take us back to your beginning a little bit. At 13, you realized that money or maybe the lack of it was shaping your family's life. And you were given the moniker of Money Mark. So, what did young Money Mark believe that money could actually change?

You know, I just realized what I was like. So, it was funny. My parents were— my family's always been poor and my parents were making really good money from like age 7 to 12. So, I was like wearing the expensive stuff and the nice shoes and the nice jeans. And then at 13, my dad lost the company and they just fell into like Poverty, like brutal, like didn't have any money. So it was a wake-up call. Like we didn't have any money at all. We were living in bad neighborhoods. We were living in this and and um so I just like go. I was like man, now I gotta learn about money. I was like I always wanted to learn about money for some reason. I didn't like school because um I just didn't. I don't know. I was like that didn't make sense. I wanted to make money. What school have to do with making money? So I was questioning that. Um but no, I was just um my somehow at some point I started talking about how do I make money and how do I make money? My mom was like. Money Mark, right? So the kind of nickname Money Mark.

So, so what did you— you know, you, you basically spent, I would call them very formative years, 12 to, you know, deep into your teens, and, and you spent that in some pretty rough neighborhoods. You told me that you'd gotten, you know, beaten up, robbed, all that stuff while in school.

Yeah.

What did you learn about Like, you know, you're like, well, I always wanted to know about money. Was there a kind of precipitating event that's like, I must learn, I must know what it's about, I must know how it works? Or was it kind of like, huh, I'm curious, the way people are curious about fossils?

So, I've always said I was like, we're poor, this sucks, right? We need— I need to make money. So, I'd ask my parents. My dad just would say, Mark, you'll never get rich working for somebody else. I'm like, Okay, that doesn't help me, but okay, I got that. Okay, that's good. Thanks, Dad. Like, you know, so my dad was like, so one, you should be self-employed. Like, you should start a company in the future or something like that. But I don't know, there's no internet then.

Yeah, we just lost sound for a second, so just repeat your last sentence. After, Mark, you'll never get rich.

Yeah, so, you know, my— I, I thought— I didn't know how— we didn't— I don't know how to make money. And my dad said to me, Mark, you'll never get rich working for somebody else. And I was like, okay, but that doesn't really help me, Dad. Thank you. Like, that's, that's the best. That's all he knew. He didn't know how to make money. I mean, he was, he was born in a little fishing town in Newfoundland where the Irish came when they didn't have any money. Like, you know, Newfoundland, a little fishing town.

So, your dad gave you this, this great lesson on basically shoving you into entrepreneurship. You'll never get rich working for someone else. What, what was he doing? And, and what was—

He had been doing really well. He owned a company and then he lost the company, lost the major contract for The whole province of Ontario. So he was making tons of money and then boom, fell in poverty. So he was like, well, you never get rich working for somebody else. My dad knew how to lay bricks. So my dad left Canada, there was no money, and he went to California during the Northridge earthquake so he could lay bricks there. He could go build chimneys there and there was tons of work. There was just massive amounts of work in California after Northridge earthquake. So You know, my parents ended up in California. No green card, just drive to California and go start a company and start laying bricks. That's what my dad did. And I was still back in Canada at the same time going to high school. So I'm 16 years old. My friend was— my one friend was a car thief. He got out of jail. His friend was a drug dealer. He got out of jail. So I'm living with my 2 best friends. One's a car thief and one's a drug dealer. And I'm 16 on my own.

So at that age, Like, what did you do? How did you— was it just a moral fortitude? Like, how do you, how do you stop that, those kinds of influences?

I influenced them.

Your identity, like—

Oh no, I influenced them. So I was, I was the partier, but I also had a good, you know, my parents were cool, so I influenced them. So I got them into partying and not doing the, the other stuff. Now, I was also, I was selling cigarettes, to be honest with you. My first job was selling cigarettes to my teachers at school. So in Canada, cigarettes are like $2 a pack. Canada said, hey, we can tax these things up to $10 a pack. There was a spread there. So I could buy them at the Indian reservation. I could buy— my friend Graham had a beat-up car. So me and Graham used to jump in the car. We used to go buy a case of cigarettes, put it in the car at $2 a pack. And then, because they used to bring over the border, and then I would go to school and I'd sell them for like $6 a pack. So I'd sell them to the students and the teachers. I had a little business at school selling cigarettes. So I'd sell cigarettes, we'd buy booze, we'd party with it. And then my friend Mike used to provide the drugs for the house. It was pretty fun. It was a, it was a fun experience for like a year and a half.

That is something at age 16. That's, that's crazy.

Yes, I had a— I didn't go to school much. Like, I really didn't go to school anymore, but I got an award at school. It was called the most likely to come home to find a house full of people. That was the reward I got in high school at 16 years old. Because I used to have a party house. It was like you could always have a party at my house. It was like, so fun. It was a crazy, crazy life at 16.

And did you carry much of that with you?

I was an entrepreneur.

That's great.

Yeah. And then I left Canada, I went to California, I became a private investigator. I used to chase people around with a video camera. On workers' compensation claims, and that's when I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

And and that influenced you, and you sort of pushed against it too, right?

Well, it explained to me why I didn't like school because I was the kid who I thought school was bored. I thought it was stupid. I thought school was stupid. I'm like, all you're doing is teaching me to be obedient and stand up, sit down, put your hand up, go to the bathroom. So da da da da. Like, I don't want to do that. I want to become an entrepreneur. I'm gonna go do other stuff, and those kids can go get you know dumbed down at public school. So I thought it was stupid, and then I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and it confirmed why it was stupid. Schools aren't made to make you successful; they're created to turn you into obedient worker bees for factories. And I was like, oh, that's it explained everything. I was like, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'm like, oh, this is why I hated school so much because I didn't want to be obedient worker bee. I was like. And then it confirmed it. So, I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, Cashflow Quadrant. I read all Kiyosaki's books. I got immersed in it. And I started going to seminars and I bought a course on stock options. And I bought a little coffee shop when I was like 21 in Oregon, a little drive-through. Bought my first piece of real estate in Van Nuys, California. And I was like 21. I owned real estate, a business. And, and yeah, and I was, and I was learning finances.

That is an amazing bounce in 9 years as a kid, you know, 12 years old, your dad loses everything, you're poor, 16 years old, you're basically out on your own, creating a party house and creating your own entrepreneurial adventure where you're selling cigarettes to now at 21, You've bought property, you own a coffee shop.

And I still didn't have a green card, by the way. I was an illegal immigrant.

You're back in Canada, right?

Well, I was in the— I was in Los Angeles.

Now I know, but you are now, right?

I'm in, I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee right now.

Oh, that's right, that's right.

Yep, Knoxville, Tennessee. So yeah, um, yeah, I was an illegal immigrant. All my family were illegal immigrants. We just went to the United States and started working. California's like the land of opportunity at the time, it was.

So that was a while ago. You're now a citizen. I just want to point that out.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, for sure. Dual citizenship now. So it's good.

Excellent. That's awesome. So you went into real estate investments, you made a ton of money, and then how did you find yourself in almost $750,000 in debt? Like, what happened that you racked that up?

They're called ninja loans. No income, no job or assets. You ever heard of them before? I literally quit my job and I could buy real estate with— I don't know, those mortgage brokers committing fraud. Massive, massive fraud. So, you could literally— you could not have a job and you could buy real estate, right? And that worked good as long as you could get tenants and whatever. So, I leveraged it up. I had a property in Vegas on a golf course. I had a 5-plex in Florida. I had properties in California. And they were really valuable at the time. And I thought I was a genius. I thought I was financially independent in my 20s. And then, 2008 crashed. And that $1.7 million Vegas property on the golf course, it was worth like— you couldn't sell it for $400 grand at the time. And the, the property in, uh, in Florida, the 5-plex, I think I bought it for $380,000. You couldn't sell it for— I think it short-sold for like $60 grand or something like that. So you're like, uh, wow, I was $700 grand in debt. Like, whatever happens happens. Like, do what you want. Like, yeah.

So how'd you get out of that?

I just let it go away. Just disappeared.

Okay.

Just don't pay it. At that time, nobody was paying their bills. The banks had, the banks had 50,000 files of people not paying their bills. It just eventually disappears, but it definitely ruins your credit. You can't buy anything for like 10 years. So it kind of followed me around for about 10 years, you know. Um, so it's very difficult. You can't buy real estate, you can't do anything because your credit's jacked for whatever. So I literally went from real estate to literally renting for like 10 years.

Wow.

Couldn't buy real estate, jacked up credit. I was eventually able to buy a property there. And so eventually, eventually, but that was like 2012, I was finally able to buy a piece of real estate again.

So, okay. So that's—

and then just when things were going well, yeah, I came home and my wife filed for divorce. I lost the house and started from scratch again because I was broke again.

Okay.

But just when I got myself out I was back to square one again. I was totally broke.

So you've had some ups and downs. I mean, this is— it's— you've had life, right? It's like the total ups and downs.

So whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So I think I'm pretty strong.

And this is the question that I think borders and overlaps into kind of the leadership development area that I get kind of excited about. So beyond the financial tactics, which I want to get back to, who did you as a human have to become in order to make like such a dramatic comeback possible for yourself?

Yeah, I had to learn people skills, how to win friends and influence people. I had to learn how to communicate and talk to people because that was not in my family. We didn't talk to people. I was a private investigator. I used to hide in a car and not talk to people. That was the goal. I don't be seen or talk. So I had to learn people skills, I had to learn communication skills, I had to learn sales skills, I had to learn all those things. And I met a guy named Patrick Bet-David in— what year was that? 2000— forget what year it was that I met Patrick. I ended up working in his office. And, you know, Patrick Bet-David at the time was before he was starting his company called People Helping People. He kind of pressured me to He taught me to sell. He taught me to, you know, people skills. He got me reading books. He was part of the reason why I wrote my first book. He forced me to public speaking. He would force me to do it every week. Mark, you're doing public speaking. I'm like, holy crap. But, you know, so he pushed me really hard. So, I don't know, I met the right people, but I always knew when— I always knew I was going to be rich, though. Like, I knew in my mind I was. Get rich or die trying. I knew I would become rich. I always knew that. I just, you know, I was like, I don't care, I'll just keep trying. And you end up meeting people, and then you start reading books, and it changes your mindset. And just being around the right people, man. I cut all the ties from all my friends I was hanging around with. I cut ties from all of them. They were all going nowhere. They're all still Doing nothing. I mean, I was like, I gotta hang around with entrepreneurial people. That's it. Cut the ties. So I literally cut all the ties with all the, all my drinking buddies and all those guys I was, you know, going to get drunk with on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Cut ties with all of them and just spent time with entrepreneurial people. So the things that people aren't going to do, I did them all. I was so hungry to win.

So this is right. These are all things that I think are leadership traits, right? When you are One, you have an expectation. I knew I was going to be rich, right? Like, you say that with such conviction, and that is what it takes to achieve any goal. I knew there was no way I was not going to do this thing. Like, all of the people that have accomplished great things, yeah, they all, they all say that. I'm like, there was no way I was not going to. And then the other thing that you said was You know, you basically, without knowing it, you said yes to opportunity when it showed up. You may or may not have known that Patrick Bet-David was the one to be around, but he offered you this opportunity. He pushed you to be greater and greater and greater, and you took him. You took his advice and you did it. And then the third thing you said is, To do the stuff that nobody else wants to do. It's like, yeah, because—

Yeah, are you kidding me? Talk, go out and talk to people, prospect, all those things, those scary things you have to do and get rejection. I just got really good at them. I'm like, I can talk to anybody. I could, if you said go talk to 100 people, knock on the doors and you're going to get 99 nos, I could do it without any hesitation at all. I don't care. No means nothing to me. I can get 1,000 nos. Now, fortunately, I'm in a position where I don't have to chase people anymore. I have people who knocking on my door all the time. That's kind of cool. So, it's good. But you got to get beat up. You got to get lots of negativity, lots of adversity. You got to get super tough. You have to learn sales skills. You have to be willing to accept lots of nos. And then you just get good at it. You get confident and you get some skills. But yeah, I mean, I had a— and you have to decide something's true. What people don't know is they go, I hope it's going to happen. And they put a little board on the wall with a picture saying, oh, I hope it happens. But the problem is they didn't assume it's done. That's the difference. I assume it's done. It's already done in my mind. And then I don't have the board because me looking at the board says I hope it's going to happen. They didn't assume it's done. That's the thing that separates people, is the people go, I hope it happens. Then they put their picture board And then they're not willing to put the work in and they don't assume it's done. You have to assume it's already done in your mind and then stop thinking about it and get to freaking work. It's the assumption—

I'm sitting here smiling so big. This is, uh, it's one of those—

It's so wrong when people say, I'm gonna pray that it's gonna happen to me.

It's not.

You create your future. You have to create it. You have to decide it's already freaking done.

Hope is not strategy, right? Decide.

So decide.

This is a big thing. You know, I'm a, I'm a big fan of words. I talk about decide a lot. I talk about declare. You know, it's like, so decide means decidere, is to cut away. It's like from the Latin, to cut away. And so when you cut away the thing that's not that thing that you know has to happen, yeah. The distractions disappear because you're driven to do the next thing that shows up. You don't have to know the whole path. You have to know, uh, what's next, where the headlights shining. It's like, what's the next piece of road that you're going down?

Yeah.

And I love that. I love that you're saying it this way. Did you— who did you study for this? Because Neville Goddard—

There's a video, there's a great video called Will's Wisdom on YouTube. Will's Wisdom. It's fantastic.

Okay.

Will's Wisdom. I watch it every— in fact, in my course, which I run quarterly, I play it in our orientation class every quarter. So, I get to watch it every quarter because I'm like running the class. And I'm like, every time I watch it, I'm like, man, it's so good. Will Smith has an incredible mindset.

It sounds like Napoleon Hill, Wallace Wattles, and Neville Goddard or Goddard.

Yeah.

They were— they're centuries old or a century at this point. So, yeah, I mean, great, great. I'm glad you found that because that is like incredible stuff. Let me ask another. There's some really bad financial advice out there.

Okay.

And I just like, you've spent over, I don't know, over a decade, 2 decades, 20 years, 20 years in the financial services industry.

Yeah.

Right. And you have become pretty critical yourself of some of the financial advice that's out there.

Pretty critical. Sorry. Pretty? Well, more than pretty critical. Yeah.

A little more than pretty critical. You're emphatically critical of some of the advice.

Yeah.

So, 2 things. What caused you to be so critical of the standard playbook? And what are the big things that you push against?

Okay, so picture this. I'm a financial advisor and I'm being called to talk on stage to train thousands of financial advisors at a Fortune 500 company. Okay, huge major player in the industry. So I'm the guy, but I'm going on Hawaii trips, sitting with executives, and they're saying some really interesting things in the meeting, in the private meetings. And I'm in the meetings where One of the top executives, the co-founder of the company, who was known for ethics integrity—he was the ethical integrity guy that would use to talk on stage about we do everything right for the clients and we're the da da da. He's in the meeting telling the entire field force to only sell this one product. Okay, the entire company said you can only sell for this insurance company. Surprise! That the parent company was the owner of that insurance company. And that was the day I checked out. I was like, the whole industry is a fraud. And then I learned something later. I learned that the regulatory agency for the entire financial service industry is a private company owned and funded by the banks. So everything the financial advisors learn at school and college and university And the CPAs, all of their financial education comes from one source. It's a private company. It's funded by the banks. They call it not-for-profit because it's funded by the banks. In fact, they even issue fines to other companies which go back to inflate their own salaries to regulate themselves. And that's what I learned. That's when I said, you know what, I'm out. In 2018, I wrote my My second book, and I knew that I couldn't become a stay as a financial advisor. So I wrote the book. I sent my letter of resignation. People said, "What? Fifteen years in the financial industry, you got this thing going on," and I'm like, "I resign. I'm out of here. Gone." Cost me a huge amount of money. I launched the second book, launched a company called Remy Group. It's a real estate mortgage insurance investing. We're doing consulting on that. Started that company. We're getting it ramped up. It was all in-person seminars in Beverly Hills, La Jolla, Malibu. Just got some traction and the coronavirus happened and all my seminars canceled. So I'm like, okay, what do I do now? I'm like, okay, I'll write a 3rd book because I got tons of time on my hands with coronavirus. I'll write another book. And then 2, I went on to, um, I opened up a brokerage account and I was skeptical of coronavirus. Okay. I wasn't just quite a little bit skeptical. I thought it was total fraudulent when I saw it. Didn't believe it for a second. I knew it was just something, whatever. I knew it was BS. Okay, so I put a triple short on the market. You can bet down 3 times. So I went, I opened my brokerage account, I spent down 3 times, and when it hit the bottom, I flipped it around and I started betting up 3 times. And I did the one thing that I was so grateful for. I started posting my trades on Instagram that day and I made a fortune. And all my friends and all my clients, like, who were following me started following me. And they said, Mark, you should start a financial education company. And I'm like, I got tons of time on my hands, like rock and roll. And that's when we built— we started building The Perfect Portfolio. And I made a fortune during coronavirus. I was like, this is the easiest money ever made.

So explain just for a second. It's a, it's sort of a A detour. Explain betting down or buying down and then buying down 3 times.

Like, okay, good. So there's SPY, the stock market index fund SPY. There's SPXS where you bet 3 times, you're betting down times 3. It's— you can— anybody can buy it. That's very dangerous. You don't want to You got to know how to use these things. But when the market was crashing, I bought XPSS. It's a short. It's times 3. It goes down. So it makes money when the market goes down. And then SPXL makes 3 times the money when the market's going up. So I just bought them in my brokerage account. They're also in the book. Like, they're in Be Smart, Pay Zero Taxes a little bit, where they're kind of in there. Anytime the stock market crashes, I just go buy those ETFs and I make a ton of money going up.

So I got you. They're ETFs. Okay.

Yeah, they're ETFs. You just do this times 3. You can buy gold 1, you can buy gold times 2. You can buy oil, you can buy oil times 2. You can buy Nvidia, you can buy Nvidia times 2. I mean, there's all kinds of ETFs out there, but the financial advisors can't help you with them. In fact, they'll be fired for talking to you about them.

Really?

Yeah, totally terminated, 100%. It's called selling away.

It's called— I'm sorry?

It's called selling away.

Selling away?

Yeah, yeah. Financial advisor, the term financial advisor is fraudulent, all of it, 100%. The whole term, the whole entire financial industry is actually fraudulent, and I can tell you exactly why with facts, not opinions.

Okay, alright, I'm gonna— I'm going to let people find you so that they can ask you directly because I'm not a financial advisor or any— and even a financial educator, and I'm not using this program— here's my disclaimer— to offer advice. But I do want people to find out the truth and your truth because what you're saying is pretty remarkable, and I love that.

It's also in the book, and I'll give you an example. Have you heard the term fiduciary financial advisor? Have you ever heard that term fiduciary? Okay, So question, what does it take to become a financial advisor? Is it a diploma? Is it massive years of schooling? What does it take for somebody to become a financial advisor in the United States?

So to be an advisor, they need schooling, and do they not need to pass tests of some sort? Isn't there a—

They have to pass a multiple choice test.

Okay.

Multiple choice.

Remember, advisor versus trader, right?

Financial advisor, you have to pass a multiple-choice test. That's it. Okay, no schooling, nothing. You literally have to memorize the answers for a test, which are multiple choice, and they call you a financial advisor. Okay, cool. Now, what does it take to become a fiduciary financial advisor, the highest standard of financial advisors in the United States? What does it take?

I don't know.

Pass another multiple-choice test.

That's amazing.

Now, do you need a high school diploma?

I'm gonna say no.

You know why? Because I'm a high school dropout and I was a fiduciary financial advisor. Now, okay, so you're a fiduciary financial advisor. A fiduciary means you have to do what you're supposed to do, what's right for the client all the time. Most fiduciary financial advisors, they work for a company with a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. So how can I call myself a fiduciary when my boss has to maximize profitability for the shareholders of this company here? That's the definition of fraud. So you don't need any schooling. You pass 2 multiple-choice tests. You don't need a high school diploma. They call themselves a fiduciary financial advisor, but if they're working for a company That's publicly traded. It's the definition of fraud. So how is that a financial advisor?

Amazing.

These are facts too. I'm not telling you it is. It's the definition of fraud. Yeah.

No, it's amazing. Yeah.

And then the company that educates the financial advisor is a private company owned by the banks and run by the banks and funded by the banks. And that's the financial education for colleges and universities comes from the same source. So tell me how that's financial advising.

Yeah, we're bursting the bubble of how people learn about finance.

Yeah. So I'm in the financial industry. I'm the financial advisor to the financial advisors. I see it's fraudulent inside the industry, especially from the people who are running at the top of these major corporations. And then when you set up a 401, there's no talk about retirement for the employees. You know what it is? Force you to work till you're 70. That's what a retirement plan is. It's created to keep you working till you're 65 to 70. Why? to pay more taxes, defer income taxes. They get to hammer you in taxes till you die. And Wall Street gets rich, the financial advisors get rich, and big government gets bigger. That's the purpose of a retirement account.

I love that definition.

Yeah, I like to pull punches. I like to just keep it light on this.

Boom.

So yeah, I mean, I could rip apart the entire financial industry factually. Not like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I've been there. So I was like, this is ridiculous. I need to start a company that helps people with real estate and teach tax avoidance. And we teach the buy, borrow, die strategy. That's what the super wealthy use.

This is perfect. So buy, then borrow against it, then die and pass it on. Talk about this so that it's understandable, right?

So first of all, can anyone open up a brokerage? Can anyone put $100 in a brokerage account?

I assume if you're 18.

Yes, 18 years old, correct. Adults, you have to be 18. You have to have $100. Let's say you pick 5 stocks, right? I'll put $20 into Google, Amazon, Apple, Costco, and Nvidia. Put $20, $100 in the account. Now, can you buy more every single month? Maybe $50 a week into your brokerage account, right? Just automatically buy. Okay, anybody can do that. When you get $2,000 in the account, there's a thing called a margin loan. You can borrow money secured by your brokerage account. So let's say I have $5,000 in my brokerage account and it's growing. It's growing tax-free, right? It's only taxable if I sell it, correct? If I never sell it, I never pay capital gains taxes. But wait, what happens if I have $5,000 in the account and I borrow $100,000 secured by the account? My $5,000 is still there. I borrow $1,000 and I send it to my bank account. That's $1,000. Did I work for it? Did I pay taxes on it? What if I buy a gold ETF with it? I got $1,000 in a gold ETF. I literally didn't work for it and I didn't pay taxes. So, the gold grows, the stocks grow. I fund my gold ETFs. I fund my stocks account. They grow, right? And then I want to get—

You pay back the loan or no?

No, no, you never pay back the loan. You pay back your rent. There's no payback. It's buy, borrow, die. Buy, never sell, borrow to buy another asset. You circumvent the tax system, both capital gains and income taxes. Those assets are going to go because your debt's getting smaller as gold is getting larger, isn't it? Because inflation—

Ratio-wise, sure.

Correct. Yeah. So you don't— and you never have to pay it back because the debt's going to disappear because the dollar is losing value. The gold is going up. Real estate, you never have to pay it off. You don't pay off real estate. You borrow to buy more real estate. Because the real estate goes up and the dollar goes down. So just buy assets with limited supplies, great stocks, profitable companies, gold, silver ETFs, copper ETFs, real estate, whatever. Just, I buy assets, I borrow to buy more assets. I never sell any of them. And then when I die, there's a step-up in basis. All my assets could be worth, they could be worth 100 times that amount. And when I die, up to $30 million passes to my, to my family. Tax-free step-up in basis. The family gets $30,000,000. Guess what they do? They take the $30,000,000 and they never sell it, and then they borrow and they buy assets. Your family goes from $30,000,000 to a billionaire, and that's how people become billionaires. They own the assets 100— imagine 200 years from today you'd been buying real estate, stocks, and ETFs, and 200 years from now your family still owns those same assets. They never sold them because they borrowed To buy more assets. You completely circumvented the US tax system. Buy, borrow, die. I've got a 10-year-old that does this. I taught it to a 10-year-old. He learns it lightning fast. He learns it so fast, but the parents are like, I can't get it. Takes them like months, 6 months to do it. The 10-year-old's like, got it, rock and roll, keep going.

You know why? Like, we're all taught— we are already institutionalized, right?

Correct. It starts when you're in school. Yeah, it starts when you're in school. I'll break down the system for you. So the banking system has a plan for your kids. Okay, it's called stickiness. Okay, they figured this out. They figured if they get to your kids when they're younger, they can make them sticky. What does that mean? It means they won't leave the company. They get emotionally attached to the company. So pick a bank, the Big 4, they're all doing the same thing to your family. They want to sell you 5 products when you're a kid. If they do, you're emotionally never going to go anywhere else. You're stuck to them. You're stuck. Stickiness. So, they sell you to save money and get good credit. You ever heard that before?

Save money and get good credit. Your FICO score, right?

Yep. Okay. That's conditioning. They're going to condition your family. So, they go, oh, go get a checking and savings account. You're like, oh, checking. Everyone's doing it. The teachers are doing it. My school's doing it. The TV's telling me to do it. Those commercials are really nice on TV. Boom, I'll get a checking and savings account. They sold you 2 products. They have to get you another one. So they go, oh, get a student credit card because you got to build your credit score. In fact, get 2. Now they sold you 4 products. They go, oh, you need your first car loan? Come to our bank. They sold you 5. If they get you another credit card and a mortgage, you're stuck. Your stickiness. Sell them more. If they sell you more than 5 products, your kids will constantly go back to that company who has a financial responsibility to maximize profitability for the shareholders. So the number one goal of the Big 4 banks is to make your kids sticky, sell them 5 products, make them believe in the bank, stick them in front of the TV so they see the commercials and trust the bank. The bank's whole goal, get them into massive credit card debt, keep them locked in there till death or bankruptcy, charge them absolute fees, and sell them those horrible retirement accounts to keep them working till they're 70. That maximizes profitability to the shareholders. And people are like, I'm going to tell my kids to save money, get good credit, work hard, pay my taxes, go to high school, go to college, and get a degree. Everything's there. Oh yeah, they have one for the adults too. Sell the adults five products. Get you a Roth IRA and a 529 and an HSA and a whatever. Sell the parents five products. Even stickier. Sell you five products. That's it. You're done.

You're cooked. Seven products for a kid and five for an adult.

It's it's five and five. Just sell sell them five when they're a kid. Add add make sure they have five products. The financial advisors, I just sell them five products. Those they're sticky. So they sell you the HSA and the 529 and the Roth and the Roth for the kids and a custodial account. You're like, oh, my financial advisor is the best. But the financial advisor never does— the financial advisor doesn't know how to get wealthy. The financial advisor is scared they're going to die at their desk. The CPAs don't know how to avoid taxes. The CPAs have to get financial advisors because they're scared they're going to die at the desk too. And all those people line up to financial advisors and CPAs and ask for financial advice. And it's quite possible the financial advisor was a high school dropout who just passed 2 multiple-choice tests. And I was the guy leading the front, and I was sitting in meetings with fraudulent, shady people that I would never mention their name because they would destroy me because they're very powerful people. But they were not ethical people. They were just maximizing profitability for themselves and their shareholders. That's my whole finding of the financial industry. And that's why I left in 2018.

Okay, so, so, all right, you've shaken up a, a foundation that we— it's sort of like saying, you know, Columbus never landed on what we know as the United States. Why do we keep saying he discovered America? Um, it's like, you know, it's a— it's— but we were taught that when we were young. But he never came here.

Well, with all fairness, this used to work in 1980. Okay. You save money and get good credit. Okay, cool. They were not really financial predators that you could save money and they'd pay you like 7% on your savings account, right? Or 6% or 5%. You could do it, right? They weren't printing as much money because you were— if you were still on the gold standard, they couldn't print as much money. Since then, there's 7 different ways the government manipulates the inflation rate to hide it. They didn't have those 7 ways before. Then we created them after 1980 with the inflation rise. The government manipulates the inflation rate and inflation's 5%. So unless you're making 8% or 10% on your money, you're not really making money. Taxes are going up all the time, and then they're robbing you with inflation. inflation and taxes. So, um, it's so simple. Buy, borrow, die. Open up a brokerage account, buy some stocks, never sell them, borrow from them.

Right. So my question then is, like, how do, how did the, how do the ordinary people, um, actually make use of what you're saying? Because, you know, what you've said is, uh, we've been institutionalized into believing A scam. Yes. And we've all essentially bought into it because that's the way we know. Yeah. And, and that the— those in the, uh, ultra-wealthy upper echelon already know these rules that you've explained.

Uh, very few people do. It's not even the— it's not even the 1% that are using buy, borrow, or die. It's like the 0.0001%. Even the wealthy people don't know buy, borrow, or die because I don't know, it's, it's strange. Like buy, borrow, or die was coined in the University of Southern California in the 1990s by getting Edward McCaffrey. Okay. USC. If you go to Edward McCaffrey's class, as far as I know, he won't teach you the strategy buy, borrow, or die. You actually go to the guy's class who coined buy, borrow, or die. It's super simple. He was trying to explain to the students how super people get super wealthy. But it's not taught in any university in the country. You go to Yale, Harvard, Pepperdine, whatever. You can go there. You can go to any university, any college. You can become a financial advisor at any one of the firms, and they'll never teach you the words buy, borrow, or die. Because why? You'll get financially independent. That's not good because you're going to leave. And 2, you're going to start teaching your clients, and they're not going to be slaves to Wall Street and paying taxes. So why would they want— do you really think the big government and Wall Street put together a system and they said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to educate all the financial advisors and CPAs so they can become financially independent and pay less taxes, so then they can educate everybody else in America on how they can get financially independent and they pay little taxes. Do you really think that happened? Or wouldn't they make more money teaching everybody the opposite? It's called maximize profitability for the shareholders.

Yeah.

It's a fiduciary responsibility. If the executive doesn't do that, They can sue him and destroy his life. That's what fiduciary responsibility means. He ethically obedient, he has to be 100% obedient to the corporation. If he doesn't maximize profitability, it doesn't matter ethics, morality, or even if it's illegal. If he doesn't do it, the corporation could absolutely destroy his life. They can take his home, destroy him if he doesn't maximize the profitability. And that's who's teaching your family financial literacy. Like, it's insane. And that's who's teaching the financial advisors.

So, all right, so buy, borrow, die. You've already said a 10-year-old could do it. Does it matter what stage of life we start this as a process?

I got a 9-year-old and I got a 95-year-old. They're both equally excited. The 9-year-old's like, holy crap, I'm doing it now. He's 10, right? He's like a little entrepreneur now. He's like, I can make money and throw it in my brokerage account. He's got also a little portfolio. He's like buying, he's like, he loves to buy stocks and then borrow and buy silver ETFs. He loves it, right? He's, he'll even borrow money and he'll go buy silver coins at the store. You know, like he does it with his parents. I have a 95-year-old who's a former fighter pilot. He's so excited. You know why? He's like, at 95, I'm learning how to get wealthy. He's like, I don't even know how many days I got left, but this is fun. I'm going to teach my kids and grandkids. So any income, any income. I had a guy who was homeless. I had a guy who was homeless. And he joined one of my courses. He was— he didn't tell me this at the time, but he'd lost his job and he was living in his car. But he's like, man, I'm at rock bottom, I might as well buy this course. And he bought one of my courses. And, uh, he didn't tell me this, but a few months ago he jumps on Zoom and goes, look at my apartment. I'm like, yeah, cool, that nice apartment. He goes, I never told you this, but I was living in my car for the last 4 years. I was like, are you freaking kidding me? He didn't tell me. He goes, I just want to say thank you. I mean, so yeah, and then yeah, so there's like anybody can do it. It's just so simple. It's so simple, but you have to unlearn, man. It's the Matrix. So stop eating red, eat the red pill, man. Just wake up and realize the world's— the world is made to keep you blind. The public school system is horrible. It's there to turn your children into slaves. Colleges are the same. It's an extension of that system because The pharmaceutical companies and the banks fund the universities. You truly think you're getting an education. It's just the system, man. It's the system is made to keep working people factories. They're there to maximize profitability for Wall Street and maximize the revenue for the government. If you work till 70, man, that's a lot of money for the government income taxes, isn't it?

I mean, is there anybody who shouldn't be attempting a strategy of buy buy? Yeah.

Yeah. Lazy people who don't want to put the work in. So yeah, no, it was like, I define my audience very simple. I'm, I don't want everybody to do it. Like, I don't know, like I need somebody to pay the taxes. Like, but no, like you have to be genuinely excited to learn about finances. I want ethical people. You're really ethical. Great. Come check us out. Are you excited to learn, man? You get up every day like, man, I'm so excited to learn this. Right. I'm still learning every day. I'm like, what can I learn today? Right. I'm excited to learn. And they're just independent. You can like change your thinking a little bit. Like maybe that isn't true. Like you can kind of have an independent thought, which is most people can't. 'Cause you know why? Colleges reduce the ability to have independent thought.

It was proven.

Absolutely. Colleges reduce the ability to have independent thought. And high school, all the, all the schools, they're not there to make you critically think. They're to brainwash you for Wall Street. And sell your pharmaceuticals.

So, all right. So say you've got somebody who's ethical and, and is willing to think outside of what they've been taught, think independently. Yeah.

And then the book's $12. You can buy it. By the way, the book was written based on the course. So they can like—

is that Pay Zero Taxes or do you want to find Buy Borrow Die, which is another book?

Well, this is Pay Zero Taxes. Use the Buy Borrow Die strategy to get rich. So this book was written after I'd run the course for 4 years.

I got it.

I had a major news company reach out to me and say, hey, Mark, would you partner with our publishing company to write a book? So I had been teaching the strategy in The Perfect Portfolio, Buy, Borrow, Die, for 4 years. I taught like 600 people. So the major media company said, can you write a book for our publishing company? I said, I'll write that book. So the book is based on the course, The Perfect Portfolio. Somebody could read the book, it's $12, and you'll get a really good picture. It talks about stocks, ETFs, life insurance, real estate, crypto, precious metals, the 5 pillars where you can buy and borrow those, you never sell them. You can make money without having to work, without paying taxes. It uses real estate tax strategies. How do I pay nothing in taxes? I paid less than 3% last year. People say that's not possible. I'm like, look, I'll show you my tax returns if you'd like. So, yeah, you don't have to pay taxes.

So, what about the people that are like overwhelmed by debt, right? There are people living paycheck to paycheck. There are people that are entrepreneurs that are sort of like, I'm an entrepreneur, but I got tons of debt.

Like, what's the first meaningful step that Well, first of all, you need to decide to raise your financial IQ. You have to be willing to put the time. So I put 60,000 hours into my financial IQ. 60,000 hours. You don't need to put 60,000 hours. Maybe you need to put 300. How about 365 hours? You spend 1 hour a day reading the book, whatever. I got some courses online. I got a video course you can do, 18 hours, where it covers like all the stuff in the book. It covers it in in 9 classes. That's like a $600 course, right? So, um, you can do that, but you have to learn. Oh, but I also put $600,000 of my own money. The company— I personally put $600,000 to run a company with employees so that I could build this company. So I'm $600,000 in, 60,000 hours. Do you need to put $600,000 in and 60,000 hours? No, you need to put like a couple thousand bucks And one hour for the next 365 days. There you go. That's it. That's your cost to win. How many people will do that? Almost none. Most people won't buy a book or read a book. They'll never spend money on a financial education course. It doesn't matter if I spent five million dollars building the course; they won't do it. So I'm not worried about everyone getting rich. There's a very, very small people that are even awake enough to realize that they're they're they're it's the matrix, man. They don't know they're in the matrix. They think that everything's hunky-dory. They're saving money, they're getting good credit, they got the financial advisor, they got the CPA, like everything's good, man. Send my kids to college so they can get their 5 products sold to them by their bankers and then their financial advisors. So yeah, the lessons that financial advisors teach— anyways, well, no, we're not going to go into that because I don't need to trash financial advisors again.

Yeah, no, I mean, this has been quite the education. A lot of people, if you ask them, what do you really want? What would you want? A lot of people have this really fast answer, oh, I want to be a millionaire. People still say that, right?

Yeah.

Being that means different things to different people. It's like, yeah, just a millionaire, right? Or, wow, being a millionaire means you've really pushed away from all the things you've come from. Just in wrap-up, Marc, what do you want listeners and viewers, what do you want our podcast audience? This is, you know, it's one sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. What do you want our listeners or viewers to do differently as a result of hearing all of this?

Yeah, wake up. First of all, realize that this is a matrix. You're in a financial matrix, okay? The system wasn't built to help you get financially free. It was built to do the opposite, okay? Be willing to spend time and money to get yourself out of it. It's going to take a long time to unlearn. You have to unlearn before you learn. Now, if you knew nothing, it's very easy. If you're a 9 or 10-year-old, it's really easy. Know that you can start with $100 in a brokerage account, okay? I've taught this to over 1,000 people. I'll be launching my app and I can teach millions of people at the same time. So, I'm going to build the resources to teach millions of people, but I had to prove the system worked for 5 years. I've been sitting in this chair for 5 years running 8 meetings a day for 5 years.

Amazing.

And running classes every quarter to perfect the system. So, I've spent the money, I put the time in, I've proven it works. Anybody of any background, any education, and any income Can do it. Now, is there you know does if somebody is hugely in debt, there's lots of ways to get out of debt. There is, right? I'm not going to go through them, but there's lots of ways to do it. You probably just don't know it, right? So, but you got to stop listening to those financial advisors. I hate to say it, but they don't know what they're doing. In fact, but they worse than they they think they know what they're doing because they're a financial advisor. They're like. I'm a fiduciary financial advisor. I know what I'm doing.

I'm like, well, they passed a test, darn it, right?

Yeah, exactly. I passed a math multiple-choice test, right? And again, by the way, I know some financial advisors who are real fiduciary financial advisors. One, they have the licenses. Two, they're just like super high-end financial advisors. They work for institutions. They don't work for a publicly traded company. They can kind of do anything, but they're few and far between. So my company partners with one those guys. You know, he's a real financial advisor. Like, he can do really cool stuff, but you kind of need, you know, you need a lot of money for that. Like, our financial— our advisor, he's— he was an institutional money manager. He used to manage billions for institutions. We became friends and he's like, man, I want to start my own company and manage regular people's money. He's like a really cool guy. So we partnered with that guy. His minimum is like $250,000 to take on account, which is crazy because normally it's $25 million. So, you know, he's like, so yeah, we part— we've got some good relationships. And honestly, most of our people, we just say open an account and put $100 into it, and we show them here's how to set up the account.

Great place to start.

Yeah, and then we have to put $50 a week. So I don't know if $50 a week is too unbelievable, but you gotta do that, and then you start, and then you raise your financial IQ. Anybody can do it.

Alright, so would you recommend people start with Be Smart, Pay Zero Taxes?

I think so. I think so. I mean, they can go to theperfectportfolio.com. We got some information, YouTube channels. I got tons of YouTube content you can check out. I mean, I got David Walker who endorsed the book. He's the former Comptroller General of the United States. So the former CPA of the United States read the book. He endorsed it. We're working on some stuff behind the scenes. I've got tons of YouTube channels, free content. If they reach out to my team on theperfectportfolio.com website, Ask for the 3 classes. We'll send you 3 classes for free. Just watch the 3 hours, man. That's 6 hours of financial education, so you only need 360 more.

It's a great place to start, and it's a great way to prove to yourself that you want that education, right? Because it's like you're going to commit to 3 hours or not, right? So it's like, what a great test.

Yeah, and I'll leave with this. There's a great saying. His name is Sadhguru, and he says this. He goes, thinking is just a recycling of the data you've gathered in the past.

Sounds like an LLM.

Think about that. Thinking is just a recycling of the data you gathered in the past. So a person's like, I'm going to get wealthy. What have they been told? Go to school, get a job, save money, get good credit, pay your taxes, better retirement account, get a Roth IRA. Get a 529. It's just recycling all that bad data, right? It's the matrix of all this horrible data coming from Wall Street and big government to keep you trapped there. So, thinking is just a recycling of the data. So, if you don't change your associations and the thoughts going into your head, you're stuck. You never get out.

That's amazing. Really good. All right. Mark Quann, Q-U-A-N-N, if you want to find him. And you can find more about Mark. at theperfectportfolio.com. Mark, thanks for being here. This was— it's— I'm always, uh, uh, like a little shaken and very excited after I talk to you. It's, it's, it's a great mix. Thank you.

Well, I, I try not to be boring, right? So I like— and I try not to pull too many punches, and I try to get myself in trouble, right? There's like— I ruffle too many feathers, man. You know, they don't like it when you cut Wall Street's profit. So, try not to do that too much.

Try not to do that too much. No, but helping people to find their financial footing, I think, at whatever level they want, right?

Yeah, I've gotten people out of huge debt before. I mean, that's, you know, and, you know, I've got, I've got, again, we're doing homeschool students. It's cool. Like one of those things we're doing, the financial literacy for homeschooling companies. I did it for free. I'm like, this sounds like fun. So, I got another seminar for a big homeschool company in September.

That's so great. Yeah, good for you. Cool. Good for you.

I gotta keep those kids away from the banksters.

Thanks so much.

You're welcome.

All right, well, this is One Sharp Sword. My guest today has been and is Mark Kwan. Find him at theperfectportfolio.com. Again, One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm your host, Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell. And I would hope that you would like and share this episode everywhere. There are tons of people that need to see it. Alrighty, thanks. We'll see you here next week. Keep tuning in. Keep making your magic. Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. For more information, Please go to onesharpsword.com.