"What To Do With Your Money" - Part 3 of 67 Steps to Getting Anything You Want Out of Life Health, Wealth, Love, & Happiness with Tai Lopez

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Hey folks, welcome to part three of this special podcast series that I've been doing with my coach and mentor, Ty Lopez, in which you get to sit back and hear Ty and I talk about a lot of the strategies that Ty has developed. Ty has this program called 67 Steps to Getting Anything youg Want out of Life, Health, Wealth, Love and Happiness. And Ty uses a lot of those concepts to coach me and give me advice, particularly with respects to business and finances and even life. Now, if you didn't get a chance to listen to part one or part two of this series, you, you should check them out. In part one, Ty and I talked about multitasking and reprogramming your genetics and even checking your email less. And you can check that episode out@BenGreenfieldFitness.comTY1 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.comTY and then the number one and in part two, which is over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com TY2TY and I talked about how to know when you're actually making enough money, when you can stop focusing on income and start focusing more on life or love or happiness and kind of how to strike the ideal balance between being over ambitious and under ambitious. So these are some really interesting calls that Ty and I have. So I highly recommend that you check those previous two episodes out. Everything Ty and I talk about today, I'll put over in the show notes over at, you guessed it, BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tye3 that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ty3 the number three. Now, Ty right now is over in London and you're gonna get a chance in just a second to hear about what he's doing over there. But that is why also you may notice a slight lack of the high resolution quality that you're used to getting for audio. I think it's because Ty is in some kind of like a payphone booth in London eating tea and crumpets. You might hear like some horse carriages and stuff go by. And you know, I don't know how many, how many other fallacies about London I should start presenting right now. But Ty, what are you doing in London?

So I'm on kind of a speaking tour. So I was doing a talk here in London and by the way, I went to the Amish not too long ago, so there was some horse and buggy. I went there for some.

Nice, nice. Well, so you do these, these conferences in London. Are these like private, private talks that people there go to? Are these things that are open to the public, like for people who are listening in to this show who might be living in London or other places where you talk?

Yeah, it's public. I'm gonna give you a link for your site to have the calendar. We're doing one in Los Angeles. I do them in la, New York and London. So kind of rotate around. So that way hopefully access to most of where the audience is right now. So I got one coming up, big one in Hollywood and London, again in New York. So yeah, they're open to the public. I mean we have resell tickets and we were talking on three main topics. So the seminar is titled how I got a million customers and how you can too. The 10 tools to creating a multi million dollar business. And then we also talked. The third thing was on persuasion and sales and closing the 25 cognitive biases and the 67 steps. All that stuff that people ask a lot about.

Cool. So you said Hollywood, London and where else?

New York, New York.

Awesome, awesome. Cool.

About every six weeks I'm doing one of those.

Nice. Well, if you're listening in and you want to go to one of Ty's retreats, I'll put a link in the show notes for you.

I hope you Paul Salatin on the next one. So those of you I've never done one, me and him together, my original mentor and I together, it's going to be kind of a special one.

Where's that one at?

That's going to be the one in Hollywood.

Oh, cool. Is that the one in, in January?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Man, I wish I could make it down there. I'm going to be in the Middle east, otherwise I would, I would honestly come down and go to that one.

So guys lined up. So I'm doing. My first original business plan when I was 14 years old was to create a conference where I bring in the smartest people on subjects and have them debate with each other. Because most conferences are just one person giving you their opinion and really pressing people for the hard answers. Really not trying to create conflict but really saying, okay, let's get five of the wisest people out there and let's ask them, is it better to work out this way or this way? Is it better to eat this diet or this diet, or is it better to be an employee? Better to save money, better use the stock market, Better to build your own business. All those questions that people have about health, wealth, love and happiness. So it's taken me a while to get around to doing these conferences, but like Joel used to tell me, better late than never.

Yeah, yeah, cool. I like it. Joel. Joel's a great guy. I've actually got a couple of his books lying around because we're going to be adding some chickens and goats to our property later on this spring. So I'm trying to catch up on that. Anyways, though, usually in these calls, as I think anybody listening to the first two kind of know, you and I just talk about things that are keeping me awake at night or that I'm searching for answers on. And, you know, you give some of your advice and insight based on that. One of the things that I had told you that I was interested in talking about in today's Call is money. And I know that a lot of people are probably aware that Tony Robbins just published this book called Money. And I read it. Have you read that book, Ty?

I have not, but I peeked through it. I got an advanced copy I should have. I looked through it, and it looked solid. Looked like he's interviewing sharp people. And. Yeah, I mean, I've been in that kind of financial world since I started back in 2001 in finance, specifically working in that same thing. And it's funny, the things that he's talking about in that book in 2015, that's what we built our business around back in 2001. So I realized in 2001 that most of the financial advice that people get is wrong. And so the reason is, by the way, is what Charlie Munger says, Beware of perverse incentives. So most of the world, excuse me, most. You know, I've been taking Melatonin here. That's been helping me travel. But most of the world, the problem is not that people are malicious. You know, we overestimate. I forget what philosopher said this, but we overestimate the malice that people do to us. When we think about, let's say, the health industry, the food industry, we think a lot more about conspiracies and evil intentions, but for the most part, most humans are just going about their day, trying to survive. But what happens is we live in a world specifically when it comes to someone listening to this, your financial situation, the advice you're getting comes from a place of perverse incentive. So, for example, the stock market, you're being guided to put your money into various mutual funds and stocks that pay commissions to the advisor. That's a perverse incentive. So even the greatest person, even a person who means you no harm, is being guided down the wrong way. You see that in food. It's not that the processed food companies are wanting to poison their own children and poison a generation. What they're doing is they're running the math. And when they put in more sugar and more processed food, their profits go up in the short and relatively in the long term. So there's a perverse incentive for them to keep putting more sugar in. So what you have to do. Same with doctors, right? Just like financial doctors get paid when you're sick. So, sure, a doctor, when you go in the office with him, he's not out to make you unhealthy. Most doctors generally, even though they prescribe medications, sometimes in an allelopathic kind of covering the symptom, covering the root of the problem approach, they still tell fat people, look, you need to lose some weight, you need to not eat, you know, drink so much beer and also stop smoking. But a doctor's not highly incentivized from the pay. And money motivates people. They're not motivated by. Then just anytime you tell somebody it's not motivated by money, just say, well, then no problem. Then let's just give all the money in your bank account to charity. Because you don't care about money, right? Everybody cares about money. So a doctor is obviously, if all doctors and you hear people talk about this were motivated by, you get 100 patients and every day you get a set pay, Every day that all 100 of them are healthy and every day that they're not, and every day that someone has a disease directly related to lifestyle or dies prematurely, you get docked in pay. Well, guess what? Doctors will become very persuasive, even more than they are now. So they have good intentions. And the same thing in finance. So I actually just recorded a new series. I haven't had a car for a couple years just because I had Ferraris and Maseratis. And I don't like to get too materialistic. So two years ago on Halloween, I sold my Maserati and I just happened ubering or taxiing or walking or going with friends. But I finally decided that experiment was up. So after two years last in Halloween, I bought a Lamborghini. So I've been shooting a new series, and I did it not because I Like to show off. I just like they're fun cars to drive. So I've been shooting these Lamborghini lessons on business. And the last one I did is called the three Things I Wish People had Told Me when I was 18. And one of them is I wish someone had Told Me. Basically nobody in the world knows what they're talking about. Just always remember that. And the reason, there's many reasons. One of them I just gave the world set up with a tremendous amount of perverse incentives. Universities, the reason people go to college, you know, the reason you walk out of college. And many people are not equipped to go out and make money for themselves. They just become nine to five workers and usually they major in something that they never use again. And because the university gets paid the tuition, whether or not you went for the right, whether or not you learn anything that's going to be useful to your career. So if universities had a money back guarantee and after four years, if you are not happy with what you learned and do not think that it was worth it, you could get your money back, well, guess what they would do on day one. They wouldn't let you take Spanish as a major. One of my brothers took Spanish as a major, racked up, you know, 80 to 100 grand in college debt and never used it again. And see that college would have said it's not the university's evil, they're perversely incentivized. So if they had been on day one, you have to go through 10 rigorous career aptitude tests. You have to. And then we continually double check and we be sure that Spanish, because for some people, Spanish is the right thing. You want to be a Spanish writer or a philosopher or something, you need a Spanish degree, but not for what he needed. And they could have steered him. So always remember, when it comes to a subject like your personal bank account, most everything you heard is wrong. For example, one of the things you've heard is that savings creates wealth. Well, this is a double edged sword and a somewhat complicated subject because I can easily argue that nobody gets wealthy if your goal is wealth creation or at least the five, I call them the five pyramid levels of finances. So every one of us, and I'm sure you've been at different stages in the pyramid. I've been in different stages. The first, lowest one, the one you don't want to be in, I call Donald Trump debt. Donald Trump at one point began to not pay attention to his businesses in the late 80s and he went $9.2 billion in debt. He said he walked by a homeless man and realized that homeless man was $9.2 billion richer than he was. He was in that Donald Trump level debt. And you got to get out of that. The average American had about 220,000 of debt if you count their home. 30,000 of automobile debt, another 30, 40, 50,000 of consumer credit card debt. So debt is the lowest above that in the pyramid. You have scarcity. And Daniel Kahneman, he won a Nobel Prize, Princeton researcher and economist. And he and his researchers found that if you make less than 75,000 a year in most countries, in most cities in the world, you're living at lower happiness. There's two measurements of happiness. There's momentary happiness and there's memory happiness. Momentary happiness doesn't really go up based on how much money. That's why you can meet a miserable billionaire. But the other side of your brain, that creates something called memory, happiness, achievements, accomplishments, things you've been able to do, that goes up the big bang for the buck. Where you get the most marginal reaction in your brain for material things is hitting that 75,000 to about 150,000 income. And I remember when I did that back in, I think it was 01. I worked for GE and I got my first paycheck. It was a number 71,000. I remember life got noticeably better. And so that's level two that that below 75,000, you're in scarcity. If you can hit this number that Daniel Kahneman talks about, you move into the third level of the pyramid, which is financial independence. And that's really like 75 to, let's say 120 or 150. Above that comes prosperity, like 150 to 1 million. And then the last is when you can make over a million. That's wealth and impact you can really have. So for people, when you're trying to move up the pyramid, you have multiple strategies. And this is where life gets confusing. And as I said, you have to realize most people either are perversely incentivized or have no idea what they're talking about. About. And I've been lucky enough, you know, been, you know, became a certified financial planner and built a company with 6,000 clients that we helped and hundreds of millions of dollars we managed. So I've seen, you know, in person, both in my own life and working with thousands of clients and through the training that I've had, that you don't go up through savings. So savings are very important. So don't get me wrong, people misunderstand what I'm saying. But no wealth is created through saving. Only wealth is created through spending. And let me justify that because that's gonna sound wrong and some of it's semantics. I don't want to argue with it. Think of it this way. If you make the average American family makes about $80,000 a year. If you make $80,000 a year and the average American family saves less than 5% of that. So let's just say your savings is about $4,000. So you got 4,000 disposable income. So you have a choice. You can a hide that money under your mattress. Okay, that sounds like savings. The problem is inflation is devaluing your money anywhere from 2 to 4%, roughly, depending on the time. Okay? So the economy is spending your money for you at the rate of 2 to 4%. Even if you don't want it to, it's spending your money. It's nasty. Now, what if you put it in the bank account? You put it in a bank account and get how much now? 1, 2%. Well, the bank takes your money, they pay you 1 to 2% and they spend it for you. So it makes somebody wealthy, just not you. It makes the banks wealthier. So now you have the other option, which is what people do, is they spend it on rrd, what I call rest, rot and depreciate. That's one of my mentors that never spend on rust rot. People spend money and make 80,000 a year. They spend it on rent. See, when you spend on rent, you made somebody wealthy, but not you, you made the landlord wealthy. Now you might have to. Rent might be a necessity at the time you have to pay, but you made the landlord wealthy. And then of course, the landlord oftentimes has a note and he pays the bank, so he transfers it and makes the bank wealthy. Now you can buy food, you make somebody else wealthy. Now some of these, like I said, you must do, you're not going to necessarily grow your own food, but you should never get it. Twist it in your mind as to what's happening. So you've got restaurant depreciate. You put a dollar out and the only thing you really get is a momentary benefit. Like you get to live in this apartment for this month, or you get to eat this sandwich which sustains you for now. Then that leads you to the last category and the only category that makes you real wealth, and that is when you invest. Now, the book by Tony Robbins and many books like it, you know, they talk about mutual funds and they Talk about this type of investment, but I want to tell you something that vastly surpasses those. And I can back it by every statistic, but common sense, and mathematically, the real bang for the buck is when you invest in yourself. And this is what's not being talked about enough. Let's just do the numbers. If you put, let's say you make $80,000 a year and you, you have an extra 4,000 to save or 10,000. So you put it in the stock market, the average return after costs, after the fluctuations. People never do the math, right? They do. You got to do what's called a Monte Carlo simulation, which shows the ups and downs. People usually just say, oh, I'm going to make 8% every year. It doesn't work like that, but let's just say it did. You make 8% every year after taxes and after fees and after inflation of 2 to 3%, you know what you're left with a couple percentage points of real wealth created, let's say 2%. So you have 8%. That's if the average person doesn't make it. So let's say you make it. Inflation eats up 3% even if you keep your fees low. Trust me, there's transaction costs you'll never completely eliminate. Let's say 1% is eaten up there, and what are taxes going to eat up? So you're left with 1.2%. So at 1 to 2%, that means your money doubles using the rule of 72 every 36 years. So, sure, wealth is created when you're 80 and 90, but as the ancient philosopher said, art is long and life is short, meaning the life you want to live, you don't want to get it at 80. Life's too short for that. So if you want to create wealth, and this is why most wealth in the United States is held by widows over 85 years old, because they outlive everybody and the wealth is created, but they're too old to enjoy it. So for those of you listening who want to have the only surefire way. I don't care what anybody. I love Tony Robbins. I don't care what anyone says. I can prove this face to face in any debate. And you can do the math yourself. The greatest potential for you to create lasting, real wealth that does not only magically appear at 85 when you cash in your 401k and IRAs in retirement is to double down on your brain. If we lived in a world where people took most of their investment excess cash and spent it on learning more now what do you think took Jeff Bezos from making a salary to $38 billion? You think he put some money in mutual funds every year? What do you think make Mark Zuckerberg $30 billion? What made this kid here in London who's 15 years old just sold an app to Yahoo for $30 million? At 15 he doubled down on his brain and learned stuff. This is the. Now why is this? Because remember this, perverse incentives. Only one human on the planet has 100% of Ben Greenfield's DNA. Unless you have an identical twin and even identical twins, over time your DNA changes. So theoretically at birth you don't have an identical twin, I'm assuming, right?

Not that I'm aware of.

You probably know if you had one, but. So that means nobody. Not your mom. Your mom and dad have 50% of your genes. Your wife has 0% of your genes, your children have 50% of your genes. That's why you see in the world and people don't like this message because they think it's pessimistic. I'm not being pessimistic, I'm just saying look, open. It doesn't have to be this way, but it generally trends this way. Because of DNA, husband and wife oftentimes break up in the world 50% and they don't always get along after. But usually people stay closer to their own children. Why? Is it because we're so great a people? No, it's because they carry our DNA inside. Your children have 50% of your DNA. So what that means is when it comes to investing and creating wealth, a bank, a mutual fund, a financial advisor, they don't even have 1% of your DNA. What do you think the odds are? No matter how many books are written and how many funds are created that are no load like Vanguard this and low cost annuities and everything that's talked about. Trust me, I've been in that world for since 01. I know it inside and out. Still doesn't work better than doubling down on yourself. Anybody who argues that's a fool. Tony Robbins is writing that book because he rose out of the ashes by doubling down on investors. Jim Rohn. At 19 years old, Tony Robbins says he read anywhere from 300 to 1,000 books he mentored under the world's smartest people. He learned. He became a continual learning machine and he built a network of $500 million. It didn't come from any mutual fund. A mutual fund contributed. Not even, I guarantee you 100 of his net worth or income comes from Mutual fund. So this is the real message that is, I'm not disparaging any books, I'm just saying, yeah, this is accurate.

Well, I have a few follow up questions for you based off of that because what you're saying makes sense, that obviously you're going to get a huge return by investing in yourself, by expanding your knowledge and that that's going to return really big dividends, especially compared to mutual funds or the stock market or anything else. But if you, you look at a lot of these people who have invested in themselves, who are running businesses that are doing very well, it seems to me, at least from the anecdotal evidence that I'd gathered, that they are still putting that money that they're making. I mean, eventually you get to a point where you can only spend so much money on yourself. You could spend 1,000 bucks a month on Amazon and 10, 10,000 bucks a month on seminars and still have money left over technically, if you're doing the right thing. So I'm curious when it comes to where you would recommend that the people who are doing well, who have invested in themselves, I'm curious where you would recommend that they put their money. Because for example, Tony Robbins has his all seasons portfolio that he recognized. It's like a mix of mutual funds and stocks and it's this guy named Ray Dalio's portfolio. And then you of course have other people who will take all their money and put it into gold and silver. Now just to back up for a second here and give you a background of why I'm asking this question, I've invested pretty heavily myself in protection, meaning that I've invested in like, you know, disability insurance. And I've got, you know, a bunch of whole life insurance and really good home insurance and car insurance and like gold and silver and a home and like guns and ammo and a buried propane tank and you know, a few kind of side homes that I use for depreciation and all of it's based around protection. Right. But now I'm kind of interested now that I'm investing in myself. And now that I'm protected, I'm interested in growth. And where you recommend putting money when you actually want it to grow and you already are investing in yourself.

Well, so the way I used to advise people when I was on a day to day basis, I was think of money in three buckets. So you have three buckets down at your feet. And these are broad categories. So the left hand bucket I call rainy day. So as John Wooden Says prepare for the rainy day. Or Lao Tzu say, do what's difficult when it's easy. So you have to have a rainy day fund. So that primarily should be composed of cash, liquid cash, ideally savings in an FDIC insured account if you're in the United States and the equivalent if you're outside the U.S. okay, how much? Well, as Warren Buffett says, justifying why he keeps $20 billion in Berkshire Hathaway cash, he says, when times are tough, I don't want to rely on the kindness of strangers. So that's your rainy day fund. So that you can do that when the rainy day comes. You're not begging strangers to bail you out who don't have your DNA and don't care about you. You can take care of yourself. That is the bucket. Also that all the spending on what we call risk. Okay. So risk aversion or risk insurance. So that would be for sure. It's smart that you have disability insurance, life insurance, certainly you have dependents. All those form the protection. I don't know that I put gold into that category. I think gold gets missed. I think whole life we've talked about this a little bit at times gets misapplied. So but for certainly cash and insurance and potentially CDs and some other things. So then that's your left bucket on your far right hand side of your feet. Okay. Is what I call your Las Vegas money. So this is the money that you are okay with completely losing. This is the amount of money when somebody comes to you with a hairbrained idea and says, come invest with me in this and I'm starting a business or that. Or they say to you, can you loan me five grand? I guarantee you I'll pay you back. Only pay them out of if there's enough money in the Las Vegas.

Now is that like a separate FDIC insured account or is that coming out of the same account as the rainy day funds?

No, no, no. I would recommend most banks you can just open for almost no cost or zero cost. Three, at least three check ins or three savings account. And I just label. I think of AmeriCorps. I think you can label them online. So label one rainy day, you know, and one Las Vegas. You don't. Here's the point. I'm not going to tell you how much you should put in the rain game.

Right?

You should put in the base. I think generally it depends on your age and how much you love risk. My grandma's 96 and she loves risk. She's Been taking risks since she left Germany in World War II on a boat and came to America and didn't know anybody. She has a high risk profile. This goes back to the Oracle, Delphi, Plato, Xerox, Archdeacon. Know yourself. If you stay up late at night when you made a 10, when you lost $10, you are not somebody with a high risk tolerance. If you're somebody that just like, I don't even care if I'm homeless, I'll be able. I'll have fun, I'll go sleep on the beach. You probably have high risk tolerance. So you must know yourself. The higher your risk tolerance, the more can go in the Las Vegas bucket and the less goes into cash rainy day and the more and again, how many people depend on. If you're listening to this and you're 60, you don't have time to lose your wealth and have to rebuild it again. So you must put more in the safe bucket. Now, the middle bucket in between your feet. I call it, I don't even use a word for it. I call it the eh bucket. It's like, I'm not gonna be super aggressive with it. I'm not gonna spend on Vegas. But, you know, I'm not gonna just put in cash and get 1%. So for some people, this ends up being that middle bucket in between your feet often is where you put most of the money. That's where you do 401k stuff. That's where you do gold. I would put in that category. That is where you do. Your house would be in the second one. It's not guaranteed. Certainly houses go below market below what you paid. So most of your assets generally go in this second category. But where I would put also in the second category, where nobody talks about is the investment in yourself is certainly not a Las Vegas gambler. You have. See, when you invest in the stock market, when you invest in any type of fund, the ones that Tony Robbins talks about, any kind of balance portfolio, anything, it's not really growth. That's what I was trying to say because you, as I said, even if you take $100,000 and you put it in a fund recommended by Tony Robbins at I'm telling you, these funds, look at the lifetime returns. Nothing goes at 10% a year in these mutual funds. I know you'll find one that says, oh, we're done, 14%. But look at the amount of years. In two years, maybe. But if you watch it over your lifetime of investing in that fund, things do 6 to 8%. And when you subtract the fees, you subtract inflation and you subtract the taxes. Depending on if you are holding this, you're almost money in a retirement account. You may have tax deferred growth or even tax free growth into like a Roth or something. But if even then you're only making 2 to 3% and that means it's 25 years for your money to double. Just remember that. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, but like you talked about, for example, like a 401k being in that, that bucket isn't a 401k. I mean, isn't that getting invested in like funds and stocks that are, that are really getting similar returns or something like that?

Yeah, so all of 401k does the exact same thing as investing in mutual funds on your own. It's just in the United States, 401ks and various retirement plans just give you tax deferred growth. Some of them, depending on the type, give you tax deduction on your contribution. Some don't give you a tax deduction on contribution, but you can withdraw all the growth tax free. So it just depends. There's many vehicles out there that you have to talk to an accountant because it really depends. So you should generally max out if you're making excess money. You generally, it makes sense because of the tax incentives from the government to max out. But let's say you have 100,000 to invest or 200,000. You may not be able to invest that money all into tax deferred or tax, you know, tax advantaged accounts. So what I'm saying is with the money that can't go into these tax deferred. You were saying, well, eventually we tap out on how much money we can invest ourselves. I don't know that that happens as easily as you think, even for you. Ben? I have a friend, a guy named Romeo, funny name. He lives out of Miami, very wealthy guy. And I asked him a story. He said, I sold a painting business I had up in New Jersey when I was relatively young. I think he made a couple million dollars on the sale. And he went out and he said, I got bored and I decided I started spending my money and I realized I got to go back in the business, I'm too young. So he went back, he said, I used to paint a lot of houses of wealthy people. So I went back to the wealthy people and I said, how did you get this wealth to buy this house that I used to paint with my painting company? And they said real estate. So he said, I Began to go to every conference on real estate and say what I would go, I would buy the most expensive ticket they had, and then if they had an upgraded package that you could buy at the end where they sold you a $50,000 private mentorship or whatever, I would buy that. And he said, I did that for one year. And he told me all the names of the conferences. I said, man, Roman, how much did this cost you? He said, $1 million. Wow. Was it worth it? He said, ty, let me put it this way. I'm one of the number one short sale real estate guys. I knew nothing before, and it's been whatever two or three years. I've built up this bank of knowledge I've flown to anybody. I've paid, you know, ethically bribed, I call it, where you take someone out to dinner and send him a $10,000 gift or something and say, hey, you know, pay attention to me. And he said, now I can make at any point 100 grand a week at any time. He said, I don't even care. He doesn't care about money. He opened an entrepreneur house in Miami. He just bought all this real estate and just lets entrepreneurs come learn from them. So the point is always here's something you didn't hear. Remember I said, everything we've heard is wrong. I'm going to tell you, one of the things you heard growing up was that you should not put all your eggs in one basket. This is a very common diversification tool. Now, let me clarify that. If your goal is protection of your money, that is a very accurate statement. Mathematically, diversified portfolios tend to experience less volatility. Now, if your goal, listening to this, and we must delineate between people type listing. Some people are 60 and they just want to protect what they have. So if that is your category, do not listen to what I'm about to say. If you're interested in wealth and growth, then you want to listen to what Warren Buffet said, where the secret to wealth creation is, put all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket. So the thing we didn't hear is this phrase, and I hope this phrase sticks with everybody if they don't remember anything from this. If you really want to have success in anything, health, wealth, love or happiness, go on what's working and immediately cut or not. Always immediately, but as soon as possible, cut anything that doesn't work. So, for example, Jack Welch, maybe the most successful CEO in modern times. He came into GE and by the time he left, the value of GE had gone up 400 billion. That's a half a trillion dollars. And all he did was he looked at every business venture they were in and he said, these 70 aren't. We can never be a winner in it. We'll never be number one or two. And he cut it and he took all that money and he doubled down on what worked. So for somebody, let's say, think about it socially. You know, a lot of people read books, Never Eat Alone and How to Win Friends and Influence People. I have a much better, more scientifically justifiable approach to social life. Jonathan Haidt, who wrote Happiness Hypothesis, one of the him, Martin Seligman, Michal Czikh Sentmihalyi and David Buss. These are like the four or five most respected social scientists out there. Lieberman, a couple other. What Jonathan Haidt told me personally, he said, look, the way your brain works is you have something called companionative love, like a mechanism. So companion love is only built over like a decade or 20 years. So what everybody's trying to do is double down on what doesn't work. They're like, how can I meet a new person today? How can I go have dinner with someone new? When what science says the best thing you can do is buy a plane ticket for a friend you had in junior high and high school that was your closest buddy. I mean, you have. I had the best friends in high school. Why do we get rid of them? Because no one ever told us double down on what works. What I do now is I fly in and get my best friends to move to Hollywood. I give them a job. I don't even care if they're good at what they do. And it's the best biggest bank. The wealth of friendship that I experienced compared to when I tried all the stuff people are telling you on how to go network more. You can't reproduce Companion of love except over 20 years. When it comes to wealth creation and growth of your money, what made you the money to start with? So let's say you have a career, get double down and go take training so that you get promoted and your salary doubles. Whatever made you the money is the surest bet. If you are an entrepreneur, take the money and double down. Now remember what I'm saying entails a little more risk. But when you put your money in the market and it only gets 7% and you subtract taxes, fees and inflation, you're not. You're just treading water. So you must take smart risks. And the best risk to take is always on yourself. When you INVEST in stock market the reason I even though at one point I was, you know, I stopped being a financial advisor because I really sold that business and now I just, you know, do my businesses for myself. I saw that the stock market is controlled by things you have no control over. Joel Satson told me a great thing. He said you know what I like about doing what I do Ty? I'm an entrepreneur. I have this farm. He goes if ever anything goes bad or a session comes, I can wake up two hours earlier and work two hours later until I make up the extra money. It's in my control. I'll tell you this, nobody at Wall Street I don't care what fund you invest in just because Tony Robbins recommends it or anybody recommends the guys running the fund don't care about you. Hedge fund managers top hedge fund manager a couple years ago made his personal salary was 400 million a month. He made $4.5 billion billion the highest paid people in history. And that's not going away just because you're getting fees where the funds where the fees are the money still changing hands behind the scenes for people who don't even know your name. You'll never do well in anything in life too invested in people who don't even know your name. If you don't believe look at the wealthiest people people in the world. So you can look at the Forbes list if you want to argue with me. Or you could say well Ty, I don't care about billionaires. Well then I recommend you read one of the most exhaustive studies of self made wealthy people in the United States. That book. There's a series of them, the Millionaire next Door Almost all of them did it through small business invested in themselves and allies that they saw face to face. This is what I invest my money in people that you can reach out touch, you know. So if you have excess money, sometimes it's good to invest inside. I'm just telling you run. The reason is people don't know how to run a financial calculator. Just watch it. If you invest $100,000 in a market in a fund today and you do 8%, that's a solid return trust. Anyone who tells you about 12% returns doesn't know math. You will never no fund done 12% or I should say almost no fund. There's anomaly like Berkshire Hathaway but Berkshire Hathaway A shares are 100,200,000. There's hedge funds but you have to be an accredited investor the most of what you're going to get access to does 8%. So at the end of the year you have 108,000. Okay, 108,000, that sounds great. So let's say you invest and double it all back down. They have compounding now you get 8% on 108, so that is roughly about 9,000 the next year. Now you have 117,000. Sounds good, sounds good. Well, 8% means in nine years you'll have 200 grand. Nine years, so now you went from 100. That's assuming no fees, no taxes, and no up and downs in the market. It never has happened in history that there's been exactly 8.0 every year. What happens is one, you see if. Here's the thing people forget. If you invest in a market, you do 100 the first. If you put 100 in, it goes down by 8%. So now it's at 92,000. Now let's say the next year you get 8% return on the money. You only get 8% of 92,000, which is about 7,000. So now you're not even back to where you want to go. And one bad year will affect the ROI for a decade. So but let's just say there is no badger in the imaginary world. So now in nine years at 8%, you have 200 grand, assuming no taxes. Now, but let's just think, we can assume inflation, depending where you live, the cost of living in some place, remember general inflation, the cost of good, the basket, the government calls it, of where they look at a general basket and try to say how much the cost is going up. If you live in New York City or LA or some places, you might be experiencing real estate inflation of 8%. So that 80%. So 100 grand growing to 200 grand, you just completely have been treading water. No wealth was created and there's an opportunity cost. You take that, oppose that with Jeff Bezos took $70,000 and made 38 million. That's a good return my friend took here in England. He took $25,000, he put on credit cards, he became, I don't know, the Queen gave him entrepreneur of the year. He made 100. I think he's doing 70 million in a row now. Again, even not everybody listening to this wants to be an entrepreneur. But I'm saying double down on what works. Get better at your job. If you're in sales, working for somebody, read every book on sales, go to every conference. Be like Romeo. Maybe you won't spend a million. I spent, spent millions on first $17,000. I made business. My first business was with Joel Salatin. We rented a farm together. We grew grass fed cattle, 80 of them. I took care of them. Joel supplied the capital. And I was just at Joel's for Thanksgiving and he reminded me, I thought I made 17,000 profit. He said, no, Todd, you only made 12,000. So I took that 12,000 and I began to travel around the world meeting mentors. And I ran out of money in New Zealand and I was shearing sheep and I was on a farm with a guy and I bumped into a farmer named Gary Townsend, who I didn't know at the time was one of the wealthiest people in New Zealand. The Harvard mba, huge land holdings around the world. We became friends. He said, why are you here? I said, well, I wanted to find out, double down and invest in myself by learning from great people. And I ran out of money, so now she's sheep. And he saw a twinkle in my eye because what happens when you double down on the right thing? People notice. And he said, interesting, Ty. We stayed in touch. I moved back to North Carolina. I went to NC State for one quarter before I dropped out. University there. And I remember making nine bucks an hour or something at a coffee shop, trying to pay my way through school. And then I realized there's no money. I learned from Joel Salaton there's no money in that. So I became an entrepreneur. I started a little consulting company. Gary Townsend somehow found out about that guy from New Zealand, said, hey, Todd, I'm gonna hire. I need to buy land and United States. You know it better than me. Tell me, write me a report, a two page report. So I wrote it to him for him in one night and said, I'll send you my normal consultancy. Give me your wire instructions for your bank account. And I did. He wired me $10,000 I made in two hours. And that's when I began to realize this is where wealth is created. Create massive skills for yourself, and it's the only sure bet, because you care about you more than anybody ever will. If you don't think there'll be another recession, if you don't think there'll be another Bernie Madoff scandal, if you don't think there'll be another Lehman Brothers going other than Wall Street. Then, like I always say, when you're playing poker and after 30 minutes you don't know who the sucker is, you are the sucker. If we have a world, there's an ancient old saying, let every man sweep his own front porch and the whole world will be clean. The answer is Local, not global. The financial recession is not happening at a global level. Certainly there's forces that work globally. I'm not going to be ignorant. But the solution is for every person listening to this, I give you practical stuff to take. Go out and buy a book for dummies on finance. Go read a little bit of Susie Orman. Go read a little Rick Edelman. Go read the Tony Robbins book. Now, above and beyond that, quit being afraid of being scammed. I'm going to tell you this right now. I have tested, I believe in experimenting. I buy every online course, I go to every conference. I've never received the less value than I paid. Except one time since 2001 where I bought a $97 online seminar I was going to go to and the guy never showed up for it and I asked for a refund and they gave me my 97. People live in such a world of scarcity. If you're listening to this, one of the other things I wish someone had told me in 18 is that everything we've been taught comes out of a timeline of wealth that no longer exists. Let me explain in the year. Let's go back following the timeline of the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Will Durant. Story of civilization. At the beginning, who controlled the wealth in the world? It was chiefs of tribes. Then world progressed a little bit and warriors, maybe the Genghis Khan, the Alexander the Great. Then it moved and this is not exact order, but I'm giving you the rough order. It moved to explorers, Pizarro, Magellan, Vasco da Gama. They began to take wealth from South America and bring it to Spain. Then it became the age of monarchs and kings. And then from there you had the rise of families and banking families like the Habsburgs or the Rothschilds. Then you had in the more modern times, you had the time of the robber barons, the Carnegie's, the Rockefellers. Then after that you had the industrialists, guys like Henry Ford who automated the assembly line. Then lastly we, all of us, even if you're very young listening to this, were born into the second to last age, which was the age and the rise of the corporation that happened after World War II. And post baby boomer or baby boomerish time and the rise of where university degrees work for you, where you're at the behest of a pension and a 9 to 5 job and a loyal company that you work for. And they'd say with you, but let me alert everybody to something and myself, let me remind myself something has happened and it's Called the rise of the self made. The rise of the self made entrepreneur. There's never been a time in history where a black woman, that's a black person and a woman, two groups that have been discriminated against from the beginning of time and still are now rising though out of the ashes of an abusive family and making $2.2 billion and becoming one of the most beloved people in the world. That's Oprah Winfrey. There's never been a time where 15 year old people sold companies for $30 million. Never. So all that you heard is no longer relevant. See, we've heard the right thing for the wrong time. So what the world is now about, there's never been a greater reward. See, if you were a serf in the middle ages, what was the reward for doubling down on yourself? And Peter Drucker, the great business teacher talks about this. He said in managing one himself, he said there's never been a reason in history for most people to know themselves because there's never been a reward. If you were a serf, you were always a serf. If the wealth was held by the king, you could never get it. Unless you were born into opposing royalty and could go to war. It all doesn't work. If you were the rise of the corporation was because vast amounts of capital were needed to start businesses. In the 50s you have big oil companies started in Dupont and all these. And these were heavily capitalized businesses. And so the average person couldn't rise out of action. But now with technology, I was just reading how Google works. Eric Schmidt, the CEO, former CEO of Google, he talks about this and the fact that technology now allows you to launch a business from your home and now allows you to like you do. You have a very prosperous business out of your passion. Everything you heard is no longer relevant. So what I tell people, and this is what I talk about in my conference, you know, I have this business mentorship, what I tell everybody in the business mentorship, I say wake up. All those rules are for. And so Tony Robbins and all these books are great, but they are a little bit talking about an age that I don't believe is relevant anymore. So it's good advice for protection and diversification. If you are listening to this and you want to create wealth and you are willing to take a little more risk knowing that you could lose it. But you'll never lose what you double down and invest in yourself. Even if Jeff Bezos, when he quit his job and he went off and start, even if Amazon hadn't Made. Remember, he took 70 grand that he borrowed from his parents and turned into 38 billion for himself personally. Even if it had failed, he said he didn't care because he would never have regret. And he also realized he had built tremendous skill. So if he had gone back to work after Amazon, let's say failed, in an alternate reality, it failed, he would be that much more skilled. He would command a job as an employee where they would have to pay him more. So at the end of the day, there's nothing better than taking your own brain, finding what's working and doing it 10 times more. Do that with your health, do that with. You know, it's funny, health wise not to diverge off that. This. Even though I teach this, I'm still stupid and forget what I teach. Our brains are not good at remembering, even if we're the teacher. You know, I was working out with this guy here, one of the top male models in the world, Janelle Castillo. He's now 40 and he's one of the most in shape people you will ever meet because he gets paid to have a six pack. Basically, he was here not two summers ago. And I got in the best shape of my life with him. It's almost like it rubbed off on me because I go to movies, him and his girlfriend. I'd go with my friends and I'd see how he eats. Like, he never eats junk food. So kind of, I didn't want to be the idiot buying junk food around him, so I wouldn't buy junk food. He's very disciplined in exercise. He shows me some of the stuff. So I was. I would see him jogging, like on his Instagram, like, I'm going to see him tomorrow. I want to. He always asked me, how you doing it? So I was jogging. I got the best six pack I've ever had in my life. Now, you would think I would double down on what was working, but no, I began to. I kept experimenting. One thing about experimenting, once you find something that works, just stick to it every day. And so I began, I was like, well, I wonder what happens if I, you know, I do two cheat days a week or I blah, you know. He said, do one cheat day. He's like, one day is enough. And he was like, jog at least three times a week. And he's like, do Manny. There's a little abs workout by Manny Pacquiao, the boxer that Janelle swears by. Like, do this. It takes two minutes, five minutes a morning. And you read stuff where it's like, Abs don't do abs to get abs. And I know there's some truth to that, but I'll tell you, when I was doing Manny Pacquiao abs, my abs popped out. I know. Arnold Forsner, they did crunches and sit ups. Again, I know this is. I'm not trying to give expertise, I'm just telling you my story. But I didn't double down. I should have just doubled down. And then it's like, damn it, you know, then you lose momentum. So the point of everything I've said is ignore what people say. Remember the time that we're in. Double down on yourself financially also. If you're going to invest, invest in things that you can touch, taste, see where the people you're investing in see your face. You can invest, by the way, Ben, in stocks. It depends if you're an accredited investor. So depending on your network, you can become an accredited investor. And about 90, 80 to 90% of all investment deals in the United States are done through what's called ppm, private placement memorandums. Private deals done by a small amount of generally more sophisticated investors. They're not available on the public stock market, the public stock market. There's so much information. You rarely buy things undervalued because everybody's looking at it. So you can invest in people you know now, you could still lose money there. Just understand that there's oftentimes more risk there, but there's a lot more upside. And much more wealth is created this way mathematically than everything that you hear. No one will talk about this. Primarily, your financial advisor will never tell you what I'm saying because I know as a financial advisor you're held under very strict compliance from your broker dealers in the SEC who give very conservative advice. That's why I stopped being an investment advisor. I realized I couldn't give good advice to people because you got the shackles of government on you. Now, some of the shackles are good. You don't want to be giving out shoddy advice, but this advice is not shoddy. There's not a smart person in the world when it comes to finances that would disagree with the gist of what I'm saying. They would disagree. Obviously, I'm not infallible. But the general gist of this, as long as you understand there's always risk. If you follow what I said, it is still not a guarantee. Some people will lose money doubling down on themselves. Some people will invest in programs and mentors that were the wrong ones, but play the odds. It's better to take the odds on yourself. Because the worst case, you might say, well, what happens if I die? Can't double down on myself. But then you don't care if you have money because you're dead. So you know, it's one of those, even if you lose, you're not there to experience the losing. So I would always and what I've done and practice what I preach. I've always taken the route of, you got an extra ten grand? Okay, if I put ten grand in the stock market in nine years? Nine years. That's a decade of your life practically. So you're in your, what, mid-30s or early 30s?

Yeah, yeah, early 30s.

If you get 10 grand at 40, early 40s, you'll have 20 grand. That's not a lot of money with inflation. Look at the difference between the money. Ten years ago, even look at movie tickets are now, I go to movies sometimes they're $20 for 3D tickets. I remember when I was little, they were a dollar, there was a dollar ticket or maybe $4. So if you take 10 grand and you invest it in a business or you invest it in a human, you take on a protege. See, people forget this take out. Like for you as an entrepreneur, take ten grand, bring some money from the ashes and say, hey, come work with me. I'm gonna give you ten grand extra bonus just for working for me. And because you know, as an entrepreneur, your energy is limited, you're not gonna be able to always grow your business on your own. Get it, get allies. And then the next thing you know, Ben Greenfield Fitness makes. I guarantee you 10 grand in. That is more likely in 10 years, 10 years to have made you more than 20 grand back. You could sometimes. I just bought a company August 12th. I have a thousand percent ROI on the money I put into it. 1000% ROI in four months. Annualize that and try to replicate that in the stock market. You'll never do it. Now I've got some skill. Not everybody can do that, but it's not as hard as you think. Look around, keep your eyes open, be patient. As Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett said, they've only done 10 good deals since they opened the fund in the 60s to now. In 50 years, you only need 10 good bets. So they say. We do a lot of sitting around waiting. Something interesting. Speaking of gold, had you invested in gold in the 1960s, I think I'll quote this right $10,000 to today. And some people say, well, but the gold standard didn't change until the 1970s I did the math. It doesn't change it. You invested $10,000. You know how much money you'd have today? 400. About $450,000.

Wow.

Have you invested in Berkshire Hathaway? That so Berkshire Hathaway isn't really a mutual fund. They literally take controlling interest or try to take control. Controlling interest in businesses. So it's a little bit more like a ppm. Even though it is more. That's a special exception conversation. But you'd have. I believe the number is $48 million. Wow. So. Or don't quote me. It's some absorbently. You know I think it's $50 million. So the Walt, the McDonald's brothers, they sold the business to Ray A. Kroc. He bought them out for $1 million each. Now it was working what he was doing, but they were like I'm not going to double down and stick with this guy Ray A. Kroc. Because the McDonald's brothers still owned a large portion of McDonald's. Guess what happened. He paid them a million bucks each. He hardly could get that money. He conjured up that money and begged, borrowed and stole till he got $2 million. He bought them out. Had the McDonald's brothers kept the interest in what they had started and what they could reach out and touch, taste and feel their restaurant business, they would have made dividends of 100 million a year. Do the math there.

Yeah.

Was that any wise and dollar you try to replicate that. So they took the million bucks from Ray Kroc and they bought some real estate and they probably bought some gold and they probably bought some mutual funds they could have just kept. Now you can always. That's anecdotal. You can bring up the guys that stuck with businesses that failed. But even if you fail in something you can touch, taste and feel, guess what happens? You still gain the knowledge and you move on and you get successful in the next business. Donald Trump 9.2 billion in debt. Let me be clear. He was 1 billion personally guaranteed. Most people will commit suicide. I was in Miami. I had a place in Miami. One of my lawyers in Miami, he said, ty, I got a problem. A lot of my clients aren't paying the bills. I said, why not? I said, they're committing suicide. So 50,000 units had been built in South beach in mid 2000, 2008, the recession and the housing bubble kicks in. People are underwater $2 million and they're jumping out of windows because they're like, I'll never pay the thoughts. Donald Trump late 80s, early 90s. He talks about this in his book how to get rich. He loses 9.2 billion. He's underwater 1 billion percent guaranteed. Of course, he rises out of the ashes. He's worth, I think over 7 billion. Now you know how he did it, because even when he failed, he had learned stuff that he could then extrapolate and extend into the businesses that he could touch, taste and feel. So even if you fail, you win. Even if you're Jeff Bezos and people in 2000, the crash of early 2000s in the tech bubble, he waited it out. He learned. He doubled down on his own brain during that failure time and he rose out of it. I want to encourage people to know who you are. If you're very risk averse and you're really just, you already have enough money. Like Warren Buffett says, you only have to get rich once you're already wealthy. You just want to protect it. Then you really want to look at these books like what Tony Robbins and people talk about. If you really don't care about having any measure of prosperity while you're relatively young and you're like, look, Ty, I don't care. I just want to make sure I'm wealthy at 75, then you would again listen to all the advice that's out there. Buy no load funds in Vanguard and do the traditional stuff. If you are somebody who says, I'm willing to take more risk, I'm willing to take because the best risk I can take seems like on myself. I don't want to wait 40 years. I don't want to be the richest man in the graveyard. Steve Jobs used to say, I want to try to double down and take a chance on things I can touch, taste and feel. Then I would suggest you only use the advice that people like these books are talking about. I would use those more for bucket number one. I would see investing in the stock market more as a hedge against investing inflation. So remember that rainy day bucket? I would start putting all my mutual funds more in the rainy day bucket. I would keep bucket number two as doubling down on myself. And I would take bucket number three, the Las Vegas stuff, at just real harebrained ideas that usually the Las Vegas stuff is usually investing in other people you don't really know that well. So bucket number two, that kind of like not super risky is investing yourself. Bucket number one is investing in traditional investment. A lot of cash, some mutual funds a lot stock up on insurance. Cause that's insurance. Is another conversation we'll have one day. Definitely stock up have too much insurance. It's better to be over insured. You will be happy one day when you're disabled or temporary or premature death. Your kids will be happy. But don't think of People have traditionally thought of stock market and I used to think of it this way when I first started out until I saw what was happening. That stock market is a real way to grow wealth. It's not. There's nobody on the forest list, there's nobody in Millionaire Next Door or very very few. Almost a statistical anomaly that made it BY Just their 401k.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well Ty, you're as I know you know, you're long winded. I barely had to ask a single question during this episode and Unfortunately I'm about 20 minutes late for my next call so I got to wrap this thing. But what I'm going to do if you're listening in and you want to check out some of the things Ty and I talked about, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com TY3 that's TY the number three and I'll link to some of his retreats, his seminars, some of the things he and I are doing, his mentor program, and also his really good online video series about getting anything you want. His 67 steps. Getting anything you want out of life, health, wealth, love and happiness.

Those three just real quick. So 67 steps everybody. I'm on track to have a million positive comments in a year on that thing. So that's the mindset. Then I've got a financial independence course and a lot of you this course number three that I have which is the business mentorship. If you have a business or thinking I've had an idea in your head how you can make it reality. It's not a get rich quick thing. It's real deal stuff from a mentor that I've learned from. And then lastly check out these conferences in person. So and I do some online ones. So yeah, we'll put links to all that. And this is an important subject. I tell people, don't get this run wrong. It will take too long to catch up. So no matter how old you are, if you're 100 listening to this or you're 18, today's the youngest you'll ever be. So make the changes today. Do it practically. And I tell people, don't tell me about your five year goals. Don't even tell me about your one week goals. Do something today. Yeah.

Yeah. Nice. All right, well cool Ty. I'll let you get back to your tea and crumpets over there in London. And again, you can check out everything that Ty and I talked about over@bengrigelfitness.com SL Ty3 thanks for listening in to today's episode.

Thanks guys.

Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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