How Small Businesses Can Steal Billionaire AI Strategies | Tony Giordano

I have two big philosophies when I'm speaking to audiences. One of them is play chess, not checkers. The philosophy behind chess is being 7 steps ahead. And then the other philosophy that I try to share with people is do what billion-dollar companies do for your business. Do it for your small business.

You have a network of billionaires and you work with billion-dollar companies and you see exactly what they're doing right now with everything's changing.

They have integrated AI a level beyond comprehension. That right there would be equal to you get a one-on-one sit-down with Albert Einstein, and for 1 hour you were just like, hmm, what's 2 2? And Albert would say, 4. Thanks. I mean, thanks for the time. Yeah, I appreciate it. That's all you got? You have me for an hour? But if you want to grow, you better look in your rearview mirror, cuz there's a whole new level of of talented people with AI that could take the business from a veteran overnight.

You have to become an owner and you have to become an investor and not be afraid of what if this goes down? Well, guess what? Your dollars are going down.

Mm-hmm.

100% guaranteed. Welcome back to the Hannah Hammond Show. I'm here today with my dear friend Tony Georgiano, who's founder and CEO of Georgiano Industries, and he is one What, what are you not? You're international bestseller, you're a speaker, you're on million, million dollar listing, you've been on CNBC, you're crypto and AI, you mentor luxury agents and help, you have a massive luxury real estate agency. You're one of the most influential real estate people in the world, hugely followed, and more importantly, and most importantly, one of my dearest friends. So welcome back to the second time on the Hannah Hammond Show.

And you are one of my dearest friends and I'm super excited for today and I'm So glad that I'm back.

Oh, you're awesome. So he came all the way here from California, Newport Beach, but you're all over doing keynotes nonstop. I think you travel more than I do, which is pretty impressive. But the first episode you were on, we really dove into your story and your rock bottom and how to be recession-proof and how to overcome failure. And this episode, we're really going to continue on to that path of mindset and what it really takes to succeed and realize your highest potential, which is a lot of what the theme of my show is all about. But I want to dive into what you talk about, which is the billionaire mindset. And you have a network of billionaires and you work with billion-dollar companies and you see exactly what they're doing right now with everything that's changing. And like, everything's changing right now. We're in a massive singularity, right? As Elon Musk will say, we have AI, We have crypto, blockchain, uh, social media, and marketing is changing, and influence, the power of influence and how we're able to build that brand today. And then just businesses, like businesses are losing value like crazy, and then other businesses are becoming trillion-dollar companies. So I'm excited to dive into everything and just what people aren't doing that they should be doing and getting ahead of it, and, and really what the billionaires and the billion-dollar companies are doing to really take advantage of this singularity in this economic shift that we're in right now to be able to grow?

Yeah. So to, to go with the billion, the billionaire mindset, or I, I, it's a philosophy I've had. I have two big philosophies when I'm speaking to audiences. One of them is play chess, not checkers. I think I even went into that on our first podcast where I was saying, you know, I approach life in general playing chess, not checkers. I don't actually know how to play chess. So if I'm actually playing chess with somebody, they will crush me. But the philosophy behind chess is being 7 steps ahead. Like, if I move here, they're going to move there, they're going to move there, and then you make your move. And that philosophy is what I do in life personally. Business is— I'm thinking, if I do that, that's going to happen, then that's going to happen, then that's going to happen. Okay, I'll do that and I'll be 7 steps ahead and make the right decision. Think ahead rather than be reactive like checkers where it's I jump you, you jump me. So that's one philosophy. And then the other philosophy that I try to share with people is do what billion-dollar companies do for your business. Do it for your small business. So if a— before we get into what they're doing right now, let's just take one example. Billion-dollar companies will hire a celebrity to drink their new flavored Coca-Cola or something because they have influence and they know that they're gonna influence other people to wanna drink that new flavored Coca-Cola. So if billion-dollar companies know that the most effective form of marketing out there that gets the highest ROI is influencer marketing, then you, for your small business, need to do the same thing because it's the most effective form. That's why the billion-dollar companies do it.

Right.

So example, they go out and pay a $10 million celebrity that has millions of followers on a global scale to achieve what that new product is gonna achieve. You need to find— you're not gonna go out there for your small business. If you're a real estate agent who owns a real estate business, or you have your own brokerage, or you're an insurance agency, you're not gonna hire a $10 million celebrity most likely. But micro influencer, you're just doing it on a micro level, mm-hmm, that of the same thing that the billion-dollar company does. So example, what do you think would be the most effective form? What of these three things do you think would get the highest ROI? You have $5,000 to spend. You're a local business here in Arizona. Let's say you're a real estate agent. You can spend $5,000 on print advertising. So maybe some direct mailers, an ad in a local magazine that's here in Arizona, and that was what you decided to spend the $5,000, and you're gonna sit back and see what comes. Or you decide to do a $5,000 pay-per-click SEO campaign with social media sponsored ads, and you spend all $5,000 and you target certain people in this area to try to get traffic to your website. Mm-hmm. Or there's that local dentist and she or he have 20,000 followers here because they're not a national dentist. So those 20,000 people that follow that dentist are here most likely, and he's— he or she's always showing before and after pictures of the, the teeth construction that they do, or whatever, new veneers. And you go to them because you know them, or maybe they're your dentist, and you say, I'll give you $5,000 if you share a 60-second reel and story and say, hey everybody, outside of dentist work, if you ever have any questions about real estate or finance, you need to call Hannah Hammond. She's the best. And then I look to the audience and I go, tell me, out of those 3 things, which one do you think would have the highest ROI? And everybody goes, well, duh, that. Because it's the most effective form of marketing with the highest ROI, which is why billion-dollar companies do it. Yeah. So do what billion-dollar companies do. And what are they doing right now? When you look at any massive billion-dollar company, they have integrated AI at a level beyond comprehension, spending tens and tens of millions of dollars not asking ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, hey, can you rewrite this action plan that I can give to my employees? That's the most basic thing you could be asking AI for. No, they're building massive AI agent employee— employees to do all the work to leverage. And yeah, it's unfortunate for the people who are in administrative tasks with billion-dollar companies. And that's why you're seeing so many layoffs, because AI has the power to do so much administrative work. It's not asking it basic stuff. I have this thing I say, like when I, when I'm speaking, if, if you're asking, you know, AI to write a property description for a home you're getting ready to list for sale, AI's probably like, really? That's all you got? Like, I can literally do anything and that's what you're using me for? That right there would be equal 'til you get a one-on-one sit-down with Albert Einstein. And for one hour, you were just like, "Hmm, I got it. What's 2 2?" And Albert would say, "4." "Awesome. Thanks. I mean, thanks for the time." Yeah. "I appreciate it. That's all you got? You don't wanna ask me anything else? You have me for an hour?" Nope. I just, that was, thank you. So what are you really doing with AI? So to kind of circle back with what you said, what are people not doing is I feel that 99, if not 99.5% of business owners, salespeople, people who have to go out there and build their brand and find contacts and find new clients who are self-employed, they're just doing AI. At the level that they hear others doing AI. So if everybody in the office is saying, yeah, I can do this and this and this, that's all they're doing. They're not taking the time to be learning-based. They're not taking the time to really research the power of what AI could do. And that's where, you know, people like you that I know teach AI as well as me is that's not the advanced stuff. That's not the stuff that's going to really leverage you so that you can focus on the things that you do best. What do salespeople do? Better than anything out there, shaking hands, kissing babies, meeting people in the community, giving back to their community, promoting others, promoting other businesses. And when you think about that, that is where we thrive.

Yeah, that's our tip of the arrow that we should be spending 100% of our time, but as much as possible, 90% of our business, as you know, in—

when you're in sales and you're building a business, it's administrative. There's so many things that we have to do behind the desk that the TV shows in real estate don't obviously show the boring part, right? But it consumes our time. And even with employees and staff and my assistant and my listing coordinator and my transaction coordinators, I'm still having to do so much. There's still so many things that you have to oversee. And if we could flip that where instead of 90% of what we do to get transactions to, to closing, if that could be flipped to where instead of 90% administrative, 10% I have the time to go out there and meet people now, and I can have AI do all of the administrative, even train one of my staff members to oversee that AI And now 10% of my day is just monitoring all the systems and the AI that we've created to leverage us, which means that now 90% of my day can be what I do best, which is people, right? Building relationships, deepening relationships. So it's that philosophy of what billion-dollar companies do. Just do it for your small business on a smaller scale because it obviously works.

I love that so much. And it's so— it's never been easier than now because the cost of AI is almost nothing relative to the value that it brings. And now, I mean, there's kids becoming millionaires with AI and building full applications and solutions and selling them. And I mean, you could— there's just so much you could do. And it's so amazing that you could literally go take a billion-dollar idea and just go build it on your own. In not a lot of time, and AI can even teach you how to do it.

That's the key, is it's one thing to listen to a speaker on stage and me say, start doing this, start doing that, which is going to get you going. But I'm not going to teach you everything about AI. You're going to learn the things that I've learned from AI. Mm-hmm. AI's the teacher. So if you talk to it like a human, if you give it details of what you're seeking, what you're looking for, the accomplishment that you're trying or the goal you're trying to accomplish, that's where you see it shine, right? When you're not basic, it won't be basic. When you advance and are in detail, it will be advanced and in detail. And then you're in control. Like, it's not in control of you, you're in control of it. So example, I slowed mine's voice down. I named her, right? Because I want it to sound like I'm talking to a human, right? And then I give it everything. I've uploaded my books to her so that she learns my personality. I've uploaded slide decks and presentations where she analyzes it and where I can improve and, and how to take it to the next level. Um, and even as far as just, again, talking to her like a human. One of the things that, you know, I learned was, you know, it's so basic now, but it's advanced to people who are probably listening to this podcast that don't even know this. Is I asked her, hey, Siri, Alexa, all these different platforms that have been around before AI on recommending, you know, Siri, who's a good real estate agent locally here in Los Angeles? And it'll just pull up from Google and data and it'll just give a list of names. So I asked my, my, my AI is Ashley, really nice voice. And so I asked— British? No, she's not. Yeah, just regular voice, but slow. I won't— anyways, so I said, Ashley, how do I get recommended by you, by everyone's ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini? Meaning what happens when somebody says, hey, ChatGPT, who's a top luxury real estate broker here in Newport Beach? And she goes, well, right now Most of that is when we go internally, we're looking to see if we can find it within our AI platform through something called schema code. Schema. If that doesn't exist in schema code, then it goes out to Google, it goes out to the internet, and it'll just pull up data from Zillow or whatever, and it'll just find the same stuff that Siri and Alexa would have. And I said, so what's the schema code? And she goes, it's an invisible code that you attach to the backend of your website. That lists everything and all the tag words and everything different from normal WordPress coding and keyword and key phrasing. It's specific code that is what AI reads first. And she goes, so once you establish that and you copy and paste it and you give it to your web developers and they put it on the back end, now when somebody asks their ChatGPT who's a top luxury real estate broker in Newport Beach, It's going to go into our platform, it's going to go into the coding, and it's going to find people who have the schema code first. And if they find your website because you're one of the only ones that have the schema code connected to it, then it won't go out. It'll just say, oh, here, Tony Giordano, Modern Group, blah, blah, blah, top luxury real estate broker. I learned that from, from AI. AI. I didn't learn that from somebody talking about it. I just kept getting deeper and deeper into asking it the right questions from little points that maybe I've heard of people talking. And I think that's the key is, you know, AI, AI, if you should not be having AI think for you, like it's, it's not, it's not there to think for you. It's there to leverage you. It's there to help you grow so that you can focus on what you do best.

Yeah.

And I think that's where people aren't taking the time to really learn. And it's just common. It's common with everything. If everybody in the office is using something and, and I use it for this, I use it for that, I use it for that, then that's all most people are going to take the time to do because, oh, it's just another thing I have to learn. But if you want to grow, you better look in your rearview mirror because there's a whole new level of, of talented people with AI that could take the business from a veteran overnight when it comes to growing a business and building a brand.

Right. And the nice thing about being a small business or a private company is, and the smaller, the easier, is you can start to implement these things so quick and you can test them without having to spend $10 million, right? Or having to get a vote from your shareholders or your board of directors or all of this stuff. You can really use AI to learn AI. Get in some groups or masterminds. Like, I just went to a 3-day event in Austin, which was an AI mastermind, 8 hours a day for 3 days. All we did was actually build in AI and learn all the tools and all the things that are going on. And you can just test these things and really figure out and take that time to implement quickly, cut quickly if it doesn't work, or train it, you know, to where you need it to be. Because sometimes with— and here's another thing with AI, it's improving at such a rapid and exponential pace that you might try something this week and you're like, ah, it's not quite there. It doesn't— and this has happened to me, right? I'm like, I tried this email assistant AI thing. I'm like, it's not quite there. Honestly causes more work than it helps me. But then I tried it 3 months later and I was like, oh crap.

Exactly.

This is really amazing. And most people just write it off because most people started with— they opened ChatGPT a year ago and they're like, okay, help me write a listing description. It won't get rid of the em dashes. It kind of uses too many emojis. This stuff is a waste of time. I'm just going to try it. It's AI slop, but it's growing so fast and exponentially. It's like you have to stay at the cutting edge of it because it's not going away and it is becoming insanely brilliant, like an Albert Einstein that's trained in all these different things. And so I think what it really comes down to is now more than ever, it is so important to be a creator and not a consumer and use your consumption purely to create.

Yeah.

Right? And that's the thing with AI is you have to be a leader.

Mm-hmm.

And so many people, this is why entrepreneurs are in heaven with it because they're leaders, they're creators, they're innovators, right? And they work with other people to think better or get new ideas. And then they use that to leverage their own ideas and their own vision and execute on the vision. But the consumer mindset, which is how the population is trained through public education and just through societal rules and dogmas, is do what you're told, don't make mistakes, follow the rules, like all of these things. And that will kill you now. Like, you have to become a creator and you can be your own independent, you know, you can be an intrapreneur, like an entrepreneur within a company. You can go start your own side business. You can take your position as a W-2 employee and leverage AI to make you so much more valuable to the company that they can't replace you because you've already— you're already 10 steps ahead of it. And you're like, listen, I'm leading this, I, I built out these agents, like I'm guiding all of this. I'm making sure that the quality is good here and look at what I've been able to create. So instead of just waiting for AI to come in and take your job, you go create things regardless of whether you're an entrepreneur or an employee or a solopreneur or an investor, like whatever that is. Actually, I met somebody who literally built— and I guess this is happening all over. I mean, Bridgewater and all these big investment firms have been using AI to trade. Like we all know the stock market's completely traded by AI, but it's got gotten better and better and better for AI to be able to predict what's going on. But this person I met, he built an AI to fully autonomously trade for him, zero action on his part. He already set his limits on stop losses and daily investments and funded the account initially, and he's made 100% on his money in 14 days with 100% success rate. And he trained, he trained the AI to backwards, you know, check the chart for the past 10 years to see if its predictions, if its trades would've been correct.

Yeah.

And it was 100% correct. It's insane.

Yeah, it's fascinating because maybe one of the things that people don't grasp is once AI technology is plugged into data of some data porthole, it is now the most experienced genius of that data and it knows how to read it and it knows how to identify trends. I mean, we're not even talking about the fact that AI will be involved in curing cancer. I mean, we're already seeing a movement in, in the ability to recognize things in MRIs and stuff like that. So going back with what you said is, you know, you have AI agents, you know, the AI agents are talking to each other. Now they're learning from each other, AI and AI. And that is absolutely fascinating to me because now as they're talking, they're learning and they're understanding what we humans are needing or what we're asking for. So there's just a whole, like, it's, it's rapidly growing so quickly. And I think that for me, for real estate, an example is Yeah, write the property description, things like that that we were all doing when it first came out. But, you know, ChatGPT, Claude Gemini, an example as a real estate agent is we have our MLS, right? We have the Multiple Listing Service with all the data of every house that sells, actives, sold, pendings. And ChatGPT cannot plug in to that MLS porthole. It can't, it's not, it can't plug into a third party yet. However, companies that are out there that have developed a real estate version of that, that can plug into the MLS. I'll give you an example. There's a company called Simplicity and they built Sarah Broker and Sarah, Sarah AI. She's the, she's your assistant for real estate and it's sarahbroker.com. You sign up. And you connect your IDX and your MLS. Well, what people don't understand is now that it's plugged in, she's a genius of the market over somebody who's been in the market for 30 years right then and there. And so Sarah is an AI assistant we have for our team, and we literally just go in and say, Sarah, create a full market analysis, a lifestyle slide deck of closest golf courses, closest you know, 5-star restaurants, 5-star hotels, proximity to the beach on this property. Boom, done in seconds, minutes, all designed, all laid out with our company, our branding. What used to take hours for a human to have achieved in literally minutes. Then it goes further in public record data. So it's not just the MLS. I can go in and say, hey, 555 Hemlock Street, how many rooms in that mansion face the ocean? And it pulls the architectural plans and permits and public records of the building zoning and says 4 of the 6 bedrooms face the ocean. So it's not reading it from the marketing remarks the agent wrote saying 4 rooms face the ocean because the agent didn't even say that. It's pulling public record data from building and when it was built. And so it's just— and we're just at the beginning of this, you know. And so I think that's where Pete— that's, you know, to kind of go back to what I said is I've learned so much from AI, not from human teaching me AI. However, the one thing that I do bring to the table and what you do bring to the table is I've tried out so many things as a coach and a teacher. I can't go on stage and just say, "AI will teach you," and then eventually figure out how to find SarahBroker.com.

Right.

So I've always told audiences I fail often so my audiences fail less. So I'll beta test so many different things to find the best of the best programs. And I think that's the problem, is problem number one, you're not doing your own research and being learning-based. But problem number two is so much is getting thrown at us in the AI realm that they don't know which one is the best. And so that's where I try to work hard in finding the best. So example, Synthesia. Synthesia is what the billion-dollar companies use and spend $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 building a live AI avatar twin for the company that can answer any question of the company, if not a million dollars. That doesn't exist quite yet for small business. The perfect live pre-recorded content of your avatar twin doing scripts and videos and leveraging you with video content all day long.

Mm-hmm.

But creating my live consumer-facing twin that can answer any question about Newport Beach real estate doesn't exist yet.

Yet. Right.

The minute it does, It's done. And so when people are thinking of like asking AI questions for administrative, that's your backend. The consumer-facing is right around the corner. Consumer-facing is the chatbot that you see on websites, right? You go to the website, you see a chatbot, frequently asked questions, or there's a live chat. In the very near future, you're going to see a thumbnail with me. My avatar twin, just kind of floating there waiting to get asked a question. And when people go to my website, I'm going to, I'm going to say through my avatar twin, welcome to my website, how can I help you? It'll be plugged into the MLS and my avatar twin will be able to answer any single question about anything right there, consumer-facing, because it has all the data while I'm sitting in a listing presentation with my clients going over what color they should paint the kitchen before we list their house. Yeah, that's a true— that's what we're right there. And when that happens, it's, it's done, you know. And so that's where we get to focus, circling back on what we said, focus on what we do best, which is the authentic meet and greet people, and then let the twin do all the work.

I already have my clone on my website. I I know, but I'm not— I haven't been so good with training it everything, right? It's just plugged into my YouTube and all of that stuff, and, and, uh, I need to train it more and be more proactive about what's going on currently, like live data versus, you know, exactly stuff.

So example, yeah, those exist to train them, but then they're only gonna know what I know.

They're not out there like learning Right, right.

And so the second that our AI clone can be plugged into a data porthole, right, like the MLS, imagine that, you know, just, you know, right now my clone can only answer the questions that I'm teaching it.

Mm-hmm.

But the second it's plugged into the MLS, it now can answer questions that I don't know.

Right. Because if someone called you, you would have to go look up on the MLS and you, you would know it, but you don't know it in that moment. Right.

In that moment. Yeah. And that's huge. I mean, it's just, it's, it's incredible where we're at.

I know. It's so exciting. But see, at the same time, it all— I mean, it's all going to come down to data, data restrictions, data approvals and all that stuff because it can only share what it's allowed to see. And that's what we face in commercial real estate, right? Is CoStar has all of our data. Correct. I think Luke was on my podcast, the co-founder of CREXi, and they're a public site, so they're a little bit more open to data. People can go search it like Zillow. And so I can access that. But it's a it's just, it's fascinating what can be done. And at the AI conference I was at, we were learning about AI— I'm sorry, Perplexity Computer, which I was telling you about last night. But basically, it's an AI that has access to all of the AI language models. So it has Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Nano Banana, and it has its own accounts for all of them. And so you can give it a massive project of multiple things to do, multiple things to accomplish, like, hey, go do full competitive research analysis on my company and every single one of my competitors, then put together a full presentation on, you know, all of our milestones that we need to create over the next 12, you know, 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 10 year, then go book in my calendar, like find all my availabilities in the schedule, all of these things for me to meet, like whatever, like a million tasks that you could give it. Not a million, but you give it a whole series of tasks and it'll just go autonomously. Build agents for each of the LLMs based on which LLM is the best. So if part of it was create a video, it's gonna use Nano Banana and tell its agent there to go create the video. If it's create a website, it's probably gonna go to like Manus or something to build the website. A presentation's probably get like whatever, right? All these different things. And then it'll just go do all these tasks and as long as your computer's plugged in, it'll run and it'll keep going. And it's $200 a month and it'll just do all of this stuff. It's crazy.

I know when I hear the, the monthly, amounts of all these amazing tools that we have now. I'm actually shocked, and maybe we shouldn't say this, but I mean, I'm already at the point where if they turned around— I used to say this about social media, like 15 years ago, because my business became, you know, on our first podcast, you know, I, I, how I was using social media before most people in the way I was, is I would tell people, if Mark Zuckerberg turned around tomorrow and said your Facebook profile is $500 a month now, most people would get off, but I'd be like, where do I send the check? Because I have to now. Like, most of my business is coming from it.

Right.

With AI, good grief. With the power and the things that I've created already, they could quadruple the price. They could, like, because I see the value and it's still a fraction of having a team of people and staff doing it.

Yeah, but they're, they're smart, right?

Yeah.

It's a lot easier to sell a dollar product to 8 billion people than a—

Exactly.

Billion or a million dollar product.

Yeah. And then of course, the advanced stuff, you pay a little bit more and maybe you need another plugin. So yeah.

Yeah, it's exciting. It's pretty cool. So it, and it's just going to keep getting better and better. And I think as long as we have access to the restrictions, like I was telling you, I was testing this Agentik AI that was I was giving it a bunch of different tasks to go run autonomously, but then like I was having to do a Zillow search and then it was like, are you a bot? Like, click here to confirm you're not. And it's like, I don't think it can click there, right? So yet, yeah. So actually I didn't even give it time. I just was watching it and I did it.

It'll build a digital hand.

Yeah.

And a mouse.

It probably will.

It probably.

But it's pretty exciting to see where it's going.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So I mean, for, for people out there that are business owners right now, like what is the best way for them to— whether they're investor or business owner or even in their careers, like what is the best way to actually leverage AI in the capacity that they could be versus just continuing to go to ChatGPT and typing a question in or having it do like this simple task?

I mean, I think we've, I think we've covered it. I guess for, for what I would do is start using, you know, step one is start using it at a higher level in the verbiage you're using. Like don't be basic. Like test it, be super advanced, super detailed of what you'd like to accomplish, and you're going to see a massive shift in the way it responds. And then tell it what to do much shorter. Stop being so detailed. I don't— I need you to simplify it. Give me, give me 3 steps to take first. You know, just talk to it like a human. Don't talk to it like a robot. And I think that's where you see that first shift. And then You know, go to the next level. So I would say the next level for a small business is leverage it at least with video content. You know, we've talked about some advanced stuff like the clones and everything, but, you know, heygen.com, H-E-Y-G-E-N.com, is an amazing platform to create your, your third-dimensional, you know, clone that you can give scripts and just create a ton of video content so that you can be out there doing what you do best.

Yeah.

You know, and just upload that content. But I always tell people, let people know, like don't hide it. I think that's the thing that people are doing is, is people are getting frustrated. Or if I see somebody and I know it's an AI video and whether it's a friend or a business colleague that I know, say that, right? Hi, it's Tony's digital twin. Just wanted to give you an update he told me to send out to all of you. And then the script or whatever. Just like our social media was, you know, I always called our social media our digital twin back then. Now it's just a live third-dimensional avatar with AI. But back then it was my digital twin. They knew that's not the real Tony. But if I ask Tony on Facebook, like, I feel like I'm talking to him, I know he's going to get the message and I know he's going to then respond through his Facebook digital twin, right?

Yeah.

So I think let people know, don't try to hide it cuz we're not there yet. Like you can tell the difference, right?

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And just keeping that authentic self and that's why it's gonna be so important. And we'll, we'll get into branding and marketing and all that cuz we love that. That's what we do is organic, um, marketing. But it's going to be pretty hard to, start to build a personal brand pretty soon because AI video is going to pretty soon not be able to be distinguished from real humans. Right. So you're already seeing these AI channels explode and like get millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. But you can still tell if you really look, you go like, okay, I can still tell it's AI, but pretty soon— and that's what they were saying at the AI Mastermind too, is like next thing that is going to happen is AI voice. It's almost perfect. It's still not 100% there, but AI voice is going to replace every single cold caller in the world because it knows Jeremy Miners, all of his training. Like, it never messes up. It knows perfect tonality. It knows exactly what questions to ask, and it does it way better than anyone. It does it at the level of the best salespeople in the entire world. And so, you know, that position is going to be completely wiped away. And the next thing is going to be video. So that will come next where you will not be able to tell and the tonality will be perfect, your speed will be perfect. And then with the marketing, there will no longer be, and I already know people doing this, a mass email campaign that gets blasted out to, hey everyone, you know, here's my newsletter and this and that and this is what we're doing. It'll be, hi Tony, I know you were here yesterday and I know that you are an entrepreneur and you, speed consultation, all these things, and it'll be like directly targeted to you and your pain point. And then that could be sent out at a mass level, but they're completely custom.

Custom.

Yep. And so it'll be like that for like all ads. Uh, all ads will be custom ads. So you're going through your Facebook and it literally goes, hey Tony, we have this new product that we think that you would love.

Yeah. And the whole key behind this, what we're sharing into those that are listening is We're sharing where it's going. Don't be basic. Don't keep using it at the level. Everything we're sharing right now, go in and ask, right? You know, when is this gonna happen? What are the top 5 things that I should be using you for running my mechanic business, my small business, or my dentist practice? Or how can I be using you better? What are other dentists out there using when it comes to AI? It can answer all of that already. And I think that's the thing is that's where people will start to be able to be ready to do and ready to take advantage of the things that you're sharing right now.

Yeah.

When they come out and be the first before their competitors are.

Right. And a good one too is ask AI to give you the prompt. So I do it all the time. Yeah. Because I'm lazy and wanna be efficient. I'm like, hey, this is the outcome that I'm trying to get. What is the best prompt for me to give you in order to get this outcome? And then it gives me this 15-page prompt and then I can plug that in and then it actually creates an amazing, outcome. But I mean, we're using it in everything right now, and I know we're not even using it to the capacity nearly of what we could be. But what used to take an analyst hours and hours to build underwriting models and to check for inconsistencies and to build formulas and to put whole loan packages together, I mean, Claude will do it in 3 minutes or less and it'll build all the Excel sheets and build all the models.

Like, it's— Claude is fascinating.

Yeah.

Even the stuff that you were sharing last night on, on the things that you're using in cloud. But you going back to what you said on how you won't be able to tell, like in the very near future and, and, and the way it will reach out to your database and be custom and share and talk to my clients, my clients, everybody's going to be okay with it. And the reason they're going to be okay with it is they know that's my my system. It's my technology staying in touch and, and giving them value so that I can focus on what I do best, which is authentically being with people. And I think that's one of the best things about AI is it's actually going to put us back out to human and human connection. Yeah, a lot of people are thinking it's disconnecting humans. I actually think it's going to connect humans because it's going to leverage us so well that we all have the time. What did Elon Musk say? He does— in the future, he doesn't think there'll be currency, money, right? People won't work because our AI— AI is doing everything. Like, when you think about that depth, yeah, it's a whole nother— it's a whole nother level. And then like going back to what you were saying with the stocks, You know, and what he's, what he's achieving, that's being done in crypto and blockchain as well. I mean, AI is, is there's so much AI involved in the world of blockchain and crypto now, and that's going to be the currency for AI. That's going to be digital assets are going to be right up there with AI. Yeah.

And we'll, we'll, let's shift into crypto and blockchain because that's a whole nother, you know, tech revolution that we're still in the midst of, which you were really early on, um, especially in real estate before a lot of people have adopted it. Now it's becoming more and more adopted, but there's still people that are heavily against it and big investors too that are heavily against it, but then equally amount of people who are heavily into it. And so, uh, I actually heard something, I think it was at the conference, the Mastermind, that said, because somebody said, well, the, the AI can't really become human because it can't open a bank account.

Exactly.

And so they actually said there was an AI agent that created a job posting for a CEO to take their meat suit and go open a bank account so they could run their company. But what's happening now is crypto is going to be the currency for AIs to actually trade and to make money and to create businesses. So like Imagine a world where you can create an AI that just goes and builds a whole company for you and collects all the payments, opens the crypto account, trades in currency in its currency that can be traded to Bitcoin or traded to cash or whatever. Because I'm pretty sure crypto is allowing anyone can go create a coin, right?

Oh yeah.

And so AI could go create a currency that then can be transferred to whatever your currency is, right?

It's kind of like your own stablecoin, right? Your own token. Yeah.

It's insane. And so, I mean, I would love for that to just have my AI copilot build companies.

Yeah. And for those that are listening, I go back to what we keep saying is all of this is going to be a massive advantage to people who know enough to take those steps and start that. But if we're using it on a basic level, then when all of this is happening and you and I are doing that, most people still aren't using at the level and they won't even know where to begin.

Right. And then they'll just be angry.

And so I can't— I'm so passionate when it comes to take the time to be learning-based and research. Don't just do what you hear others using things for, you know, because that's where, that's where you thrive.

Yeah. So where are you seeing AI and crypto and blockchain? Like, first off, well, people know what cryptocurrency is now, right?

Yeah.

But like, What is the blockchain?

Well, yeah, blockchain's been around 2 or 3 times longer than, than crypto. And the first crypto was Bitcoin. But blockchain technology has been around for 30 years. It's— but it's the technology. It's the— I call it the bank vault. It's the vault that holds all currencies, all paper trails, the chain of all transactions and everything. That's, that's the secure vault. But going back to cryptocurrency, yes, you know, we want to assume people know what cryptocurrency is, but they don't.

Right.

And the reason they don't is they understand that it's here and it's here to stay. And what used to be bad publicity and bad media on it, now they see it as a ticker on CNBC, you know, when they're watching TV and the Dow and the Nasdaq and Bitcoin and Ethereum because it's not going anywhere. And then they see our own US dollar here and the United States become USDC in its own digital asset comparison to the dollar, the stablecoin. And so people know that, but there are so many people who still just don't know why it's valuable.

Mm-hmm.

Like, why is Bitcoin valuable? Some anonymous person named Satoshi created it in 2009. We don't know who that was. And now it's a multi-trillion-dollar global asset. That is considered equal to actual gold that we can hold in our hand because gold is an equal asset worldwide. Everybody has the same value to it. Everybody embraces it equally. Everybody holds it at the top, right? And same with Bitcoin. So maybe, how did I get into it?

Mm-hmm.

We'll start with that.

Perfect.

And that's a funny story. So I was speaking in, Palo Alto, California at a tech conference in 2013, towards the end of 2013. And it's a tech conference of multi-industry. So I'm speaking on real estate technology, like how technology's disrupting real estate. So I'm talking a lot about, you know, how we're evolving with electronic signature at a high level and electronic processes and social media and branding yourself using technology and all this stuff that I teach and write the books about. And then somebody was coming up to talk about insurance technology and then finance technology. And after the event, this gentleman walked up to me and he goes, hey, you know, like, I'm a financial wealth manager and, you know, I help people invest money and I own my own little firm. And that was awesome. I'm going to totally you know, use the things you were saying that you do for real estate to help build my business in finance. He goes, but, you know, aside from that, he goes, since you're a techie, I have a question to ask you. He goes, what are your thoughts on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? Because I have clients who are making millions in Bitcoin and You know, I just curious, what are your thoughts on it and the blockchain? And do you think that in the future somebody will be able to buy an actual physical house using Bitcoin as their form of payment and the seller of that house accept the Bitcoin in trade for the deed and the keys to the house? And I remember like it was yesterday and I just said, you know, it's, It's a very, very good question, but it's very early, right? And I think it's too early to tell if that will happen. There might be regulation to it. There might be liability. There might be legalities that have to be worked. However, common sense is anything that the world embraces. Actually, anything that even tens of millions of people worldwide embrace as some new form of value or process, it won't just find its way into real estate, it'll find its way into every single industry. That's— it's just common sense, right? And he goes, wait a second. First of all, you're the first real estate agent who even knew what I was talking about. And second, you actually think in the future somebody will be able to buy a house using Bitcoin? And I go, again, might be too early to tell, but let's go back to what I'm saying. Anything, not just, yeah, assets, anything that tens and tens and tens of millions of people embrace as something new, it'll find its way into everything because enough people back it, enough people see the value in it. And he goes, well, as I said, I have clients who are making millions of dollars. It's super volatile, obviously, And he goes, but they want to park it. And this was before it was, you know, it's much more stable now and it's much more worldwide. But he goes, and they don't know where it's going, so they want to park some of their profits into real estate, you know, something more stable. And so, you know, as soon as they're ready, I would love to talk to you and maybe you can help them, you know, find a property where they can buy it and And I was like, yeah. So we exchanged information and that was late 2013. He walked away. And this is what I say to my audiences when, when I'm speaking on crypto and blockchain and he walks away, I go into the other room and I grab my phone and I go into Google. And what do you think I Googled? What the hell is Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain? Not kidding. I had no clue what this guy was talking about. I had never even heard the words Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. This is 2013. Yeah, but you say you have a— you have clients making millions of dollars right now and they want to park their profits in real estate. And I sell real estate. I don't care what question you ask me right now, I'm going to know what you're talking about, right? And you're never going to corner me. If I see value in a conversation, I'll never be cornered. Where I don't, I don't come across like I know what they're talking about. It's— that's just— there's been books on sales for years and controlling conversation and being able to route yourself during a conversation to seem like you know what you're talking about. And, you know, it's like I— how many times have I hung up on someone who asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to? Like, I'm on my phone and somebody was just like, hey, so we live on such-and-such street. And I mean, are you familiar with our area? If I wasn't, I'll hang up on them. I go into my system really quick. They're calling me, send a voicemail. I'm not done with my research. Boom, boom, boom. I pick up their street name, recent sales, da da da da, school, school name, school grade, send a voicemail, da da da da da. Good. Call them back.

Hi.

Oh, I get— was it me or you? Like, who knows? Stupid phones. Anyways, what street are you on? We're on Hemlock Street. Oh yeah. So how does your house compare to the one on Bratton Street on the, on the next street, that one just sold like a month ago. And now I'm the expert, right? Yeah. So circling back, so I start Googling it and I'm absolutely fascinated by how much data was out there about it already in 2013. And so I went from, you know, you're learning-based, you're addicted to learning.

Yeah.

And I'm addicted to learning. You know, even the headlines in my social profiles say researcher. I, I just love research. Me too. And so I'm diving deep. And I went from, you know, binge-watching my favorite show on Netflix at, you know, 10 o'clock at night till midnight, you know, when I go to sleep and I wake up at 5 the next day, uh, to just watching hours and hours of the most boring videos on YouTube of of what Bitcoin was, cryptocurrency, the mining process, why it's valuable, why it's going to change the world. And within about 6 months, I was an expert, like, for how much information that I learned on it. And then that's when I started investing in it and understanding, you know, and then I'd sell and then I'd reinvest and just learning the processes. And about 3 years later, that gentleman came calling. We had stayed in touch. He had a client that wanted to buy a multimillion-dollar property in Southern California. There was a property that, uh, wouldn't sell. It was a super unique property. The seller of that property was also somewhat savvy in the crypto space, but it was still pretty volatile, um, compared to now. And Long story short, well, I mean, it's still pretty volatile.

I think it dropped 50% this year.

Every 4 years. We're talking about it was doing that on any given day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any given week. It just goes through its 4-year cycle. And it's less every time. First it was 90 or whatever drop.

Yeah.

Then it was 80.

I know every time it—

Then it was 70 or something. This one's been 50 or almost 60.

We're doing pretty good.

Yeah. So this is not—

buy more.

This is not a crypto investment. Uh, I'm not telling people to invest in it. I'm giving you what I do, and what you do with that information is entirely up to you. But remember, there's two sides to every currency: investing in that currency or the use of that currency. And so he— bottom line, long story short, they ended up The seller was willing to accept Bitcoin, the buyer used Bitcoin. And that's why I don't like the word currency when it comes to cryptocurrency, because it's an asset. It should be called crypto asset because you're trading an asset for an asset, like trading somebody Bitcoin for their house is asset to asset. They're getting that asset. They're not getting a currency that's based on that asset. They're— you're sending them that digital gold, right?

Yeah.

And so That caught CNBC's attention when that transaction was done. And then that's what led to me being interviewed with CNBC. And then that's what led to then eventually being the crypto blockchain expert when it comes to its use in real estate. And then it's just grown from there. It's evolved so much now. And now when somebody calls me and says they want to buy a house using Bitcoin, My, my question back to them is, why? Why on earth would you trade an asset that is going to go up 25 times more than real estate will over the next 20 to 30 years? Easily. Like, no, now you don't have to. Now you get to have a margin loan like you take out on stocks, right? If you have a ton of Apple stock and you, you need to buy a house and you don't want to have a 7% mortgage or a 6% mortgage. You take your 3 or 4% margin loan against your Apple stock and you go buy the house with that interest rate, right? Well, now there's so many ways to just get a loan against your digital assets so that you don't get rid of that digital asset. I actually laugh every time I hear these things now. Walmart's now accepting Bitcoin. I'm like, if you're stupid enough to buy something at Walmart with a fraction of one of your Bitcoins, like, my goodness. Right? Like, don't do— so of course everybody's accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment now because they know where it's going.

Yeah, right.

So kind of that's where I'm at now. Going back to kind of basically what is it, and this is very basic, but you have to understand currency. My definition, my, my layman's term definition of currency when I teach it is currency is simply What two or more humans are willing to give a value to, to buy, sell, trade a product or service. Like, that's the basic, you know, Michael Jordan's rookie card was used as currency in India during the highlights of his career because two humans are giving it value and they're trading and they're using it as currency. So who gives the yellow piece of metal that we find in Earth value?

Gold? We do.

Humans?

Yeah.

It's just a yellow piece of—

We give everything value.

It's just a yellow piece of metal on Earth. We give it its value. Now, why do we give it its value? And see if you follow this with something else that's considered the same definition. We give gold its value because of its rarity, its worldwide embrace for the same value, its strength, it's the resources and people it takes to find and mine it and pull it out of earth. And yes, I will hear people say all the time, yeah, but Tony, I can own gold, like I can touch the gold. And if you believe in science or you believe in God, whichever one, but you know, God created earth and, and it's something I can touch and it's valuable. Right. First of all, no, you can't own your gold. You can own gold recreationally. But the government, the United States, took your gold away in 1931 and said it's now illegal to own your gold and gave you a piece of paper called the Federal Reserve Note when gold was $2 an ounce and now it's $5,000 an ounce and they own it all. And that piece of paper now has zero value because it's 35 trillion in debt and isn't even backed by gold. So the value aspect of the dollar versus cryptocurrency is there's way more value in cryptocurrency. That piece of paper in your pocket, the only value behind that piece of paper is the superpower nation behind that currency that says, don't worry, we're figuring it out.

Mm-hmm.

That's the only value is words. It's not backed by what you used to be able to have. And when they took it away from you in 1931, it was backed by that. You could go in and get your gold in replacement of the glorified IOU, but then they even took that away. And so you can't own gold at a high level technically anymore. You can buy it off market and, you know, gold bars and plates and stuff, but that's a different different podcast. Um, so now let's go back to crypto. Okay, science or God? God created Earth. We mine Earth for valuable metals or stones. Well, God created crypto. If you really want to take this podcast to another level, yeah, God created technology because every single piece of technology is powered by what? Electromagnetic waves from the sun. Radio waves exist. Every device, everything we have wouldn't exist without being able to connect to the digital world, which is those waves that the sun gives off.

Mm-hmm.

So now when you think about it, we as humans figured out how to mine physical mountains for metal. Then we figured out how to mine the digital universe. Mm-hmm. That's actually math, the entire universe, time, everything. And we figured out how to mine and create a digital asset. And once that was created, it doesn't matter it's anonymous. Well, who created it? We've— we can't— we don't know who it is. We haven't met him. Have you met God? You haven't met that one either. No, you're going off of faith. I don't know what to say, right?

Yeah.

So let's not get complicated. Let's just say that we have figured out how to create a digital asset that not just whoever created it gave value, the entire world now has embraced— let's just take one of them, Bitcoin. Same value, same use, its rarity, the amount of mining and resources it takes to get one. And unlike gold, it's capped at 21 million coins. What would happen to the price of gold per ounce if if the world realizes there's no more? We have found it all. We have mined it all. What would happen to it?

It would skyrocket even more than it already has.

Bitcoin is what, 98, 99% mined now?

Yeah.

And so it's a digital asset that does have value. 'Cause remember, what value do assets have? The value that humans are willing to give that asset.

Right. Yeah. It's so fascinating. And I've been an investor in Bitcoin. I remember hearing about it in 2014 when I started engineering. High school, and this alumni mathematician told me about it. And because he was— I don't know, he was on campus for some reason, but I think he was guest teaching in a class. But anyway, yeah, he told me about it, and I started—

the hexadecimal number.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Because we can get complicated on this podcast, but I'm trying not to.

Yeah. MetaMask. I can't even remember the exchanges that I had to go on, and I'm sure I've lost multiple passwords to multiple exchanges. I still lose Exchanges, like I told you, I'm like, can you help me get back into this?

We're going to— we'll work on that after the podcast.

Yeah, because I call customer support and they say I'm SOL without a passkey. So anyway, yeah. So it's really been crazy to see what, what it's been, what's come from it. And there's still people that say it's going to go to zero, but I don't think it's ever going to go to zero because there's always a supply and demand. And as long as there is a demand, there's going to be a supply for it. And it's already in existence. And people are going to use it.

So, you know, it kind of goes back to, you know, I'm very direct and straightforward when I, when I speak on stage, like I don't sugarcoat anything. And people will say that all the time, like, he's a nice guy, but man, he is to the point. Like, he does not— I don't mess around. And so I say things that other people don't like, the fact that I put it in, in ways. But example is just get your head out of the sand. It's like the people that I hear say, oh, it's It's, you know, cryptocurrencies for money laundering and terrorism.

Geez.

Oh, because the US dollar has never been used for money laundering and terrorism. Like, get your head out of the sand. And the biggest corporations who have bashed it and push the bad media are the biggest whale owners of it.

Why?

Because they bash it online and on TV so that the price drops and then they can buy it. Perfect example. JP Morgan.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, Jamie Dimon has always been a critic of Bitcoin, not necessarily a critic of cryptocurrency or blockchain, but a critic of Bitcoin, bashes it all the time and price drops. He's the CEO of the largest bank, JP Morgan. And this is content you can find online. This is not me who just knows this. This is out there for anyone to research and see the articles on it. But the second it drops after it's being bashed by JP Morgan, who buys a billion worth of it? JP Morgan UK.

Mm-hmm.

United States, the most non-friendly crypto country in the world since its existence until recently over the last year now and all the new policies and everything and the Clarity Act coming soon. But the most non-friendly crypto biggest nation in the world and is, I think, number 6 or 7th largest whale owner of it. And why aren't they selling it? Because they know where it's going.

Exactly.

And I think that's where I try to tell people, like, you know, uh, go, go to zero? No, because it's not based off of just United States embracing it. It's global. Nations are using it. And that's where you just see where it's going to go. And they just don't— unfortunately, they don't want the non-1% to own it. They know the amount of wealth it's going to create. They know where it's going to go. And I think that that's why you're— you get a lot more bad media on it than you do good. And then I always try to compare digital things to real life. Like, you know, when I was a real estate agent, door knocking, I went from door knocking to door clicking, the modern day front door. So I always try to compare what we do online as the same thing we used to do offline. Going back to crypto is Bitcoin is, say, the gold. Ethereum is the silver, right? Ripple or something like it is copper and bronze and like, just go down the line. But gold, uh, there was something called fool's gold that people found and it wasn't real, and people got fooled because they thought it was as valuable as the real one because it looked the same. And, and there was a bunch of people behind it and talking about it. Well, there's some fool's crypto out there. There's thousands of cryptocurrency tokens. So I always try to tell people, you have to focus on the ones that have use. What is their purpose? What are they being used for? And don't pay attention to all these other ones that are out there. And, and Kevin O'Leary says it best. Like he always says, he's like, yeah, there's Ripple, there's this one, there's this one, Chainlink, Solana. But he goes, Bitcoin, Ethereum, like they're gonna have 95% of all market share of things that are being done with the use of crypto. So he only focuses on Bitcoin and Ethereum. So I think that's where, you know, don't get overwhelmed with the Fool's cryptos, you know, the Fool's gold. Get focused on what you see the whales purchasing over and over again, like Mike Saylor with Strategy. I mean, my goodness, they, they own so many.

So yeah, yeah, I know they were probably in some pain. Hopefully they're still doing okay with that massive drop because they were what, 30 to 1 leveraged on there.

I think he's going to be fine.

Yeah, I'm sure he will be fine. He's good at capital raising.

So now, now you have the evolution of it. So now they're— now we're talking tokenization.

Mhm.

That has become the big world— the big word is, is tokenization of RWA, real world assets. You have people talking about tokenization of stocks now in the entire stock market, tokenization of an actual physical house, tokenization of a mega yacht, tokenization of a private jet, commercial properties, commercial properties, everything, all powered by decentralized finance, DeFi, and on the blockchain recorded. So example of where I'm trying to teach now is there's, there's multiple reasons to learn this. The number one reason when I teach it is not to get people to feel like they should invest in it or anything like that. It's you should have knowledge of what billionaires have knowledge of, to get into those conversations. So 30 years ago, 40 years ago, if a real estate agent really brand new, just got a license, they want to go after millionaires and luxury neighborhoods and they want to, they want to, they want to hit that market. What news should they be watching? CNBC? Bloomberg, stocks, the economy. They should be learning that world because that's what wealthy people have knowledge of. So that when they're at the country club or when they're at the golf course or when they're at a nice restaurant and they hear the other table or somebody that they meet talking stocks, they watch enough of the stock market to get into that conversation. Oh, well, it was nice. What do you do? I'm a real estate agent. Oh, well, I need to sell my house. But they would have never been able to get in that conversation if they didn't have knowledge of what those super wealthy people had knowledge of. That's why I teach it. I don't care what you do with it. I just want you to understand it so that when you hear somebody talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum or the blockchain or tokenization and you're at some nice restaurant, now you get to go and get into the conversation. And now you're talking to them about what you know about crypto and what news you heard that day. And now they're like, what do you do? I'm a real estate agent. Oh, I got to sell my house.

Mm-hmm.

Not with crypto. I don't need to buy or sell a house using Bitcoin or anything. I just, I need to sell my house. But you got to get in that conversation. And that's what I try to get into people's head is Bob and Sally. Sorry if your name's Bob or Sally, they're just my default names. Bob and Sally in Little Rock, Arkansas, who dabbled $100 towards a Bitcoin 10 years ago or 5 years ago or 1 year ago. Are not who made it a multi-trillion-dollar worldwide asset.

Exactly.

The most wealthiest, intelligent people in the world understand it. They own it, they use it, and they know where it's going. Mm-hmm. And so that's probably the best point of this podcast is take the time to learn it. It goes back to what we were saying about AI. Most people in the crypto space or blockchain space are just doing it or have the knowledge of what they hear people around them saying about it.

They're just reacting.

They're not, they're not taking the time to go deep.

Yeah. Yeah. The Cathie Wood with Ark Investments who I follow, she's, their 5-year prediction target is $1.5 million. I love her too.

Yeah.

She's amazing.

I don't just love her because of her prediction.

Right.

I'd love her if her prediction was the other way.

Yeah.

But I love her. I listen to her a lot and always read the things that she's on for sure.

Yeah, she's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you know, just especially with everything going on, I mean, we're technically in war. People will say we're not in war, it's an excursion in Iran. Someone told me that yesterday. They're like, the excursion we're on in Iran. I'm like, okay, you call it what you want, but pretty sure it's a war. But anyway, The excursion in Iran that we're on, um, the still in an inflationary environment. And then of course with Iran and the oil prices going up, that creates higher inflation. We're trying to get interest rates down, but that's also inflationary. And so you have too much inflation. We can't get interest rates down, which affects the overall economy. We have $1 trillion of commercial real estate debt coming, coming due, which last crisis was a residential real estate crisis because of the adjustable rate mortgages. Well, now it's more of a commercial real estate, um, you know,, I don't wanna say crisis, but bumpy road volatility in commercial real estate because of all the debt coming due. And as long as interest rates continue to remain elevated, the sponsors, the owners of these buildings can't refinance.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's gonna cause prices to drop and the cycle to kind of reset and restart. And we're kind of in that, but it's different this time because it, uh, and I hate when people say it's different this time, but every time is different, right? History rhymes, doesn't repeat, it rhymes. And so, Now with banks extending and modifying because we don't want to have all of these loans taken back or all these assets taken back. You know, we have 20% vacancy in office buildings nationwide, which is 20%. I mean, you know how many billions of dollars of loans are in offices. So that's obviously a problem. We have a little bit of climbing vacancy. We have some high vacancy in apartments. We've had dropping rents. And this is commercial real estate, which commercial real estate is a big indicator. Of the overall economy because it's where we have our businesses. I mean, the whole real estate market in general, residential and commercial, and we've been seeing a softening in residential. And then we're seeing the value of the dollar continue to go down because of the hyperinflation. So there's just so much going on in this new rise of AI and technology and blockchain and crypto. And I think a lot of people feel so overwhelmed of, oh my gosh, what do I do? Everything seems to be chaotic or changing really fast. And, you know, we came off this long bull run and everybody was wealthy and happy and doing good for the most part. And then now it's just day after day. It's like you look on the news or you look on social media and you're like, you just think, oh my gosh, you know, 15 massive things happened today. And, and how do I possibly keep up with it? And so I think really my message here of my long ramble and rant is it is so important to be investing in assets. Yeah. And assets are one, your own skills. That's the best asset you could possibly have. And love that Robert Kiyosaki always says it's skills that make you rich, not money, because your skills can go make you the money. So yeah, number one is your skills. Number two is hard assets. What— whatever you believe in, like whether it's cryptocurrency, you know, you believe in Bitcoin. Uh, I like to diversify and, and play with a bunch of different things, even if I'm not 100% sure of everything, right? But whether it's cryptocurrency, whether it's gold and silver, whether it's real estate, real— yeah, 100% real estate, commercial or residential. Like, all of these assets is so important because there is a lot of changes happening with the dollar and with currency. And if you look into the news and what's going on and the whole fact that the dollar is just debt, right? And so people who just save dollars ultimately lose over time. And we're in such a massive phase of growth where there's— Elon Musk is going to take a multi-trillion-dollar company public, which is the biggest company valuation ever in history. And we have the opportunity as people, as normal investors, to go in and buy, like, become owners.

Yeah.

And that was the video I posted yesterday. It became viral that said nobody ever got rich from being an employee. It's not to say that you shouldn't be an employee. It's just that money that you're earning from being an employee—

do something with it, right?

You have to become an owner and you have to become an investor and not be afraid of what if this goes down? Well, guess what? Your dollars are going down 100% guaranteed. Yeah.

Your oranges are going to get more expensive. Your eggs are going to get more expensive. It's not the dollars going, you know, it's not that the dollar— The dollar is not going down. It's the cost of goods that are going up, you know, at the end, which is the same. And so I think that's where people don't, you know, grasp what we're saying is, is, you know, that house that your grandparents bought for $40,000 that's worth $10 million now or $5 million and it was $40,000 then, it's still the same house today. It might have been remodeled, but the same value today that you get out of that house is equal to the value you got when they bought it and the value that they had on it. It's still the same thing, but it costs more because of inflation, because the dollar getting weaker. That's what people need to understand. And so you could—

you want to own it.

Exactly.

Because then you benefit.

Yeah, exactly.

Sorry, Bruce, go ahead.

No. And so, uh, you know, even taking 10% of your income, 5% of your income, and investing in something is going to prove to be beneficial. And a lot of people, I think, you know, people who struggle, you know, they don't have that 5 or 10% to invest sometimes. You know, they, they rely whole, you know, on that whole salary. So I'll always ask them when people come to me for advice is if— so if you got laid off So you make, let's just for simple math, $10,000 a month. I know people don't all make $10,000 a month, but $10,000 a month and that pays all my bills. Like I don't have the means of dedicating $500 to, you know, Robinhood or stocks or tokenization or investments in crypto. What if you got laid off tomorrow? Oh, it would be horrible. What if the new job was only going to pay you $9,500 a month? Would you accept it, or would you say, nope, I have to wait for $10,000? No, of course I would take it. I, you know, I'm just gonna have to cut some things in order to— for $9,500 to be enough now.

Yeah, exactly.

There's your answer. Cut some things to make your $10,000 $9,500 capable and invest the other $500.

Yeah, it's just because you don't have to that you don't do it.

But anybody can, can find money to invest. And I don't care if it's $10, just start.

Exactly. It's such a frustrating excuse that people think that they have to have millions of dollars to invest. And that's— it's so easy. Like $5 a day, you know, like David Bach talks about that. $27 a day, which is 2 Starbucks coffees or so, you know, or 1 meal, like 1, you know, 1 Chipotle with some chips and guac. You're at $27, which we all eat. So just eat a little less and take that money and go invest it in an automated account on Robinhood.

I mean, yeah, don't take this the wrong way for anybody who's listening, but, you know, until you've created, you know, savings for your retirement, maybe the 33 cents a day to the rescue dog foundation should be 33 cents a day to your own investing so you can eventually give more. But that you're the— the dog isn't the victim, the, the children aren't. Like, at the end of the day, if you have to be your own victim, are you helping yourself so eventually you can do it on a greater scale and give back?

Yeah.

And give back to charities and give back to foundations. So, you know, if you're not— if, if you're barely getting by, cut the things that you— you know, I used to tell age— I used to, or I still do every now and then, I'll ask audiences, and this is actually a stat that I've researched, and it's still a stat, and it's only gone up. What do you think on average the average top-producing real estate agent, meaning an agent who is doing a decent amount of business, you know, somebody who's in the top 20%, uh, what do you think on average most of them spend $313 a month on?

Coffee?

Starbucks.

Yeah, Starbucks.

That's the average.

Yeah.

I, I challenge anyone listening to this who's a producing business owner— you're, you're an independent contractor, insurance agent, lender, real estate agent— I challenge any of you to add up your gourmet coffee point of sales in your bank account and realize, could I just drink regular coffee at my house and take that other extra $250 and be investing in it? Yeah. You just have to be willing to cut in order to create wealth sometimes. You have to take a step back.

Yeah, and that's what Tony Robbins said. He said if you took $300 a month and you invested it for 8 years once a month, yeah, right, in the S&P, it's crazy. Getting— he, he, it was S&P's on 10% over 30 years, but he just said 8%, 8% compound interest. You just leave it in there. You would not have to invest one more penny again after 8 years, which is a $28,000 investment. And when you retire, when you're 30, so you can have a kid do this, your, your children, right? You can have your middle school kid do chores or high school goes and gets a job and they just train them $300 a month. That's all you need. Well, in 30 years they have almost $2 million. Mm-hmm. And they didn't do anything. They invested $28 grand and they completely passive, didn't do anything to earn that. And just by putting it in the S&P, which anybody can do and go create an account and it's It's so easy and you can automate the withdrawal from your account every month.

Yeah.

So you don't even think about it.

And I think that, uh, that's another thing people don't understand sometimes, cuz they're not taking the time to do research, is you think the $28,000 is just accruing the same amount of interest annually to eventually get to that because they don't know the term compound interest. Mm-hmm. You know, and compound interest is completely different than your normal annual, you know, uh, dividend or interest rate earning. And so that's where I love Tony Robbins for that, because he makes it so easy for people to understand. And even if people don't, just do it. Yeah, literally just do it.

Yeah.

Humorous and try.

I just think everybody needs to be an investor. And the sooner you can, the more leverage you have because of the miracle of compound interest. And it's— it doesn't need to be so complicated. Yeah, you know, and I think people think it's so complicated and it's so risky, but it's just you do it to stay consistent with it long term. Like, I don't like day trading or trying to figure— and that's a reason I actually love real estate, because it forces you to be illiquid. It forces you to not panic sell.

Yeah.

As I can't just be like, oh my gosh, Bitcoin crashed and I'm going to sell it right now. Like, let me, let me save, let me— because we always have this scarcity, like we're driven by fear and greed. This scarcity and this, this greediness. And so with Bitcoin or with any stock, people can be scared and they want to protect the remainder of what they have because they see something's dropping and they panic sell, which if you can get over that and train your mind, that's like when you're buying more. As long as you don't over-leverage and allocate like all the, all those rules, right? But with real estate, like the real estate market could be dropping, but I can't just go be like, okay, I mean, I guess I could, but for sale, sign up tomorrow and I have my money in 3 seconds. And so it makes you really think long-term. So when I invest, I try to think in terms of 10 years at least. Like, if I'm gonna— do I believe in this thing for 10 years?

Chess, not checkers.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So you're way ahead so that you're not making the reaction now.

Yeah.

You're thinking ahead. Do I have 10 years? You know, you're 10 steps ahead. Yeah. Uh, you know, and, And again, it kind of circles back to the billion-dollar philosophy is people are selling things like their crypto or assets out of scarcity because they've gone down, but the billion-dollar companies are buying more when you're selling it. Like, why aren't they selling theirs? You know, because they know where it's going. They're not, they're not doing it because they think it's a bad decision. It could be, but I find it hard to believe, right?

So yeah, that's where the wealthy get wealthier and the poor get poorer. And that's where that saying comes from, is because these markets where everything drops and asset values drop, that's when you build wealth. And most people, they buy at the peak and they sell at the bottom.

My, my grandfather, rest in peace, Papa. My grandfather always said it was one of his favorite sayings. He would say, you know, don't do what I do in his Boston Sicilian accent. But, you know, don't do what I do. I always bought high and sold low. You know, he'd always say time and time again.

Is he the one that said how to be recession-proof?

No, that was his brother, my godfather, my great uncle Mike.

How do you be recession-proof?

Liquid assets, liquid knowledge, always increasing the amount of liquid assets you have and always being learning-based and increasing the knowledge here.

Yep. And so good.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a crazy time to be alive. And so what, 'cause you just, we were talking about the billionaire mindset. What do you think people, what belief do people have to let go of? Like what belief do billionaires have that normal people don't have?

That's a great question.

And of course there's many, but what are some things that you've seen in your network of billionaires or working with executives of billion-dollar companies. How do they see things differently than what the normal—

They believe in themselves. They believe in themselves. And many people don't. I think, I mean, tell me a billionaire that when they were first starting out before they were a billionaire didn't have belief in themself.

They have delusional belief in themselves.

Delusional belief in themselves. And look where that delusion got them. And so you have to believe in yourself to achieve anything when you think about it, even on small scales. But there's something that people say all the time, like, you gotta have no fear. You gotta have no fear. Fear's bad. I don't know what it is, but fear is not bad. Fear is how you get to success. Fear is is you're so fearful that you're going to work harder to do it right. It's quitting that, that is, that, that is the bad thing, or you're not even trying. So it's not fear. Fear is good. It's self-doubt that kills success. Self-doubt and fear are completely different. A tightrope walker who's about ready to go over a canyon 200 feet deep with no harness. The weatherman says zero wind that day. Zero wind. All forecasts say zero wind. Do you think the tightrope walker has self-doubt?

Nope.

That's why he's a tightrope walker. Or she. Do you think they have fear that day that is going to make them be prepared for a gust of wind and the weatherman being wrong?

Yeah.

Which is why they're going to be prepped and have fear as they go across, ready for a bad thing to happen just so they're prepared for it. That's a good thing. Fear's making them get to the other side and do it correctly and slowly and be precise. Self-doubt got them to not even try.

Right, right.

And so to answer your question, that's the first— my gut instinct answer is, what belief do you have to have? I say, in yourself.

Yeah, yeah. Delusional belief in yourself. I think that's so true and definitely something that billionaires that I have met have. And I feel like I have that. I have a lot. I still have the self-doubt and the fear and that stuff too. And there's just like you're saying is a lot of people try to, they try to resist fear. They try to be like, I'm afraid, so I'm not going to do it. Right. But when you can realize that fear is your friend and it's not going anywhere, it's going to be by your side for the rest of your life. And if you cannot get comfortable with fear next to you, you will never take any actions actions towards your dreams.

Exactly.

And people think fear is just bad and I shouldn't do it because I'm afraid. But just like I'm afraid to do keynotes on stage and all this, but I know it's aligned with my true north and my mission and what I want to create in my life. And so I just am going to push through the fear.

Yeah.

And I still have self-doubt of, oh, what if, you know, I'm not— nobody— none of us are good at something that we haven't done yet, right? We have to practice. Like, I was terrified on my first podcast. Now I'm just like, okay, hey, How's it going? I'm so super comfortable on camera now. And that was a year ago. And yeah, so I think that's the big, big message is make fear your friend and like fear— your fear has a message for you and that message keeps you safe. But you also need to have to know that what your true north is and what you want to create and what you want your life to look like. And then use that fear to help guide you and protect you, but not to hold you back. From creating the things that you want to create. And then as long as— and that's what courage is. It's not not having fear. Courage is just acting in the direction of your dreams despite of the fear that you have. Because I do it scared all the time. You know, I just like the first talk I did on stage. I was terrified, but I just did it scared.

Yeah.

And that's how you move through it. And once you gain confidence in something, which you gain confidence from just doing the reps and seeing the success, and keeping your promises to yourself and just doing it, then the fear goes away naturally. But if you're not afraid constantly, then you are completely stagnant and never growing because your body is naturally built, evolutionary constructed to protect you and to help you survive. And so you'll be in fight or flight. So anytime you're doing something new, you're going to have fear.

Yeah.

Nobody's just going to go do something new and be like, totally fine. Got this. No big deal. Because the fear doesn't go away until you are confident in it and you've experienced it before. And so I always know if I'm afraid, if I'm not afraid, because then that means I'm not pushing enough.

That's kind of what I was just going to share. Yeah, for sure. Well, it kind of goes back to exactly how you put it, but it's It's somebody who doesn't have a fear that they're going to lose their job next— this December. They don't have a fear that they're going to lose their job. They're going to continue doing what they do every month, thinking they're going to have that job forever. But if you embrace fear and you force yourself to have it, if you could find out— if somebody told you, you are going to lose your job December 18th, I'm just letting you know, like, you're done December 18th. I'm from the future. And you know that that was legitimate. What would you change right now in preparation that you know you're not going to have an income come December 18th? You would be cutting costs. You'd be only doing things that are necessity, not wants. You'd get rid of like upgrading that car or whatever in preparation of what you know is going to come. Well, then have the fear of it. A lot of people sometimes say, dude, you're so doomsday. I go, no, I'm just— it's chess. What if things slowed down and I knew they were going to slow down? How would I be prepared now?

Right.

And that goes back to the liquid assets, liquid knowledge. Like, if I don't need it, then I'm just going to pretend like something's going to happen next year and I'll I'll act accordingly now. And that, you know, so I'm afraid when I'm not afraid as well. I put fear on things on purpose.

Yeah, I do too. Because if we're not growing, we're dying. And I think we should always be pushing ourselves to do new things. And ultimately, I mean, again, we're floating on a space rock in the middle of expanding nothingness. And the idea that we exist and the same water we drink is what flows through our body and keeps us alive is just, it's that comes from the sky, that's evaporated from the oceans. Like, it's insane. So anything that I could possibly be afraid of doesn't really have that much weight and my ego can get over it. And I should, might as well, like, anything is possible. People are like, oh, that's impossible. Like, you realize your meat body is here talking to me with a consciousness and you're telling me that this little puny goal that you have is impossible, or even if it's a big goal, but anything's a puny goal when you compare it to life and existence and creation. And so I just think—

Like galaxies away, you cannot see us.

Yeah.

You cannot see Earth galaxies away. Give that value.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And you don't think something's possible on that little speck that can't even be seen a few galaxies away?

Right.

Anything's possible.

So that's why we have to be delusionally— we have to delusionally believe in ourselves to create whatever we want to create. Because why can't you create a billion dollars of worth? Why can't you feed 8 billion people like Tony Robbins' goal is? Why can't you make the world a better place? Of course you can. It's just, do you want to?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And even if you don't hit the actual goal, you're gonna hit massive goals on the way.

Exactly.

That achieved amazing things.

Yep. And the key is not being tied to the outcome. It's being tied to the mission.

Yep.

And who you become when you execute on that mission. And that's the beauty in all of it. So it's exciting. All right. School of Hard Knocks.

Well, this, just so you know, was by far absolutely amazing. Like, I really enjoyed this one for sure.

Me too. You're awesome.

You're awesome too.

I think you should move to Scottsdale.

Okay.

And then we could do like a monthly AI, crypto, Uh, real estate.

Just, you guys have the same weather as Southern California, right? So it doesn't get above like 80.

Well, we could do there in the summer, you know, June, July, August.

All right, all right.

And then, uh, yeah, we'll just be here the rest.

I do love Scottsdale. I've always said that.

Yeah, but you know, primary residence in Arizona, Arizona taxes are much better.

I've heard.

Even though if you're buying real estate every year, you probably don't have to pay taxes out there either. But anyway, Okay, rapid fire.

It's cool.

Hard knock style.

Okay.

How old were you when you became a millionaire the first time?

26. 2004.

And then you lost it and then you rebuilt, right? Yeah, that's—

I lost it. That's on the first podcast.

The first podcast.

Yeah.

Click, click over to the side at the end of this video. We should actually put that link on the end of this video. What line of business are you in?

Real estate and speaking, writing.

Serial entrepreneur.

Serial entrepreneur.

Speaker, writer, author, crypto, real estate investor. Yeah, all the things. Okay, cool. What is the greatest piece of advice you've ever heard or received in your life?

Increase liquid assets and increase liquid knowledge. But since we've already said that one, I would say choosing delayed gratification over instant gratification. You know, I think that in the first half of my life, or maybe even two-thirds of my life, I chased instant gratification. It wasn't until probably the '08-'09 crash that I started focusing on delayed gratification. I don't need to see the reward now.

Right.

And I'm going to give this the effort it deserves instead of just chasing the shiny thing or, or thinking the grass is greener on the other side. I'm just going to give this the watering and, and fertilization it needs.

Yeah. And if you have instant gratification all the time, you don't get the miracle of compound interest.

Exactly. That's perfectly put.

What's the best book that you've ever read other than your own?

I don't think I've read mine. I wrote it, so I guess that would define it as reading. The best— it's this question I just can't answer. There's so many good books out there. Think and Grow Rich. Yeah, like Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad Poor Dad, The One Thing. Millionaire Real Estate Agent, Miracle Morning, School of Greatness, Lewis Howes. Yeah.

So many good ones. I know there's so many.

And any book John Maxwell writes.

Yeah. You're on John Maxwell's top leaders.

Yeah, it was. It's a top— it's like a— that was actually a dream come true because he idolized the guy when it comes to leadership and his books and what he teaches. And they did a thing where, like, thousands were nominated. And it was this world— it was the top 100 leaders of the world for different reasons. And I found out that I was in there and then I made it and I got a little certificate and a seal. And I was, I was, I was blown away because I have always followed him. So yeah, that was a, that was a fun, fun moment.

That's amazing. That's so cool. Who is your hero and why?

My mom, because she just changed my life and truly taught me to believe in myself. And when I guess when you said, you know, what should people have in their belief system? Believing in themselves. She made me that way. And one of the last things that I remember in our conversations after she passed in 2013, you know, when I tried to say my last words, you know, because we were about a week away and everybody, my siblings, everybody just knew she was on hospice and it didn't look good. And so I came to do mine and she stopped me like mid-sentence. I was like, hey, Mom, I just, you know, want to share. And she's just stopped me and she goes, you don't need to say what you're about to say. Like, I know you're going to be fine. I'm not worried about you at all. She's just like, what I need from you is you to start believing what I already know, you know? And that's where I kind of developed my— stop focusing on proving the wrong people wrong in your life and change your focus to proving the right people right in your life, the people who believe in you. So she's by far my hero, and, and because she, I think, just made me believe in myself at a different level.

That's beautiful. If you could send one message to yourself in your 20s, what would you say?

To change the course or prep them for what's coming?

Anything. You could just send one text to your 20-year-old.

Oh, buy Dogecoin. I love it. Buy Bitcoin when you hear it come out.

No, like advice.

Advice is there's going to be some rocky roads ahead. But you're gonna be fine. So no matter what, don't stop believing in yourself, because here I am telling you all the things that you think are going to be the end of the world— you made it.

You made it.

So just keep moving forward. Be prepared that things are gonna get rocky, but you'll get through it.

Thank you, Tony. Thank you. So great to have you back on. Can't wait for our next one.

Same here. When I move to Scottsdale.

Yes, when you move to Scottsdale. We'll have to do one out in California too.

Yeah, for sure. But at the beach.

Yep. Love you guys. Thank you. Catch you on the next one.