CW 197: Crisis Investing in Precious Metals, Debt, Offshore Banking, & Income Property with Mike Dillard Founder of The Elevation Group

Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing fresh, new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman. And this is episode number 197. I hope everybody had a very merry Christmas and you're enjoying the holidays and I hope, I hope you're looking forward to a great 2011. You know, all things considered, it's been a pretty good year for us. I hope it's been the same for you. And I hope even in the midst of this financial crisis that we've been going through for a couple of years now, you are optimistic or at least actually, you know, I really shouldn't have said that. I should say I hope you're opportunistic because I have now proclaimed, and I did this a long time ago, about a year and a half ago, saying I'm no longer an optimist, I'm now an opportunist. And I hope you're an opportunist too, because now is the time to be an opportunist, that's for sure. Great example of this would be a property that we have in Denver that's available now and you can see this on the website@jason hartman.com this is three bedroom, two and a half bath, just about 10 years old. Fantastic cash flow. It'll take you about $27,000 to buy this property. Subject to qualifying of course. And projected rent 1150 per month. Your projected overall return on investment is a whopping 32%. And your rent to value ratio, it's about 1% right there. Just about approximately positive cash flow. Projected 309 per month. Nice conservative assumptions. Again. There are fantastic opportunist opportunities out there nowadays. So exploit this situation we're in. Of course, you know, inflation is here and a lot more of it is coming. It's going to become a lot more apparent. Check out the Denver market, check out any of our markets. We've had a lot of business lately really in in several of the markets. It's been pretty diversified recently and we got a whole bunch of new inventory in Indianapolis just yesterday. So you can check that all out at Jason Hart as well under the Property section. And by the way, if you'd like just an overview of any of our markets, don't just look at the actual properties, those are in one section but also under the Properties tab on the navigation bar, look at the area presentations and just below that, if you're interested in commercial properties, take a look at the larger deals in the commercial property inventory as well. And remember that you can invest in real estate of course with your IRA and it's a pretty good time to do that nowadays. If you have any questions about that, ask our investment counselor and do that through the website. First visit there and then they'll give you a call right back very quickly. And that's of course@jasonhartman.com youm can just fill out your information under the Contact us and an investment counselor will get right back to you. Remember in March we have our semi annual and again this is just twice a year so you want to plan for it, don't miss it. Our Meet the Masters event. This is going to be a fantastic three day event and make sure you are registered at our website@jasonartman.com so if there are any specials offered you can get in on them. Of course there's some great early bird pricing still on the Meet the Masters event in March. So plan for success in 2011. Plan to be there. And the other thing I want to mention to you, lately we've been more on the real estate investment track but of course you know this is a two part equation for all of us in our financial journey of life. We need to earn income and get substantial tax benefits from our earned income side in a home based business, Internet marketing business, that type of thing and use that in addition to our other income. Hopefully we have other income as well from a maybe a small business we have, maybe we're self employed, maybe we have a corporate job and use that to leverage it into something big in the real estate investment world. So earning your money, saving on taxes and then levering that up so you can invest and create long term wealth through those investments. So be sure to check out the opportunities we have available to help you build your personal media empire, your pme and we haven't talked about that much lately but we're really doing it. I mean we now have 12 different podcasts that we're running and they're all ramping up quite nicely. We're very satisfied with the results of them. Some of the shows are newer and we are just about to sign a contract to be broadcast live on streaming radio. So we'll have Internet radio stations as well, and those will be listed if you're an itunes user, under the radio tab on iTunes, one that I only just several months ago discovered myself, and I really like it. So we'll have programming there as well as you're listening to now. So, again, a lot of great opportunities out there. And just along the lines of the personal media empire. About 11 years ago, when I published my first book called Become the brand of Choice, I really talked all about personal branding and how someone can create a marketing empire by using their name. And that is still very true. And in fact, the opportunities today are better than ever. They're better than they've ever been in history, but they're better than when I published that book 11 years ago. Because think about what's available to you today and look at it in the context of the broader history. Look at the history of sort of influence over the years. Many years ago, really, the influence was from warlords and religious leaders. Of course, they approached it a much different way, but that was the influence. And then the influence became political. And then there were the industrial tycoons, right, and the influence they had, and then the more modern version of the media. But nowadays, with the opportunity we have to use our name, build our personal brand, this has become much more accessible to everybody. You can launch an Internet radio station, you can launch a podcast. You no longer have to ask for anybody's permission to do this. If you have a message that you want the world to hear, you can do that through social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, etc through podcasting, Internet radio, Internet marketing. There's just all sorts of great opportunities. I mean, what an exciting time to be alive. So take advantage of that. If you want our help with it, please inquire. You can go to jasonartman.com, click under the store and we're happy to help you build your personal media empire. And of course, we're happy to help you build your real estate investment, your income property empire as well. So those are really the two roads to wealth. So today I think you'll really enjoy our show. We have my friend Mike Dillard on and he is a very successful business person, very successful Internet marketer, and has some real thoughts about the economy, about inflation and all sorts of stuff. And one of the reasons, and I didn't mention it earlier in the show, but that I brought up Denver is that I am on my way there in mid January. I will be skiing in Aspen. I'll be meeting up with Mike and several other Internet marketing people there for a little bit of skiing brainstorming and kind of a retreat that we're doing. So I'm excited about that. And I tell you, Denver is a great market, really just a gorgeous place. And don't miss out on that. I know I don't talk about it that much because it's not one of our more active markets as the prices are a little bit higher, but the rent ratios are still good. And it's one of those sort of premium markets as is Austin, Texas, where again, creative class city, kind of a different genre than the really low ball type of stuff where you've got tremendous cash flow like Indianapolis, like some of our other Texas markets. So again, we've got a diversified list of opportunities for you with your income, property investments. And you can talk to our investment counselors about that. Learn more at the website. And let's go right into the interview with Mike, which we will be back with in less than 60 seconds.

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It's my pleasure to welcome Mike Dillard to the show. He is the founder of the Elevation Group and he has some interesting thoughts for us today on the economy, on business, on Internet marketing, all sorts of things, inflation, deflation, some of the stuff we talk about on Virtually every show. And Mike, it's great to have you here. How are you doing?

Great. Honored to be here and looking forward to a great show and we're going.

To have fun now. You're coming to us from Austin, Texas today, one of my favorite cities. We've actually recommended investments there. We have probably, I don't know, 200 investors that have purchased properties in Austin because of our recommendations and not really recommending it so much lately because the prices are just a little bit high. We like the lower priced income properties. But Austin's a great place.

It is. The real estate market has held up quite well here and beautiful little city we've got going and. Yeah, that's fantastic. Absolutely. Have loved living here for the last five years.

Great place. So tell us if you would. I originally met you because I watched a great online video that you had produced with some of your thoughts about the economy, about the future, about monetary issues like inflation. What is your thinking about what's going on out there? We're living in some pretty treacherous times, aren't we?

Well, I guess it depends on what side of the coin you're playing.

Good point.

Yeah. Yeah, that, that absolutely is the case. From all of the research that I've done and from everything that I've learned from you and your GU and your team, pretty much on the same page. I started studying this stuff in 2007 and I guess I have a pretty unique take or background when it comes to investing because I'll go ahead and put myself in the newbie category, the non expert category, and very much along the lines of middle class Americans. And this is all very new to me. But fortunately I was introduced to some very, very smart people. Michael Maloney is one of which, Robert Kiyosaki another back in 2007. It really opened my eyes to where things were headed as far as the currency is concerned or debt is concerned. The housing bubble was concerned and I really just, it just lit a fire under my tail because I'm in many ways the American dreamer. I've had the privilege of living that I used to wait tables. I'm 33 years old today, waited tables till I was about 26 and then started a little online business from home that has become quite successful. And we now have two offices and about a dozen employees and do about $15 million in revenue. And newly married and had a baby. And all this stuff is happening at once. And I saw what was happening with the economy. And you know, at that point you have two options. You can continue to Just go about your daily life and ignore it and put your faith in the government and politicians and the Federal Reserve and, you know, hope that they'll fix everything. Or you can take the other side of the coin and be proactive and turn it into the greatest opportunity of our lifetimes. And that's really how I see these events as the biggest opportunity of my life. So I spent the last, really three years studying as much as I can, as fast as I can to learn how to take advantage best of this opportunity. And that led us to come together and to form this friendship. And I've loved learning from you already in the short time that we've known each other. And, you know, my goal today is to really help as many people as I possibly can to take advantage of the times that we're living through. And the way I see it is that it's almost like the economic super bowl of our life and you're in the game whether you want to be or not. It's just what side do you want to end up on when it's all over?

Well, that's a really good metaphor that you just made. And you know, Mike, I think the place you definitely don't want to be right now is that of spectator. Because things are changing so quickly and probably this change that is going on right now, right under our feet, I believe it's the largest transfer of wealth in human history, certainly in US History and probably in all human history. And if people act and seize the opportunity and there are big opportunities out there right now, I think they will be rewarded very well, and they'll be rewarded in a relative fashion at the very least. And when I say that, Mike, and you can probably speak to this, I think people on the whole are going to get a lot poorer. I think there's some real economic devastation coming. No one can accuse me of being an optimist.

I'm really an opportunist. And. And those who learn to exploit what is going on right now with the crooks on Wall street, the banksters, etc. And just the whole monetary system legally can really set themselves up for a very nice future, especially relative to, unfortunately, what most people are going to endure. That's why we want more people listening to this message, don't we?

Absolutely. It's unfortunate that we've already seen such a great divide between the haves and the have nots in society. And this series of events is only going to widen that to the furthest level possible to where all of the wealth in the World is really going to be put into the hands of the 5% of the population who is one, aware of what's happening and two, took the, you know, the actions necessary to take advantage of it. And all of the wealth is going to be transferred to them and the other 95% are going to end up with very, very little, unfortunately. So like you, it's thank God for the Internet these days because the outlet that that provides us, you know, regular guys like you and I to reach out and touch, you know, hundreds of thousands of people around the world with this message is absolutely amazing.

Yeah, it sure is. When you talk about how 5% of the people will take advantage of this opportunity, it reminds me of that old saying, and that is the best thing you can do for the poor is don't be one of them. And that sort of said tongue in cheek, but it really is true. If you want to help other people, if you want to take care of business and make the world a better place, you better start by helping yourself. And then after you do that, you put on your own oxygen mask first. Then you have the power to help others. So what do you see specifically going on out there? What is going to happen in your eyes?

Well, I'm in the camp with same camp as yourself and Kiyosaki and Doug Casey and all of those guys where right now we're seeing both deflation and inflation. And I think the ultimate end result for this entire process is what Michael Maloney refers to as a hyperinflationary depression, which is kind of the worst of both worlds happening at once, which is very unfortunate. So, you know, right now we're seeing deflation in credit based markets like real estate and we're seeing credit continuing to decline still. You know, people are spending less money. The jobs definitely aren't there. You know, according to John WILLIAMS over at Shadowstats, the real unemployment number right now today is about 24%, 23% as opposed to the 8 or 9 the government would have you believe. Yet when it comes to commodities and goods and services like food, energy, gold and silver, building materials, we've seen unbelievable inflation over the last 12 months during the year 2010, with average food prices up 46%. One of the most fascinating statistics that I saw over the last month was that the price of your Thanksgiving Turkey was up 28% from the previous year per pound.

That's unbelievable.

Yeah, so things are costing more. It's costing more to buy goods and to buy food, yet the economy in many ways is still deflating especially from a wages and jobs standpoint, so people have less money to spend, and so we're getting both. And unfortunately, I see the government and the Fed in between that rock and a hard place to where they keep pumping in liquidity in order to keep the market up, to keep the stock market up. And I don't have any money, honestly, in the stock market at this moment in time, because it's just the biggest scam I've ever seen in my life.

Life. Couldn't agree more.

I refuse to play that game at the moment. But they're doing that for illusion's sake and for job market's sake and to help people keep their nerves calm. But there's not much they can do about it. As inflation starts to kick in, if they try to raise interest rates, it's going to kill the housing market, it's going to kill people's equity, and it's going to lead to more deflation. And so there's not much they can do except keep doing what they're doing, which is to pump more and more money into the system. But I believe when Bernanke comes out and says he's 100% confident that he can actually control inflation, nothing could be further from the truth. And for us, as not only a country, but as a world, to take him for his word and just say, hey, go ahead, yeah, whatever, I trust you. It would be absolute lunacy. So I'm setting myself up for the big crash here at the end of the currency. And this is going to be one of just hundreds, another event of hundreds over the last several thousand years. When a fiat currency comes to an end, the average lifespan is 30 to 40 years. The US dollar, since it was taken off the gold standard in 1971, is about to hit its 40th year. So it's at the end of its life cycle. And, you know, a lot of people think this is just about the subprime mortgage crisis and all of that fun stuff. It really isn't. What we're really looking at is the death of another fiat currency at the end of its life cycle. And that's just one of the many symptoms of that. But for me personally, I'm positioning myself for hyperinflation, and I'm taking the appropriate measures to not only prepare myself from a practical standpoint, but to profit tremendously from it as well.

Okay, so, Mike, a couple of questions and comments based on what you said, which I think is very insightful. First of all, I can hear the skeptics saying the end of the fiat currency. We have a fiat currency, and that just means it's not backed by anything except the good faith of the Federal Reserve or the government, as it were, a pseudo governmental agency. But I can hear them saying, well, yeah, maybe in history these fiat Currencies only last 40 years or so, but this is the United States of America. I mean, it's different this time, right?

Any comments on that?

You know, all I can say is that we have 6,000 years of history back from the days of Rome, and the track record is 100% flawless, meaning that not a single fiat currency has ever survived for very long, not much more than 40 years. And, you know, would you place your money on being the first time ever for that to actually take place? I'm going to take the other side of that bet. I'm going to go with history. So, you know, I don't know if you've ever read or if some of your readers haven't read Atlas Shrugged yet.

Oh, who is John Galt? It's one of my favorite book. Yes, fantastic.

Absolutely. I read it about two years ago, and it's one of the most prophetic books that I've ever come across. And it's just absolutely fascinating to see every event that takes place in that book taking place in real life here in the United States today. And ultimately, what is going to determine what happens with the currency is human nature. And that's really what we're talking about here, because we're still people. It's still the same motivations that are driving us. The fear of pain and the desire to acquire pleasure and how greed comes into that and corruption. And so that's really what we're talking about here. So for me, it's, you can look at history, but you can also ask yourself, what do people do throughout history? What are the decisions that they make? What can they do to avoid pain and pursue pleasure? And right now, Bernanke and the politicians of the United States are essentially doing everything they can to avoid pain with their constituents, with the voters, and, you know, in every way possible by just tapering over the problems they have and just putting another band aid on the dam. Putting another band aid on the dam and the band Aids keep coming off. And pretty soon there's going to be so many cracks in it that there's not going to be much else they can do.

They're just trying to kick the can down the road, aren't they, and just kind of let the next guy deal with it. We'll deal with it later. But at some point, you got to pay the piper. And we in this country have enjoyed and should be very thankful for the fact that we have been lucky enough to participate in the greatest illusion of wealth in the history of the world. I mean, a lot of this wealth is really an illusion and the debt has piled up, up, and the chickens are going to come home to roost. And things are changing pretty significantly and pretty fast. You know, Mike, when you mentioned before hyperinflation, that you see that in the future, can you define that? Can you put a number on that? I mean, I know it's a prediction and nobody really knows. Ben Bernanke doesn't know. Nobody knows. But what are your thoughts on how significant the inflationary future will be in a percentage number? Maybe.

I mean, I just, I think it's going to go. I think, let me put it this way. I think the value of gold will be infinite at that point. I think it'll be a situation that is extremely close to or not identical to Zimbabwe, you know, in 2008, where it's not going to be worth anything. You can use it for firewood or toilet paper, but that's about it. And the interesting thing is that hyperinflation, as far as my knowledge is concerned, has not taken place. It's happened to 30 different countries over the last 100 years. So it happens all the time. It's just not really talked about because a lot of of it, most of the time it happens in these third world countries like Zimbabwe or Yugoslavia that we just don't really hear about here in America. It has happened here twice already, once during the civil war and once during the revolutionary war. And so this will be actually the third time hyperinflation has taken place here on United States soil. But it's going to be interesting because it's never happened to a currency that has been the global reserve currency before. And it's never happened in a situation where the entire global currency market is tied together at the speed of light via currency exchanges. So if and when it happens, it's very, very, very possible that it could happen not in the course of, you know, weeks or months, but literally in the course of hours and days, because things are just going to happen so quickly via computers and via the exchange, because we've never seen that take place before.

Well, that's, that's one of the skepticisms that I was actually going to raise is. And you raised it. It's never before happened with a currency, with a fiat currency that is the global reserve currency of the entire world. Now we have certainly seen, and anybody who's paying attention has seen it in the news media, that other countries are really starting to lose faith in the dollar. And Russia, Brazil, etc. Etc. There's some others. I think the head of OPEC actually wanted oil to be traded in euros and they're starting to use alternative currencies and of course America doesn't like that one bit. But I'm not sure how long they can really keep up the pressure for people to use the dollar as the reserve currency.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I see the rest of the world going back to their local currencies and I see the game of musical chairs coming to an end one week when China and Japan and all of the other holders of our debt are tired of seeing it debased and tired of seeing it lose value and they're just going to sell it one day and it's going to start that game of musical chairs where, where it's hey, China's heading for the exits, we better be quick. And then the neighbor sees them heading for the exits, we better be quicker. And it's just going to happen like that. Again, I'm definitely not the expert in this arena, but I've read enough, probably done about 900 hours of studying on this subject over the last 36 months. It's all I've really been doing and for me it's a foregone conclusion. It's already taken place, it's really just a matter of when. So for me it's all about preparing to not only deal with the consequences from it, from a practical day to day life standpoint, you know, I have a three month old so you know, it's a matter of having food and diapers stocked up and really studying how things went down in Argentina in the 1980s. And from a practical daily life standpoint, they woke up one day and their bank accounts had been frozen by the government. You couldn't pull your money out and then it had been devalued by I believe 50 to 80%. And they basically said you can pull out 20 bucks a day from your account to go buy food. It's been devalued by 80% now. We've also restructured your debt so that you now owe 80% more on your mortgage because the mortgage companies and those guys and the banks didn't want to get screwed so they got hit double hard and that could very easily happen here. So what can you do to act today and Then what can you do to prepare yourself to profit from this? Because with every massive change comes massive opportunity. And that's what I think you and I are all about these days.

Excellent. And I want to ask you about that. That was going to be my next question. But I just want to make one comment on the Argentina scenario and comparing it to the United States. I am suspicious and call me paranoid if you wish, I don't think you will, but some of the listeners may. I am suspicious that the IRAs, the 401ks, the retirement plans that Americans have are going to be the next big attack on their wealth. And the government is going to come along and they just had that big financial regulatory reform which in every one of these bills there's a whole bunch of pork and seemingly unrelated stuff. And of course it's all for our protection. You can just hear the cries now. We need to be protected. And somehow it never quite works out that way. But I am afraid that the next thing, the next big ugly thing coming up is they're going to try to nationalize the retirement plans.

I agree with you 100%.

Yep. And it's going to say something like this. Well, people's IRAs, maybe they'll, maybe they'll orchestrate a stock market crash just to have a reason, false flag type of reason. People's IRAs are in jeopardy. We've got to protect the average American, the hard working person who has saved their money. So we're going to make this like Social Security. Maybe we'll roll in everybody's 401k and IRA into the Social Security system. And of course we all know how well the government has handled that, you know, and, and that's what happened in Argentina. And I tell you that's, I think that's fairly likely we're going to see some iteration of that or at least if it's not done, it will at least be here in the States. Any more thoughts on that?

100% agree with that. They passed regulation or new law, what was it about six months ago that basically gave them control of people's money markets accounts if they wanted to. Correct. I don't remember the exact legislation.

Yeah, I don't know the details.

Yeah, the rules were put in place for them to give them the power to do that within the last 12 months. And obviously most people just ignored it or didn't hear about it. Too busy watching American Idol. I'll tell you this, I'm spending quite a bit of energy and effort here in the first quarter of 2011 to move a fairly substantial chunk of my assets overseas, overseas accounts, all doing it above water, legally, legitimately, by the rule of law. But I'm going to be moving a substantial portion of my assets.

Can I ask where and why, what country and what's the rationale? If you want to answer that.

Well, I'm a bit afraid of capital controls and I'm a bit afraid of, of tax walls going up if you want to move money outside the country or bring it back in vastly beyond what exists today. And fortunately, I don't have a penny in a 401 or an IRA. Being as young as I am, I kind of figured out at an early age that that's not the way to go for me. But I do see that happening. And I don't want my wealth inside the United States until this is all over and done with because I don't trust the government, I don't trust their actions, and I don't think they have my best interest in my. And so I guess you got to do what you got to do to be smart about it. So we're looking at, I actually have a meeting next week to set up some accounts and we're going to set up some businesses in Hong Kong and just going through that whole process. So it's going to be a big project for us over the next three months.

Let me take a brief pause. We'll be back in just a minute.

Have you listened to the Creating wealth series? I mean, from the beginning? If not, you can go ahead and get book one that shows 1 through 20 in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information, go to jason hartman.com.

It'S funny because I was just talking with an international bank in Central America this morning about the similar concept. And again, I still think the US Is the best place to live. Certainly I love this country. Here we have, we have rights. And even though the rights are diminishing and they are under attack, it's still a lot better than pretty much every other place. But hedging your bet and maybe thinking a little more internationally, it might be wise for some people that have enough money to do it. I mean, this is not something you do if you're just sort of starting out, something you do kind of later as a planning tool and asset protection tool. And you've got to be very careful, as you mentioned, because the government is, is very suspicious of this type of stuff and you really got to make sure you declare it all properly and stuff like that. And again, neither of us are experts on that, but it's just kind of an interesting topic. So what else are you doing to prepare or what other recommendations do you have? And then I want to talk about your business and what the elevation group does.

Well, from a very practical day to day standpoint, I think the first thing that everybody needs to do is, and I hate to go into the prepper, survivalist content kind of mode, but if you place your bets and you say, here's what I believe is going to happen, you kind of have to go through with it and go all the way. So for me, when inflation starts to kick in, and if it starts to happen very quickly over the course of days or weeks, the first thing that people are going to go do is go spend that money on food. And you know, we don't have a big agrarian society here in the United States. We don't do backyard gardens. We don't have community gardens or farms for the most part. And we're really reliant upon the grocery store chain system and delivery system. And you know what's going to happen when people start to spend that money as quickly as they can on food and necessities? Well, the shelves are going to be empty within two to three days, just like they would be in Louisiana during Katrina or during a hurricane. It's going to be a very similar situation here. So if you don't have basic necessities prepared beforehand, you're going to be screwed, essentially. And I Learned this lesson 2008 when things were really heating up and the banks were going under. I had already been buying gold and silver at that point, but I was obviously buying more at the time. And for the very first time, there was a period where you couldn't get any even if you wanted it for the most part, unless you jumped on ebay and bought it from some crazy sources. But the vast majority of dealers that I had purchased from were completely out of inventory and back ordered two to three months. And that was really a wake up call for me and a very valuable lesson learned. And so I'm applying the same lesson to, again, daily practical preparations for family. And that starts for me with food and basic necessities. So above and beyond that, again, I'm a very simple guy. I'm a business owner. I'm not an investor, I'm not an economist. And I like gold and silver and I really get gold and silver. And so that's been the foundation of my strategy. And my ultimate goal is to play this cycle out. And ultimately I see currencies, the US Dollar going, going down to zero. I see gold and silver at that point would be almost infinite in dollar value. But I'll be trading that gold and silver in for real estate, primarily at the peak of its value. And at that point it would probably be a great buy to go into real estate, and it'll be cash flow real estate specifically. And that's just. I'm doing that because that's what I understand and that's what I get. One of the most exciting things that I am looking forward to learning from you is y' all strategies that you're using above and beyond that to gain even more leverage and bring in different asset classes into that strategy. So I'm looking forward to that. But that's really what I'm doing. I'm keeping it very simple, very easy to understand, and it just makes sense to me. So I think that's the most important thing.

Well, I tell you, Mike, I think you're going to be a lot happier with your precious metals than people will be with their paper dollars.

It reminds me of the story from the Weimar Republic, and there are many stories during their inflationary time where you saw stories like this. Someone goes to the market and tries to get in to buy groceries with a wheelbarrow full of money, full of fiat currency. And then the wheelbarrow doesn't fit through the door, and so they leave it outside. And the thieves come along, dump the money out, dump the worthless Deutsche marks out. The Weimar Republic, Marx, they dump them out and steal the wheelbarrow. And you know what that says to me, that story? It says that things have value. Fiat money does not. And that's why I'm such a commodities bull. I think commodities have real value in the world. I mean, think about it. None of us are interested in a bunch of pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents. We're interested in what those things will buy for us. What resources can they bring to our lives. If you need a wheelbarrow, if you need a car, if you need food, if you need housing, the commodities have intrinsic value. We all need them. But money, that's just a symbol.

Well, you know what's interesting, and Robert. I've gotten to know Robert Kiyosaki fairly well over the last few years, and I've done a few calls similar to this with him. And one of the phrases that he mentioned that has stuck with me on a daily basis is, if you prepare for the worst of times, you will only know the best of times. Good phrase for Me, what preparing means for me, and probably for you as well, is that when the rest of the world is in chaos, chaos, if you're prepared, then you're still sitting in a very peaceful, centered place. Everything around you is taken care of, you don't have any worries, and that allows you to take advantage of opportunities when there's blood in the streets, essentially, as the old saying goes, and I don't mean that literally, but that's just a phrase. So if you're prepared and you're not in chaos, you have nothing to worry about. You can really focus on opportunities, identifying them, executing on on them at a point in time where nobody else is really thinking that way. And so for me, that's ultimately what it's about. It's just another move on the chessboard.

Absolutely. That's a great saying, by the way. That's a great saying. Hey, tell us a little bit about what the Elevation group does.

Sure. The Elevation group is really kind of a passion project of mine or a hobby because I became extremely, extremely frustrated as I began to study this stuff. I've been fortunate to have a lot of business success and have made some money over the past few years. But I didn't come from money. I came from a very conservative middle class family who did what most middle class families did and what their parents did before them, which is to go out and find your cookie cutter financial advisor and, you know, set up your 401k, your Roth IRA, your life insurance, and invest in a diversified portfolio of mutual funds.

Mike, are you really telling us then that the guy at Merrill lynch or Ameriprise didn't make you rich?

Well, you know, here's the irony of it is I went and interviewed at one of those big companies when I was about 23 years old to be a financial advisor. And this is me fresh out of college with nothing but credit card debt to my name, and yet they want me to tell people twice my age what to do with their money. And that's when I realized this is absolutely absurd and I'm going to stay far away from this. Well, the unfortunate part is because I didn't really have any mentors when it came to wealth in my life. I didn't have the knowledge that I needed to invest and to really make good use of that money. So I started reading a lot of books, I started jumping online, I started looking for courses, and I really wanted to study what the rich were really doing with their money, because it's not what middle class America is doing with their money. And I knew enough to know that. So that was my starting point. But what I found when you walk into Barnes and Nobles and you know, your normal bookstore jump on Amazon is that all of the books there about money are about that paradigm. It's about the baby boomer paradigm. It's about the mutual funds, it's about the diversified portfolio and all of the basics. And it was just every book was about the same thing. And then it occurred to me, it's like, huh, well, I get it. Because that's the generation that all of these people grew up in. And two, that's who's buying these books. If you're an author and you want to sell a lot of books, you have to write a book for, you know, middle class America, where there's a lot of buyers, right? So there weren't any books written by millionaires and billionaires that said, hey, here's the real secrets to becoming wealthy with your money. So I knew I had to get that information, but it wasn't available. And that's really where the concept for the Elevation Group came along. And essentially it has turned into an online diary of my journey into the, you know, I like to call it or refer to it as the black box investing strategies of the rich. And thanks to my success in business and the reputation that I have with a lot of really successful people, I've been able to really leverage that Rolodex and go into these individuals lives and in their homes and really sit down with them and get the real goods from them on what they really do with their money to accumulate true wealth. And for me, that's a minimum tens of millions of dollars up to two to three generations out for your grandkids in the billion dollar figure. And it's been absolutely eye opening. And my goal is to, through the Internet and through the miracle of social networking and all of the amazing tools that we have available to us today like Facebook and YouTube is to take the really the secrets of the privileged or the elite, you know, 5% in the United States to take their knowledge and to empower the rest of the world with it. And that's really the only difference between the rich and the poor is information and the willingness to act on it. So that's kind of become my mission. And that's the mission of the Elevation Group. If you really want to learn how to become truly wealthy the way that the rich actually do it, then that's what this project is all about. And the feedback we've gotten on it has Been phenomenal. And I can't tell you the first three months that I've been doing this and the first three gentlemen that I've met and interviewed, it's already been worth approximately $130 million to my family legacy within 90 days. And, you know, my retirement is completely taken care of through a concept called infinite banking that I learned from a millionaire down here in Austin named Paul. We're going to be getting into the topics of real estate soon. Next month I'm flying to Aspen and taking the camera crew out there and we're going to be talking to one of the founders of Sovereign man about setting up accounts overseas and setting up up businesses overseas and protecting your assets on an international basis. Michael Maloney. When it comes to investing in gold and silver and how do you capitalize on the destruction of the currency? So it really is kind of the inside scoop on exactly what I'm doing to grow my wealth on a personal level. And people can kind of follow along in this diary as I travel around the world and make this happen.

Fantastic. So how does one take advantage of getting involved in the elevation group? I mean, what's involved? There's a small membership for fee.

Yeah, there is. It's a very small membership fee. I really wanted to make this available to anyone, especially those in middle class America, which is where I came from, and to give everybody the opportunity to really take this as big as they want. And so the best thing to do, let me put it this way, it's less than 100 bucks. And the best thing to do though, is to make sure that this project would be of benefit to someone is to go watch this 90 minute presentation that I spent months and months and months putting together that we recently released. In fact, we just made it public. We showed it to a small group of people about a month ago and just made it public last night. And we had 86,000 people watch the video last night alone over the course of about 12 hours from 163 different countries.

Wow, that's amazing.

The feedback has been absolutely phenomenal and people are getting back there and have been going through the diary over the last 24 hours. And the comments and the feedback is exactly how I feel about it, which is, oh, thank God, finally someone's talking about this and showing me how to do it. And it's really frustrating because there was a point literally just a year or two ago when so many people say, okay, take the money you earn and go turn it into assets. Go buy assets. Right. That's Robert's big thing. And I always kind of took that to heart from rich dad, poor dad. But the interesting part was, is no one ever really showed you how to do that. What are the details? And I'd really literally get on Google and I'd type in, all right, well, I have a little bit of money I want to invest. I don't know where to put it. So I'd literally type in buy assets in Google. I was like, where are these assets and how do I get them? And for someone who's made eight figures and hit the seven figure mark by my 26th birthday, for me to have that question and to not have an answer for it was really just a huge red flag for me. That said, if I, if I don't know this and if I can't figure it out, then the rest of America doesn't have a prayer. And that's really when I made this my new mission in life. And I walked away from the other two businesses that I owned. And this is all I've been working towards for close to three years now. And it's become a reality as of last week. And it's really starting, I believe, a new movement of financial and wealth education in our nation for a new generation. The baby boomers are reaching their golden years and we have two new generations underneath them that really need to learn these skills. But the education is not out there. And so I'm making it my goal to put it out there for everybody.

Excellent. Well, anybody listening can watch this video. Just go to jasonhartman.comoffers where you can also get some special offers from Mike as well. And that's jasonhartman.com offers and all the information will be there and some links to some different content and things like that, including the video you mentioned. Mike, what else would you like people to know, just in closing, either about your company or about your thoughts on the economy in the future? Either one.

You know, I just have to, I can't stress this enough. I can't stress, stress the fact enough that you're not on the sidelines right now. You're literally in the game whether you think it or not. And if you don't realize that, then go ahead and take a look at the value of your dollar today. How much fewer goods is it buying you compared to last year? We already know it's 28% less Turkey for Thanksgiving. And go ahead and look at the value of your house. Go ahead and look at the amount of Money in your 401 and your Roth IRA for retirement and then tell me that you're not in the game because you are. And I believe everybody knows that. So you got to pick a side because we're entering the third and fourth quarter here and I believe over the next six to 36 months that you know we're going to see this thing reach its climax and it's up to point. It's going to be one of the most exciting and lucrative days of your life or it's going to be one of the absolute worst. So make your decision, pick a team and let's go.

Very good point. Well, Mike Dillard, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate the insights and good that you're preparing for the future and I hope everybody listening is doing the same. So be sure to check this all out. Jason hartman.com offers and you get some good special content, some good learning there. Even if you don't discuss to join the group and get the membership, there's some great free content as well.

Absolutely man. Thank you so much for having me, Jason. I truly am honored to be here and hope everybody enjoyed our call today and I can't wait to do another one.

Thanks so much Mike.

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