196. How to Achieve Personal and Financial Sovereignty

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How do we take personal sovereignty and a holistic approach to managing your money and creating the success you deserve and that you want in life? Well, we're joined today by Jay Martin. He's the host of the Jay Martin show and man, he's got some epic followers going on in his community now. He's created one of the largest investment conferences in Canada, the vric, the Vancouver Investment Resource Conference. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. He hosts renowned politicians, economists and investors. It typically attracts over 6,000 people every year. He's interviewed the former prime minister Canada, Stephen Harper, former president of Mexico, bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki. Everyone on our program certainly familiar with with him as well as well known Austrian economic thinkers such as Dr. Ron Paul, leader of the Ron Pool Revolution movement. For many of our listeners will be familiar with that. And of course, Peter Schiff. He's an investor, author, very successful entrepreneur and he's an ultra marathon runner. This guy's a triathlete. It's going to be crazy. We're going to have a lot of fun as well as a father of three young boys. So we're going to talk about his perspective, his experience, the importance of understanding commodities and having more control over your personal wealth and economy relative to some of the, let's just say, manipulation of money markets that's been going on in the world. So Jay, welcome to the show. Happy to have you.

Yeah, Richard, it's my pleasure. I'm glad to be here.

Well, I, I kind of want to kick things off a little bit. So you've got this epic conference. I know you've got one coming up. I believe in. It's an annual conference in, in January beginning in 2024. And I would really love to know, share with our listeners a little bit what inspired you to create this conference and put it together and how has it blossomed since, you know, day one? The idea came to you and then you put that into motion. Tell us a little bit about building this conference.

Yeah, well, the event business, it's a fun business, right? And so at our largest, we had 11 conferences per year spread across North America, all focused on the investment sector. We did diversify a little bit here and there. Like I spread into a couple of consumer events. In 2014, 15, 16, we had events in the drone space and the cannabis sector. You know, our bread and butter is commodities. But we ended up building two conferences in Canada that became the largest technology investment conferences in the country. Cantech in Toronto and Extraordinary Future in Vancouver. There's a lot to love about that business, but there's also a lot to hate about that business, to be honest with you. And when we got shut down in 2020, like any live event production company did, it hurt immediately. But what it allowed me to do is reallocate my time to the business that I've been trying to building in my spare time for the previous six years, which was a media company. And we went all in on that, and it ended up being a much more pleasurable company. This is what I do now. I've got a couple of YouTube channels, couple subscription newsletters, podcasts. I've got some online courses. Those are super fun. But when we got the green light to go back to the event business, Richard, it wasn't an obvious yes for me. It was actually a big conversation. So, like, okay, I don't miss it. I don't really want to get it. I don't really want to resurrect it, to be honest with you. But we'd also invested 12 years in building that brand equity, and it just seems silly to let it die in the vine. Right? So I'll just be frank. I resurrected that company in 2022 with the sole intention of taking it to market as fast as possible. Which, you know, it's like a horrible mental state to be in when you're running a company, because I would have taken any bid like, you give me your Toyota Corolla, like, you can have it. Just take it off my hands. I don't want this business anymore.

How did you know about my Toyota Corolla?

It was just, you know, it's, it's, it's, it can be a tough business building investment conferences because you, you know, your cash outlays, like, 12, 18 months in advance. Sometimes you can't predict the volatility of the market. There's a lot going on and, and, and, you know, you hit a bear market. No one wants to come to a commodity investment conference if metals are in the tank and all this stuff so anyways, you know, when we resurrected it, I was like, we're going to do a different, we're just going to resurrect one event. We're going to throw all of our weight behind that one conference and just make this the super bowl. Because it was like we can go back to doing 8 to 11 medium sized events and, and kind of claim territory and you know, California and Chicago and Toronto and you know, Calgary and Vancouver or we could just go all in and build one like, you know, grand Slam conference. And that's what we ended up doing. I now love that business again, which is so lovely. I've built it completely different. I've got, you know, I think two full time employees, I've contracted everybody. So just the nice thing about that period, Richard was like, I got to rebuild the company I'd been running for 12 years from ground zero. Like, can you imagine, like who gets that opportunity? You can, you know, all your mistakes are erased because the business was shut for two years. And then when we resurrected it, I got to resurrect it from first principles and build it how, you know, with all the lessons right along the way. And so now it's like an absolute blast. You know, it's three months of my year. We go all in. Yes, it's in January, January 21st and 22nd. This keynote roster is always amazing. I take a lot of pride in that. Like I really put my name on it, you know, so means a lot to me that we really impress the city and we should see 6 to 7,000 investors this year. We'll see. But, but you know, at a high level there's, there's sort of three stakeholders at this event. There's keynote speakers and they kind of own the stage. And, and we have seven stages that will wrap around the perimeter of the Vancouver Convention center. And those will be anybody from, yeah, former politicians. People always ask me like, why do you want to talk to politicians? Like, I'm pretty libertarian in my psychology, so you know, what's with that? But I enjoy, you're in the right.

Room today by the way, because, feeling.

Yeah, I, I, I enjoy understanding the psychology of decision making and, and how people interpret the world and, and either way, like love or hate our political leaders, you're going to learn something when you square off with the leader of a G7 nation like you just do, you know, they're going to have been in rooms, been in conversations that I'll find enlightening. And so I still enjoy and frankly, I think it was A good, you know, it was last year we had Prime Minister Stephen Harper and it was a good time to bring him back because, you know, for, for my non Canadian friends, he was the leader that navigated Canada through the 2008 financial crisis. And we came through Canada, came through that crisis with a healthier balance sheet than any other G8 nation strictly because we had a leader who knew how to leverage our natural resources to the global market. And you know, he did unthinkable things in today's terms, like he ran a deficit but kept the temporary. He ran stimulus but kept the temporary, promised he would and he did. And, and you don't meet politicians like that anymore. Definitely not in Canada. So anyways, yeah, you know, keynote speakers wrap the room. The center is like a marketplace of investment opportunities. So 300 ish early stage companies will be set up in a trade show and they're all looking to raise money or promote and, and then investors show up to, to do their diligence, shop around, meet new, meet new potential opportunities. But hear from the experts, you know, and, and hit the workshops, hit the speaker hall and you know, hear from a variety of money managers who have been in the game a long time, made tons of mistakes, made tons of wins and, and survived bull and bear market cycles and, and all this stuff. So it is a bit of a party. Like it's, it's super fun and if you like to geek out on macro and geopolitics and raw materials and commodities, then it's a good, it's a good place to be.

So yeah, I think it's interesting because you, you use the COVID scenario, which again, decimating to hundreds of thousands of businesses across North America and certainly in Canada and ones in a space that definitively requires physical people to attend and pay money to attend an event. I mean that's, that's a hard pill to swallow. But you, but you took it and you did something that our, one of our mentors, Dan Sullivan talked about is you created a future that was much bigger than your past in the, in the, in the reimagining of that, of that new business venture. And it's, it's like, yeah, you, you had that vested interest, but you were able to pivot and say, okay, I want to bring with me from the past the parts that I did like and enjoy about this business and I want to reactivate those and I want to basically take a shotgun to all the stuff that I didn't like 100%.

Exactly. And Dan Sullivan's the man by the way, I love that you dropped Dan in here. I'm rereading 10X right now. You know, absolute critical book. But, yeah, that was it. It was like, you have the second chance to build the same company, you know, do it smarter this time and do it in a way that you love it. Right? And I love it again, I don't want to sell it today, which is because in that place two years ago where I was literally like, I'm just building it to get rid of it, you know, not the mindset you want to be in when you're taking something to market. Right?

Yeah. That's fantastic, Jay. Sorry, my voice is a little hoarse. I was just saying to Rich, before you got on the call, I was at my son's football game last night, and I can't even help myself. I'm like a proud dad. I was yelling for 60 straight minutes for the whole entire game. And my son actually got recognized by his team as the player of the game. And I'm super freaking proud of him because he's never played the game in his life. And he just got better and better and better as the scene went, as the season went on, and. And he played incredible last night. But anyhow, yeah, thanks for letting me share that. I just wanted to know, I might have missed this. How long is the conference? Actually? Is it just. I would imagine it sounds like it's much bigger than one day. Like, how long is it?

We squeeze it into two days. So, you know, we get. We get pitches almost every year asking us to expand to three and four days. It's definitely tempting, but I like, I like where it's at. You know, we'll do some pre show boot camps, some post show activities, but the core conference itself is just two full days and it's. It's jammed. But everything that we do at that conference is recorded and published on our media platforms. It's all free, actually. I don't charge for it. So people that can't attend or more frequently, what we hear is somebody comes and they're like, I can't. There's six stages going at once. And I want to see these two individuals. You've got them squaring off against each other, and I get it, but you know, there's. It's a fine balance, right? Because you want a busy room, you want. You want high volume traffic, you want full speaker halls, because that creates a certain kind of energy, and that energy fuels productivity and good conversations and a positive experience for everybody. And so spreading that over More days, you know, you do risk diluting that energy a little bit and that, that sort of productive memory. Right. And so we do compress it. It's very busy as a consequence. But it's, it's the formula that I like a lot.

One, and, and being able to offer a lot of those things again in post production, out through your other media channels, I think is a huge benefit for people to get some more bite size. And even if you attend the session, again, like you say, you can't see every, every speaker, every keynote, you're not going to meet at every booth necessarily, but you have a chance to reengage. And, you know, often repetition is our best teacher or certainly at least our best memory cognition tool to go over things again and again and again. So I think that that's a, that's a huge advantage. Now, I know I've listened to a lot of incredible interviews that you've done. There was one that you did a while back with Brad Wall, former Premier Brad Wall, which was very interesting and something you said about, you know, the, the opportunity to communicate with a politician who's operating at that level or, or previously had what I find very unique. And in, in some of the, the interviews I've watched has been the opportunity to recognize, okay, when were the challenges and strife that occurred and how were they able to overcome those things? And specifically for me personally, what really connected is, you know, we, we all have an idea and a vision of how our, our political environment should maybe be moving forward in some direction. And we always wonder, you know, why is, why is the machine moving at a snail's pace? And I think that some of the interviews that you've done that I've, I've been able to be a participant in watching, have really isolated, you know, what are the, what are the barriers that these political figures are, are beating their heads up against, trying to get initiatives moving forward. And they're running into all kinds of, you know, challenges and walls that are placed in front of them. Not, you know, wall, not to be used as a, you know, joke there, but, you know, that's a real issue that they face. And so I'm curious in the conversations you had, because you've interviewed many from, you know, again, former president of Mexico, like lots of different variables, not just in Canada.

What comes up for you when you think about some of those conversations you've had in the political sphere?

So, you know, a key theme right now in Canada, which I've heard from former British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, from former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, and although I haven't had her on the show, we're hearing it all day right now from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Is the federal overreach that's sort of reaching down into the provinces within Canada and limiting the actual decision making that's been.

Allotted to the provinces as per our constitutional rights.

And there's two really interesting pieces of legislature in Canada right now, one called the Alberta Sovereignty act and the other called the Saskatchewan First Act. But, you know, you don't have to be Canadian to appreciate this is like the states rising up and saying, you know, we've been promised our sovereignty to a certain degree as per our federal constitution. And right now we have a federal leader who's reaching down into the states, or in Canada's case, provinces, and stepping on the toes and hamstringing in our local economies, not allowing us to govern the best interest of our local economy, which is so important because the more you centralize anything, the more mistakes are made and the more vulnerable that system becomes, right. And the more blind spots you open yourself up to because you can't possibly know everybody's unique advantage or pain point. And so, you know, I don't, I don't know how you get out of that in, in, like in, you know, in the case of, you know, Canadian, Canada's government, for example. But I think that I'm very inspired right now by the work of Danielle Smith and the Alberta Sovereignty act and, and you know, the work of Scott Moe in, in Saskatchewan, he's the current premier of Saskatchewan, threatening to, for example, withhold carbon taxes. Right. If, if, you know, his province doesn't start getting a fair shake from the federal leadership. But.

Here'S, here's something to think about, though. Like an inefficient government might be the best thing ever, you know, and if, if political leaders can't see eye to eye and can't come to decisions, I mean, isn't that why. That was kind of the beauty of the American experiment, wasn't it? It was to limit the power of any one person. And as a consequence, the United States president has far less power than a Canadian prime minister. And that's by design. And that's a really good design. Right. You should limit the power of any one human being. I mean, that increases the sovereignty of the civilians and decreases the impact of centralization. Now, that's eroded a lot, like over the last 200 years. It's not what it used to be, but that was the initial intention and what a great one. What A great one and probably a large reason why we've seen the United States accelerate from what was honestly not that long ago a third world country pulling into the edge of the Atlantic Ocean into now being the global superpower. You know, a lot of that's just left to the individual innovation and ambition of the, of the citizens.

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Took something that you know, I think for many they look at it perhaps as a very bleak outlook to some degree. And you, you've got a very interesting perspective about the advantages of the slow moving machine. So I think that's fascinating vantage point and it's important to have context as we look at these things because from a day to day perspective, you know, you could see a news article or a headline and you could get a little frustrated about it real quick. But if you take some time to think or ruminate, think upon your thinking. Both our mentor are Nelson Nash and Dan Sullivan, very focused on the idea of, to rethink your thinking about a particular subject or a matter. And so I really appreciate your, your, your method of doing that. And what kind of comes up to me a little bit is, you know, as we hit the go button here for a recording, you know, I mentioned a little bit something about you know, central banks and I know in a lot of the commentary, especially in recent episodes, I mean you've had Peter Schiff on who was interviewed by one of your, one of your team members. You've had Dr. Ron Paul on so, so many individuals who again with that Austrian thinking mindset looking at the issuance of we'll call it funny money that effectively isn't really real real and how that's being pumped into the marketplace and creating a lot of, I, I'll call it havoc over extended periods of time. And so with some of the interviews you're having recently, a lot of communication, a lot of talk about where maybe there's a, a large bubble that's forming and appearing. I'm just curious to get your opinion when you, when you think about amalgamating some of these recent conversations you've been, you've been having and for me recently in the last two to three months. But I'm, I'm sure in your mind's view, it's actually probably the last three to four years. What's some things that comes up for you here that you'd like to talk about with some of the themes that you're hearing in those interviews that are taking place now?

Well, I think that we tend to separate the behavior and intention of governments from the behavior and intention of regular people like you and I, as if it's different in any way. And so everybody got hooked on cheap money and cheap credit. And you know, consumers are going through that right now in a certain way and governments are going through it in the exact same way. And so, you know, on the consumer front, what do you see? You see things like auto loan delinquencies, not at all time highs, but they're kind of a hockey stick curve going that direction. Mortgage delinquencies in some pretty scary scenarios right now. You know, once again, in Canada, you know, in 2022, I think 70% of new mortgages were variable rates. They're getting whacked right now. Mortgage demand is down something like 25% this year alone. New mortgage is down 50%. People are getting priced out of their homes, all this stuff. An interesting data point that gets less attention is new credit card application rejections. That is at all time highs. New credit card application rejections are at all time highs. So this is people that can no longer afford their monthly nut. They've become accustomed to reaching out for more credit when that occurs and now they cannot get it. And so this is silly to me. When people ask, are we headed towards a recession? It's like, well, what are you waiting for? This is what a recession looks like. I mean, United States set a record for corporate bankruptcies in August. You're waiting for CNN to provide you affirmation that yes, this is in fact a recession, we're in one, but our federal leadership's in that exact same situation. And it's important to think about it that way. We're looking at in the United States the $32 trillion debts, 2 trillion dollar deficits. And I, I pause to, to really like prophesize on those numbers because they sound crazy. And when you say, you know, a $2 trillion debt, how is that sustainable? As if a 1 trillion dollar debt was, you know, or a half a trillion dollar debt was. Right, like 32 trillion in debt, like this has to end. It's like, well, was 20 trillion okay with you? Like it doesn't matter at this point, like it's, it's irrelevant. These are just digits.

The goalpost just keeps getting pushed further, further out almost to an exponential level where the word trillion and billion don't even, they don't, they don't have like, like a visual impact to the human being because we're so unfamiliar with, with seeing it that it, and it's being tossed around so much that it's like, it's like.

Being basically just being the boiled frog, essentially, right? When we're hearing these terminologies and it's just like it, it almost becomes inconsequential, but yet it's monstrously consequential.

Yeah, yeah. And, and of course we're desensitized to these numbers. Exactly. Who can wrap their mind around 32 trillion of anything? Like it's not a, it's not a fathomable concept. And there's always a reason to think this time it's different, right? We're looking at a pretty serious, you know, treasury oversupply. The global demand for US Treasuries is still actually pretty much on par with where it's been, but we're needing to sell more of them to finance our debt. Because, you know, how do you, how do you reconcile a 2 trillion dollar debt when you can't make cuts to really anything on the budget outside of the only two buckets that would make an impact would be entitlement spending. And that's political suicide when there's an election cycle every two years. So no politician is going to touch that. And then military spending and don't think that's going anywhere, not in the near future. So that's, you know, and then you got interest, expense. And so, you know, I, I stepped back from this and I'm like, what does this really tell us? Because I can't invest on this information. I can't really make any short term adjustments or predictions based off this information. But if we depart from the noise of like this quarter, last quarter, next quarter and say, you know, what does this tell us about the big trends that might be occurring right now? And if you look at the cycles of empire, you know, over like the last 500 years, you know, we got six empires to analyze, right? We got the Portuguese empire, which had its own global reserve currency. It was kind of maritime specific, but it was recognized relatively globally. The Spanish Empire, the Dutch Empire, the British Empire, and now we're living in the era of the American Empire. So six empires inside of 500 years tells you a little bit about the expeditious nature with which power rotates around the globe and therefore what inning we may realistically be in in the era of the American Empire. And nobody wants to hear that. And I imagine that the citizens of any empire didn't believe it when it was occurring to them because all they live in is their recency. Bias, right? And this is the world that I was born into and it's the one that will continue forever. And that's a reasonable thing to think. But when you step back and look at the big picture, it's like, oh, it's a guarantee. Of course, this is obvious where we're at. And inside of those cycles you see the same kind of behavior, right? You know, a country typically before it's, it starts as a, you know, sort of a developing but highly ambitious country and the citizens become very productive, usually by stealing the middle class jobs from another empire that wants to outsource that. I mean, that's what happened in the case of, of, you know, Spanish to the Dutch and Dutch to the British. They built their power off their maritime strength and determined that it was cheaper to have, in Spanish's case, to have the Dutch build their ships. And so they outsourced their middle class jobs to the Dutch to build cheaper ships. Turns out the Dutch got really good at building ships and also got rich from building ships for the Spanish Empire. So the Spanish Empire hollowed up their middle class, essentially outsourced it to Holland. Holland took over, took that puck and ran with it, right? And they built their empire on the back of maritime strength. Surprise, surprise. But then they did the exact same thing and they outsourced their ship building to cheaper labor in Britain and Brits became really good at building ships, ended up with the largest navy the world ever seen, you know, and, and you know, so we're seeing that now, like have we not hollowed out the empire or sorry, the middle class of the American empire. Like obviously we have. But that hyper, you know, hungry, productive populous becomes wealthy, just do hard work. But you know, the stages they go through is like, you know, productivity leads to wealth and then you become accustomed to wealth and then that wealth leads to decadence. Then you become accustomed to decadence, but you're not as productive as you used to be. So now you fund that with debts and then debt fuels decline and that productivity fuels wealth. Wealth feels decadence, decadence feels debt, debt fuels decline. That's the cycle that you'll see in all six of those empires. And so when you ask that question about the American empire again it's like, you tell me where we're at. This whole conversation is about debt. So it's like, yeah, we know. Right, we know where we're at. But that doesn't mean that the end days are tomorrow or inside of five years. And it took 30 years for the British pound to really give space to the American dollar. It was a slow, arduous process and it will be again. But, you know, so you have the insolvency of the state that we're, we're seeing right now, that sort of debt fuels decline scenario, the final innings. Right. Of the empire. We're there for sure. We can, I think we can say that with confidence that the state's insolvence. There's no, really no real way around that, that I can see. The two other factors you often see at the end, during those end days are civil unrest that explodes to a point that borders on civil war. You know, becomes, are we there? Like, I don't know, you can make an argument that we're, we're kind of close.

I don't think I've seen any polarization happening in the news in the last two years.

Right. Calm and collected. Yeah, right. And, and we're there. And that's, you know, often in response to the wealth gap that's created when you outsource the middle class, but the affluent class continues to build wealth. This creates civil unrest and that division spreads and people don't know who the enemy is. They just know their life's not as good as it used to be and they can't afford what they used to be able to. So they, they look for an enemy. And that's a whole thing right there. Like, you know that the lack of financial education, I think is at the root of a lot of that. Because if you, if you bought the story that you were sold in the 90s and in the 2000s, that you should go through high school, take the student loan debt, get the degree, do what you love, don't do it for the money. Like we were all told that. Did that work out? You got the liberal arts degree for 100 grand. Now you're 35, 100 grand in debt out of the housing market, and you're looking at people your age who are millionaires, and you're like, there's no way. I did everything right. I went to post secondary, I worked hard, I did what I loved, but they're a millionaire and I'm broke. Like, they must have cheated, you know, and then you get this animosity Back and forth, when all that really happened is that you guys are both playing the same game, but only one person knew the rules. Right? Because we go through the education system without ever learning about capital gains and leverage and credits and you know how these are core. These are core. So, so anyways, we have the civil unrest, we have the insolvency of the state, we have the civil unrest. And the third bullet point that you typically see in those end days is a external power rising to compete with the existing power. And so does that exist today? Like, historically, it's not one nation that rises up and challenges the existing power. It's a collection of smaller powers that are able to pause their ideological differences in order to overthrow the existing superpower. So are we seeing that? It's like, yeah, we're seeing that too. And so, you know, near term debt crisis, I don't know what happens. I think we can kick the can a lot farther than people think. And the evidence of that is just look how far we've kicked it thus far. We kicked it to 32 trillion. Like, who saw that coming? You know, we kicked it to a $2 trillion deficit. Who saw that coming? We can kick this thing really, really far.

Five years ago, you would have been labeled a heretic just for even suggesting that we could get the $32 trillion.

100%. Absolutely you would have been. Yet here we are. Right? And so I can't predict the short term impact of the debt crisis, but you can step back, look at history and say, okay, but what's the big picture telling us? And I don't know about you, but I do find it. It's easier, right, to. It's hard to predict near term volatility. Like, I can't tell you what the market's going to do inside of six months, but I can make some assumptions about what the world might look like inside of 10 years. That's actually easier game to play. And those big trends, they don't move as quickly, they're not as volatile. They're the super tanker kind of going one direction and these little speedboats jotting all over the place, which are harder to predict. But you know that, that's how I tend to process that stuff.

Richard, does that remind you of anybody's number one rule that we know?

Thinking long range.

Right? Thinking long range. You know, our Nelson Nash, our mentor, he wrote the book Become youe Own Banker. And rule number one is you got to learn how to think. Wrong. You got to learn how to think. Three generations down the road and love that his iteration of that was, you know, so he, he passed away in March of 2019. He was 88. Revolutions around the sun is what he would say. And so he had a breadth of experience going through cycles. He saw and lived through much of that empiric rise that we've been discussing. And he also was a very big student of history. In fact, if you go to his website, he's got something about 250 books, most of which are on economics and history. But he says you can't have an understanding of economics if you don't first have an understanding of history. You know, so he would go back to Richard Canalon, who you know, many people would recognize as where the, the auspices of the Austrian school of economic thought really stems from. And he, he, he thought about how in his own lifespan if you started to recognize that you could think beyond your own lifespan and you started to picture, okay, what's the family, what's the legacy, what's the things that you actually want to do and accomplish and you, and you made goals and targets in relation to those things. The actions you took today would begin to adjust through that mindset and through the intention that you set about what that three generational outlook is. And so, you know, for us the idea of family banking and, and seceding from a system that we, you know, generally don't believe is there to support you is how do we slowly and incrementally, or as quickly as reasonable, you know, disconnect, unplug ourselves from at least to some degree the banking sector and system that isn't designed to support your initiatives as a, as a human being and plug into another system utilizing the backbone of a framework built on insurance. With insurance companies, we don't fractionalize the money supply so that we can begin to still incorporate the day to day transactional aspect of banking, but be in the driver seat of all the decision making process rather than tapping into this commercial sector that has this fractional reserve principle attached to it. And so know his mindset was that if we could get 10% of a population base, so the, the idea that as soon as you get 10% of a population of any size doing the same thing, you create that automatic adoption process. It'll work its way through that entire community or, or population base. And so if we could do that, some measure of scale over a period of time, then we would be able to without having to do the Ron Paul model of end, the Fed, nothing wrong with that. That's great. Personally, big fan of end The Fed, however, that's a top, you know, he, he referred to that as a top down thinking methodology. He believed that the only way to really get it done was a grassroots model where it was a bottom up solution. And so unplugging from the system by voluntarily making the choice where you're seceding from what's there and plugging into this one where you're now in free contract with other free people, a sovereign model where you can now profitably engage in financial activity that you're already doing, you could now separate yourself by seceding from the system that doesn't support you. And you know, there's a little bit of advantage in private contracts that aren't publicly aware and reported to the Canadian government as well. So those were, you know, some of the check boxes that he saw in the implementation of Austrian thinking, using one of the, one of the most traditional financial vehicles that's been available to us as a, a secondary location, an alternate banking method to go about accomplishing the things in life you're just going to continue doing anyway, such as buying commodities, which is, you know, one of the big focuses for yourself.

And that, that comment about you can't understand economics until you understand history. Like, what a haymaker. It's so correct, isn't it? You know, we say the most undervalued asset on Wall street is a history book. And it's true, you know, Absolutely. And you know, duration is, I feel like it's the competitive advantage that everybody has access to, but very few actually capitalize on. But it works, you know, and there's, you know, for example, everybody knows Warren Buffett. He's the Oracle of Omaha, maybe the most successful investor that we've ever heard of. The number one reason that he is a household name is because he's been an investor for 80 years. That's why he started in his early teens, he's still going in his 90s. And had he run the exact same portfolio strategy from age 30 to age 65, like most people, he'd be worth less than 1% of his current net worth and no one would have ever heard his name. He'd still, by the way, be rich. Like, it still would have worked out because 35 years is a long tenure. That's still great duration.

But he wouldn't be the oracle. It's only because he's compounded his results for 80 years and stuck in the game. The number one asset that most any investor ever ends up owning is their house. And it's not because real estate Always outperforms it's because it's the one asset that they'll hold for 25 years duration wins. Because we think about our house as something we own. You don't trade ownership. Right. Whereas when it comes to the equity market, most people identify as investors, but they're really acting like traders and they're just trading share prices. That's all they're really doing. They're not, they're not understanding that they're owning a company when they buy equity in it. And that shift of your frame of thinking really shifts how you operate and helps helps you manage the short term volatility. Right. The bumps along the way.

You should get some shirts made that say that we don't trade ownership. I really like that. That would be, that's really good.

Yeah. Yeah, well.

Oh, sorry Jay, I didn't mean to cut you off there. But Rich, I just can't help but think of that story that Jason often shares about his dad.

Right?

This is, he shared that story before where, you know, the one asset that he actually had that was performing, that he actually owned, that had some value that would continue to compound and, and, and serve his family for the rest of his life. And even after he was gone, his brilliant financial adviser told him to cash in his whole life policy just as he, when he, as soon as he retired, he cashed it in. He bought some toys, bought dude ads, bought dude ads. And then less than approximately a year later, he, he was gone. And then he left his family with problems and duds that they didn't want, need, or could, you know, do anything for.

Came in plans, no financial value and no tax free windfall. And, and, and so it goes again that, that, that ties directly again to that longevity thinking. And it's not that he did anything wrong or incorrect, it's simply that he didn't know. And so the education component, you know, your, your conference, it's really a, it's a, it's a mass opportunity for 6,000 people to gather and get a bunch of education and learn about new opportunities to learn about from other people who are well exposed to not just a geopolitical environment, but a, a financial and historical environment. And they're, that you're bringing minds together that are in general looking at things through the lens of bigger time and time, the relevance of time impacts us in, in everything. I, I think about it this way. You have three young kids. How old are your kids, Jay, if you don't mind asking.

They're three, five and seven.

Okay. So I I'm, I'm at six and eight and so we're in the same ballpark. And if you just think about that, so 3, 5 and 7 now, Vern's kids are a little bit older. Okay, he's got maybe 10 years on us there. But if you think about the relevance of time, your, your three year old has gone through monstrous leapfrogs in cognition and everything and skill in a, in a three year period that is almost uncanny if you really consider what's transpired. Learning how to walk, learning how to feed themselves, like, learning how to dress themselves, like, like momentous changes. And so, but the time relevance, if you think, oh, well, you know, a year and a half or two years ago, hey, we were like, still in like Covid, locked down in our house or whatever. And so like that was a really crazy time I had, my business was shut down. I was pivoting into something new. Like there's all this other chaos happening in a short time frame. And so a lot happened in that time frame, but in his lifespan, it's an exponential change of everything. And so I think about that as I look at my own children. I think, wow, if I go back eight years and I think about when my son was born and all the stuff that was happening there, and then I think about 10x opportunities that have taken place in my own life during that time frame. It's like, wow, like a lot's happened in a short, in a decade, in a short period of time. But it is such a micro blip on the radar in the 42 years I've been on planet Earth. And, and that was, you know, if Nelson was still alive today, he would be like 92. And I'm like, well, what, what was, what happened in his time frame? Well, there was no indoor plumbing, there wasn't electricity in his house, they didn't have a fridge when he was born. You know, like, like the, the context of what time has allowed us to do and the, and the sheer absolute prosperity that we live with today. People can't even fathom and respect the value of what we already have to some degree. Would you agree with?

Yes, 100%. You know, and use that, that 10x analogy there. Right. And it's, it's, it's a, it's a fun one to play with. So the concept that you could 10x your results, 10x your growth, 10x your development. I mean, yeah, like I'm watching my three year old do that every six months. Right. So it's possible, but isn't that funny how. Just because I'm rereading that book right now. Phenomenal book, by the way. Dan Sullivan, 2x. Sorry, 10x is easier than 2x. Phenomenal read for any entrepreneur, anybody, to be honest with you, because we tend set goals in terms of like 10 improvement, you know, 2x gains. I want to double this, I want to grow this by 10, 20%. And when you reflect back, it took me some time to get through this, right? The first time I did this exercise where I looked back at my life and I was like, have I 10x anywhere before? And the first time I thought about it, I was like, ah, I don't know, I don't really think so. You know, because like, you diminish your milestones as soon as you accomplish them, right? You set this colossal goal, you work at it for five, six years, but the day that it's done, it's small to you because you've grown into the person that, that is a small thing to, you know. And so in hindsight it's like, ah, that was obvious that happened. Like, of course I built that business. Of course I, you know, no, no brainer, right. Of course I did. But when you get real with yourself and look at that experience under a microscope and say, oh, actually like I've 10x everywhere. My confidence as an entrepreneur. Yes. My net worth and income, my, my standards for relationship, my parenting ability, my physical ability. Right. Like I wasn't running ultramarathon six years ago. I was an alcoholic seven years ago. You know, like we're, we've, we've done a lot. You know what I mean? And, and then when you, when you reflect on that and then project that into the future, then it's like, why would I plan for less than 10x? It's silly to discount myself like that because I've got all this evidence that shows me I've done this multiple times in the past. And we all have, we all have, by the way. And so don't short sell yourself when you're planning into that future, right. It's like, it's silly to think any, any other way about it. So, so valuable principles. I love that.

That reminds me of another Dan Sullivan book, Gain in the Gap. So there you go.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's very easy to get, to get stuck in the gap. And I'm starting to recognize, seeing that even where my children now are even stuck in the gap. And so I'm not, I wouldn't say that I'm becoming expert level at helping them get out of it. I, but I'm certainly becoming expert level at trying. Right? And it's through the act of trying that I'm hopefully we can able to do things. And funny enough, right before we hit the go button, I was actually on a session with Scott Donnell, who was wrote the book we've interviewed on our podcast, the Value Creation Kit. And it's all about helping kids understand the importance of value creation and how to save, spend, share so that they can take on responsibilities very early to develop the real world skills of money management at the earliest possible age through gamification if you don't have it. Value Creation Kit, it's an amazing book, Scott. Donald's a wonderful guy and so he's, he's putting some coaching programs together for, for families to, to deep dive into that a little bit more. And so literally leading into our conversation, you know, it's just kind of funny that we're talking about this here, but I was coming from that, that inspiration into our great chat here today. And so I really do think a lot about and again, being a, being a member of Strategic Coach, one of the things that Dan Sullivan does when you, when you join coaches, you get to do the lifetime extender exercise. And, and it's a thinking exercise that puts you into the, into the hot seat right away where you have to really start reimagining what longevity of your own lifespan looks like to you. And if you gained X amount of more time on the back end of your life, what now becomes available to you to accomplish that you didn't know you could accomplish before? It's an unbelievable exercise that really.

It could shake you to your core on recognizing what's truly possible in your own world. When you get to realize what the potential of longevity looks like today given the rapid expanse of technology, especially in the medical field. So, you know, thinking today, and I'm just curious, taking that inspiration and thinking about your life now, today, I mean, you're still a young guy, Jay. You've got a lot of road ahead of you. You got 10x thinking being beat into you really effectively self beat. I guess my curiosity is if you think about what you've already been able to accomplish to this point and as you look forward into your 10x future, what are some of the opportunities that you see yourself building, manifesting as part of the legacy that you want to leave and create?

Oh man. Okay, so.

Well, so a project that I'm building right now that I am very fired up about and this is the reason that I reread 10x is easier than 2x because I wanted to ensure I was thinking about the future of this business appropriately. And it actually touches on a handful of things that we've discussed thus far, including the value creation kit which you just mentioned. So I'm going to look that up because I'm unfamiliar. But teaching financial education to my kids is paramount. And as I said earlier, I think a lot of the people feeling disenfranchised and cheated and all this is because we're all playing the same game, right? But only a few people actually know the rules. And that's the game of money. Like, love it or not, we're all playing that game, you know, do what you love, but you got to pay rent, you know what I mean? And money does not buy you happiness, but it does buy you options. And it can solve problems and it is important. And building wealth can allow you to be the rock that somebody else needs to lean on. And you don't have to be that rock, but you got the option to be one if you have wealth. If you don't, you are dependent. And you know, so just, it's, it's not evil to want to get rich. It's actually, I think, a very noble endeavor anyways, so financial education is paramount. I think that when it comes to people educating themselves about finances, they may watch channels like yours or channels like mine, but in my experience, individuals are very hesitant to ask what they deem to be dumb questions. They don't want to look like the rookie and ask something silly. And because there is a lot of ego and intimidation in the world of finance, no one wants to look like the idiot, right? And so they won't raise their hand and say, I actually don't even know what liquidity is. Everyone's talking about an inverted yield curve. I have no idea what that is. Right. Like people won't ask those questions. And so we're now building sort of a university. It's not an actual sanctioned university, but it is a series of online courses that I'm super fired up about. And the first one we just launched a month ago, it's called the Commodity University. And this is a 10 chapter lecture series led by myself, but I'm joined by a whole bunch of friends on various chapters where they lean in. So for example, I've got a chapter on risk management for commodity investors. And Rick Rule from Sprott Asset Management leans in on how he's managed risk over his 45 year career being a commodity investor. But it starts with the absolute most basic fundamental principles. The first chapter literally asks what, what is a commodity? Let's start there. And ten chapters later we're into portfolio construction. But everything in the middle is like, which economic indicators actually move the price? What are supply and demand dynamics, and why do those matter? We do deep dives into five metals that are front and center for most commodity investors, like gold, silver, copper, uranium, energy metals. Everybody's talking about renewable energy, but what are the ingredients, ingredients required in that infrastructure. And what does that mean? Do we even have those ingredients? Like, turns out we don't. We need to get them somehow, you know, and, and there's a whole bunch in there.

So imagine that you have to destroy some of the Earth to get those things out so you can protect the Earth. Isn't that, isn't that weird?

Isn't that weird? Yeah, I love to talk about that. So, so, you know, this, this university project. So thecommodityuniversity.com if anybody wants to check it out, but it's the first of eight courses. Next up is the Geopolitic University, discussing the rotation of power around the world, where it lies today, speculating on where it might go next. We've got the Currency University, the Energy University, the Behavioral Economics University, because. And then we got the Titan University, which I'm super fired up about. This is like studying about 12 different, very interesting personalities, from Marcus Aurelius to, you know, Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. morgan. Like a whole bunch of just people I think we can learn from who have changed the world with their intentions and their, their 10x visions, to be honest. And it, it kind of like, it's very personal because that's how I interpret the world. It's like we, it's, this is all a consequence of human nature and raw materials, like the people that exist and what they do with the stuff they have real simple, you know, this is how you, you build economies, you build civilizations, you build technology, you become competitive, like all this stuff. But it, at the, to make it really sports specific, to use that analogy. Like at its core, you know, it's, it's human behavior and it's raw materials and those two things playing off each other. You know, what you have, what you don't have, what you need, who's got what. All of this stuff kind of dictates a lot of how the world functions. And so, you know, that's, that's how we, we built this, this, this curriculum and starting with that. So there's a lot in human nature A lot of behavioral economics, a lot of storytelling about people who have been there, done that, and what we can learn from their stories and then who has what right? The raw materials component. So that's what we led with the Commodity University. But bleeding into, you know, what you build on top of people and stuff, people and raw material, what gets built on top of that? You know, obviously, you know, currencies, energy production, all this stuff. But that, that, I think that, Richard, that is what I am hyper focused on building into an incredibly disruptive platform that provides people the education we're not getting from, definitely from the public school system, you know, and I think it's just lacking in general because we're all kind of rushing to catch up and try to understand the world of macro and the world of finance and you know, the world of investing. But there's a hundred different directions you could go and they're all kind of right, depending on who you are and what you're looking for. So the most intelligent step that I could think of is like, let's get down to absolute first principles. Assume you know nothing, right? And let's just start there and start educating from that standpoint with a focus on, on, on, on money. You know, it all comes, you know, it's all, it's all tied in, so very important. But that's it. Man, I'm fired up on that business right now.

Well, I'm excited to hear that. One thing that it reminds me of and Vern will understand where I'm coming from though. This is again something that Nelson Nash would say is, well, if you know what's going on, you'll know what to do.

And the simplicity and the premise of.

Working from a foundation, you can't build a skyscraper unless you have a solid foundation. So if you don't work on the foundation first, what's the point of starting to add walls and floors and furniture and all the other things and glass if you don't have anything for it to stand on? And so the educational base and those foundational principles again, a little bit around what are the different types of things? Understanding basic terminology, going through real world experience of other people is a way to have a look back. So it's again going back to Dan Sullivan. You get to choose what you bring into your future that you're designing, and you get to pick and choose what parts of the past you want to bring. But it's not just your past. You have the capacity to learn through the paths of other people. I think about that a lot When I think about Nelson Nash or a person like Dan Sullivan, they've got, they've got years of time ahead of us. And I, I know thinking back, I think I had, I had the lucky opportunity to be blessed with having older parents. And because of that, I always found myself around older groups of people. And I was fascinating being those environments because they had the better stories, they had a lot more stories and their stories seem to have more interesting context to them. They talked about their failures or things that didn't go well and they had a lot of other good, very interest stories, all of them with vehicles ending up in the ditch for some reason. But regardless, it was an interesting capacity to, to learn vicariously through those experiences. And so I've always been interested. Anytime I go to a room, I look for who the oldest people in the room are because I want to go talk to them. I want to go to them first. What is it that they know versus what someone else knows. And often those individuals, I even find they don't even recognize the relevance of the stories that they have to someone that's younger than them. You have to extract them out by asking good questions. But you, through these interviews that you're doing as well as the other education components, you're taking these experiences of other individuals and you're providing a look back that allows for a look forward for the individuals that are going to go through this training academy, this university. I think that's phenomenal.

You said something that I thought was super critical and something that I probably learned from Jason or Richard because I'm the sum parts of all the guys that came before me and the great mentors that I have, but I think it's really critical. I love what you said. I, I might be dicing this up a little bit. I don't know exactly how you phrased it, but basically people are afraid to ask what is perceived as a dumb question. And I say to people that I meet one on one all the time, look like you can't ask a dumb question. The only dumb question is the one you didn't ask. So with those university programs that you're putting together, even for a person like myself, like, I'm no geopolitical expert, I'm not an expert in commodities and those kinds of things. And I'm really interested to learn more about what you share in those universities, I like that you break the programs down right from, hey, here's the absolute basic, like what is a commodity? All the way through to bringing it to putting together a portfolio because somebody might be super intimidated to get involved in that. And they're like, well, I'm never going to change my future because I have no idea even where to start. And you start it down to the basic, the basic roots. And, and you don't make somebody feel unwelcome or silly for not knowing about any of this stuff. They can actually get involved and learn. I think that's pretty inspiring.

Well, it's such a roadblock, isn't it? You know, and, and like, you know, we deal with this in our personal lives, and we're facing a challenge that overwhelms us, like some monumental crisis in front of us. If it's a business problem or a family problem. And, and when looked at as a whole, it's hard to find the attack vector. Like, where do I even start on this thing? Because it's so overwhelming and it's monstrosity. But when you're able to step back and compartmentalize and maybe break the problem up into tiny little micro problems, like, then you can find out how to approach this. And here's where I should start. And this looks like, you know, you see the opportunity, you can get started. Right? And, and this is, this was like, maybe the biggest learning for me as an entrepreneur was, you know, maybe I was facing like, you know, a cash flow crisis or, you know, a sale or a marketing crisis or an hr.

That never happens in business.

Right. And it's like, you look at it and it's just like you're kind of paralyzed, you know, paralysis by analysis, they say. And, and because you're just looking at the whole thing, the whole pie, and it's like, I don't know how to solve this problem. But, you know, if you're able to say, okay, well, what does this problem consist of? Right. What is it built of? Right. What are the ingredients in the problem? Right. Who's involved with it? Right. Like, you know, what's the best case outcome? Like, what's a minor case outcome? You know, and what's the thing I could do today to get started? And then you, you build a path and you create a strategy, and it's like, oh, it's all approachable. It's all fixable, actually.

Right.

But, but yeah. So, you know, I think financial education is like that for a lot of people. And, you know, we have a value. At my company, it just says be first. And, and that's what it speaks to. It's like, raise your hand first, like, ask the dumb question, like, go first. And what you'll find is that you're not alone. Like, people will be really grateful that you were the brave one. Fortune favors the bold, you know, and you raised your hand and asked the question that 10 other people were wondering about, but nobody wanted to stick their neck out, you know, and. And risk embarrassments, right? Like, we kind of driven by that, like, back to the human nature thing. Like, we're driven by this desire to look good and not look bad to a large degree. You know, it, like, dictates a lot of our behavior. And. And again, that's why we focus a lot on human nature and human behavior in this course, because how people are, how people are with each other and the psychology of decision making and how we navigate our biases and our heuristics and our blind spots. It really, like, it's. It's how the world organizes around us because that's how we navigate through it. And, and the principles that we learn in those chapters, like, like biases and blind spots and heuristics, they apply to everybody. And, you know, we tend to, you know, we talked a lot about, like, you know, government policy and central bank policy and all this stuff, and we tend to impersonalize that stuff. Like, oh, it's some, you know, faceless governing body, you know. No, it's. It's just a bunch of people and there's one or two that are making the decisions, and they're just like you. They're governed by fear and greed as well. And, you know, we maybe make the assumption, you guys probably don't. But a lot of people make the assumption that our, our governments and our politicians are looking out for our best interest, you know, our collective interest, right? And I would love that to be the case. And I just. What am I looking out for, right? I'm looking for. I'm looking for a good deal, right? I'm looking to take care of my kids. I'm looking to better. Better my situation, looking to elevate my tribe, right? My collection of people that I take care of, right? That's what I'm concerned with. And that's not to say at the cost of everybody else, but I think everybody functions that way to a degree. You know, I don't believe that we're electing leaders who are there for the common good of everybody. They're there to further their career path, to get a good deal, to take care of their tribe. Like, the same things, right? And so, you know, that is what drives. And if. If those leaders are reliant on two Year election cycles, then expect them to behave accordingly. Don't be surprised. Buy empty promises of 2035 that they'll never have to keep. Like, of course, why would you expect anything different, right? And I think that provides a bit of realism, right? It's like, okay, now we know what the game is, right? We know who we can trust and who's saying what for what reasons. And, and, you know, if you, you know, it comes back to something you shared there, Richard, about the importance of sovereignty. You know, that's like detaching yourself from the decisions of other humans because you can't control that. And they're probably not acting in your best interest, but you can act in your best interest, and it's in your best interest to do so. But, you know, personal sovereignty, from my perspective is just like, it's recognizing that nobody's got my back, and then it's recognizing that that's a really good thing because it puts me in the driver's seat. I'm the only one accountable for my future. And so step one is I can never point the finger. I'm here because I put myself here. I could have put myself anywhere, but I put myself here. So who would I complain to, right? And you may not always agree with that. Sometimes you might have been wronged or maybe somebody broke a trust, but as soon as you blame somebody else, you put them in the driver's seat, you give them control of the situation. And if your future and you. You take your hands off the wheel and never want to do that, right? And so personal sovereignty for me is like, how can I emancipate myself from the poor decisions of other people or just the decisions of other people? How can I eliminate as much counterparty risk in my life as humanly possible? And you can do that with your bank account, with your portfolio, with your personal life, personal growth, your family, the education of your kids. I mean, it's. And we're seeing that, I think, become a bit of a trend, aren't we? Like, I think people are waking up to the importance of independence and personal sovereignty. And, you know, we talked a lot about education, but I have so many friends now that are pulling their kids out of the school system and taking control of that and either doing some version of homeschooling or unschooling or remote schooling or, you know, alart, schooling and, and kind of piecing together what they think it's important for their kids to be learning. And frankly, my wife and I, we. We've gone down that path. You Know, we were in a, a school called Nature Learners a couple years ago, seeking an alternative path for our kids education. It ended up being a bit of a mess. It was like this awesome on the surface kind of hippie school. The whole thing was outside. And the kids would learn about the world through cycles of the environment. And so on day one, they'd literally walk into the forest. They'd find. Sounds so ridiculous, but they'd find a tree friend. That was day one. And then over the course of the year they'd, they'd visit their tree friend and they'd watch how things changed, right? Like the tree friend has leaves and you know, moss on the bark and then it gets cold and the leaves fall off and you know, but then the leaves come back and you learn that like, oh, it's, it's. Most of the world is cyclical, right? Things get really dark and scary and then they get better again. They get dark and scary and better again. The salmon were in the river and now they're gone. Did they die? No, they came back again and it's like that's what they learned about. And for a handful of reasons it wasn't sustainable, but it was awesome, you know, and provided like a cool foundation. I think that if you understand.

Like cyclicality, it can help you in those, those dark moments, right? Whether you're fighting through a business challenge or a marriage problem or whatever it is you're fighting, it's like, man, we get in those moments and it's so hard to remember that it's not gonna, it's not gonna last, right? And, and you know, things get better, right? But like good things usually come in response to really bad things. And anyhow, I'm on a tangent here but, but one of the nice things.

About that, you know, foundation of understanding that cyclical nature for, for you and your kids is that you'll always be able to bring them back to that, you know, something in the future is going to come up and you can, you've now isolated a couple of key lessons that happened early on that you can bring them back to of something else that's happening in their general environment or even, even the, the, the larger community or the, the global scale. And you can say, hey, do you remember how that tree that you had, you know, that was your friend that did blank, blank and blank. And it's like, take a look at what's happening over here. So you know, I'm always just looking for where's that inspiration point of something that's already happened that's proven to be either successful or momentous or impactful in some way. And can I, can I allocate future learning opportunities back to that event? And you know, I've done that with my, with my, my kids around us discussing a family banking system and how we, we implement financial energy differently in our life for our family. And Verne has an amazing presentation about the family banking system. Awesome video that came out today. Supporting a wonderful charity and that, that whole capacity for them to understand. Look, hey, we're gonna like, we're going to Hawaii next week. It's going to be awesome. I'm excited. It wasn't originally on the books. It kind of happened a little bit short term and never been. So I'm really pumped about that. And so that's going to be a wonderful family memory and vacation. And we're going with some, with some friends. Well, we're going to have some moments and opportunities that come up there that I'm going to hold onto as fuel for future conversation, integration with my kids probably around the family banking system. I don't know what it's going to be yet, but I guarantee you something's going to happen and I'm going to be able to utilize that as fuel for discussion. And so we understand that when we go to do a large family thing like this that there's value exchange to make that happen. We have to return what we utilize from our family economy, our family system back into the warehouse so that we can utilize that again for a future endeavor the next time we want to go to a Hawaii or a family trip. So beating those lessons home early, at an early age, they don't understand a, the details of the system, but they don't need to. They understand fundamentally when we utilize capital, we have to set up a intentional plan to put it back. And when we do it the way that we do it, we get to use it again later for future endeavors. And those simplicities of the simplicity of that lesson is really becoming a core pillar for how we, you know, I can bring them back now to even the smallest little endeavors versus the bigger ones and having deeper conversations about value. What does value look like? I'll give you a quick example. We, we got artificial turf installed recently. It's amazing. I can't even believe it. It's changed our whole life. It's fantastic. Making life much better for a lot of reasons. But I had my reasons. I wanted to hear the kids reasons, so I got them to share with me some of the things that they were frustrated with or disappointed with or what was going on with them around the. The burnt, destroyed lawn by two dogs and how difficult was to play soccer and play with their friends and all these things that were in their world, in their mind's eye. And I said, well, if we continued letting it go like that, would it ever get better? What would happen? How would that show up next year, next summer when you want to play in the summer after that? So I got them really thinking about what the future implications were say, so if we replace it here now, it's going to cost us money. And I said, okay, we could do it ourselves. We could get three wheelbarrows. I get little wheelbarrows for you guys. We can bring, we can haul dirt out. We can haul the new stuff in. We can figure out how to watch some YouTube videos and learn how to roll out turf and do all these things. It might cost us less from the family banking system, but it would cost us a lot of time. And if we had all that time, how many meetings would Daddy be able to have on the podcast, you know? So I got them to connect with some of those opportunities to recognize, oh, yeah, it makes a lot more sense for us to pay someone who knows how to do that to bring it in for them to do the work. And in two days it's done. And then, boom. How much value did that create for them? So the, the conversation opportunity to buy artificial turf, I would have never imagined before it happened would create such a goldmine of learning lessons, but I can integrate them all back to the foundation Arnelson Nash taught us that we implemented in our life around the longevity of thinking three generations into the future. And so you never know when an opportunity to have a good conversation of any kind, but certainly one with your children is going to show up. So, you know, immensely grateful for that. And here you go telling us a little about the cycles and the trees. And I, I just see such wonderful opportunity for you and your own own kids to re. Emphasize some of those lessons with, with future endeavors that come up.

I hope so. Yeah. And I love that, by the way. That's so great to teach them the exchange of money and time. And I don't know if you find this to be a challenge like I, you know, when I'm, when I'm taking off in the morning or whatever, and I've got a kid, you know, hanging onto my knee and, and it's, it's a tough one, isn't it? It's like, depart the time that you're spending with the five year old to go to the business, but then to explain to them why this is important, why that is more important than being here right now. And you know, I don't, I don't have this, the secret sauce there. But, you know, one way I've begun explaining this with my kids is like, we all, we all grow up and play a game, you know, and, well, we all play games all the time, but daddy plays a game. He plays a very specific game and everybody plays a game. The waitress at the restaurant's playing a game, right? The, the, you know, in daddy's game is he makes videos and he makes, he makes videos and he writes for a living. And that's the game I play. And so I acquired a certain set of skills that allow me to play a certain game. And depending on what game you play, you'll be rewarded accordingly. Right. And generally speaking, the more skills required to play the game, the more rewards you get for that game. Right. And your game could be anything. My 5 year old is like a Lego maniac and he wants to be a construction worker when he grows up. Right. Of course. My wife's like, no, an architect. You know.

This is all Lego, man. Anyway.

It is all right.

Yeah, this is all, all Lego.

We are going hard on the Lego right now. It's so fun, you know, but, but it's like, you know, it's, it's just, we kind of explain it that way. Like you're acquiring skills that allow you to play a certain game, man. You get to take that game out one day and, and you get rewarded for that game, but it's all about the skills you acquired. You can also choose not to acquire skills and you can play a super low level game and you'll get a really low reward for it. That's a choice you can also make. Right. But there's consequences to that too. And starting to frame that thinking a little bit. You know, I don't know if there's a right way to do it, but they're fun conversations to have, for sure.

I think that's a great analogy. And as you were talking about the kid, you know, hanging off reviews, you're gonna go play the game. I just pictured that happening for Vern and being very difficult because Vern's son is much bigger than Vern now and I can't imagine what that would look like.

No kidding. He keeps me on my toes for sure.

Well, well, Jay, I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your wisdom with us here. Today, it's a lot of fun. Our final question really before we, we end the program here, I'd love to know again, circling back to the, the Vancouver Investment resource conference. Putting 6,000 people into a room year after year, getting people through education, building an epic university training method for people to learn basic financial concepts and, and historical value. These are not small tasks. You may not recognize that you're showing up as a hero for people who are going to come through that university program, attend your investment conference, but to some degree you probably are. And my curiosity really is for you, who do you most want to be a hero to?

My kids, man. No question, no question. My seven year old, my five year old and my three year old.

It's, it's, it's funny, but it's paramount for me. I never really thought legacy would matter to me and I don't know what legacy means yet. I think I haven't figured that one out. Maybe I'll figure it out in a decade or so, but in the meantime, it's like I want to, what I want to leave behind for them, I want to leave behind an example that you can build whatever you want. Right? It really is up to you. And you can build something very impactful if you want to. And you can, you can change the lives of people if you want to. Right. And, and I'm not, you know, it's not lost in the emerald soul. I'm driven to build personal wealth for my family. Like that's very important to me. I'm a provider in my community, you know, and my, my immediate community is my, my kids, my wife, my parents and, and close friends and family. And, and I am a provider to that community. And, and I know what that means, right? It means I got to go out and collect and, and I have to build things of value and, and, and it's fun. Like I, I like identifying that way. This is what I do, this is who I am, you know, and so.

I think as soon as you asked that question right away it was like one, two, three, my three little boys. Absolutely love it.

Awesome. Well, thanks again for being with us here, Jay. Amazing. All the best to the incredible conference you have coming up in January and the launch of the brand new university. So amazing stuff and we look forward to hopefully having you back on the program again in the future. I know I would love to come and attend the event in Vancouver. That'd be fantastic. Except Vernon and I are actually going to be in Costa Rica that week at a real estate conference. So unfortunately we won't be able to be there, but hopefully I can catch the next one. For all of our listeners tuning in again, thanks for watching the program. If you're on YouTube, go ahead. Boom. Right there. Check that out. New video. It's going to be great. Check it out. It's good stuff. Thanks for listening to the Wealth Without Bay Street Podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. We definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies, and the mindsets that maximize your wealth.