Financial Independence: Your Growth Plan for the Future - Garrett Gunderson

Hello, this is Joe Polish. I'm here with a longtime friend, Garrett Gunderson. What's up?

How's it going?

We're just shaking hands just for the video so it looks professional. Just so you know.

Okay, well, this is the most professional it's gonna get.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're gonna share some really. Well, hopefully it totally depends on you, Garrett. Yeah, you gotta say some good stuff today that's gonna be helpful to all of our viewers that are watching this on video and people that are listening to the audio version of this. This will be some good stuff. So if you don't know who Garrett Gunderson is, I'll tell you the quick bio. Garrett is chief wealth architect at Wealth Factory and author of the New York Times best seller, Killing Sacred Cows. Wealth Factory helps entrepreneurs optimize cash flow, streamline their finances, and keep more of their hard earned money so they can make more powerful investments in their best wealth creator, which is their business. Garrett has appeared multiple times on ABC News. Now you world with Neil CAVUTO On Fox, CNBC's squawk on the street and more. And his first firm made the Inc. 500. Read more about Garrett and his company at wealthfactory.com you can also follow him at facebook.com wealthfactory twitter.com wealthfactory so what else do they need to know about you before I get into asking you a bunch of questions? You're trying to be serious now too, which is funny.

That's a serious bio. It's like after people see me, they have to hear those. We use these really fancy words like chief wealth architect.

Right.

Kind of stuff.

Yeah. All these titles.

People see me like, oh, God, that's the finance guy for sure. Look at him, you know?

Right.

But I'm not like a Wall street guy. I'm more of like all about cash flow, keeping more of what you make. I'm not really like an investment guy telling people where to invest their money. I'm more like, what's their investor DNA? What aligns with who they are, how do they manage risk, all that kind of stuff. But I think that I bring simplicity and a little bit of fun to a boring ass topic of finance that most people never confront. And I'm solving the entrepreneur's dilemma where they're always saying, I'll just earn more money. They think that's a solution to everything. And it's great to earn more money. But Biggie says more money, more problems. And I think that's what actually happens to a lot of people is they Just don't know how to handle that.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think having been totally broke even growing up, I mean, half my childhood we lived in trailers and stuff. I mean, we weren't completely dirt poor, but we certainly never had, you know, I never lived any sort of extravagant life growing up. And my father coming from the Great Depression, he just was, you know, he was paranoid about doing anything. So, you know, I've had different experiences and then starting my own company, you know, when I was in my 20s, and then, you know, literally having a multimillion dollar business by the time I was even 30 years old. I've seen extremes and what I've learned is that there's a big difference between making money and managing it. I mean, they're two completely different skill sets. Because I know people that have had millions of dollars come through their hands, that are broke, and other people that have earned very modest incomes and they just do things very intelligently and they amass quite a bit of wealth and investments and they're safe. And at the same time, they're able to live out their entrepreneurial life. Because if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you're kind of going to trade off security because there are certain levels. David Kekich has that quote, if your purpose in life is security, you'll be a failure because security is the lowest form of happiness. That's a philosophical way to maybe talk about it, but it is nice to not have to be stressed continuously related to money. And the truth is most people are poor and rich. And see, when people have at least the illusion of being successful financially, people think they don't have problems. And you know as well as I do, I spend a lot of time talking with, you know, I mean, I run Genius Network. I mean, I'm dealing with people that are running multimillion dollar companies. I mean, most of my clients are millionaires. And there is a lot of stress and a lot of angst. So that's one of the reasons I want to talk with you about all this stuff. And so I've got a whole list of questions that I think will get us talking about things that will be most useful for our viewers and our listeners.

I think just to what you're saying here, though, is the bottom line is the greatest asset anyone has is them, their ability to earn money. It's not a stock, it's not a bond, it's not a piece of real estate. And if people start getting distracted by their money or their investments or things that they don't know about because they're speculative or they're exhausted because they're worried about is this handled. When it's not, they're not sleeping well or they don't have peace of mind or financial clarity, it starts to drain their actual productivity. So if someone gets their financial house in order, first, it takes some courage to confront that. But second, if they do that, I see A year later, 20% increase in their revenues and if we use some of the things we teach today, 25% increase in their net profits simply because of what the distraction is when that pressure is on. Like I get sometimes there's positive pressure of okay, I need to produce. But a lot of times it destroys creativity, it creates adrenal fatigue, it hurts relationships. It has people like making, chasing what I call bad profits like okay, I need to make this money. And so they take on a project or they take on a customer that really isn't a good fit just in the name of a short term profit. So they miss a lot of the foundational, like financial principles that I'll keep them. I just don't want people to discount them because they're so damn simple. But if people implement this, it is going to push them so much further ahead. And I think that one of the most strategic advantages for business owners, if they can create economic independence, which is just simply how do you create enough investment in entrepreneurial income? And there's no such thing as passive income. That's just a big lie. I mean passive income, if someone's owned real estate, it's not passive. You have to manage it. Right. What I like to call it, just to be really clear, because I think semantics matter, is recurring revenue. How can you create enough recurring revenue that comes in even if you don't show up the next day? But you still have to be a steward over, you still have to be responsible for. So entrepreneurial income is income that would show up to your firm if you didn't show up the next day. You know, but if we look when you started Genius Network, a lot of that was probably very driven by you that now you have kind of an organization that can handle a lot of that, right? Or investment income that comes in every single month. And the problem is there's this big fault where everybody thinks that investing is about setting money aside, waiting for that to develop over time. And I believe investing first and foremost and safest is about cash flow that covers your expenses. Because as soon as that happens, when you have recurring income to cover that, you can swing for the fences. In your business, you lower your stress level and every dollar you earn is unencumbered to your lifestyle and can go to create exponential growth inside of building more cash flowing assets. Gotcha. So anyway, that's a little bit of the framework.

No, that's awesome. You know, let me even ask you, like, how would you to take it as at the most basic level? This is going to sound totally ridiculous, but I'm interested to see how you would answer it. What is money?

So money is simply a receipt, right? So I think that money is a receipt of two other things. The first thing is how effective we are at taking our mental capital, which is our ideas, our knowledge, our wisdom. And business is the bridge between what we know and people. And that's the, that bridge is business. So it's how effective do we serve other people? And then money is just the receipt to show how effective we are at it.

Okay, so if you were.

So some people call it energy, some people call it, you know, but it's, it's just a representation of value. It's not value in and of itself. It's a representation of value that we can store that value. Because if I, if we're not bartering and I do something for you or like when I joined Genius Network, right then all of a sudden I paid before I came to all the sessions, you know, and all that kind of stuff. But it was stored value until.

Until I didn't give you any value whatsoever.

I was like, screw this guy. You pulled out this thing right here.

Oh, yeah.

This is our first phone call. So just background, by the way.

So people that aren't seeing this on video, they're hearing like, because a lot of people listen to my podcast, they listen to the audio version. And if you are listening to the audio, you can always go to, you know, the Genius. You can type in, you know, Joe Polish and Gary Gunderson and find this video or go to Genius Network and you can find it there. So this is new rules to get rich, to optimize your wealth and maximize your fulfillment. Because we're in one of my conference rooms in my building that has about 2,200 books on the shelf currently. And I know the value of every one of these books, by the way, the ones that are not old editions and stuff, because there are some that you can't trace. But it's like $88,000 worth of books sitting in this room right now. So nonetheless, this is a Nightingale Conant program that was done how many years.

Ago in 2008 or 2009. And so this is how it came about 2006. I have two business partners at Dyna, plane crash. And Babs calls me Strategic Coach and says, hey, what can we do to help you out? And I was like, I don't know. I'm, you know, I just, I need some help. For sure. We have 42 employees. I don't really. We're figuring out how personality based we were. We don't have a lot of systems in place. And she goes, all right, why don't you just come out to Toronto? And so I flew out to Toronto, had dinner with her and Dan, stayed at their guest house, went and interviewed Dan for a series thing that I was doing. They showed me the business and they just talked to me about how to navigate a lot of that process. And all I said was, look, I would like to know how to market better. I don't really know. Like we had now I lost two partners. These were big personalities. They drove a lot of business in. And they said, we need to know Joe Polish. So it was a chaotic time. So you and I didn't meet. But then I wrote the book Killing Sacred Cows and someone sent it to Robin Robbins. She sent it to you. And then Dan happened to tell you about me that week. So we ended up connecting on the phone because of that. And on that first phone call, we were talking and I said, yeah, you know, Nightingale Conant was going to do something with me, but they decided to go with the cheapskate millionaire because it tested better. You're like, let me make a phone call. The next thing I know, I'm doing the Nightingale Conant program. So then you're like, hey, would you like to join my mastermind? And by the way, I don't know if you remember this, but I just written a check for $91,000 to plan television Arts. I just written a check to promote a book for $95,000. I just written a check for 66,000 revenant rate. It goes on to be $500,000 of checks. And then you're like, hey, do you want to join my mastermind? Well, I already listened to Prana Marketing because I bought it at Strategic Coach. It was sitting out there. So at the end you're talking about the importance of Mastermind. You've marketing sob, you know, just getting me totally bought in. Like, oh God, I need to be in this Mastermind. Then you're like, hey, do you want to be in. I said yes. Before I even KNEW it was 25 grand. I'm like, absolutely. I'm like, when is he, like, next week. I'm like, great, I'll be there. You're like, cool, just send the $25,000 to Eunice. I'm like, oh, okay. I just wrote a bunch of checks, so let me figure this out. And I just, you know, I figured it out, and it was really kind of a tough thing because I didn't have the exact resources based upon everything I was allocating towards the book. But I just knew that it was gonna be a good thing for me. So I came out the next week, went. You introduced me to someone that helped me sell a thousand books the first week my book was out, and someone that's been a longtime friend on that first session. And then, I mean, I came into that room and I kind of felt like the baby of the room. Like, I didn't know much about marketing. I felt a little bit out of my league. I was a little bit nervous.

Yeah.

And then now I feel like when I'm in the room, you call on me now, like one of the contributors. But. But that's where a lot of the background was. And so it was a pretty transformational thing for me to invest in myself. And I kind of figured. I was like, look, if I put all my money in this book, it wasn't all my money, but if I put a lot in this book, that's something I have a lot of ability to. Course. Correct. I have a lot of ability to influence. To me, it was a great investment going to the mastermind. I'm like, hey, an investment in relationships. I'm going to meet people that I never met before. And it was definitely an exponential thing for me. Because all of a sudden, I mean, where you're brilliant and other people just don't do what you do is someone that you didn't know really well you met in New York and they were going to Park City. So you just call them. Me. You're like, hey, this is Patrick. He's coming to Park City next week. Now, look, like, I knew 10 people that knew me and knew Patrick. No one connected us. So I get on the phone with Patrick because you awkwardly hand your phone to him, and then the next thing you know, he's in Park City. The next week we meet. I go to a thing for that. He's hosting the week after in Denver and get seven clients, by the way, from a 10 minute talk. Not because it was a Joe Polish 10 minute talk. Just because that's all they had for me. And I was just there as a guest, transform my son's health, because it was all these health professionals and we didn't know what to do. And so you just think about the power of an investment in yourself and all the peripheral things that come about from that. And I think in the world of investing, too many people think it's about a product. And there is no magic product out there. There is no, like, oh, cool, if I do this investment, then that's going to be the game changer. If that happened, we'd all call the 800 number, we'd all line up to buy that investment. But the bottom line is it's basically building your foundation. It's making sure that your money's safe so it can be sustainable, and then keeping your growth totally aligned with where you have expertise, where you have knowledge, and staying more in cash than almost anyone will tell you. Because real investors pounce when there's opportunity and stay in cash. Rookie investors constantly stay invested because they're indoctrinated to do that by the entire investment world, which is because of the system, the compensation, not because of the reality.

Interesting. Yeah. So when it comes time for them to have available cash flow cash to put into any opportunity, it's just not there.

Right. A market they don't control starts to go down. Now they're going, well, I don't want to take those losses. Or they get burned by that loss. And then they don't want to invest. And then everyone else, like McDonald's goes, it's time to buy real estate. Apple goes, it's time to start acquiring businesses. Everyone else goes, now's the time. And then the other people were going, oh, the market's going up. I better jump in and get into this. And look, I believe real wealth is built through focus, not diversification. Diversification is admission that we don't know what we're doing. I don't know, diversify. Maybe this will work, maybe that'll work. And it actually spreads us thin and moves us further away from understanding the outcomes. So I believe diversification creates risk in some sense. Even though it might create more stability to your money, it creates more risk in it because you're further removed from the outcomes and the knowledge.

So you said diversification is the. Say that line again. Yes.

Diversification is admission of ignorance.

Admission of ignorance.

I don't know what I'm doing. Let's diversify. You see, Andrew Carnegie said, put all your eggs in one basket and watch it like a hawk. Look at the wealthiest people in the world. Did they get there from diversification or did they get there from ultra focus, with ideas, with business, with something that made an impact. And most people think investing is about ROI and numbers, but investing is actually about what kind of mental capital do you have that actually impacts other people? And the more people it impacts, the more wealth that could come about. Or the deeper it impacts people, the. The more the wealth could come about. So when people wake up in the morning and want to know how they can make more money, that's not a good question. It's not powerful. The better question is, what mental capital do I have that's unique, that I can actually do something with? And marketing is one of the accelerators to business because it helps that bridge become more effective to reach more people. Right. So I think that people just have a faulty equation because Genius Network proved this for me. You're either one idea or one relationship away from the next level of prosperity.

Right?

So I showed you. You were that relationship that had an exponential growth. For me, Patrick was another relationship. Exponential growth. We can kind of, you know, tie that down the road. And my book brought a bunch of great relationships because I shared mental capital that the marketplace hadn't seen yet. So when people read it, they resonated and they wanted to talk.

Well, I mean, look, just like what we're doing here, just like putting out my podcast that I do on, you know, the Genius Network podcast, which just the time we're doing this interview, recently launched just, what, a little over a month ago. And putting ideas out to the world like, this is a way of just anyone. Literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will end up listening to this, and there's a small percentage that will actually do something with it, you know, and now when someone pays a large sum of money, their likelihood of doing something with ideas and relationships is greatly.

We pay attention to that which we pay for.

Exactly.

You know, you taught me, hey, the quickest way to build a relationship is write a check, right? And look. But the other thing is, I think people get so enamored, like leaders, visionaries, people that are up to something, they get caught in the details too often instead of the vision. So. So I have a kind of a philosophy of people over projects. So, for example, when you're like, dude, come to Vietnam. I was in the middle of a pretty big project at the time, and I was like, man, this is kind of bad timing. But I went home, told Carrie, and she's like, you gotta go. That's gonna be a good group of people. You Know you're gonna like build something out of that.

Right.

So you immediately asked me, we're on the flight, hey, you should come speak at my event. Okay. You know, I meet some new people that I still have relationships with that have, you know, that have become valuable. But I think a lot of people, they want to build relationships without putting in the work. But they get that it takes work to build a company. They get that it takes work to finish a project, but they don't get the work that it takes to build a relationship. And that's where they miss most of the wealth. I think most wealth in the world right now that's under capitalized is relationship capital.

Right, right. Well, look, you'll get no disagreement for me. I'm totally biased on that because that's what my whole world consists of is capital. Curating the right relationships and putting them together. Well, talking about Vietnam, we gotta tell the Tim Ferriss story because we were on that trip with Joe.

I like to tell people that they're like, how do you know Joe? Nam. We went to Nam.

Yeah, that was actually great. That's great. We won't spend a lot of time on this just because we obviously want to dispense useful financial advice. But we invited Tim Ferriss on the trip, John and Missy Butcher, who are my partners and artists for addicts, and they founded Lifebook and he's the chairman of Precious Moments, the largest collectible company in the world. And so he had put this trip together in 2009. And so Tim Ferriss, Matt Mullenwig, who's the founder of WordPress, and John Vasily and who else is Brad Fallon? A bunch of goofballs. And so we go there and anyway, I mean, Tim, who's Mr. You know, Vagabond sort of thing, has, you know, he basically packs very light and he also prides himself in dancing and doing karate and martial arts.

His Umbro shorts.

Yeah, well, the orange shorts that we kept giving him grief about, like in.

A really formal, nice hotel in Saigon. He comes out in his Umbros, but.

You know, he does comfortable as can be. Give him credit. I mean, he knows how to like travel for. I don't know how often he does.

It now, but he knows how to do it.

You know, you can take like a backpack that's like half full and travel for like a month. I mean, I just can't do that. I mean, I just don't know how people do that. So John and Missy, on the other hand, you know, they carry like semi trucks of luggage.

Seriously? Yeah.

Which is funny.

Remember how much stuff they shipped home?

Oh, yeah. I even bought a bunch of art and I had them shipped. It was great. So here's the thing, though. So we go to a puppet, a water puppet show. And it was the most painful experience. Now when I say painful, I had.

Dinner with John and Missy and that's the first thing I said. I said, remember the time when you sent us to the puppet show and you guys didn't show up? Yeah.

We're crammed in this smelly, sort of moldy, watery.

There's puppets.

Puppets in water.

They don't move. They just stick puppets.

And we were looking at each other.

The entire time we just landed.

Right.

So I'm like half falling asleep.

I mean, watching bugs die would have been more entertaining than that show. I mean, it was like anyway. But it was enormously funny.

Me, Matt. Yeah, Tim.

We're just like looking at each other like, we are here. I can't believe this. And you couldn't leave because it was like, you're in the middle of this thing. Yeah, you could not leave. So we just had to sit there and, you know, I mean, look, I mean, these are all first world problems for us, going to the third world country and whatnot. But it was a great trip, though. The people there were incredibly nice. And the most interesting thing was how entrepreneurial that country was. You know, I mean, there was. It was. It was weird though, because I remember there would be streets that you would in.

The only shops would be, this is Pineapple Street. Yeah, everyone's in one section in a category of shoes. And I'm like, this is Shoe Street.

Your competitors selling the same thing you're selling. And one of the weirdest thing, I think it was, you know, Saigon, which is, you know, they. Hoochie Minh City. There was a Louis Vuitton store and then there was a knockoff store right next door selling the same exact purse. One was like $4,300, I think, in the real Louis Vuitton store. And then right next door, the same. A knocked off version of that purse was $80. And I never seen anything like that about just IP intellectual property where they literally could knock off something and they'd sell it right next door. And somehow that just. It worked. I mean, so if you really wanted the real authentic stuff, you go there and if you want the fake stuff. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen, you know, I never forgot that. Anyway, then the Kentucky Fried Chicken was pretty funny too. Well, it was like a Colonel Sanders that looked like a Vietnamese Colonel Sanders. It was funny. All right, so let's go back. Let's go to some money.

You showed that, like at one of your events.

I had a picture of it. I wish I could. If I had easy access to it, I would just. We would make it part of the promotions of this podcast. All right, so let me ask you this question. What kind of advice are people following that actually hurt them rather than help them when it comes to money?

So the main advice that hurts people is this kind of scarcity driven accumulation philosophy that, you know, we could hear things like start early, dollar cost average, the market goes up, the market goes down, but long haul, you know, all that is actually really damaging because it doesn't have people look and say, is this working? How's it working? How am I benefiting? So that whole notion of compound interest being a miracle, the only miracle is that people have actually bought into it. Because people don't get rich from compound interest. Banks get rich from compound interest. And so if people think that the formula for wealth, by the financial planning standards, it's putting in money and it takes money to make money is the notion which I don't believe in. I believe you can have your money make money, but it takes human ingenuity, innovation, value, you know, service. It takes solving problems to make money. So you could be resourceful and make money. You don't have to have every financial resource. And I mean money. You know, look at our health care system in the United States. We're the sickest nation for the most part. That's a first world country, but we spend more on health than anywhere else. So money doesn't, you know, it doesn't take money to make money. It takes actual human ingenuity and solutions.

Yeah, the intelligence of where to spend it and where to.

So then the second part of that equation is people believe, oh yeah, I got to take high risk to get high return because it's money times rate of return. But risk is actually your chance of loss. And from the outside in the poor middle class and the people not in the know think that entrepreneurs take a lot of risk, but entrepreneurs don't believe that they're actually taking a lot of risk. They think that they're taking calculations of how they can really make money. And, and they are willing to do things that everyone else can't understand. But the entrepreneur sees the world a different way. So if all of a sudden you have a financial person that doesn't understand what you are like as an entrepreneur and they see what you're doing is risky. They're actually convincing you to take money out of what you know and put it into other things in the name of future wealth, growth and retirement. And then the third piece is it's all about how long you can wait, because time is what needs to make that work. And if all that fails, I'll just tell you to move to Ecuador. It's a really flawed model. It creates a restriction mindset, and no one shrinks their way to wealth. You know, you don't scrimp, sacrifice, delay, and defer and then all of a sudden wake up one day and be like, wow, I'm so wealthy. No, you wake up with maybe a lot of money that your heirs are going to spend in three years after you die because they didn't know that you had money because you live like a pauper. And that transfers and translates to a mindset. And that keeps people small minded because they're thinking only about what they can save versus what they can give, what they can contribute, how they could grow. And this whole notion of living within your means gets people to think immediately about budgeting and cutting back. But the reality is, if we think about continually expanding our means, that's the real solution. Live within your means, but expand your means. How can you expand your means? How can you impact more people? How can you make more through doing something that actually translates to value in the marketplace? How do you serve? How do you create leverage? How do you scale? Those are much more powerful situations that, than setting money aside and businesses prematurely diversify. And you know, if we add the word premature before something, that's usually not a good thing. Joe, you know.

Yes, Gary, you're absolutely right on that.

Like premature business. Yeah, yeah, I heard what you're saying. Exactly. No, but like pulling money out of a business to throw it into something that people don't understand, that's locked up, that's government controlled. And calling that a financial plan is actually harming the entrepreneur. It hurts them because they don't have liquidity. But because financial advisors aren't paid to build liquidity, you know, if you could.

Actually, if you could say some of this sort of knowledge or whatever you'd want to call what you're saying right now with a level of enthusiasm and passion, I think it would land, it would land better, a little bit better with our listeners. So if you could maybe just move it up about. Totally kidding. That's actually incredibly good advice. I mean, you could go back and listen to what Garrett just said, and really think about the mindset, because when you're talking about risk, it makes. I don't even know what the stats are. But I started thinking. So many people, like, certainly entrepreneurs are risk takers. What I mean by that is they're willing to step out of the time and effort economy into the results economy for a period of time, but they're not stupid risk takers. The term risk, I think if you were to go look at Las Vegas as an example, I bet the vast majority of money that is made in Vegas is not coming from very smart strategic entrepreneurs, because they would look at that level of risk as being completely idiotic. I mean, you're just going to lose. Unless you are a professional gambler that has learned how to game the system, but you don't play chance. I mean, most the risk taking is like, yeah, I'm just gonna go out and make it up and make it real. But I'm gonna read a lot of books, I'm gonna talk to a lot.

Of people, I'm gonna learn lessons along the way.

Yeah, I'm gonna learn what it is I'm doing, and then I'm going to take a level of responsibility on myself that most people are simply not.

Which actually reduces risk.

Yeah, yeah.

And knowledge, I think, is the key strategic factor to reduce risk. I think our own capabilities, our own drivers, our own values, and. And if we stay aligned with those things, that reduces risk. But also, I think that entrepreneurs, where they have risk is when they follow that model, that they always have to stay invested. Like, what reduces risk for an entrepreneur is having liquidity. And if you have a lot of cash on hand, you have staying power. You also could have peace of mind because you say, okay, if I'm sick and don't feel well, I'm not forced to go earn something or, you know, or if I need to take some time off for a family member or friend or I need to go rejuvenate, you have that. But if people constantly are redlining, which is the risk of an entrepreneur redlining, like getting an airplane, and they're always redlining, that plane's going to break down faster. And the entrepreneur tends to break down because of those situations. How many entrepreneurs could we have get up on a stage and talk about the time where they had a health crisis, the time where they just burned out, all that kind of stuff. And part of it is, this isn't the total solution, but they've got to get off the treadmill. So the first problem for an Entrepreneur is that they focus too much on revenue because it's bragging rights. Revenue is seductive. It's sexy. We just had someone at our workshop did $195 million of revenue, and I found out their net that they took home was 1 million. To me, that scares the hell out of me because I'm like, they're one small mistake away from that being completely gone. Yet in most rooms, the person doing 195 million of revenue is going to be more interesting than the person that's doing two and a half net off of five million. But I'll tell you what, which business has a lot less risk, which business has a lot more, you know, control mechanism? I mean, it's just like. And I also knew immediately when they told me that they grew 40% in the last three years. I said, but you didn't take any more home. I just knew. And they said, no. I said, and you're starting to have things break down in your business that never happened before. Like, yeah, our reputation's suffering. I'm like, right, because you're focusing on the wrong growth. What about boosting the bottom line? So there's five ways, five things that people can do to create economic independence.

I don't think you should share any of them.

Okay, the first one is boost your profits. So look at your bottom line. Here's the four easiest things to boost the bottom line. Number one, stop overpaying the government. Legally and ethically, pay them what you owe, but stop overpaying. 93% of entrepreneurs tip the government because they either don't have a good accountant or because they just don't take the time to address this. And I'm talking about four 20 minute meetings per year. Could be the difference of $11,000 per half a million of revenue in their pocket. That's pretty high return even for some of the most successful entrepreneurs. Right? That's a really good hourly. Second I is investment fees. Investment fees have become exponential over the years. And if you only had a 0.85% fee. So let's say you had $100,000, you invest it for 30 years. And this is like, I kind of feel like office space where the Bob's going. This is a hypothetical, you know, because there's no way this is actually reality. But if you could earn 10%, that 100,000 grows to 1.74 million. But if you have a 85% fee, it only grows to 1.4 million. That's a $340,000 cost. Most people think, oh, that's less than 1%. No, it's $340,000. Investment fees, hidden commissions massively impact people's bottom line. The third I is interest. Most people haven't renegotiated their interest rates, haven't looked to make sure their credit score is over 780. But, you know, people that you and I both know, we've saved them a ton of money by simply making one phone call, getting to the right person, and renegotiating an interest rate. So. So that average for an entrepreneur doing a half a million dollars of revenue, so not a big number. $2,484 per month if they have more than two loans. If they have 500,000 to a million, the average is $4,117 per month by restructuring loans, paying off inefficient loans, which we have a formula for that. Like if someone's earning less in their interest than they're paying on interest, it's pretty logical just to pay that off. 95% of people don't, because the financial advisor would never tell them to because they'd have to be saying, cash out. What makes me money to pay off? What's better for you. Then the fourth I is insurance. There's just duplicate coverages, duplicate costs, and those aren't huge numbers. But, you know, like people that you referred me to, I sat down with them. They stayed with the same insurance company. We raised their deductibles. We negotiated a couple things that I felt like they're being overcharged for. We saved them $240 per year, which is minimal, but we got them $10 million more liability coverage, same company. So that's another thing, is transferring. But those four I's, irs, insurance, investments and interest, that's one way that people can immediately boost their profits and keep more of every dollar they make. But everyone's so focused on the business, they don't translate of what that means as the journey goes over to their personal side. And so, yeah, that's the first one. There's four others. We can get to those too. But.

Well, you know, I mean, some of these. Well, let me go through some of these questions because. Because you're addressing some of it. However, this I think will allow to hone in on some key areas that I think would be most useful. So nobody likes paying taxes, but you say that most people overpay their taxes. You're just talking about it here. How can people tell if they're overpaying on tax versus just doing what they're legally required to do.

Okay. So there's several ways that you could tell. Number one, you have an accountant that tells you they're conservative. Conservative is code word for I'm missing a shitload of deductions for you. That's what that means. Interesting, because think about it. If you ever, if you're scared of the irs, which most business owners have some degree of fear of that, and an accountant says, hey, my number one job is to save you from an audit. Well, guess what? The IRS's intention is to audit you at least once during your lifetime. How are they going to save you from an audit? What I want is good documentation and that the audit goes smooth and that they actually save me more money if I'm audited because they know the formula that we use with auditors where we save our clients if they ever get audited. Typically not every time, but most of the time because now I can get permission. What about this deduction that we didn't take? And could we take this more? So if they say conservative, if you're not being proactive, like if you simply aren't talking to your tax team, or if you're doing multi millions of revenue and you don't have a tax attorney, I assure you you're overpaying taxes. A CPA can't do it all.

Let me ask you that. What's the difference between a tax advantage attorney, like a tax strategist, versus a CPA?

Well, most CPAs, not all the best CPAs usually get gobbled up by family offices, which are offices that work for people that have maybe 30 million, 50 million, 100 million or more. So they get access to some of the best accountants in the world. Other accountants become unfortunately heavily reliant upon just filing tax returns. And that's usually what they focus on. They're not necessarily the most proactive human beings in the world. A lot of them are introverts. A lot of them like to work and crunch numbers. So by that nature, you find out, okay, cool, so what should I do? And they don't usually have a lot of advice for what you should do. It's usually like, oh, well, yeah, let's talk about that. Most people have to prompt, they have to ask, hey, I heard about this tax strategy. So if you have an account like that, you're definitely overpaying. But look, we're in the financial business. Finding good accountants is our number one difficult thing that we do because we have to create capacity.

Let me ask you, because you talk about what we do for Our clients. And I mean, I read your bio, of course. What do you actually do? How does your business work? I mean, I know, but for people that are watching this, what are some of the things that you actually do? Because the question becomes, a lot of people are going to hear this and they can learn about this from your book. We'll get. You can talk about your book later. They're going to learn a lot from listening to this. But they're like, okay, well, how do I go deeper with this? So you actually have a company that does this. There's lots of smart people out there. And I'll ask you at the end, what are the resources that we don't cover during the course of this interview, but what do you actually do for people?

So we're not retirement planners. We're all about financial results. So what we've taken is when I was 22 years old, I walked into a family office in New York and I was like, this is amazing because around the table were attorneys, accountants, fiduciaries, like cash flow, people like everything. And the financial guy that was presenting to them, the client wasn't even in the room. They were analyzing it and doing due diligence and seeing if it was a good fit. And I was like, this is how it should be. So when we finished the meeting, I asked him, so how does someone work with a firm like that? He goes, oh, they're a little bit lower tier.50 million net worth, you can get into them. I'm like, damn, I'm from Price, Utah, coal mining town. If we add everybody up, maybe there's $50 million. You know, it's like, it just. It was kind of baffling. So I went from excited to pissed off. And so naively, like many entrepreneurs do, I go, I'm building that for the entrepreneur that has high revenue but doesn't matter what their net worth is, because they need an integrated financial team. We know in the world of business, if you have a teamers, it's good for your business. But what about having a teamers on your finances that communicate with one another and that you make sure your entire financial house is working cohesively? So what we do is we become financial quarterbacks to navigate all that, get people second opinions on everything they're doing. So they either know it's done right and if it's not that, it can be corrected. And the first thing we do is recover cash for them so they can put it back into their business, which they really know. The second thing we do is sit on the same side of the table as them to help them analyze the investments to find which ones are aligned with their investor DNA. And then we help them take that money and scale their business.

What do you mean, align with their investor DNA?

So investor DNA would be. We all have our own unique investor DNA. Some people come say, hey, Garrett, is real estate a good investment? I'm like, for who? Like, it depends. For me, I don't really like real estate. I don't want to be a landlord. I don't want to go get loans. I don't want to analyze those deals. But, you know, Dean maybe, you know, he loves real estate, owns a bunch of it. So he has a different driver, things he wants to pay attention to. We brought up Tim from Vietnam, right? He moved to Silicon Valley because he has a huge intrigue and interest in technology. So technology is a much better investment for him than it is for me because of what he's paying attention to. So it's not only what drives you and you're paying attention to, but it's what you have competency in, where you're like, I could be in a financial meeting that you might go, I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. I could probably photographically remember every word that they said. What they're talking about, how it works makes sense to me. Technology doesn't always feel that way. You know, real estate just is boring. It's just I don't want to deal with tenants and all that kind of stuff. So our competency with our drivers and then the things we value so that it's things that we're actually going to care about. When people think they're just going to hand their money over to the financial expert or they get in the financial deal because someone's really smart, that's where there's massive risk. And if they're going to, if it starts to lose, the problem is, what could they contribute to the equation? Or how could they know that it was going to be a problem? How could they mitigate and manage their risk? So I think more than anything, we go get their total financial house in order. So help them save on taxes, help them save on interest, help them on all those kind of things. And then once they have that, our entire objective is to get them to economic independence, teach them how to focus on cash flow instead of accumulation, and then build the model that gets them there.

Gotcha.

And we're tuition based with results backing it.

So the way you get.

So we're not commission we're not fees on assets under management. They write us a check, it's performance based. And they pay us a down payment. They pay us monthly from there. And we work with 125 people, one on one per year. And then we have some other workshops and things where we can impact more people that way. And then we have a lot of digital products, so we can kind of go out to the masses. And then we do what you taught me. Sift, sort and screen, that only the perfect people get into the 125.

Great. Love it. Love it. Okay, perfect. Let me ask you some more questions here. So how did a kid from a small coal mining town figure out this stuff? And why do you do this? I mean, you talked about when you were 22 years old, you saw this. But your upbringing, it seems, and even your look, you don't look like the typical financial guy. I really get kind of annoyed by it because when you come to the office and my female staff is here, there's always a couple of them that just think you're really good looking. And I'm like, yeah, but he's not a good human yet.

You gotta understand this. He's friends with me.

So, you know, what are you thinking?

Well, When I was 15, I started my first official business that wasn't babysitting or mowing lawns, and it was detailing cars. And with that, I won $5,000 for being the young entrepreneur of the year. And I wanted to. I had a belief back then that to be successful, you had to be a millionaire. And I wanted to prove to people I could be successful because I, deep down thought I was stupid. Because when I was in kindergarten, something happened that made me say that about myself. I didn't know that was driving me, but.

So we all end up in therapy, don't we?

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like, what do I do? And mine was because someone threw away a little milk carton craft project because I didn't memorize my address. And they threw it away in front of the whole class. And I felt stupid about that. So I wanted to prove that I was successful. And so when I won this $5,000, to me, that was a ton of money. I wanted to invest it, but the more questions I asked, the more confusing it became. The more people I talked to, the more variants of advice I got. But When I was 18, I finally invested some of the money at 70 bucks a month. But as a kind of a financial nerd, I was in an econometrics class in college, and Figured out it had no chance at hell of working the way they showed me. So then I started asking better questions. Got offered an internship, also known as bring your friends and family so we can sell you shit and you can tell people you're a financial planner while you peddle life insurance and mutual funds.

Wow.

That's basically how I really got started. And then when the market started to go down in the year 2000, that was the most transformative part of my career because I had this professor that was a money manager. Before he became professor, he managed $5 billion in muni bond funds. And then for his next 25 years of his life, he's like, I'm giving back. I'm gonna be of Service. So from 50 to 75, you want to be of professor? Well, I was a business senator. Befriended him, started working out with him because he said he wanted to get in better shape. Started spending time with him. We became friends. He eventually became a client. But when the market started to go down, I'm like, look, Steve, all my clients are like my friend's parents, my mom and dad, my grandma and grandpa. My firm wants me to tell them, markets on sale, you're in it for the long haul. I'm like, I can't say that in good conscience. I just, like, it makes me want to throw up. He goes, just tell me you don't know what you're doing, but you're gonna figure it out. And they can either just, you know, find a different advisor or wait for you to figure something out. And I did, and it sucked because I was arrogant as hell at that time and had big ego. So it was really deflating to go to them and say, I don't really know what I'm doing. I just sold you this product, got paid a commission. And the reason it went up in 98 and 99, because everybody's investments went up, the reason it's going down right now is because everybody's is going down. But I don't know for how long. I don't know how bad it's going to be. I don't know what's causing all this. I could give you a thousand snippets of whatever sound bites everyone else is saying. So everyone but one got all their money out of the market by May of 2000. We saved two and a half years of downturn, and in 2001 and 2002, we did 44% and 41% on their money. With being out of the market over 80% of the time. And that really was because I started researching, talking to Steve, figured out a few strategies, and then the biggest aha for me is like that strategy kind of got wiped out because they started restricting how often you could trade. And a lot of people figured out what we were doing. And so it just. They don't like that kind of stuff. You know, the big. The big companies are like, no, you're trading too often. You need to stay in for a full day, or there's redemption fees. So what I figured out is there's one way to really guarantee returns. Save people tax, save people interest. Look at all these areas where no one else is helping them. Because what financial planner is. Is getting paid to make sure your credit score is good. What financial planner is getting paid to make sure your estate planning actually gets done instead of just telling you about it, or that you have the right corporation, or that if you overpaid your tax, amending your returns the past three years. And so what I realized is like, how much risk, how much effort, how much time, how much worry does someone have to go through to accumulate millions of dollars to kick off in this lowly interest rate environment, a piddly couple hundred thousand dollars a year off? Millions and millions of dollars. I'm like, what if I could just save him that money in the next year without risk? And that thought drove me to figure out how the hell to do that. Because when I first thought that, I didn't really know all the details. It was just like I'm sitting there watching someone tell me about a tax strategy. I'm like, oh, my God, that's a huge return. That would save someone 10 grand a year immediately. How much money would you have to Invest to get 10 grand a year? $200,000. How long does that take after tax, all that? So that was kind of what transitioned everything for me.

If you only had 60 seconds to do a public service announcement, what would you say?

Okay, so this is super simple, but every time I teach this, there's majorly successful people that go, I didn't get that. I didn't know that. So there's something called marginal tax rate and average tax rate. So let's just say that you earned 100 grand, $17,000 paid to tax. That's 17% average tax. I grew up in a town where people say, I can't make any more money. I'm going to get killed with taxes. You've probably heard people say this, right? Got to stop making. It's going to kill me from a tax bill. What they believe is if they make more money, all their dollars are taxed at a higher level. But that's not true. There's corridors or margins. So the first dollars that you make, I make. Bill Gates, anyone? It's all taxed at a lower rate. Some people just get there faster than others. The next segment of money, let's say above $20,000, gets taxed at 5% higher. The next segment of money, let's say when you're $80,000, get taxed a little bit higher. But when you earn more money, it never comes back and increases the tax on the previous dollars. So what that means is the greatest tax shelter in the world is to earn another dollar because you still keep more. And when you save on tax, it's always off the highest tax dollar, not the lowest tax dollar. So a lot of people think they have to stop earning because of taxes. But even when Ronald Reagan paid $91,000 in tax on $100,000 check when he was an actor, that was still $9,000 more than he would have made if he didn't earn that money. And people thought, well, the highest bracket at that time was 91%. Every dollar is going to get taxed at 91%. No, no, his first dollars were still taxed at 10 and 15 and 25. So I know that that's so simplistic, but you'd be amazed how many people don't know that exists.

Awesome, awesome. That's good. So you've written a bunch of books. Your latest one is what Would the Rockefellers Do? So what would they do? And why should anyone care about it?

Yeah. So first of all, what not to do is what the Vanderbilts did. So Cornelius Vanderbilt had more money than the US treasury after he died. 54 years later, the first Vanderbilt died broke. Wow. So there was still money in the family, but they were buying mansions. They were just, you know, there was no real kind of methodology. And the worst part is they didn't really have a financial team. So the Rockefellers, the first thing that they did was they created the family office concept where they had that financial team that worked just for them. Now, most people don't have that kind of wealth, but just thinking about having a cohesive financial team is a huge aspect. But they're now six generations strong, donated $50 million to charity last year, and still grew their net worth. So the Rockefellers have a completely different methodology called the rock. I call it the Rockefeller method. And so look, you know, you've been through Lifebook. You've put a Bunch of people through Lifebook. One of the things is when I went through Lifebook, my Lifebook, you know, John Butcher's program.

Yeah. It's mylifebook.com if you want to.

So I took where you go through premise, vision, purpose, and strategy, and I narrowed that down to 51 pages of the most important success formula that the Gunderson family could abide by. Utilize, learn from, added that to my trust. So now my estate plan has 51 pages of common language instead of legalese. And then I created a board of directors of. Who are the five people that if I'm not here, I want to, you know, transfer knowledge and guide my kids when it comes to money, business, and all those kind of things. And then I created a family bank so they could borrow from it, but they're not entitled to it.

Well, you know, you've never spoken with me about guiding your children along the way, so I'm wondering why you would refrain from having me be the main source of influence for your children.

You're wondering why you're not on that board.

I'm kidding.

Although it's like putting you on that board now. I don't want to be out of every relationship that is in the world, which would be nice.

That's true. Yeah.

Kids would know how to have fun.

Right? That is true. So tell dirty jokes.

Yeah. But I. But I put together that board because that's one of the things. And then I have this kind of dynamic language that I'd say I look at my family like an ongoing concern, like a business. Right. Not like that cold. But I want it to go from generation to generation. I want my great, great, great grandkids to know who I am, what I stood for, and be kind of the. I want to change my family's financial future and financial destiny with the choices I make now. So they're not born into financial bondage in Price, Utah like I was, but instead they can actually cultivate the best of who they are. But if they choose, they want to be bums, they just don't get access to it.

Interesting.

But if they do, they could. They could benefit from it. And then what the Rockefellers did is they bought life insurance on everyone so that after they die, it replenishes the trust. That way, if they make mistakes, which happens. Right. Or the economy takes it down, they found a way to perpetuate it. But not just anyone's entitled to it because there's a lot of trust fund babies out of it out there. Right. And trust fund babies are some of the least happy people that I've met. They feel guilt. They feel all this.

Why do you think that is? I mean, I have my own thoughts and I. Well, actually, I know in a lot of ways why they are the way they are. But, you know, I want to.

Look, money is just a magnifying glass, first and foremost. But second, if we didn't have any relationship to the money or if someone wanted the money more than they wanted the parent, then when the parents gone, all of a sudden there's a lot of guilt that can happen. But it's kind of like when you earn something, you get a sense of satisfaction. And when people have no incentive to go out there and figure out who they are, what they could do. We had these people that were. Their family was really wealthy, but they didn't know it. The mom and dad were wealthy. They got in a plane crash, private plane, and all of a sudden, one dropped out of medical school, the other one stopped being an attorney, and the other one, you know, just forgot about college altogether. They didn't even know, but all three of them just, oh, now we have money. And it just was dumped into their lap because a lot of attorneys go, okay, at 30, 35 and 40, it just distributes. I think Leigh Brower says, divide, distribute and destroy. But I'm all about, you know, perpetuate, protect and provide with stewardship. So I want to make sure that my kids have access to it and that we earn the interest rather than the banks so that we can kind of build this situation where we can continue to grow and that they could follow their passions as long as they're not, like, I don't believe in passion from a standpoint of, like, follow your passion and life's going to get good. There are people passionately broke right now because it takes real ability, too, and it takes actual stewardship. And you can't just, you know, spin your wheels. It actually has to impact someone. But I do want to encourage them to do something that they enjoy. And I look at those words in the trust as signposts, not as forceful things like, here's the lessons we learned, here's what's important, here's how we got here, here's how you can grow this. And so there's a. There was a guy that owned 20% of one of the. One of Carnegie's businesses, and when he died, he set up a trust and he just wrote one page letter, it's in my book, that where he just like, hey, we want to grow this Wealth. And it turned in from, I think it was 10 million originally, and now it's $2 billion 100 years later.

Wow.

So I like that he challenged his heirs. He said, let's grow this. Vanderbilt just said, let's keep the money together. He didn't even say let's keep the family together. The Rockefellers were like, hey, let's make sure that we treat this like a business and it can perpetuate. So look, I get some people don't have that money yet, but we can make choices right now financially that would set up the future to be the next generation to actually grow it and have something. But most people get wiped out because they don't have a financial team. They go throw their money into speculative investments they know nothing about in the hopes of gaining a high return because they saw some magazine where someone was an angel investor, where someone bought in early to a company and it hit big. But they didn't talk about the 999 that actually went bankrupt and didn't make anything, and that the person that hit it big had plenty of cash on hand, had their financial structure in place, and all they're seeing is the end result without seeing what the inner workings were or how it really worked. And that's where most people are missing in money is they don't know what it took to get there. And so there's just certain fundamentals that the Rockefellers have used to sustain and transfer wealth. And six generations is pretty damn good because most of it's gone in the third generation on the long term and sometimes three years after the person dies if they never have conversations about money with their family.

Right. No, it's fascinating. What are the areas where you are just not qualified to actually speak to. I mean, there's so many aspects, I mean, there's so many aspects of this where, you know, you talk about your investor DNA. I mean, you have your sweet spot, your type of client, you. I mean, what are some areas where people are wanting to invest money or do something with it or either, for lack of a better word, beyond your capabilities.

First, offshore. Anything offshore, like offshore taxi to avoid taxes. I know a little bit about offshore on asset protection. A lot of people want me to know about the stock market. I know very little about the stock market. That's not my expertise. My expertise is anything that creates predictable, immediate cash flow and that is the foundation and safety pieces. I want to make sure people have infrastructure. And when people say, okay, well, is this a good investment? I don't really know how to analyze the stock market because every time I look at it, I'm going, man, this is way over leveraged. It's based upon consumer debt. The PE rate, like nothing actually makes sense to me in my world there because it's too intangible, it's too like, hard to predict. But I, what I do know is if they invest in their business and they grow that I know a lot of fundamentals there. But when people get into this, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars, I'm not really qualified on asset protection when they get that level. Right. You know, that's not really my game. So offshore tax, the stock market, that kind of stuff. But I have built a team. I have investment advisors, cash flow specialists, I have attorneys, accountants. I mean it took me 10 years to build that team that I vetted that I've gone out there and I built like a virtual family office where people can have this team when they hire us that they don't have to go and create on their own because it's brutal to create. We have a 42 question application, a nine month interview process. They have to come to our three day workshop. They have to be interviewed by everyone else in our network and be unanimously approved. Like we have a very strategic process. So I'm really good at building the relationships at the areas I'm not good at. And actually there's a lot of like nuts and bolts I don't know a lot about. People ask me about student loans. I've got a guy, Tim on my team that knows everything about things. I used to say, oh, there's not much you can do, but there's actually a ton you can do. I just don't know a lot about that.

Okay. Yeah, because I mean, that's a big one. There's so many people that I know that are embroiled in student debt that they cannot get out of, that were talked into borrowing money. Way beyond. I mean, just insane.

I mean, and there's specific ways to actually change, modify and handle student loans differently that I was completely unaware of for years. And I'd just say, oh, you just pay it and go earn more money. Then I started finding out there's a lot of things you could do.

Right?

Yeah, cash flow is my game.

Okay, so let's talk about cash flow. Do you, do you think of it in terms of formulas, percentages or like, what does that even mean? Like, how would a business owner, someone watching this, listening to this, be like, well, what does that even mean? Like, have the right amount of cash flow.

Here's what it means. Unfortunately, people have overemphasized the importance of net worth. Net worth is a function of your balance sheet, assets versus liabilities. When you have more assets than liabilities, that's net worth. But net worth is relatively worthless if it doesn't translate into cash flow. Cash flow is your income statement, your income versus your expenses, measured on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, depending on what your kind of frequency is. So it's just income versus expenses. So that's what is going to pay the bills. So you could have big net worth by owning a lot of equity inside of a piece of real estate or inside of a business. But that doesn't mean anything if there's no cash flow coming from that, because you could lose that overnight. Right. So accumulation overemphasizes the balance sheet where I want to emphasize the income statement. So here's how I help people do that. I look at their expenses and categorize it in four ways. Number one, is it a destructive expense? A destructive expense? You know a lot about destructive expenses. If we go back in the day.

Oh, back at me. I'm being an addict and yeah, yeah.

So destructive expenses are anything that doesn't have an asset attached to it and lead you further into debt. Lifestyle expenses are those types of expenses that you go out and you spend because you enjoy life, but you pay cash for lifestyle expenses. You never borrow to consume. The third type of expense that the Rockefellers totally understood that most entrepreneurs neglect is protective expenses. Asset protection, estate planning, insurance liquidity. They make sure to have those things so that we're all in store for financial surprises in the future. 90% of them can be handled with proper planning, which means when most people are derailed or destroyed, it could have been prevented with just adequate amounts of planning. That isn't a huge amount. It's something I could show someone in our three day workshop or I could do three phone calls and get them 90% of their stuff protected. But people just don't deal with that because when you build, you know, you have this great home. How many times you show people your foundation when you go there? I mean, the only time people throw some of their foundation is if it's cracked or not working.

Right.

Right. But if we don't have a foundation, financially, we're at risk. So the last type of expense is a productive expense. And this is where CPAs miss the boat. A lot of times CPA might tell you, why do you need a front desk person? Like just have an automated machine. But in a high touch service business, that's a stupid idea because it's a productive expense. A CPA might say, oh, you can get cheaper employees. Yeah. But cheaper employees might, you know, be 1/100th of the value as the a teamer that you know you can count on. That takes stuff off your plate and you don't have to delegate a task because they take on that role and own it. So productive expenses. Marketing is a productive expense when done properly. Right?

Correct.

You put in a dollar, more than a dollar shows up. What should be the budget for that? People ask me that, I'm like, there isn't a budget. Does it work? Keep doing it, tell it's not working anymore. Budgeting for those kind of things. Budgeting is such a destructive mindset. Budgeting is so much about what we eliminate instead of what we produce. And anytime you have a productive expense, as long as you can handle it, you keep putting money in it.

Yeah, no, that's a great way. Because I've told people for years teaching marketing, we have a 10% marketing budget. And it's like the only time you would ever put a percentage of what you can put into something is when it's not working. You want to protect yourself from going.

Bankrupt during the testing, right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, in most people that have a 10% marketing budget wouldn't even know what the word testing means. They're just like, whatever, throw this against.

The wall, see if it sticks.

Right, Exactly. And so, yeah, why would you ever put a ceiling on productivity unless you just want to limit how useful something is.

So our entire game is this. We look at people's assets and we say, are there ways to accelerate cash flow with your assets? Any asset not producing cash flow, meaning the assets not producing income, is a dead or lazy asset. Then we help them manage liabilities. Liabilities are what create your expenses. Most people think you have to eliminate liabilities, but liabilities, employees are liabilities on your balance sheet. But the reality is if you have a good employee, they're actually an asset.

Yes.

So it has to be training the eye to see the unseen, to measure the greater productive nature. So if people are only focused on accumulation, they're just looking at is their balance sheet going up. But if that balance sheet is going up, but they never learn how to turn it into cash flow. This is why retirement sucks for so many people. The number one fear of retirees according to USA Today is the fear of running out of money. Because their entire life, let's say they Had a business, they earn money with that business. Now they sell the business. They don't know how the hell to manage that money. That was never a skill that they figured out as an entrepreneur. Now they have to go put it in something other than their business. Are they gonna be an expert at that? Are interest rates gonna cooperate? Is inflation gonna do what they hope it does? And the whole time they were saving money in a retirement plan, it was never cash flowing. So that's. That's backwards. I want people to cash flow with every asset that they possibly can, and so they can measure how effective it is versus the expense that's against it. And if it's providing cash flow, I call that turning on velocity, or you're keeping your money in motion. So I think of, like, the balance sheet, like muscles, they're critical. You know, net worth is important, but if you have no blood flow in your body, what good does your muscle do, right? And so cash flow is like the blood flow. And that's why they say cash flow is king, because you can die and go bankrupt without cash flow. But net worth, you can have zero net worth. But if you had a licensing agreement that paid you a million dollars a year, would you rather have that, or would you rather have $5 million with $10,000 of cash flow a year, or 20,000 or 50,000, or even 100,000 for that matter? The game is cash flow. And once you get where you have your expenses covered from that cash flow that's coming in from your assets, every dollar you earn can build more assets and create more cash flow, which is the most unfair advantage I know in finance. Great. Love it.

Well, that's a good explanation. So we already kind of covered this, but if you want to say anything else to it. Budgeting sucks. And what do you recommend people do instead?

So I'll say exactly what to do instead. George S. Clausen wrote a book in the 1920s.

Oh, the richest man of Babylon.

Yeah. Super simple, easy concept. Pay yourself first. So this is how you do it. You go to the bank, you set up a separate account. I call it a wealth capture account. So every time your business pays you, you take a percentage off the top and have it automatically go in this account. The first purpose is to get six months of expenses saved up in that account. And where investing has bastardized the system is people are being trained, taught, and educated. Automatically invest, right? You've been probably told that, hey, just always want to put money away every month into whatever. No, no. Automatically save. Deliberately invest. Think of investing like marketing. If you're going to put money into your marketing, you should see if the marketing is working or not. Yeah, you don't just put it in every month, no matter what, you make tweaks. So that's the same thing. Automatically save. And I believe you should pay at least 18% to yourself first. And if you don't know how to get there, we go back to the four eyes. IRS investment fees, you know, insurance rates, insurance interest, insurance investments and irs. So there's the four. So find the money. It doesn't mean, because I think Most people have 10% or more of their money just leaking out the back door because they haven't paid attention to plugging the leaks. So now you pay yourself first, right? It goes in this account, you start saving up, then you can say, do I want to use that to pay off a loan? Do I want to use that to invest? And if I don't know where to invest, I can just leave it there. People are petrified to stay in cash. But cash is so powerful because you can pounce on a deal as soon as it's available. And just that alone, if you're buying a business, if you're buying an asset, typically is going to get you a discount or it lets you get the deal when no one else can get it because you have the ability to, to write the check. It also gives you that peace of mind. It also gives you all those kind of things. So you pay yourself first that way. And instead of budgeting, as long as you're doing that, pay yourself first. Just once a month. You look, did I go out of bounds on the rest of my money? Simply, I didn't borrow anything, did I? As long as I didn't borrow, I could spend all the rest of the money however I want because I now have that 18% paying myself first. But out of that 18%, I recommend setting up one more account and call it your Living Wealthy account. And so you take 1/6 of that and automatically have it pulled out every month and moved into this Living Wealthy account. So you're really just saving 15%. The other 3% is used for guilt free spending because people don't celebrate enough, people don't enjoy life enough. And so that challenges a lot of people to think, hey, if I hit a benchmark, why don't I go buy whatever I want? Maybe some people like expensive wine. Maybe some people like, you know, going to great hotels or going on great trips. Some people like buying clothes, some people like buying, you know, gym equipment, whatever it Is it's like, just go use that money. Some people like to spend $37,000 figuring out health shit all the time. I don't know who those people are. There's someone I once heard did that. Right. So it's like go ahead and reward yourself on value based spending. Because unfortunately people get so caught up in the price of things if they're budgeting that they miss out the cost. Cost is the economic impact. Is 25k group expensive?

Depends how you look at it, right?

High price for me, low cost. Considering what happens.

Well, the lowest price event that I do that I'm at in my company that I run is $10,000 a person. And I hear all the time, well how dare you charge $10,000 for a two day event which I may raise the price of 10, 25,000 just for that event because I personally think the connections alone are worth it. My whole thing is, well, because for one, I can sell it and I've sold it out every year for the last five years, duh. So there's that aspect to it. The second is I know it's a lot of money, I consider it a lot of money and it makes me say, well, step up your game. I have to deliver an event and I target it at people that they, you know, a lot of people will pay the checks to come to my events for who's not going to be in the room, not just for who's going to be in the room. And so that's why people will come to my event and they're like, I've never been to an event that has more high level people at it. But you know, all of these things, which of course the message that I want to, you know, convey here that you're doing a great job explaining is, you know, so much of everything you're saying when it comes to what are you going to invest in is you yourself, you know, it's your own.

Yeah, yeah. And so price is what you pay, cost is the economic impact and value is the feeling of satisfaction or what it does for you personally. And so you could have something be low price but be no value or something be low price and be high value. Depends on the person. When my wife was teaching, she could buy like little things for her classroom and it had so much value and so much joy out of these little expenditures. Right. But a luxury once enjoyed becomes a necessity. Our tastes have gotten a little bit more expensive since those days, which is, you know, part of why I like making more and more money. Because I Get to experience more and more richness that life has to offer. And it also challenges me to say, what can I do to create more value? And part of that richness is spending time with good people that expand my thinking, etc. So there's kind of this velocity effect to that. But price, cost, value, those are three measures of worth. Pay yourself first to the wealth capture account. Take a certain percentage, spend it however you want on what I call value based spending. Other people might think you're crazy for spending, it doesn't matter. It's what do you want, what makes you feel good? Because you're your greatest asset, your ability to produce is significant. And if all of a sudden you're exhausted, you're not taking care of yourself, you're working too hard, you're not rewarding yourself for that work, you're going to suffer with creativity, with innovation, with mental capital, with business models, with, with connection with people. And I don't think people measure that nearly enough, but it's where most of the wealth really just starts to kind of spin out. And that's why I would never invest in something that creates a scarcity mindset for me, even if it means I miss out on a good deal.

Give me an example.

So let's say that, let's say some really smart people I know say, hey, there's this investment and we can get you in on the ipo. Do you want to be in? My answer is almost always no. Because even if I think it has a good chance of working, I usually don't know a lot about those companies. I don't want to research those companies. I'm in love with my business and doing everything I can to learn about personal finance. So if it's not related to that, it's just a distraction.

Yeah. Even, even if it could be a potentially giant return.

Yeah, I mean like I had access to, you know, Facebook stock before it was so, you know, before it came out and it took a while to turn around. But I just like, no, that's just going to teach me gambling behaviors. Like at one time in my life I had a hundred real estate doors, you know, so like some were duplexes or fourplexes, some more single units. I had two IPOs I invested in, I had an oil and gas deal, had a hard money lending fund and it was like that was a full time job and I had no real interest in any of those investments. It was simply, oh, this is what you should do to invest. And that's why I discovered Investor Day because it just took one of those things to start going wrong that I was like, this sucks because I'm no longer focused on something that's actually productive. I'm focused on patching something that I don't even care about other than I don't want to lose money. And I've seen people lose their businesses over those situations, get totally distracted, get totally derailed. And so that's why I think focus is the most important thing. I mean, people that are hyper focused on one idea and they just keep running with that as hard as they can, they're usually the ones that end up making a lot more money. People that are distracted with 30 things at once, they lose so much of their power because they don't give it enough attention. So I kind of think of it like the Amazon River. Cash flow is like the Amazon river too, anyway. But the Amazon river is so powerful. It puts fresh water into the ocean. There's life all around it. It's so lush. But you think about accumulation. Think about like the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake. There's nothing. There's not life in the Great Salt Lake. There's one living organism there. It's ugly, it's stinky. There's no houses around it. That's accumulation. Cash flow is Amazon River. But some people fragment their cash flow by building multiple streams of income. Well, that's the problem, is they're not powerful streams and they can easily dry up. And now the other streams get neglected, trying to fix the one that's dried up. And then all of a sudden, someone gets bitter, frustrated in scarcity, exhausted and negative. And I mean, I've seen people when they're losing money, they're different people, they're agitated.

You're absolutely right. I mean, when I was doing, you kind of said something that made me think about this in the very beginning is I was doing a yoga class this morning, and this instructor is like an amazing guy. He's one of the top instructors in the valley. And it's a very hard class. And what he was saying in the beginning of it, he said, you know, get your mind like a tornado. But in the middle, he's like, in the middle is where it's calm, but everything around it is just chaos. And he goes, and so the more that you do this, the more that you can get into that state and you can deal with. Get yourself to the center. Get yourself to the center. Because he's like, the whole purpose of this class is to learn how to be in the center. So that when you leave this class and everyone's running around the. You're kind of in the center. But that's what, that's what a lot of complexity, that's what a shit ton of decisions do to people is. It takes them out of their center, it takes them out of what you call your DNA. And it's one of the things that it's so funny how many people I've gotten to start doing yoga in Genius Network because they heard me tell the story of how I originally got into it earlier in the year where one of my instructors named Giselle, who I do private sessions with, she. When I hired her to do a private session with me at my house for the first time, she said, if you do yoga three days a week, it'll change your body. If you do it every day, it'll change your life. And so I made that decision that I'm going to try doing yoga.

I remember staying at your house, you did 30 days in a row.

Oh yeah, well, actually in about a 90 day period. I did it 80 times in a 90 day period. And not like 10 minute video on YouTube. I mean full blown hour, hour and a half, you know, classes. And so what I said I learned out of it is it just increased.

A little bit.

The space between reacting to life and responding to life. And if I just pause a little bit longer and respond. And so as it relates to what it is that you're saying, when you have all that stuff going on or you do something that puts you in that scarcity state, you then all of a sudden you become a reaction machine. Instead of being able to respond and the ability to respond to life with intelligence, with strategy, with being, with having your feet on the ground, it's just happier. It's just a more effective way to live. And so many people just do this to themselves because they don't even think about it. And so much more than we could ever realize because we can sit and talk about money, you know, all day long and you can doll out really great money advice, which you have. I mean, there's enormous, you know, gems just in our conversation here. It's, for some reason people hear it and they still minimize it so much because the, you know, I mean, I think the leading cause of divorce is. Well, the leading cause of divorce is marriage anyway. But the leading cause of divorce, I think is financial. I think it's money.

It's the number one reason that they it and that's the symptom. But here's what happens when money Becomes so stressful, they lose focus on an exciting future, and they're only dealing with the problems of the present, and that becomes overwhelming to them.

And look, I'm not just saying that in relation. It's like, this is life. I mean, people murder people for money. People do all kinds of stuff related to money. And getting the money thing handled is so crucial to living a productive life.

Every show, every book, every. Almost everything is teaching people that money is complicated. And because it's complicated, it has people afraid to face their money situation. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that just don't want to know they're avoiders. That's the. I'll just make more. But if all they did was simply pay themselves first, build a bunch of liquidity, get some basic protections that transfer risk, just some of those basic things, and then find out where they're losing and leaking money so it will boost their bottom line so they keep more of every dollar they make. They're going to be 80% of the way ahead. And then here's the good news. When you figure out your investor DNA, which isn't like the most complicated thing to figure out, you simply know what to say no to. And you don't entertain dumb investments the distract you or that take time. Ten years ago, I listened to so many investments all the time. I even did a bunch of investments. Now that noise has gone away. People know not to even bring it to me. They're not even concerned. They know that that's not what I do.

What were the biggest, hardest things either? The biggest kick to the nuts? The hardest investments, losses, stress. What was it that you think had the biggest impact? What was the lesson that you had to learn in order to even take your knowledge and your capabilities to another level? I mean, there's probably many things, but is there any that stand out?

So it's crazy is I've got this book, Killing Sacred Cows, that was coming out financial book. But I just had two business partners died two years before, and I made four months of horrendously bad financial decisions after they died. Didn't consult my financial team, didn't do anything that I taught because I was just so spread thin. I mean, I remember four months after they died, my assistant came to me and said, hey, you're double booked the next hour. What do you want to do? And I literally sat down in my chair. I'm like, I don't even know. Like, how easy is that? If someone said, joe, you're double booked, it's like, well, who are the Two people. Oh, I think Joe will be more flexible than let's call and see. Or maybe we just shorten the meetings or let's find out if anyone. I mean, there's like an infinite number of solutions. But I was so exhausted. So then all of a sudden those decisions started to haunt me by neglecting it. And so I end up with a lot of stuff that I wasn't being responsible for that I wasn't handling. And the problem is the choices I made to get into in the financial world were easier than to get out of when it came to like real estate and stuff like that. And probably the hardest thing about the.

Whole deal that could be said about many things, relationships.

And I think like everyone's heard over and over, you know, who are the top five people you hang out with that'll determine your network. But here's what they don't say enough of. You could have 10 of the most incredible relationships in the world. You could have a hundred. But it just takes one asshole to ruin the whole thing. And I got involved with people that this is my biggest lesson. They do something nice for me and they leverage that for the rest of my life. And I remember that one thing and all of a sudden I feel indebted to them, enslaved to them. And I got manipulated by that. And I ended up holding the bag on almost all the real estate when everybody else walked away, because I didn't. I thought I was midas. I thought everything I did was going to work because it had until that point. And I thought more was always the answer. And I just made decisions based upon how much money I could make, not based upon what my vision was for life, what was important to me, because I just wanted to have more than anyone else. And I think when we're stuck in that concept of more, it's really hard to be happy. And so even when I go to Genius Network and I'm hearing all this stuff about all these things people are doing, I just make sure to go, that's awesome for them. I want to support and be excited about that. And if at any point I feel any level of I'm not doing enough or I'm not enough because of what they say, I just go back and think about all the things that are good in my life and I pull out this little score card that's all my non monetary scorecard. Everything from my marriage to my health, like. And I just have to remind myself of that, that money is a critical piece of life. But it's not the only Thing in life, because the first day we talked, I don't know if you knew this was going on. I kind of told you a little bit today, but we talked for the first time on July 3rd of 2008. And I'd listen to Prana marketing when I was.

You actually keep track of that.

Only the only reason I really know is because of one. I listened to Prana marketing. I loved it, and all of a sudden, I was getting introduced to you. Number two reason I remember is, like, you talked to me for an hour and a half. I kept trying to find out how I could benefit you. All you said was, join genius network. But you gave me three instrumental things that were really valuable at that time. And then when we got off the phone, because it was pretty early in the morning, I went to a barbecue with friends. I had had a killer workout that morning. I went swimming with my kids. We went up to our cabin later that night, did fireworks, you know, just had, like, a great day. I was launching Killing sacred cows the next month. It was going to come out, and I thought I had a good chance of hitting New York Times. So there were four areas of my life that were really dialed in at that point. Number one was I was living what I would call my sole purpose. I was living a life that I was really happy and engaged in. I loved what I was doing in business, not 100% of the time, but, you know, the majority of the time. Number two, I felt like my mindset was in a really strong place because I was like. I felt abundant. I was thinking about it. I was working a lot of stuff. I was creating a lot of stuff. Physical health. I was riding my bike 25 miles just to do a round trip to the gym and back. You know, I was feeling, like, really good there. I was eating really well. And then finally, social life. I mean, we went to a killer, you know, barbecue that day with a ton of friends. We had people up to the cabin. So I was going, that's all dialed in. But I had just written all those damn checks. So my finances were in the short, like, in the most disarray they'd ever been from a standpoint of man. Partners died, you know, lost a lot of money during that time. All of a sudden, I'm writing all these checks for the book. But what I knew was if I could have those other four areas, that finances would follow. But if I had finances and any one of those other four areas were gone, that would be a lot more difficult to dig out of and get through. And that's why I had to figure out a way to get into Genius Network at that time. Because I was like, look, this is an opportunity. I'm not going to let it pass me by by making money my primary reason or excuse for doing or not doing something. And I define financial freedom as that when money is not your primary reason or excuse why you do or don't do something prime, it can be, it's a secondary reason, it's a consideration. But when it's your primary consideration, you are 100% not financially free.

Right.

And so it's a state of mind. And so even though that was maybe one of the lowest points in my financial life from a money standpoint, is one of the biggest points in my life from a relationship capital standpoint, from an awakening from doing what I wanted to do, from the impact that I felt I could make, from being excited what I was up to. And the money did follow because man, the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2010, I made more money during that 15 month period of time than I made up until that point.

Right.

So it was kind of like, you know, I was making a lot of money like to the point where I was, you know, just like it was fun, it was, you know, it was like, yeah, this paid off. This was. Other people would say like, hey, you're in this situation, you still move forward with the book. Isn't that a gamble? Right. That's the outside world. But I'm like, not really because I felt like it was the right message and by the way, it was the right time because I had that come out before the market went down.

Yeah. Which is great. And it hit New York Times. So a couple more things and then we will wrap this up. So what are three to five things that you can answer relatively quickly that people can do immediately to improve their finances?

Alright, so boost their bottom line. So focus on keeping more of what you make right and setting up that wealth capture account. Number two. I call it strategically engineering wealth. They should go through, find out if they have their foundation handled, then have the measures of safety, then focus on their growth. So foundation would be estate planning in place, Asset protection trust if they're wealthy, you know, making sure that they have umbrella policies to transfer risk, like just all those kind of basic protective expenses really handled so that whatever financial predator comes along the way or you know, sees that someone has money that they can't get to it because, because you've protected yourself. Then the third thing is take any non cash flowing asset and turn it into cash flowing asset. So if you have a retirement plan, you can do a 72T distribution and get it out without a penalty and start creating cash flow. You could take and say, if you're not invest, if you're investing in somewhere you don't understand or how it works, put it in cash and then just look, say, how can I be a better cash flow investor? Number four. And this is the huge distinction, that really is a game changer. Scale their business revenue. Scaling business revenue is the huge leverage point to creating economic independence. If you scale your business revenue, I mean, look, strategic coach taught me how to do it initially, genius network. Then from there simply give up the things of lower value to do the things of higher value and start to build a team around you is the most rudimentary way of saying it. And then the fifth thing is make life count. Enjoy life along the way. Invest back into yourself, into your experiences, into your relationships. Because otherwise you're going to burn out, get exhausted, hurt your health. I know a lot of people that are in their later years now, not even later years that should be young in today's world, but in their 60s that look 20 years older than that, that feel 20 years older than that, because they sacrificed all this in the name of having a better future, not taking care of themselves along the way.

Right, right. Great advice, great advice. Okay. There is an abundance of financial books and programs and seminars and advisors. And yet the masses don't seem to be getting ahead. I mean, you've already spoken a little bit to this, but why do you think the biggest reason is almost every.

Financial book you read is about saving, setting money aside, budgeting, putting money in the stock market. And they're not talking about the number one thing. If you don't own a business, it's going to be slow going. It's the only way to get there fast. Not easy. Gotta have some guts. You gotta have some, you know, ability to stomach some things. But if you don't own a business, like even so I thought it was ironic as I'm reading, you know, money Master the Game a few years ago.

Yeah.

That all the billionaires interviewed in there, for the most part, when you asked Charles Schwab what to do. Oh yeah, just put your money in discount brokerage account. It's not how he made his money. He made money inventing them and selling them, you know. Oh, what do you do? Oh, you put your money in index funds. No, no, no, no. You invented index funds. It was Mark Farber, the boom Doom and gloom guy that said, hey, the real way, the real advantage in this world is find out what you're really good at, that's your insider advantage, and build a business around that. And I thought that that was the most truth that was spoken by all those billionaires of how to really get ahead. Because 91% of people. John Bowen has a book out where he has this stat in it, who's a genius network member. It says 91% of people worth 5 million or more own a business.

Yeah, that's quite revealing.

Setting your money in a retirement plan is a 99%, 98% failure rate if that's your entire plan. 98% of people at age 65 are not economically independent in the US today.

Which is, you know, that's why I like having conversations like this. Because there's a lot of people that will listen to this and they'll make a decision that they have to make some decisions that are going to avoid that.

And I think the fastest way to be a better investor in those decisions is think more like a financial institution. Not in setting up a bunch of false damn accounts and charging people, but if you put your money in a bank, they don't put their money in retirement plan. They take your money and show it on the wall. Hey, we're paying you 1%. Oh, you can borrow money from us for 3% on this car loan or on this home loan. So they're admitting that they have a 200% return. Because if you buy something for a dollar and sell it for $3, that's a 200% markup. Right? So all they're in the business of is cash flow. And if you want to get a loan from a bank to get good interest rates, the first thing they're looking at is how much did you make? The second thing is, what's your credit score? Which is what's your likelihood of paying us back? The third thing is what collateral do you have? Because we'll charge you less if you have collateral and if we don't like the collateral, like real estate, they're not good at real estate. We want a down payment. If you don't give me enough, a down payment, I'm gonna make you pay mortgage insurance called pmi. And by the way, we want you to pay for an appraisal. So they manage and mitigate their risk and focus on cash flow. Yet everyone else is taught, set money aside, scrimp, save, sacrifice, take risk, and then one day, someday, hopefully it'll be there for you. It is a completely different set of rules. So think cash flow first accumulation should be distant thought.

Yeah, that's. And by the way, one of my questions is where should people invest? So is there anything else that you would say to that?

I mean, I get this question all the time. And if you ask that question, then it should always be in becoming a better investor, in getting more knowledge and in things you understand. So is real estate a good investment? Depends on who it is. Is a stock market investment not for most people? Even though most people do it, it's only for a few select people. And why is it a good investment for Warren Buffett? He doesn't invest in the stock market. He buys a company that is not the same. That is absolutely not the same. And so I think that people should just focus instead of diversify and go for cash flow instead of accumulate and only invest in what they know. And if they don't know what to invest in, stay in cash and figure out what you're going what you know, your investor DNA and only invest in alignment with that.

Yeah. Well, okay, so now for people that want to get more about Garrett, what do they do? They want to learn more about you, they want to work with your company, they want to read your book?

Yeah, we have some. We have some cool resources. If they go to wealthfactory.com megakit, we have a kit on how to improve cash flow.

Mega Kit. Megakit, okay.

Or wealthfactory.com Scorecard teaches them how to invest in alignment with their investor DNA. It's the kind of beginning workings for that. Or I mean, I write for Forbes, so they can go to Forbes. I wrote, you know, an article with you on Forbes, and they could check things out there. Or if you want, I can, you know, give them.

Well, you have. You have a phone number that you were doing a presentation earlier.

Yeah.

And they were like, you gave out a phone. I don't know how long you'll have this phone number up. So if this.

We plan on keeping it. We got this phone number at your Genius Network event. I saw Scipio, and I just signed up for their services.

Okay. So you'll automatically if someone texts in there. And this is also a clever way for you to just basically go to my list.

I'm just scraping your list right here. Yeah, totally unbelievable.

Okay, so give out the phone number so people can. And write this phone number down. Not while you're driving, though.

Yeah. 801-396-7211. That's 8013-3967-2118-0139-67211. And then you put in the subject line, WWRD standing for what would the Rockefellers do? WWRD. We'll give you a download if you go to Amazon. That book's a thousand bucks right now. Because I don't want financial advisors buying it and bastardizing what's taught in it. But we'll just hook you up and then if you want.

How much is that book for sale on Amazon?

Literally $1,000. Really? Yep, if you go to Amazon.

Oh, that's funny.

Okay. And so they can get that, and then if they want it, ship to them, then they can pay for the shipping and I'll pay for the book.

Garrett, you've been stated as having said, everything good in my life is because of Joe Polish. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. In fact, it's hard to say where I'd be without him. So what are some of the ways I've created abundance in your life? And why do you think so much greatness has been brought into your life as a result of having me in it? And by the way, I'm totally kidding.

We actually addressed some of us on this.

No, I know. That's why I feel so bad even asking you a smart ass question like that.

What's so funny is. So I once had someone get mad because I sent out an email. You came and spoke at one of my workshops a long time ago. Remember, you ripped up all the money and threw it.

Oh, yeah, I made everyone. Yeah, that was a good. I said at a money seminar I'm having you actually.

Yeah. So I sent out an email saying, I have a guest that this year, and this was the first year I was in Genius Network. I said, added $250,000 to my life. And someone's like, oh, that's so hypey. But I went back and I said, okay, first of all, I got a 5050 deal originally with Nightingale because of you. They don't do a lot of 5050 deals. I know. They did one with you. Yeah, I sold more books with Killing Sacred Cows. I ended up speaking for 10 minutes at that event where seven people signed up as clients. And our program was, you know, at that time, I think it was like $17,500. So that was so. I just. I mean, that was just the first year. It got exponentially better year and year after that because I started to be able to contribute a lot more to the group as I really found what could I do for that group. And so it really Made a huge difference. But here's the thing that most people wouldn't know. So I'd say two things. Number one, yeah, I've made a lot of money, but I've made a lot of friends. Like, people that have impacted my thinking that I go on trips with that I consider really important people in my life that I would do a lot for that. Do a lot for me. So I've met a lot of people that way. And the second thing is, you're the kind of guy that when my mom was, you know, her kidney was failing and she had to get her kidneys out, and we didn't have a transplant yet, checked on a regular basis, sent me, like, here, you could send this out to get people, you know, to respond here, I know this person. You want to meet them? Hey, you know, checking in on that. So I felt like there's a lot of, like, care and concern there, for sure. So.

And there is. And there is no and thank you.

And we're really friends because, you know, a lot of people interview, like, hey, I'm interviewing my good friend. But, I mean, you've stayed at my place a couple times. I've stayed at your place a couple times. We've been on multiple trips together.

And unfortunately, you're staying at my place tonight. You're being in my home tonight.

Yeah.

Damn. Yeah, I guess we do have. We are friends.

It's official. Yeah, we did yoga together last time. We're hiking together.

No, exactly. No, but here's the thing. One thing I will say about genius networking is it makes a lot of sense because you've spoken a lot about relationship capital. I mean, hanging out with people that are capable, that are bright, you know, cutting all ties with dishonest, negative, and lazy people. Is this a very smart thing to do? Because if I ever am in a situation where, I mean, people can clearly see just from our conversation here, that you know a lot of. About this area. And when you become friends with people that know a lot about a particular.

Area, you've called me before, hey, I'm looking to do this thing. You have a financial guy, but he and I get along. We do some work on that stuff together.

I got some key ideas just from. I mean, I've heard you talk about this stuff for years, and there's. I got some key ideas here just from this conversation. So the point is, jump into this. And what I would recommend, after listening to me and Garrett, is make a list of three areas that need solved that this conversation and what Garrett had To say really has caused your brain to hone in on what those are. And then take the steps to set up what needs to be set up in order for you to have the conditions that you want. The conditions that I would hope that we can help people with is at the end of their life, whatever that is, and through their life, not just for themselves, but for their family, that it's not all fucked up. Because people, you know, most people just do not have their shit in order at all. Not like a little bit, like, at all.

And so we need to have, like, a version of the Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Future, you know, the Ghost of the Future. Because if people saw the decisions they neglect to make now and the impact that has on them in the future, that they may have major regret for. Because a lot of what I'm talking about, paying yourself first, is actually like, we had this woman, Melinda, who just got divorced, was really kind of taking her this new business and trying to incubate it. And for the last year and a half, she paid herself the full 18%, day one, and everything's worked out. She's got stability, she feels better, she's more productive. I mean, there's nothing mystical or magical in finance, but the closest thing is paying yourself first. Because it seems like, well, I'm taking money away from me, but for some reason, the rest of that money starts to show up, starts to happen. It starts to get people to think resourcefully.

Awesome. Well, as always, ton of value here.

Are we going to be professional and shake hands?

Yeah, we will. Thank you so much. And to all our listeners, please share this interview with anyone that you think could benefit from hearing it. I can't imagine you do not have friends and family members. And if you're a business owner, which most people that listen to my stuff and watch my stuff are, definitely share this with other business owners. This not only could help make some people's lives easier, it could probably save a lot of people from having a miserable life, especially young people, if they learn this early on. For some reason, when I was in my 20s, I mean, I started talking about the Rockefellers, the protective expenses. I mean, I was getting life insurance when I didn't have anyone to leave it to. You know, I was doing things that just would, you know, I would always take money and put it to the side. I mean, I learned that. I mean, I read the Richest man in Babylon when I was in my early. Actually, I was probably like, 17, I think, the first time I read it. But, you know, it's just one of those things. And if you learn these fundamentals, you're just, you know, you're going to set it up because five years is going to come from now, 10 years is going to come from now. And I'll tell people all the time and they're like, oh, yeah, I'll get around to it. I'll get around to it. You talk to them five years later. Trust me on this one. I mean, if you're not around wealthy people and I'm around wealthy people all the time, for every one person that makes a shitload of money and has it together, there's a lot that have a lot of money go through their hands, they lose it all. They never accumulate much of anything except a lot of complexity and a lot of stress. So, yeah, if you set it up right. And this is a great romance. So thank you and we will talk to you on the next podcast. So have a great day and a great life and follow some of his advice. Yeah. See you.