Apocalypse Soon? Everything I've Done to Be Ready If It Hits the Fan

Foreign welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders. Lars Hedinburg here, the founder of Real Estate B School. And this is part four in a four part series. We covered three episodes back. Part one, just like what's going to happen in real estate and a shift in interest rates and supply and demand and like, will the shortage of inventory temper some of the economic turmoil that we're going through that I think is going to get increasingly worse. That was episode one sort of set the stage. Two schools of thinking there. One is that shit is going to hit the fan in a bad way in the real estate market. The other is like we have have no inventory if 3/4 of the buyers sat on the sidelines. And even though rates are double, we're still going to sell a lot of real estate. So I'm a little bit torn, 50, 50 on what might happen there. But part two we covered like, you still need to be ready, your business needs to be ready and prepared for any shift. Real estate is cyclical, meaning, like it's just proven over time, it goes up and it goes down. You know, I got into real estate in 2007, left a coz, six figure, multiple six figure corporate job to get his real estate. Everyone thought I was crazy. And months after I got into real estate, you know, in other parts of the country, looking back, there were indications of a shift, I mean significant indications of a shift. 2006, West coast, everything was hitting the fan. I wasn't plugged in, I didn't know. I left my corporate job and three months afterwards, inventory in Charlotte, North Carolina went straight through the roof. Our roster of real estate agents locally went from 15,000 when I came into real estate to three years later, we were at 5,000 agents in the Charlotte market. And so you've got to be ready in your business. So that was part two. Go back and listen to it. Part three was, you know, just being personally ready to do whatever you need to do for any situation that arises in business or in your family. And just like how to take care of your physical body and come to challenges with a level of, you know, preparedness, uh, physical vitality and not only physical strength, but a mental fortitude that you will be the common storm when shit hits the fan. And shit is about the dirtiest cuss word I will say. And this episode, the title is like what to do if Shit Really Hits the Fan. And I think for the title, you know, we're going to have to think of something how to say that word without saying that word. But I say it that way, because whether or not it happens is almost irrelevant. Your ability to prepare for it without spiraling out of control mentally and going into a hole and not getting out of the bed in the morning because you're so worried about what might happen in the future. We still need to prepare for it and be ready in our businesses to make sure we're getting enough sleep and we're fueling our bodies properly, but also just to understand what might be going on and why might it all hit the fan. And so that's the conversation I wanted to have today. And there's a footnote on this or a warning on this or, you know, I'm not the alarmist guy, I'm not the conspiracy theorist. I generally have had success in business and personal success by determining, you know, where I want it to be in the future and coming up with a plan to get me from where I am today to where I want to go. Whether it's in my business or, you know, multiple businesses, or in my marriage or my relationship with my kids or my physical body or my relationship with my creator. I just kind of see where I am today, where I want to be in the future, and I just get to work on it. And that included for, for a long time, eliminating all distractions around social media and the 24hour news cycle and all of that. And so my warning is that some of this, I did it for a little bit of time here recently where I kind of spun out on some things that didn't really ultimately serve me. But I have settled on a few resources that keep me in the know because I think some bigger things are going on than most everyone realizes. And it's true of most real estate agents. I went on a, a mastermind this past week, about six agents, high level agents. I mean, one guy's closed like 110 million in the first quarter, like high level. And I went into this conversation, but I only had 30 minutes. So essentially I took my four part podcast series and I shoved it into 30 minutes and everyone's eyes glazed over until I talked about crypto. So I will get into crypto and what I've learned about that space and why I'm super passionate about DeFi, which is decentralized finance and some income generating opportunities that I've figured out. So I'll get to that here in, later in the episode. So my journey in real estate, like I said, was I got into it when things were really hairy. And in that I learned as all the agents were getting out, I did Learn that if you get up every day with intention and you have a clear plan and you're willing to do the work, it may take double, triple, quadruple the work required. But I didn't know any better because I got into real estate and the market hit the fan. So but it was a bad time and it was triggered by the mortgage crisis. We don't have that going on right now. Although interest rates have doubled, affordability is at an all time high or low, depending on how you look at it, back to 2005, 2006 levels. So that should tell you something, right? And we will see to a certain extent the only thing that might temper it is the fact that we have low invent. But bigger than all of this, I spent some time with Tony Robbins. Like I went to Life and Wealth mastery in Fiji. And this is back in. I don't remember the exact year, but probably two or three years into my real estate journey. So maybe 2009, 2010. So it had already hit the fan economically, our country was in turmoil. I mean in our market I think we hit like 25, 30% foreclosures and distress sales. So short sales and foreclosures. But he spoke about in general that economies and the powers in the world. So on a global perspective, just because we haven't seen it in our lifetime doesn't mean it won't happen and not at the time. But I was eventually turned onto a book called Fourth Turning recently, which was written, written in 1997, which Tony probably had already read 10 years earlier, which just talks about the these 80 to 100 year cycles and we're in the midst of. And it predicts with freakish accuracy from 1997 to 2007, it essentially predicted 10 to 30 years from when the book was written. All of this stuff is going to go down. And so we're sort of 25 years past when that book was written and it just lays out a lot of things that are actually happening. And that's politics aside. I mean you could probably figure out my politics if you know, if you can catch a vibe of. But it's not even political, it's just there are things that are going on which you couldn't have fathomed in the US in terms of our freedoms. And I don't care what you believe, you should be able to say it. And some of the freedoms that are being taken away from folks that have the ability to do it and they just don't like what the other folks are saying. It's Unbelievable. And so the warnings that Tony said back then as the government was doing the bailouts and printing money and saying that this level of deficit spending and the printing of money is, it's just not sustainable. If the US was a business, it would be bankrupt. Like it's just not run in any sort of fiscal responsible way. And again, I don't care what you think politically, but when you look at what's happening in our country right now, the way that we're throwing around money, it's just not sustainable. It doesn't matter what you think of where the money's going or if you think it's a good use of money. We don't have the money. Inflation is driven by an oversupply of money. Cash is trash. Right? It used to be cash is king. Right now I think cash is trash. And so you have to really contemplate, and I'll get into some of what I say, what I mean about that, but at the time when we were coming out of the Great Recession, that was driven by housing, Tony talked a lot about, you know, physical assets, silver. He talked a lot about physical silver as a hedge against inflation and as a place to store wealth. And whole life insurance. They're both super boring. I didn't take him up on the offer to go. Not the offer, he wasn't selling it. But I did go pretty deep on whole life insurance. And so it's people, most people think you're crazy if you search whole life insurance. There's a whole bunch of a philosophy out there that it's just a monumental waste of time. Just get term policy and then invest. Anyway, I studied it for years. I think I studied for four years before I jumped in. But I went whole wholly into it. And essentially you become the bank of you. And so that's one thing I've learned, which I still subscribe to. And I've also now currently invested in physical silver. And I'll get a little bit into that. So you take, we came out of that sort of great recession that really kind of worked its way through our market in 2011 and 12. And so we're on a 10 year run at this point in terms of real estate and just the economy being strong. And now we're just in a position where there's lots of craziness going on in the United States and globally. There's just a lot of unrest. And even as early as like, I think this was like four or five months ago, there was an oil pipeline that runs along the eastern part of The US that was hacked, like literally hacked. I don't know who hacked it, it doesn't really matter. But everyone instantly went to all the gas stations and everywhere in Charlotte, all the gas was instantly put into vehicles and there was no gas anywhere for three days. So like an actual disruption in our energy supply chain. And then you just sort of think of if you're in the know at all in terms of what's going on with our food supply and we have something on the near term horizon which we've never seen globally. You know, part of it is just Ukraine and Russia and sort of that conflict. But then there's just other things which you really can't explain. And again, conspiracy theory aside, we're going to go through some stuff in terms of food supply and it's just a time where you can't really say could that happen? Is it likely that the grid will go out in my house and you know, I won't have viable drinking water and you know that, you know, people storm my house and I need to protect myself with a gun? It's not likely. It's actually a pretty small chance that those things will happen. But is it possible? Like you actually can't be at least a little bit in the know what's going on in the world and think that it's not possible. So my, I'll end this here and I'm going to kind of land this thing with like what I've done to be ready for, for whatever happens. And it's giving me a level of peace. I already had a strong faith before any of this. So I think if Jesus comes back, I actually think he's coming back soon. And I have a strong faith. So there's. I don't fear any of what's going on right now. I think God has a specific plan for me while I'm here. To love and look toward him and then just to love on others regardless of what they believe and to be prepared for whatever happens. So I mentioned the book Fourth Turning. I think it's something you need to read. I don't care what you believe. You need to read it and just understand it that what's happening now, it's a cyclical. It's cyclical and predictable and it's to be expected. And there's one other thing I want you to go consume. It's Ray Dalio. So go to YouTube and type in R A Y, last name Dalio, D A, L, I, O. And it'll probably come up changing world order. And so he wrote a book that on Audible, I think it's 16 hours long. Essentially it's how to navigate the Changing world order. There are I think 18 sort of dials that they look at for every country or. Yeah, essentially every country. And over time, essentially, I think it's like every hundred years or so, the Roman Empire fell to the French, fell to the British, fell to the United States and now United States. It's clearly on a decline. Whether you like it or not, the indicators like education and technology and production and all of those indicators, it's just into the client. We were in a rapid rise coming out of probably World War II maybe, and it's like an 80 year cycle. And so now we're just on a definitive decline and China is just doing their thing. And so it's not good, bad or indifferent, it just is what it is. But he does an awesome job explaining it. So fourth turning Ray Dalio Changing World Order and then there's another guy that I got introduced to from a productivity expert that I follow. So Craig Ballantine. So C R A I G Ballantine with a B turned me onto a guy called Mike Dillard. And now that I've gotten to know Mike, I'm in a program that he puts out which is richereveryday.com I think I paid like 5 grand to get into it and I think he's reduced it since to 1500. His passion now is to sort of help equip, mostly business owners, it seems, help equip business owners to sort of deal with, you know, some of the, just what's going on and how things are changing. And so what I learned from Mike and, and Mike Dillard and Craig Ballantyne, it was on Craig Ballantine's podcast, did an interview, Apocalypse was in the title and I don't know how it came into my feed because I wasn't searching for anything related to this. But I do follow Craig Ballantyne, so it's probably, probably related to that. And Mike Dillard, who's built, you know, several eight figure plus businesses, talks about like what he's doing to prepare for what might come, whatever it is. He lived in Center City Austin, sort of moved and he's doing a ranch and the whole homesteading thing and heavy into crypto and cash flowing from crypto and decentralized finance with finance, which is defi and just a whole bunch of things which opened my mind to not only when you really sort of stairstep this thing and consider. Okay, so let's Say, let's say that, you know, there is going to be a changing world order. And let's say that, you know, these different sort of turn, you know, the fourth turning. Let's say that that is a real thing. And let's say that they're, you know, when you spend some time looking at those resources, let's say you believe that there could be significant unrest in the US that could cause some things to go sideways for a period of time. That's what I feel. I'm hopeful it doesn't happen. The worst case is that I'm now able to sustain from food, water and energy for years without anyone supplying me. Any of it didn't cost that much money to do it. And you don't have to go into a complete level of sustainability like I was able to do. You just need to think about, like, what if I had the ability to prepare and I didn't. And so Mike Dillard in this interview with Craig Ballantyne just like went through like step by step what he's done to prepare for things going a little crazy. And he's like, I hope they don't, you know, I hope I'm totally wrong. And, um, but what if they do? You know, what if there's a two to three year period or more where things are a little bit crazy? Would you have regretted not preparing to sustain and support your family if things go sideways? And so in all of that and now being in Mike's program, richer every day, and this is not affiliate deal at all, he doesn't have anything like that. I've learned about, you know, now I have, like, I hold crypto, but I'm able to, you know, use a program called Bitsgap to generate cash flow. I'm looking at my Bitsgap board over here. You know, I've generated like over $50,000 of stable coin cash flow in the first four months of this year, which is pretty cool, learning about decentralized finance, which I think is going to be the most disruptive if you're not following crypto at all. Bitcoin or Ethereum, those are like the digital gold and silver of our time. And I'm only a year into this, or not even in terms of understanding what's going on with the blockchain and how there are daos, they call them decentralized autonomous organizations being built on the blockchain. There's a project called ust, which is Terra. It's a stablecoin that essentially has the ability to take out retail banks. 100%. Of course retail banks aren't going to go down without a fight and governments aren't necessarily going to be happy about it. And there's going to be lots of politicking and advocating and all of the stuff that goes on in D.C. as it relates to that. But you could actually buy terra coins so UST and put it on a decentralized platform and earn 19% interest. And it has billions and billions and billions of dollars already in it. It's the biggest opportunity that I see in the crypto space right now is decentralized finance, which is called defi. So I knew nothing about any of this like six months ago. So I'm not coming at you like an expert and I'm risking quite a bit because I'm pretty level headed. I'm not very emotional. I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist. I've never shared any political opinion whatsoever. There's just enough stuff going on right now. And when I talk about this stuff, people's eyes glaze over. They don't want to believe it's true. They don't want to spend any time thinking about it or preparing for what might be. So there are just some simple things you can do in terms of making sure you can filter water, right? So you can. It's not hard to find a water source if things went sideways with our water supply. But also food, right? There's going to be a food issue. There are like 20 food processing plants in the first four months of this year in the US that have had explosions in them. Nobody really knows why, but There was only 12 last year, which was up from like 7 the year before. And so there's like, that could be a conspiracy theory pretty easily. Like who would want to take out the food supply? I don't know. Some of it doesn't make sense. And that's where I kind of cut it off. And I just say, okay, I'm ready no matter what happens. Energy, right? Are you able to power a fridge or a freezer with protein, you know, in the event or power small electronics or keep part of your house going? I'm installing a not completely off the grid solar system on my house because I have a pretty big house. But we're in the process of putting that system in place where we can probably run on half power sustainably for a long, long time. I also bought the company's called Jackery and they have solar power generators and I bought three sizes of these generators. Eventually they're going to, they're not going to Be around having a whole house generator run on gas probably doesn't solve many issues. But then also having protection, you know, if things hit the fan. I used to be afraid of guns. It's our second amendment right. You know, our first is the freedom of speech, which seems to be going away. And so again, you know, it's hard to do any of this with a politics aside anymore. But the second amendment right is to bear arms. And there's a lot of people that don't want that to be one of our rights. And so I am a gun owner at this point and I do know how to use a gun if it came down to it. And I needed to protect my family, I wanted to be in a position where I could do so. And so this is, this is really challenging for me to put out there because I'm like the straight lace guy that talks about business all the time. And you know, I love God and I love my family and like I figured out leverage and like always keep it business. But I just think for, for the listeners that I have, I want you guys to be prepared or at least be willing to engage in the thought process around what happens if it all hits the fan. And so I just want you guys to be ready. If you have any questions about any of this, just email me at Lars Real Estate B School. I can send you. I mean, I pretty much, I gave you kind of the things to get you started and then you just decide which direction you take this. But if you want to explore like in your real estate business, if you're not in an environment now where someone is like in your world directly impacting your ability to grow and scale your real estate business, but to do it in a way where you actually have something to show for it financially. Financially, you're building real wealth and you're actually systematically not only increasing your net worth, but your time off from your real estate business and you're not building out residual income or that you're not getting stock in your business, you're not getting healthcare, there's no usable technology in your current brokerage. Go to partnerwithrebs.com partner with rebs.com and I'm happy there are resources there where you can sort of check out what I'm building and how you can be a part of it. And I'd be thrilled to get on a call with you to talk about prepping for it all hitting the fan or your real estate business, what your challenges are, what's working well, what's holding you back where do you want to be in the future? We could talk about all of this so go to partnerwithrebs.com and we'll talk to you guys soon. Be well. God bless you and only love and respect for all of you. Thanks for listening. Would you please take a minute to share the show with other team leaders who may be struggling? And if you love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. If you want to learn step by step how to build a profitable real estate team that allows you to get out of the real estate grind and live the lifestyle you've been dreaming about, Visit us@joinrebs.com that's joinrebs.com Our coaching, training systems and support will help you get more high quality leads, increase your conversions and sales, improve your client experience and allow you to scale your real estate business, all while reducing the amount of hours you work and the stress you endure. Just go to joinrebs.com for more info now. See you on the next episode. Sat.