How To Use The Recession To Get Rich In 2025 | Tony Robbins & Lewis Howes

The stock market never took a dime from anybody. Only you can take it from you. You sold. That's why you lost.

Right.

Right.

But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime to go from wherever you are financially to where you want to be. I hope your audience is listening right now. Hear me. If you want to leapfrog and you're a millennial and you think there's no future or you're, you know, a baby boomer and you think you're too old and it's too late, the greatest gift you have is why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. You're a millennial, right? So you grew up witnessing 2008 when you were still relatively young. How old are you now?

33.

Okay, so you were, what, 27?

2008? Yeah, 27, I guess.

Yeah, 27, 28 years old. So you're a young man and you're watching the world melting down in front of you. For most millennials, they are the first generation since the generation that went through the depression that is not investing at the ratio they need to even close. And they have more debt than everyone probably, right? With all the- They have more college debt than everyone.

Absolutely true. I have a friend that has $400,000 of debt.

Well, dental school. President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago while he was still president. What?

No.

I swear to God. Oh my gosh. It's mind boggling. And he had a bunch of scholarships, but the last bit it took him that long. So what I tell them is, listen, debt, paying off your debt's not enough. You've got to become an owner or you're always going to be in that place. So yes, pay off your debt, but here's what you need to know. You got to become an owner. You got to get in the game, but you got to understand the rules of the game. You don't know the rules of the game, the old phrase is, when a person with experience meets a person with money, we know the phrase. The person with money ends up with the experience. The person with experience ends up with your money, right? So I teach people the rules of the game so they don't get screwed. But the most important thing is this. Winter's coming, but people react. So let's take last year, last January 2016. We had the worst stock market opening in the history of the stock market. Worst first, I think it was 10 days. There was a drop of $2.3 trillion with a T. Crazy. Everybody's freaking thinking the bear market's here, the market's over, the crash is here. I think the market dropped 800 points one day. And on that day, all the richest people in the world were in Davos, Switzerland, you know, for the big conference that they do every year. And they went there, MSNBC went there, and everybody's freaking, what's happening? What are we going to do? And they said, let's go ask Ray Dalio. Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio as, If you're not in the financial business, probably never heard of him. You probably heard of Warren Buffett, but Ray Dalio has done more. You have to have a $5 billion net worth and $100 million to give him where he wouldn't talk to you 10 years ago. Now he doesn't care how much money you have, he won't talk to you, because he's got a closed fund. But they go and they put value on television, CNBC, he's the king. What do we do? And he says, well, you don't need to panic. Corrections happen all the time. But you need a strategy that when markets go up and down, you don't go up and down. and he said, I spent 15 years of my life to perfect such a strategy. All of my money's in that plan. And he said, it's called All Seasons, and I've never revealed it before, but I gave it to Tony Robbins. He extracted from me, and it's his book. So you gotta go read his book. This is what he says on national television. The data markets are crashing. And that day, to give you an idea, which is the beginning of February, I think it was nine days into February, the market was down 9% in the first five weeks of the year. His strategy, which he gave me, which is made money 85% of the time for the last 75 years. It's averaged a 10% return just under, and the average loss, when it 15% loss was 1.6. So if you go to Vegas and you could spend 85% of time make money, and when you made money was 10%, your loss is 1.6, you could go forever. His plan made 2% while the market was down 9. So it was up 11% difference. Now, I'm not suggesting that's the only strategy to do. There's many. His is the smoothest ride with the least risk. But what it did was combination of that, and then right after that, I interviewed Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. He was the head of our economy, the most powerful man of finance for 19 years, four presidents he was there running. I was just with President Clinton this last week. He was the Fed Chair for him. And I interviewed him for like two hours, or three hours off stage, two hours in front. And then I asked him, in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could put the Fed today, what would you do? And he looks at me and as I said, he leans forward and he says, resign. So I look at that and go, oh my God, I need to write a book that'll free people. So here's what'll free you. Everyone's afraid of the crash. So here's what we need to know, two terms you should understand. Correction versus crash. Anytime the market drops from its high by 10% or more up to 20%, it's called a correction. If it drops 20% or more up to 80% like in, you know, the Great Depression, then it's called a crash or called a bear market, okay? So how often does a correction happen? How often do we have to be prepared for it? Since 1900, we've had a correction on average every year for 116 years. So when is winter coming? This year on average. It's like how often does winter come? You wouldn't be surprised if it stormed and rained. Now some winters are long, some are short, some are harsh, some are light. But winter always comes. So I wasn't panicked when this happened last year. I'm not panicked whenever it happens because I know it's supposed to be. How long does it last? Average, 56 days. Okay, so just under two months. What's the average drop during that time? 14% over the last 30 years, 13.5 of the last 100 years. So I use the more recent one. 14% gets your attention, right? 14% you get a little gut check. But here's what you need to know. 80% of all corrections never become a bear market. 80%. So all this fear and what people do is what you said you did is they see it, it's freaking out, I'm losing money, I'm the hell out of here. And they get out. The stock market never took a dime from anybody, only you can take it from you. You sold, that's why you lost.

Right.

Right?

So if you look back and say, what was it like in 2008? I can remember vividly being with my platinum partners and saying, you see these $80 stocks? This is six months before the crash. I told them in April, I brought them to Dubai and I said, these stocks are gonna go to eight and some are gonna go to a buck. And by October, and I told them what to do, so they were able to get out. October, I go on the Today Show in October of 2008 and they go, Tony, there's been $3 trillion meltdown. Pump the country up, you got four minutes. Ready, go. That's not what I do, first of all, and I said, that'd be a lie, I'm not gonna pump up. At that point, the $80 stocks were eight. I said, some of those, I said, I'm not a market forecaster, but I work with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the greatest investors in the history of the world. in the biggest market crash in history, 1987, he made 200% when everybody else was losing their entire life. I've been coaching him continuously now for 24 years, every single day. So I said, I work with the best in the world, and they're telling me based on history in the 30s and history in the 70s, this $8 stock some are going to be a buck. And I remember the day in March of 2009, Citibank, which had been, I think, $70, sold for 97 cents. You could go and take your money out of the ATM, it cost you more to take your money out than.

To own the bank.

And then I told people it'll jump from 99 cents to $6, $10, $12 in a month or two and it's exactly what it did. So what you got to know is corrections happen every year. You got another couple of months, got to know it's 14% and you won't lose because 80% of the time it doesn't go to a bear. Now, what about the bear? The bear market, it happens to give you an idea in the last 100 years, every three to five years, we've gone eight without one. We're way overdue. In modern years, last 30 years, it's about every five years. The average length of a bear is one year. The average drop is 33%. A third of those drops go 40% or above. That, I don't care how well prepared you are, that's a scary thing. But it is the greatest opportunity in your lifetime to go from wherever you are financially to where you want to be. I hope your audience is listening right now. Hear me. If you want a leapfrog and you're a millennial and you think there's no future or you're, you know, a baby boomer and you think you're too old and it's too late, the greatest gift you have is coming. I know it doesn't sound like it. This is not positive thinking bullshit. This is the truth. Wall Street. the stock market is the only place that when things go on sale, people freak out. If I said, you like Ferraris?

Sure.

If I said to you, Ferraris go on sale for 50% off.

Awesome.

But when I tell you Apple's on sale for 50% off, you go, oh, what am I gonna do here? What's wrong? The whole world's coming to an end. If you think about it, how old are you?

33.

33. So let's assume if you were 35 and you lived 85, you got 50, 52 years ahead of you. That means you have 52 more corrections to live through. That means you're probably in those 50 years gonna have 10 more bear markets to live through. If you're gonna have a gut checks every time or you're gonna leave out of it. If you didn't participate because you thought, oh, the market's too volatile, I can't trust it, all that stuff, you missed 250% return in the last eight years. I mean, you've missed out on everything while you're waiting for things to be better. And if you won't do it when it's like this, When it crashes, you're.

Not gonna get in.

So here's the good news about the bear. Good news about the bear, average ones a year. Could be longer, but that's the average. Could be shorter. But here's what's cool. Every single bear market in the history of the United States has led to a bull market. Meaning right afterwards. So 2008, this plummeting, what happened in 2009? Up 67% in a year. I can show you every single bear market, and the next year when it comes out, it's this explosion. Now that's not true in every market in the world. It's true for two centuries in the United States. So that's why Warren Buffett says, I want to be greedy when people are afraid, and I want to be afraid when people are greedy. If you remember 2008, he was telling everybody, buy. He was having the time of his life. Buy, buy, buy, everything's on sale. So what you have to do to become unshakable is turn, the metaphor I use is turn the snake into the rope. Meaning we all know the story, it's the middle of the night, you're walking through the yard or someplace, and you see a snake and you freak out, you pull back, you come in the morning and it's a rope. Once you know it's a rope, you're never afraid again. I want to take for people investing and show them how to turn that snake into the rope it really is. And I'll tell you one final stat on all this. People always say, and you start to bring it up, timing.

How do I time it?

Right now, things are too expensive. I want to wait. People have been saying that for eight years. Is there going to be a correction?

Yes.

But when it corrects, you want to invest again. You'll get dollar cost averaging. If you paid a little too much here, you'll pay paying less here. It'll bring the average price to a reasonable place. It's going to allow you to succeed. But here's what people need to know about timing.

If you are not in the market.

It'S the most dangerous thing. This is so counterintuitive, so I hope your audience is listening. Let me show you. There's two different research projects. One was done by JP Morgan, I just spoke for them the other day at their alternative investments conference. And to be in the room, there are 400 people, you have to have a billion dollar network to get in the room. Crazy. It was mind boggling, right? So JP Morgan did a study and also Schwab did a separate study. 20 year studies. In the last 20 years, to give you an idea, the average S&P 500, that index has produced 8.2%. Over 30 years, it was 10.28. But in the last 20 years, a little bit less. Still great. You double your money, you know, roughly you're in a position where you double the money a little more than every, you know, what is it now, 7.2, so it'd be like a little more than 10 years. But here's what they found out. If you missed the 10 best trading days, In 20 years, because you're trying to time the market and you're not in it during one of those days, you went from 8.2% return over that period per annum per year, it dropped down almost half, 4.5. What are the chances of you knowing the past 10 days to trade in 20 years? None. Warren Buffett said, Market timers and market forecasters are only there to make fortune tellers look good because no one can do it successfully. Even if they do it for a while, it doesn't last. It's luck. Jack Bogle told me, who started Vanguard, $3 trillion company, he said, We took gorillas a thousand in a room and had them flip coins. And we said, How many times got heads, how many got tails? Just gorillas flipping them randomly. And he said, One gorilla in that set of those turns flipped heads 21 times in a row. Now, when you look at that, see all these gorillas doing it, you look on and say, what a lucky gorilla. He said, but in the hedge fund industry, in the mutual fund industry, when somebody does 10 in a row, you go, what a brilliant investor.

Right.

What a genius. And it's just averages and luck at that time. In fact, he showed me that 96% of all mutual funds fail to match the market over a 10-year period of time. Only 4% make it and they're constantly changing. So the statistic I want people to know is, if you missed the 20 best trading days in the last 20 years, just 20 days in 20 years, one day a year in 20 years, and you're wrong, you're wrong on timing. Your 8.2 doesn't drop to 4.5, it drops to 2%. You might as well been on a wing of bond. At no risk. If you missed the top 40 trading days to give you an idea, you are minus 2%. So you've got to get in the market. And if you're saying, what about my timing though? Study was done by Schwab. If you've got the perfect timing for the year, the right day, the best possible day to buy, some people, the worst day, someone else dollar cost averages, keeps spending the same amount every month regardless of prices. and somebody stays in cash. Who has the worst return?

The guy trying to time them or no?

Cash.

The cash.

You get nothing for cash.

Gotcha.

The guy who was the best had the best timing.

Got it.

The guy that was the worst, the guy that dollar cost average and the one that was on the worst day were almost identical. But after seven years, there was only a $20,000 difference in accumulated assets between the worst day and the best day. The worst was not being in the market. See, you've got to be in it. And I'm not saying put everything in stocks. We teach in the book all these different assets. But stocks in the last two centuries have provided the highest returns. So you have to have significant exposure to that if you want to get the highest return.

Got it. And what I love in the book, you say that 80% of financial success is psychological, 20% is mechanical. So it's not about timing and trying to figure all these things out. when's the best thing or the best fund or best investment?

This is not about trading, it's about investing. Trading is trying to do that and most people lose money trading. Even the guys that tell you make money, see how they're making money two.

Or three years from now.

They usually eat the dust, right? Exactly. So, yes, you've got to have the psychology and my best way of psychology is not to pump you up. If you want to be unshakable, you want to be educated and you want to know the facts. You want to know, look, every five years, I'm going to get a bear, maybe three years, I'm going to get a correction every year, but I'm going to be in the market and make money. Do you know that? Six of the 10 best trading days in the 20 years happened within two weeks of the worst trading day. So when Trump was elected, the market dropped, I think it was 800 points that night. Then at three or four in the morning, he made a speech where he was somewhat human and normal. And the market which got all its money back and since then we're up 14% in November, December, January, three months.

What are you telling to people right now who are saying, you know what? I didn't follow your advice. I didn't do what I should have done. I still love off credit cards. I overbought, paid for my house, and I've got this expensive lifestyle and credit cards that I know I'm wrong. I made a mistake. I own it, and now I'm screwed. And I just got 50% cut of my work. I might lose my job in two months. I got all these bills. How do you even respond to something like that?

Well, I certainly don't say I told you so. That's not, that's not the message because I've been there. I've done stupid stuff, too, and that's not helpful. And it doesn't bring, it doesn't bring any healing. The thing is this. We all get wake-up calls. We get wake-up calls in our relationships, our spiritual walk, our leadership Styles. We get wake-up calls in our finances and. Some people, the phones ringing off the hook right now. They're getting wake up calls on a bunch of things. They're at home with their family and they're starting to realize I was disconnected from my family. I haven't been plugged in. They got a wake up call on their relationships at home. They've gotten a wake up call on, you know, I don't have any savings and I'm deeply in debt. This isn't working. And so the cool thing is when you get the call, then you have to make the choice. Are you going to answer the phone? If you pick the phone up, that means baby, it's time to change. And you can look back and you might be 27 years old right now watching this and you're screwed. You lost your job, you got no money, you got no savings and you feel like it's all over. And I remember in 1970, I was 10 years old and I was in my grandpa's backyard. We were tearing down an old deck. and I pulled some nails out of those old boards as we were taking the boards off. And he taught me to put them down and straighten them with the hammer and save those used nails in a coffee can. Now, my grandpa Ramsey was one of my favorite people on the planet. This is 1970, and he was still answering the phone that rang in the Great Depression. It changed his life. He was frugal. and careful and wise with money the rest of his life. And so someday, 27 year old, you're going to be sitting on the back porch with your grandkid and you're going to remember back in ALT 20, there was the coronavirus and it changed my life, you know, and that you're going to be that guy. You're going to be giving dad jokes, you know, and grandpa jokes, right? Like I am now. and you're going to get that opportunity. I was 28 years old when I lost everything. It was my fault. It was the SNL crisis, the banking climate changed, I'd built a house of cards, I was stupid. And the phone rang. It was my wake up call. Are you going to answer the phone? Are you going to change your life to where you say, never again, I'm going to control the controllables to where I'm the little pig in the brick house. Never. again, that may be the only thing you get out of this crisis. And if it is, you got enough.

Preach to me, Dave. Come on now. I love this. What's the biggest wake-up call for you that this has had? Maybe it's not the financial side of things or business because you guys are thriving. Is there something, you know, relationship, family, friendships, health, is there anything that's woken you up now or in the near future? recently?

Well, I've spent the last 15 years pouring into our leadership team and the Ramsey personalities creating the succession plan of and so it's not a wake up call is more of a source of pride as to how our leadership team and our Ramsey personalities are reacting in the moment here without me coaching them. They already knew what to do.

They're leading.

They're out there doing it. They're doing it. They're out there.

They're not waiting for Grandpa Dave to say, what do I do? Tell me the steps.

They already did it. They already did it and then I found out about it, you know, and that's awesome. And so it's just a sense of, ah, this is starting to work, you know, I mean, when Rachel Cruz and Ken Hogan and these guys are doing, Ken Coleman are doing all these hits and Chris Hogan, all these guys are doing all these hits, these radio and TV and appearances and all this stuff everywhere and the networks are calling and asking for them. which is awesome. And so, you know, that kind of thing is, I don't know if it's a wake up call as much as it is, it's very satisfying to say, you know, all that work of the last decade and a half of getting everybody ready to win, because we were winning in a winning environment, but then when you get the pressures on and you get squeezed, you see what comes out and it's good stuff coming out.

What was the last, I mean, what year would you say was the last big wake up call for you? around, you know, one of the main areas of your life. Do you remember when that was where you're like, oh, you know, I'm eating a little too many candy bars or, you know, my relationship or, you know, what? It sounds like you've had the finances down for many years, but is there another? Yeah.

Yeah.

Where you're like, oh, you know what? I really didn't do as good as I should have done here.

I I guess it's probably leadership, and I probably get one of those calls every day. There's some days I'm a world-class leader, and some days I'm just a butt.

In what way? Like how are you?

I mean, sometimes I do a better job than other times as a leader.

And.

I own it. I get it, but you'd think as old as I am, I'd be doing better. But I know what I'm supposed to do, but sometimes I just don't have the energy to do it. I don't care. And I should just care more. I really shouldn't be such a grouch.

Oh, no, you care a lot about a lot of people. I'm curious, what's the best dad joke you share?

Oh, Lord, I can't, I don't have no idea. Oh, you got me. I'm not a dad joke guy, really. Other than just stupid stuff off the cuff that doesn't even make sense generationally.

So, yeah, no good dad jokes. What is the most common thing that you're hearing with the people that are calling in for you right now? What's the thing that you hear over and over again? that they need the most support with?

I think there's a sense, I think when hope gets gut punched the way it has for folks right now.

The.

Answers fall, a lot of them fall in the category of this is not going to last forever. Because there's this sense that, you know, stock market's down, do I take my investments out? Well, only if you think it's going to stay down forever.

Right.

Because you're 35, you're going to be investing for 30 more years. You don't think it's going to come up in 30 more years? I mean, really, you're predicting the end of America? I mean, that's silly. But your emotions tell you lies when they're based in fear and when they're based in anger. And they tell you lies and they tell me lies. We believe those lies in situations like this. So, you know, I lost my job. I know. But, that's happened before and probably happened again. Just get you another one. Well, yeah, there's a lot of people hiring right now.

There are a lot of people hiring.

Amazon, Amazon's hiring 100,000 people right now.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's jobs. It may not be the one you want, but you can get some food. Yeah. I mean, get you a leaf blower and rich people are afraid of leaves. You know, I mean, you can make some money. So there's some stuff to do out there. But the, so the thing that, the sense that that the thing you're afraid of is going to last longer than it is.

Yeah.

Whether it's the actual virus, whether it's the shutdowns, whether it's the economic repercussions of the shutdowns, whether it's the employment situation, whether it's the quarantine, it feels like it's going to last forever. But I mean, the chances of you being in the exact situation you're in in a few months is almost zero. your life is not a snapshot. You're not trapped in this moment. It's a film strip. The story is going to continue to unfold. And so that when hope takes a gut punch though, and we get down in that fear or we're mad or however it is we manifest that stuff, that those negative things, the emotions that we all have in these situations, that's where a lot of my questions are coming. They're all built in that. And I'm spending all my time going, Yeah, but it's not gonna last forever. Yeah, but it's not gonna last forever. Yeah, but let's visit this in May. I think you're gonna be okay. By June, are you even gonna remember this? It's the great toilet paper shortage of this plan.

I don't know.

I mean, what is it? Some people are gonna have devastating, horrible things that are gonna be life changing. But that's a very small percentage compared to the number of that are worried about it.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you- and you're.

Gonna get out of it.

You're gonna get out of it.

You're gonna be okay. I mean, you're gonna be okay.

I like Preacher Dave, man. This is a, this is just a big preacher show, you know, I like this. What is the worst investment people should be making during this time? And what's the best investment they can make?

In my life, when I have become desperate, Right after that's when I become stupid.

Yeah.

And explain the other one. The other one is when I get scared and you go rushing towards something out of fear, that sense of desperation.

This.

Thing, when you do that, you're getting ready to screw up. I mean, just count on it. And the other time you do that is if you're greedy. If you think you, okay, I got this one. I can take advantage of this. And I mean greedy as a lack of virtue greedy. I don't mean greedy in a positive way where I'm being ambitious, okay? I mean the negative sides of greed. And so if you're functioning in desperation or in this no holds barred, I've I'm gonna just clean up on other people's pain thing. That's when you're getting ready to screw up and you're getting ready to make a major mistake. And so you're set up also for con artists when you do that. And so if you're functioning in high emotion, your brain just doesn't work good. My friend Art Laffer says, when you're panicked and when you're drunk, you don't make good decisions. And so, you know, you're When you're on high emotion, your brain is, your critical thinking skills shut down. And so that's when I've made the biggest mistakes in my life is when I was desperate. And the few times that I was greedy where I thought, oh, I'm gonna slip in there and that's gonna be easy money.

What was that? Easy money. Could you share a story of one.

Of those greedy times where you tried to jump in and- yeah, a buddy of mine, I was in my 20s and a buddy of mine was buying gold. And now this is in the 80s. Okay, it's a million years ago and he's buying gold and he had this friend that was a gold, he was a gold bug, he was picking gold and this guy had picked the gold prices where they were going within a dollar, like 14 times in a row. And so we both dropped five grand into this thing and if we had hit, it was a margin deal and so I would have made 50 grand. And I thought, I'm putting 1,000 bucks in here, I'm gonna make 50 grand. But it's a margin play, which means you're either gonna make 50 grand or you're gonna make zero.

Mmm.

And so he picked it right 14 times the time I got in the 15th time missed it. I got zero turned 5000 bucks into zero instantly. Last time I bought gold last time I played stuff on margin last time I got greedy.

Was it is there ever a time where so what's the difference between greed and a great opportunity of being ambitious? Can you make money? Can you make money fast in certain things or is typically most things take a a certain amount of time and energy and effort.

The vast majority of people who are successful financially and successful have done it incrementally. There's very few people who you see a meteoric rise in their wealth or their success that keep it. And I think because you build your character along the way to be able to hold on and be able to do it, I think that's my theory on it. I mean, I got rich quick. I started with nothing. and by the time I was 26, I had $4 million worth of real estate. I built a house of cards, you know, and I had a million dollar net worth. I made $250,000 in 1984. I was making 20,000 bucks a month and in my 20s, so, I mean, but you thought I had it all figured out, meteoric rise to the top. But the very thing that caused me to be the incredible overdrive of ambition caused me to go so fast that I missed the blind spots. I missed the detour signs. I missed the bridge out signs. And so I built this house of cards I thought was a stone house, but I was naive and didn't know. And along comes some regulations changes, a few shifts in the economy, a little SNL crisis, and comes down. All of a sudden Dave looks like an idiot instead of a genius. And so it turns out I was a little of both. because you don't build something like that at 25 if you're not somewhat of a genius. But I was obviously an idiot in the way I built it. And so I get to do it again. Get the opera, the wonderful opportunity to start over and the right way.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, in the midst of that, as I was falling, it took two and a half years to lose everything we own. I had stuff presented to me. I almost got conned. Serious con, like people just a real con artist type guy. There's not many of them out there. Most of the time you get screwed by well-meaning Igneramoses, but these were real con artists coming into my path and I was about to give them money because I so desperately needed to turn quick money into big money to save myself. I was desperate. And right about the time you get desperate is when you get stupid.

So don't make those decisions. So there's not really... So what I'm hearing you say is the wealthy, wealthy people, it takes time and it's incremental. It's not an overnight thing. It's not a quick rise. There might be some spikes here and there, but it's typically over time.

It's okay to take a spike, but anytime I get a spike, I'm always a little suspicious of it.

Really?

It makes me even more careful. I draw back and I go, well, that's really cool. Is it okay?

What do you recommend someone to do, whether they're an employee or maybe they have some extra cash?

Sure. So I would say, you know, this is a lot gonna depend on you because I'll be very personal with what I'm doing because I'm an entrepreneur, so I look for different types of opportunities than somebody else might. So if you are an employee, there's gonna be different opportunities. for you. If you're a business owner, there's going to be different opportunities for you. If you're an entrepreneur, there's different opportunities for you. So I invest my money in five places. I invest my money into my own business. I talked about market briefs. I invest my money into real estate, invest my money into stocks, invest my money into crypto. Then I invest my money into physical gold. This is the order that I invest my money into. This is my type of diversification. Now, I understand what's going on. and I do have some cash, I always have some cash put aside for things going wrong, investments. I always have some cash put aside there. And what I've been doing is I passively invest my money, meaning no matter what's happening in the markets, whether the market is up, whether the market's down, it's automatically- Every month you have a.

Certain amount going in.

And this is happening into stocks, into crypto, and into physical gold. that does not change, that never changes. So I get paid, money is automatically invested no matter what. Then in the past, I've had my more active strategy where I would take money and actively go out and buy real estate, actively going to buy stocks. And in this situation, I'm looking for good deals, meaning a good price. So I haven't been doing that as much recently, not because of what's happening in the market, but because I see more opportunities for me. in the entrepreneurial business side. So I've been investing money into market.

Briefs like I talked about, hiring more.

People on your team, hiring more people building infrastructure. And then I'm also working on a tax firm. So I'm going to talk about tax for one second, if that's okay, because it's a very interesting thing happening right now because going off of inflation, President Biden just signed something called the Inflation Reduction Act.

Was that 80 billion or something?

It was a huge, it was a huge, huge, I think it's even bigger than that. 80 billion is just the IRS.

The IRS.

So the tax side.

So they're hiring, they're investing 80 billion in the IRS to start auditing more people, essentially.

Right.

To start trying to get more money from people.

And that's only one part of the Inflation Reduction Act. So let's go big to go small because the Inflation Reduction Act is supposed to reduce inflation. That's what the name says. I'm laughing because it's kind of silly because how do you reduce inflation? You spend less money because the government has spent so much money they didn't have. which caused money printing.

You tax more people, bro. You collect more.

Exactly. So that's how do you now pay off all this debt? Remember, the government doesn't make money. They tax you, they tax me, they collect taxes, and then that's what they use to pay off their expenses. Now, it's not surprising that the government is running into an issue because they have 31 almost trillion dollars of national debt that they need to pay off. This is not fixed rate debt, so as interest rates go up, their payments on this debt go up as well. so we talked about what happened in the housing market, imagine that on a $30 trillion level now, so the payments are getting bigger. So what does that mean? Well, if they have this pool of money, either they're going to need to inject more money into the government, the Fed has to print more money, but they can't do that anymore because of inflation, or they're going to need more tax dollars. So that's one of the reasons why through this Inflation Reduction Act, one of the things they want to do, which is one of the most like financially interesting topics, is they want to invest very heavily billions of dollars into the IRS to help them beef up and collect more tax dollars and past tax dollars. Now, I do want to clear up some of the false information out there because the act is working to hire 87,000 more IRS workers.

That's crazy.

It is crazy, especially considering that today there are about 80,000 IRS workers.

There are a double.

Yes, and no. So the 87,000 people that they're hiring are not all IRS agents. and they're not all being hired today. They're going to be hired over the course of 10 years. And the whole idea is, this is what they say again, this is what they're saying. What might happen is it could be a little bit different. So I want to be just completely transparent because I don't want to mislead people. I want to make sure everyone's fully understanding what's happening. You have about what's scheduled is about 50, 000 or so people in the IRS are scheduled to retire over the next 10 years. So these 87, 000 people are supposed to replace them and beef up the agents that are actually gonna be doing the auditing to go and collect more money. Now, even if 50,000 people retire, that's still adding almost 50% more people to the IRS. Who are they going after? Well, they say the wealthy, the super rich. And there's about a thousand billionaires in the United States. Do you need tens of thousands of people to go after them?

No.

So you go a little bit deeper. Now again, what do we look at? History. I'll look at history to answer the question because they keep saying that we're not going saying it's not in the bill, it's not written anywhere. This is what they say that we're not going to go after middle income people or anything like that. Well, in 2021, 50% of IRS audits were on people earning less than $75,000 a year.

Come on.

50%. 50%.

How do they know? How do they? Is that public information?

Go search it on Google. Google has a lot of information.

50% of the audits were on people.

That were making less than $75,000 a year. Wow. And why are they doing that? Well, probably because if you're making less money, you're not going to have the resources to hire a good accountant and hire a good attorney to represent you. So it's a little bit easier. Less cost. I mean, it's just easier, right? I mean, you're maybe less financially savvy than somebody who's making half a million dollars a year or $2 million a year because now you probably have more resources to defend yourself. So that's a bigger fight for the IRS and you're probably more protected because you have good advisors who've told you what to do. Because now let's say you're making- you-'re.

Filing your taxes, you're doing all the.

Right steps and maybe- if you make a million- once you start making a lot of money, like if you're making over a million dollars a year, you're not trying to play the game of trying to hide $10,000 because now you're- already under scrutiny. Yes. The IRS is trying to see you do something wrong. And so if you try to get $10,000 under the table, it's a bad idea because you already know you're being watched.

You're trying to, you do everything by.

The book, you're trying to do the best. And you have good advisors to guide you to do everything legal so you can pay the least amount of taxes possible legally. Now, if you're making 50 grand a year and you have a side hustle making you $1,000 a year, you might take that in cash because you might say, this is a grand a year.

Yeah.

It's just the reality, right? taking pictures at people's weddings, you're doing whatever, you're making some cash and you're just doing it under the table.

The IRS wants that thousand bucks.

And this is one of those things where it's not surprising because if you look at what's been happening over the last couple of years, this has almost like been a foreshadow of things to come because you remember over the last couple of years, we've seen this new rule on Venmo, right? On Venmo transactions where they want all Venmo transactions over $600 or something like that, where now if you're, you know, let's say you're a photographer and you're taking pictures at your friend's wedding and he pays you $700 and Venmo has to report that, they want to know that. They never said why, but now you're starting to see all these things start to add up where if you're doing these small things, you know, it's just like things starting to fall into place where, oh, no wonder they started wanting all these details for this. No wonder they started really going after cryptocurrency brokerages. No wonder they really started doing all of this stuff. maybe creating a digital dollar because they want to be able to see every transaction, which means they want to be able to tax every transaction. Of course, I can't validate this, but I mean, it's just like puzzle pieces starting to come together. And so this is where the tax thing, why is it so important? Because of inflation, because of the national debt. The government needs more tax dollars to be able to go and fund their payments. And so what are they going to do? Well, they're going to try to find the easiest hanging fruit. Is it going after a billionaire? Probably not, because the billionaire is going to say, come after me. I have my resources, I have my.

Army, I have my accountants, they've got everything.

We have everything there, everything is documented because we want to play by the books because we know you're already watching. Now, I'm not saying that everything always is right, right? There's of course exceptions to this. But this is where you just have to understand, you know, they say that they're not going to go after anyone making middle income, Whatever.

But after you look at the thousand or so billionaires, okay, you gotta look at everyone else. I mean, so again, right, that's what.

We would have to do.

You got 80,000 people working on it. It's like, all right.

It's just looking at history, right? I mean, history is the best indicator for what's coming. I keep saying that. I'm sure your audience is getting very bored on the way of me saying this, but I mean, it's the best indicator because I can't look into the future and see what's going to happen, but I can look in the past and see what has happened. and I see that, hey, this is what happened in 2021. This is what's been happening because this is just the situation. And so for me, I've also seen a big difference between good tax advisors and bad tax advisors.

Is that why you're starting a tax?

That's why. Because I, you know, it's the entrepreneurial mind where when I get scammed, I get screwed over, I get, you know, these things happen. It makes me want to find a new solution. That's how I started a minority mindset. I got scammed when I started a minority mindset. I got screwed over when I started my BnD planning company. I got completely screwed over my first real estate investment deal. Pretty much every part of me had to do with something really bad happening. So I had a really bad tax advisor. He was really just an accountant who filed my taxes and was never on time. And I got this call. It was horrible. It was just a mess. I got a call from my accountant one day. I'm in the office. This is right before my morning huddle. So we have a 9:30 a.m. morning huddle, calls me, I think it was like 8:45 in the morning, I'm in the office, says, Hey Jaspreet, how are you? I said, Good, how you doing? He said, Hey, listen, I need you to do me something. Can you wire or send the IRS $100,000 by the end of the day today? And can you also send about $15,000 to the state government by the end of the day today? I was like, what? He says, Sorry, we had some miscalculations, we did something wrong, we missed this, and you need to send this by tonight. And I was like, geez, are you serious? He's like, oh yeah, one more thing. You're probably gonna have to pay a penalty on this as well. Oh my gosh. And this is a completely true story. Like, when was this? This is not, I mean, this is less than a year ago.

Oh my gosh.

And so it's, I mean, it's- that's painful. It's very painful. And so I'm like, okay, like, I was very frustrated because I'm like, what did I do wrong? Like, what are you talking about? He said, you didn't do anything wrong. And I was like, well, if I'm the one that has to pay this and I'm the one who has to pay the penalty, Something's not right here. And so I paid it, then I fired him pretty quickly because that's not the way I like to do business. I want everything to be clean, but I also want people who care about what they do. And he was a cheaper accountant. I got what I paid for. And so I went on the hunt to find a top of the line accountant. And I pay a lot more than what I used to. However, The situation scenario is extremely different because he has a very different personality about different persona. And the way it works now is one, he manages all my books on time and handles schedule. So every month he meets with me and he shows me, Hey, Jaspreet, here's your profit. I'm sorry, we'll start from the top. Here's your revenue, here's your expenses, here's what your expenses look like, here's how they changed, here's your profit, here's your tax liability, and here are the things that you can do to limit your tax liability. That's cool. Here are, you know, three recommendations or whatever that we believe based off of what's happening right now. to legally limit your tax liability. And he has given me so many interesting ideas because the tax code is over 2,000 pages long. And you need, I'm an attorney. I studied a lot of tax. It takes a lot of knowledge and education to understand and read the tax code, but then things keep changing all the time. Like even this Inflation Reduction Act is changing corporate tax structure. So you need somebody who literally eats, breathes, and all they care about is tax. And this is this guy, right? And I'm like, dude, like, this is amazing. Like, I love this because I don't have the time. I don't want to spend my time thinking about taxes and all the cash flow stuff. I want to build my business. And so I got to know him, got to build, see how we worked. I really liked it. And after a number of months of working with him and seeing him in action, I was like, hey, man, like, you have nothing on social media. Can we work together? Like, let's like, he's very good at what he does. But I was like, let me work with you. I think we can create a lot of things here because there's a lot of small businesses that need what you have to offer because there's a lot of small businesses who have bad accountants who all they do is file their taxes and you need a tax advisor, especially now as we're going to see a big change. You need an advisor who's going to guide you on what to do with your money, how to document what you do, like just to make it completely seamless. that way you don't have to stress about it.

Right.

And he was like, I'm down. So over the last couple of months, we've been working to build this together. It's not launched yet. We were just talking about it because it came a conversation, but that's something that I've been really working on. So, you know, if you're listening to this and you want a good tax advisor, just email me team@theminiorymindset.com or send me a DM on Instagram, Minority Mindset, and I will connect you. But these are, I mean, this is where, what am I doing? I like entrepreneurship. I like this stuff because it gets me excited. It's the way that my brain works. It's the way that gives me my purpose, right? And so I do that. I like investing in real estate. I like investing in stocks. I'm passively doing it in stocks. But right now I just see more opportunity for me to invest in things like market briefs, to invest in things like this tax firm because like I see the opportunity, it's fun. I have a blast doing it. I get to meet really cool people. So, You know, it's just it's a matter of now what is that lifestyle? Now if I didn't, if I wasn't an entrepreneur, what would I be doing? Yeah, I'd be stacking up cash to find good investments either in the stock market or the real estate market or to buy a startup because it's very accessible now thanks to the internet, thanks to all the crowdfunding sites out there. And I'd be passively investing like I would not change that.

So I mean, I think everybody should be doing this. You can put a hundred bucks a month away into stocks or into an automated account that is investing for you.

Did you know if you're 21 and you start investing $100 a month and you never change that and you just get a 10% return on your money, which is the average stock market return, and you do that until you're 65, you will retire a millionaire.

Come on.

We're talking about less than $4 a day.

100 bucks a month.

100 bucks a month.

Automatic.

Automatic.

Going into a index fund.

And you just keep trying to match the market, right? Doesn't mean you're gonna get 10% returns every year.

But over the long term, decades you will, yeah.

That's what the historical stock market return is. Now you can just plug this into a calculator and you'll see that the $100 a month for from 21 to 65-66, you will be a millionaire.

Is now the time to start investing or is it more just save up some reserves for six months to have some cash to live your life before you start investing or is it important to build the discipline and the habit of investing 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, in a diversified portfolio, no matter how much you're making.

I remember going through this because I didn't have any money.

When was this, right?

Oh, this was 1982-83. I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to help to take care of my family bills. So I remember thinking, How many weeks could I live if I lost my income? And I started counting in weeks and I would try to go out because if I got hit, so I think that's the way to do it. You start to count how many weeks, can it be a month, a year, can I get up to a year? I didn't like that because of the fact that there's an obligation and it's like, oh, if I get, then I'm going to be drowning. I'm trying to keep my head against water. This is just my own bias. But anyway, count how many you can, and then assume that it's buying power over the next number of years can fall by 3% or 4% a year, or if you put it in a risky investment, like stocks or something, It could buy more. So cut that number maybe in half and have twice as much. Because you have to understand that that's your freedom. That is your safety. So that first band you must take care of, that first band, take care of that. Once you get past that and you feel, okay, I could take care of my family and I could take care of mine in a worst case scenario, then you have the freedom to then take other kinds of risk. But when you're building that portfolio, it's the same thing as when you have a lot of portfolio past that, just you want to diversify well. Because you could see what happens to the markets. Every market, stock market, bond market, most markets have had times where they've gone down over an extended period, 60 or 70% in buying power. So I think diversify, count that and build it and realize that's your saving. One thing I do for my.

Kids.

And grandkids and always did, as long as I could start to afford it, was for every holiday, like Christmas or their birthday, I would give them a gold coin. And I said, I never want you to sell that gold coin until there's an emergency, a real emergency, never because you want to buy things. And the reason I did that, and they'll build over a period of time, that'll build something. And I said, don't even sell it, you pass it to your kids, unless there's an emergency. Okay? And so you're building that savings. Because I think we so easily spend so much money on junk. You know, so anything that I would give them, whatever it would be, I don't know, a piece of clothing, a thingamajig, a toy or something, will probably be gone.

In a year.

Okay? And so the power of saving.

And.

That resource, the relief it gives you and the power it gives you is so great. So yes, save it, diversify it.

I'm going to continue to stay on this topic, but also go off a little bit because you mentioned how, I guess it was 40 years ago, you lost your money and you had to borrow $4,000 from your father. to just kind of survive and pay your bills. How much money had you built before then, before losing it?

I don't remember. It wasn't like it was a ton.

Gotcha.

You know, I was fairly early in my career. I had a small investment business. I don't remember what it was exactly, but it wasn't a ton.

I'm curious how you, from having some money to losing it, how you then went on a 40-year, four-decade run of getting to where you're at now. Was there something in your mindset that allowed you to believe in yourself still?

Yeah.

That didn't say, oh, I've lost it all out. You know, I don't believe in myself anymore because I just ruined my finances.

That extremely painful experience was probably the best experience of my life.

Really?

And it changed my way of thinking ways I'll describe. But let me say, before that, I didn't have much money. My dad was a jazz musician. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. And I felt, of course, rich. I had two parents who loved me. I went to a public school. And then when I was a kid, I did odd jobs and I caddied. And so when I put in the stock market when I was 12 and I got hooked on the game. So I never had much money, but then I built up some and then had that experience. And so that experience, which was also a very public experience, was very painful, but it changed my approach to decision making in really a profound way. First, it gave me the humility and fear of being wrong that balanced my audacity to double check myself and in fact, try to find the smartest people I could who disagreed with me to have them stress test my thinking. So I'm never sure if I'm right. My track record of being right is probably 70 or 75%ish somewhere in that 70%, let's say, something like that. And I'm used to being wrong sometimes. And it's painful. So the stress testing of my opinions gave me an open-mindedness to learn a lot. Also diversification. I learned how to diversify without reducing my risks. If I could take a lot of uncorrelated bets, the return will equal the average of those bets, but the risk can be up to 80% less. And it changed my, it really caused me to reflect because I remember thinking to myself, it felt like, I was sitting next to a jungle and I could sit on the safe side. There's always risk in return. And what would I do? Would I have a less great upside and be safe? Or would I go through crossing this jungle in which things could kill me or whatever? in an attempt to have a great upside, a great life, a great upside. And so that puzzle led me to do the things I described, but also I knew that I had to go have the great upside and not be constrained by the risk. And so I did the two things that I described. But going into the puzzle, I found that it was great that to find people who could see things that I couldn't see, and vice versa, so that we were on the mission together, because people see things differently. I learned how people see things differently. Somebody will spot this or that, and then that back and forth helps you make better decisions. And if you're on the same mission with them. So one of the things I wanted was this meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And I found that that was so good that when I sort of got to the other side, like, I had enough money and upside or whatever, I still wanted to stay in the jungle and I still wanted to do this. Because the act of doing that with people that I was doing this meaningful work and meaningful relationships with was rewarding in and of itself, as well as success. So one of the things that you can learn is that you can see through other people's eyes. That doesn't mean you accept what they say blindly. It's that you think about their reasoning. And if you do that, that's good. It also gave me a principle, which is one of my fundamental principles, which is pain plus reflection equals progress. Okay? We have this pain, whatever it is. And okay, the reaction is a negative reaction and can almost be, why did that thing happen to me? And so on. If instead, when one calms down from the pain, there is a lesson there about how reality works. Okay, it happened. Reality works that way. and then there's a thought, how do I deal with it better?

Right.

To produce better. What's my lesson? And if you acquire that, I used to acquire, I would acquire that. I still acquire that. And then I wrote them down as principles in my books. That's why the collection of principles. It's like a journal.

If you got a thousand dollars, I would like, just keep, you know, keep investing yourself until you got another thousand.

Okay.

And, and then invest in yourself, you know, now you got 2, 000 invested. You go, go, go. You should start making money faster. At some point you should start like every time you make an investment in yourself, if I put fuel in my car, it's supposed to take me further.

Right.

Right.

So if I invest in myself, then, and look, you know, there's things I bought that I didn't get a return on right away, but I didn't quit investing in a course or a workshop or training or education because it didn't work. or your health or- I spent 17 years going to school. None of it was any good for me. But it did teach me, it did teach me how to go to school. How to study. How to study, how to go there, how to complete a course. Like I completed college. I'm not proud of that, by the way.

You're not proud you completed it?

No, no, because it was ridiculous. I should have dropped out. Like I knew it was a bad thing.

What'd you major in?

Majoring in accounting. It's a good degree. not like just some, you know, business degree. Right.

But you should have dropped out of it.

I shouldn't 100% because I mean, I would still, I would still, I would, well, I'd have a five year jump on my career. But the problem is I was on drugs. So, you know, actual drugs. If I wouldn't have been on drugs, I would have quit college. Because I would have had enough confidence in myself. When you're on drugs, you can't have confidence. Because you know, you know, you're drugged.

Right.

So everything is second guess because my self-esteem was like through the basement. And so I'm like, I need to quit college. But everybody around me is, oh no, you gotta finish college, you gotta finish college.

I'm like, what do I know? I'm a drug addict.

And if I drop out, I don't have a degree, and then I gotta hire me. And I didn't even worry about any of that. Because, you know, I didn't worry about that. I just didn't have the confidence to follow my intuition. You can't when you're on drugs. When you're not yourself. So what do you do with a thousand bucks, right?

You know, I think you just got.

To keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. Okay, boom, reinvest all that again. But what we do is we start taking it off the table, right? We save it, we don't invest it.

So I think people just need to.

Get on that cycle of like, okay, I'm gonna keep repeating this activity. I'm gonna reinvest some money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever. Monday, I gotta be hustling again. Until, okay, now I got $4,000. Okay, now I got $5,000. Now the income's starting to pick up. Income has to pick up. The income should be an indication that whatever you're learning is helping you. That's interesting. Until one day you're like, okay, I have more money here than I can actually invest in myself. I can't, like, there's nothing I can.

Go to to get rid of this money. You need to get rid of that money though. All my free time is going to my workshops. I don't have more free time to invest in me. developing skills. I'm working, I'm earning more. Now what's the next step?

Yeah. And now, now, now it would be, okay, I got to spend money on marketing. I wouldn't go make a, I wouldn't go look for an investment right now. I'm going to spend money on marketing now. Now, now, now I'm going to spend money on marketing to get me more leads. And I would, you know, big mistake I made in my career was not.

Spending more money on marketing.

Because you turned, what, 50 when you really started investing? I was 50, I was 51 when we started playing the social media game and I was probably 56, 55 or 56 when we started spending money on marketing.

Wow.

Yeah.

51 when you started doing social media.

Yeah, yeah. And then, and I should have been spending money, I should have been spending money when I was 25 years old. When I was selling cars, I should have spent money, been spending money on ads, but I was scared, man.

So, so what made you not scared 25 years later? 26 years later at 51.

I started studying, hey, what do all these successful people have in common? You know, whether it was the mattress dealer, the car dealer, the furniture dealer, or Elon Musk, they spend money, man. You know, they spend money. They spend a lot of money. And they don't worry about money the way I was worried about it. They used money, you know, they used it. They didn't save it. They didn't hoard money. And the greatest companies on this planet today, the ones that have just like, some of these companies have lost money for 25 years. Look at Amazon.

Yeah.

Reinvest 1.7 million employees. When I started, I remember I looked at Ernst & Young. I said, I have a buddy that worked at Ernst & Young. I said, how many employees you got? He's like, 240,000.

Wow.

And I'm worried about 10 people? What am I thinking? So when I quit studying individuals, and started studying people, everything shifted for me. When I quit trying to be the, you know, when I quit worrying about what Bob was doing or Pete or whoever, and started saying, Hey man, what is this big company doing? Because that also relieved me of being competitive with this guy, Pete, and started saying, okay, I'm gonna go do what Coca-Cola does. It's when I bought the plane. Really?

Yeah. How old were you when you bought the plane?

I was 50, maybe 55, the first one. I bought it because I studied what Coca-Cola was doing. They bought planes. I said, why are they buying planes? Oh, then I learned how they write them off. And then I learned how they trade them every three years. That's crazy. So notice every three years I'm trading a plane. I'm getting rid of it, replacing it with another one. But what are they using it for? They don't use it for pleasure. They're not using it for Instagram photos. They're using it to go and set up headquarters in other to the countries.

Wow.

You know, so that's when I wrote, if you're not first, you're last. Because when I started studying these companies, I'm like, Coca Cola is everywhere. You can't go any place and not see Coca Cola. And I was like this big. I was always thinking about, what can I keep? And they were thinking about, how many shells can we get on? How many eyeballs can we see? So that's when it all clicked for me. you know, and, and that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, who am I studying? And, and that's, that's when we started, you know, open up the funds for, for, I was at, went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see what it was like. These are 100, multi-100 billion dollar companies.

Crazy.

You know? And I walked in, I was like, Oh my God, man. It just all hit me in a second. I've been doing everything wrong.

What were they doing different?

They owned the building.

They weren't renting the building.

They owned the building. Well, they don't care if they rent. They could rent it, but they owned it. The elevators were bigger than the studio. One elevator. And 60 people got on that elevator and went to the 120th floor. And then there was six of these. Elevators, people going up and down. Everybody told me, Don't take people's money. Do not let investors invest with you. Keep the whole deal for yourself. The second I walked into Goldman Sachs.

Because all they're doing is getting investor money.

That's all they do. Okay? And the difference is, what I do is I could go to Goldman Sachs, I was there, they would give me money. And I'm like, I'm not gonna get money from them. I'm gonna do what they do.

From individuals.

Exactly. From my friends, from people that follow me, from people that support me. Goldman Sachs will give money to anybody. Right.

Okay.

They don't know how to go to these people. They're not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok. So I'm going to create a fund where I can tell my audience, Hey, Louis, you can invest with me. I'm going to kick Goldman out of the deal or JP or whoever. There's a bunch of these guys, you know. It's not that they're doing a bad thing or anything. I'm not saying they're the devil, but they're close, okay? Because they're not gonna call you up and say, how you doing, man? Without saying, hey, you got any money to invest? It's just not, that's not what they do. Their job is to make money, period. So anyway, when I saw that, I'm like, okay, these people are, these are the richest institutions on the planet. They fund everything that happens. The company BlackRock, BlackRock's going to be BlackRock and Vanguard, these are multi, you know, probably going to be worth $20 trillion each in the next handful of years. They'll own, they say they'll own 99% of all the assets on planet Earth, not just in America.

How are they able to do that?

Because they scale, right? Because they think big. So they're funding everything, everything that happens on this planet from media get a pharmaceutical is going to be funded by those two companies. So it just, when you're studying your rich uncle or the neighbor down the street, the think is only so big. And then when I started studying these other companies, I was like, okay, this is who, if you want to create that kind of legacy wealth and really help a lot of people, because they are in a position to help or hurt a lot of people. that's the scale you got to think yet.

Yeah, but it took you really 25 years to get there to start thinking that way. Is that right? Because you weren't able to see yourself spending money for 25 years. You were just trying to earn more.

And more and more.

Yeah, because I was just trying to. Because I was. The grind. The grind. The grind was so. It was such a low level grind.

Let's say you had the right information in 25. Let's just say you had a rich uncle. that did what these people did and you got to witness this. Do you think that you wouldn't have been able to get there faster? Yeah, 1000 or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it?

No.

When you're ready to make it and when you're ready to take on the risk or the responsibility.

Sabrina will never make the mistakes I made, okay, because she won't get in the wrong car. I got in the wrong vehicle. I didn't know the vehicle I got in when I was 28 years old. I could actually make a hundred grand a year doing this. My daughters will never get in that vehicle.

What would they do?

They'll be like, I'm not getting in a hundred thousand dollar ride. If they can't bring me, they're gonna be like, hey, if this doesn't have a billion dollar possibility, that they're gonna pick, this is the wealthy, they put their kids, their kids see things differently. If they're not ruined, if they're not completely ruined. and scathed by having whatever they want, then they'll see opportunities different.

Yeah.

You know, and but when you see the possibility, then you're like, I'm not gonna get in that car, that car, that car. I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get in a spaceship. So if I was 28 again today, I mean, I would know what industries to pick.

Top three industries to pick.

Hedge funds have to be one of them. Advertising and marketing's got to be a space to be in. And probably, you know, something to do with healthcare. If I could scale healthcare, if I could scale the organic alternative medicines, you know, so those are three massive spaces. Maybe financial too, the financial world, you know, in the next 30 years, we're probably going to have a disruption of the dollar.

Right.

And the way money's, maybe we're a crypto, currency, you know, environment in the future. Yeah. So any of that, any of that's going to happen, you know. But, but there, the re, the reason I would go there is like, like Jeff Bezos. When I, when I saw the first interview with Jeff when he was saying he was studying algorithms, I think he was, he was at one of the.

Big firms selling stocks before Amazon.

Yeah, before Amazon. And then he saw some, he saw something came across his desk where There was a spike in internet activity. Eyeballs going to the internet. That's when he said, I'm gonna go do Amazon. And he followed traffic. I didn't ever follow traffic. He followed scale. He followed scaling possibilities. And then what did he do? He followed this traffic, the possibility. Then he invested in the possibility. And then he went into debt on the possibility. And then he was willing to not get paid any money.

But what did I do?

I need money today. I gotta have money this week. I need to have a little more money next week. And if I get a little more money after that, I'm gonna save it all. And then I'm gonna go do that again. And I'm gonna feed the bank. And I'm gonna keep feeding the bank. I don't even know how much money the bank's made off of me for 20 years. Really? We don't know anybody that works harder than Grant Cardone. And as soon as he gets a bag, he brings it to us. What do they do? Hey, y'all wanna borrow this money? Now repeat that 300 million times.

Wow.

And that's the American people.

What about a family that's thinking, you know, I really feel comfortable having six months to a year of savings because I got kids, I got, you know, the rent, I got the all the bills.

Yeah.

What do you say to someone who's like, you know what? I see where you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet.

Well, then keep, you know, money, if you think money's gonna save you, you know, you're just, Again, they're stacking information on top of bad information. Okay? You know, the money that you have saved in the last six months, it's probably dropped 11%. So the money that you have, you got 100 grand, I gotta have six months of savings. I need, you know, 4,000, my bills are four or five thousand bucks a month. I gotta have 30 grand in the bank. Gotta have 30. But they really have 180. So first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months. and they don't even know it because they're living out of Terror.

Right.

It's not logic, right? You say it's logic. I need six months, but you got three times more than you need. Sure.

Number one.

Number two, you've never had an emergency to cost you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever had that emergency. Everybody hears about, oh, yeah, my guy got in the bud. This happened, blah, blah, blah. But if you had assets, if you'd been investing in assets, you can always go use those assets for collateral to loan out. You can get a cancer surgery.

You can get a loan out from the bank.

100%. Or if you just took the money that you earned and keep reinvesting in assets that pay you, not assets that you wish one day will pay you, but assets that pay you every month. If you keep investing in that asset class, one day your cash flow will be your emergency account. My emergency account last month paid me a million six. My cash flow. That's my free cash flow.

That's crazy.

That's no work involved. That is not one second of one day. Okay? That was, and that happens every single month in my place. But that's been because I made a bunch of investments for the last, you know, 25 years. Right. End of every year, I dump all my cash out every year. I'm like, you need to get as close to zero as you can. and replace it with assets that in January, if I dump out in December, January, I want a payment from that. It doesn't have to be a big payment. Just needs to be a drip off that asset.

Something, yeah.

So I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna buy a cup 'cause the cup won't pay me. So in December, I had a bunch of money. Boom. I'm like, make a deal. You were in it, yes, a couple days ago. Yeah, yeah. Take that house. Take that cash, that garbage that you have. Already had a surplus of money. So if I can't buy two of these, I'm not going to buy one of them. If I can't write off some portion of it, I'm not going to buy it. If I can't do it out of passive income, I'm not going to touch it. Interesting. So those are my criteria for making investments, right? And it needs the cash flow. So I took a bunch of this cash that was sitting here just deteriorating, not providing me with safety, and took it and put it into this asset. And people are like, are you ridiculous?

You paid that much money for that thing.

Okay, we'll see. You know, so I buy this thing, this thing will provide rental income. I think this year I'll make three million bucks on this deal.

Wow.

In cash flow.

And how much do you have to put down or do you buy the whole thing?

Well, I pay cash for this house. Gotcha. So, but the reason I did it is not because this is a great.

Deal, but this is a terrible deal.

Keeping the cash. Keeping the cash is garbage. This Malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made. Okay. But I had a bunch of surplus cash. I had already bought in December, we bought almost 2000 apartments. If I could have got another apartment deal, I would have bought another apartment.

Deal with the 40 million.

But I couldn't. You couldn't find one. I couldn't find another deal. I still have this money left over. End of the year, it's just the.

Thing that I do.

End of the year dump out, literally like flush the toilet on your savings. So every day I look at my savings accounts, it's not because I'm worried about any more money anymore. I know for sure the money is going going down in value. Everybody knows that this year. Your money is depreciating, right? It's dropping down in value. What you were told that is 100 grand is not 100 grand. The bank's not even telling you the truth. It's 100 less 11,000.

It's 11% right now.

It could be 34% less. Some people think it's going down 34%.

That's crazy.

But you're going to still see 100 because this is invisible taxing, right? It's inflation.

Wow.

So I know that I know it's not a hundred so when you guys look at your check, I got 180,000 you're lying to yourself because you're not you're not doing all the math on money this is why Mike sailor went and took all that money he had and invested in Bitcoin Bitcoin, yeah, because he's done the research so I would listen to him and I'm not saying you guys should go buy Bitcoin, but I'm not buying Bitcoin at that those levels okay, I'm buying assets that can provide you more with more cash and with more income. Maybe I should be buying Bitcoin, I don't know. But anyway, so I dumped this out. I dumped this for now, I've been shopping this piece of real estate for 19 months. I've been working this deal for 19 months. So I'm not being like, okay, I just gotta go buy something. I'm not gonna do that. But I'm trying to get rid of this cash to go into an asset that has the potential to go up in value over time. I dump out in January, okay? I do three webinars That's why everybody wants to know, man, what's the rush to make more money? 'Cause I'm broke, man.

And I got a new house.

Right.

You got bills to pay now.

You got expenses. So January 1st comes, I've done three webinars already to start filling this up again.

Mm-.

Right? Now, if I walked into January 1st with 40 million bucks sitting in a.

Bank account, dude, you're not hungry.

What's the rush, bro?

You're not hungry.

Yeah, let's plan. Let's do some planning this year. But what I do is I dump out. So every year for the last 15 years, every January, I end up with more assets.

Many of the people that I know who have tremendous amounts of money have huge fears around being poor. And so it's just an interesting thought. Like a lot of people who don't have money see people who have money as thinking differently and they might in that they are more uncomfortable being poor than you are. Like it is more painful for them than it is for you. It might be I'm just being really.

Really might be why some of them are stingy too with the money I'm gonna spend this five dollars. I'm gonna keep it you know, they're.

Very stingy with all of it two nights ago I was we were out with to dinner with a guy who just got valued at a billion, right and it's off cash flow. It's not one of these software things like it's off like he's getting yeah, like he's making real money crazy money and he's like I'm not going to that gym. He's like for equal I said I'm not paying $200 a month for gym membership. It's it's a different Perspective. Now, I'm not saying I'm that way. You know what I mean? Like, I'm okay spending on your membership. That's fine for me. But like, everyone has their own things and like, there are these behaviors like he got the other guy who had the 250. He got to that point because he lived, he squeezed everything out of his business, which made the business so valuable and then he was able to sell it. But like, the billion dollar guy was saying, he's like, you, know what they don't tell you about when you sell your business? Because he's sitting next to the guy with the 250, right? And he's like, the moment you sell your business, he's like, you have no cash flow.

And so he felt that too.

He's like, what are you going to do? He's like, you're going to take the money, then what are you going to do?

You're going to try and buy more.

Cash flow because you got to replace the cash flow you have with the business. You got to get real estate assets, you got to do something else. He's like, why bother?

He's like, I'll just keep it.

And so he doesn't have any intentions of selling. And so it was an interesting lesson for me too because we obviously got rid of our cash flow asset when we sold all three last year. Well, you got a lot more money, but you don't have the money cash coming in. Right, because then it looks like this finite asset. The business goes on forever in your mind at least, right? And so it gives you this illusion of control, this illusion of security. Me personally, most people wouldn't believe this when I hear it, but like I'm very risk averse. And so I probably need, like what's the core changes that I need to have? I probably need to be a little bit more of a risk taker than I am. Like I tend to always take the lowest risk path when I can't, even the idea of like when I quit entrepreneurship, or sorry, when I quit my job to start entrepreneurship, it was because I knew that the path that I was on was guaranteed not to get to me where I want. so I had a zero outcome. And that, so this one, even though it was lower, like I had a low chance of success, the other one had a 100% failure guarantee. And so that, so it felt like the lower risk option for my long-term goals to quit my job and become an entrepreneur for that reason. And so, you know, people are like, I'm really risk averse. I'm like, so am I. Like, I hoard money. Like, I do.

You must be getting any of the money from the exit. It's not just sitting in the bank.

Nothing. We started working the next day. We didn't even take a day off. We literally sold, wire hit, and we started working on acquisition.com the next day.

Let's say you had to start putting that cash flow every month into other things, team, resources, whatever it is. And that wasn't coming in. And let's call it 100 grand a month was coming in with cash flow. I don't know how much it is, but let's say that is going into hiring team. other things to support you getting to the billion in two and a half years. What would need to shift inside of you after three months of feeling no cash flow come in to stack your bank account in order for you to be okay with it to get to that billion quicker?

I would just have to be more secure just realistically. Like I use- what does that mean? Is that an internal- I use cash flow from businesses as evidence to the fact that I'm not a failure.

Mm-.

And so I use, I've always, like, it has been easier for me to change my conditions than to change who I am. And so I have used my material success and accolades to quiet the voices of not being good enough. And so for that, like, me having that, if I had that little voice that peeps up, it's like, hey, look at that. I'm like, okay. No, no, I'm okay. I'm not that bad.

This money just came in.

Yeah, no, I'm not that bad.

Right.

And so, so I'd have to, I'd really have to re-engineer the conversation I have with myself around how I value myself. Because then people are like, well, if you, you know, if everything disappeared, you know, how would you feel about yourself? I like to think that I would be uncomfortable and that I would change my views, but I haven't needed to do that yet. And so my effort goes elsewhere.

But that's what probably would have to happen in order for me to make that change. Is it a, what is the thing that is you're afraid of inside of yourself? Is it a self-worth thing? Is it a self-love thing?

Is it a belief that you're not Good enough. Yeah, it'd definitely be a good enough thing for sure. Yeah, it's just like maybe I'm not as good as I think I am. Maybe everything that I've been putting on media, maybe my book, maybe all these things are actually not true and I don't know what I'm talking about, right? Because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not making any money. Like so these things have been, that's why acquisition.com is the other half, like the actual businesses of acquisition.com compared to the media of acquisition.com It is the other half because it's the evidence of the fact that the things that I say are true.

Because those are getting results.

100%.

And they're growing.

Right, and so that way I feel bulletproof when I make the content, when I make the book, when I write the stuff, like, you know, there's a zillion people who are like, you suck, none of this is true, whatever. And for me, it rolls off my back because I have evidence.

Right.

And I'm like, no, no, it is true, and here's how. But if I didn't have that, I.

Would probably have to, It's because I.

Don'T know what the right call is there. Because if I didn't have the evidence, it would be hard for me to say you're wrong because I don't have.

Any proof that they're wrong.

But you have evidence now.

Right, and so I have this evidence. So how do you change the belief.

Inside that you're good enough with the years of evidence now? The question is like, have I built.

A billion dollar thing yet?

You know what I mean? That'll be 10 billion. Yeah, of course. No, but it's a fun convo and it's great because I this is wonderful though, because I get to see my own limiting beliefs. And just for everybody who's listening, everyone deals with this. You know what I mean? At every level you're dealing with this, it's feeling of inadequacy, feeling not good enough, feeling like you're not smart, feeling like you don't work hard, whatever it is. I have that stuff all the time, because you think that the external circumstance is gonna solve that. And I would say that it does to a degree. It becomes a crutch. But then you have this crutch and then you just tie yourself worth to the app later the thing rather than still yourself. And maybe I need to do more work on that. Who knows?

If you could overcome one thing or eliminate one thing internally to become a better leader to yourself, to quiet the noise or help you take a risk in a different way. Not talking about lose all your money, but take the risk to help you accelerate this. And you don't have to by any way, but I just believe that it's possible for you to do that. I believe you can be a billionaire in two and a half years. if you, if you shift whatever inside of you is holding you back to get to that space, what would be that one thing to eliminate or overcome internally to make it happen?

It's need for external validation.

100.

The need for external validation. Why do you need external validation?

I mean, I think part of it's so ingrained in us. If you think about us as kids, right? Like, how do you, how do you orient yourself with the world? You get reinforced or punished. at all phases, directly, indirectly, but you get reinforced or punished and the things that you get reinforced, you do more of the things you get punished to do less of, right? Like that's just how we learn behavior, how we learn to function in society, right? Touch that thing, ah, it hurts, we got punished. Okay, you know, your parent tells you to sit down and be quiet and eat and you learn to sit down and shut up and eat and then we wonder why adults don't move because we're told to sit when we're running around.

Right?

We learn-- or at school, sit down and be quiet.

100%. And we wonder why we eat so much when the reward for everything we did when we were a kid was food. We wonder these things. So the reason external validation is so hard, at least for me, is because it's how I learned everything. It's because external validation gave me the directional guidance of what's good and what's not. And then as you get older, it's where am I going to get that validation from? And so I would say that my external validation comes is still 100% there. It just comes from different sources. So I'm more selective on whose validation I want.

So how much external validation do you need in order to overcome this belief to go all in and do it in half the time?

No, I think I just, I need to be able to validate myself. And that's fundamentally, I think Epic Tita said this. He said, like, if you need someone else's, if you need, he has this quote. It's so good, but it's basically like, you need to be able to give, you don't need to swear to somebody else. You should be able to swear to yourself and bear witness to yourself because your word should be good enough.

So you need to eliminate external validation from you feeling good enough.

Probably, yeah. It's probably that link. Obviously, it's good to have feedback in life, you know what I mean? So I think that's why it's also difficult for some in general because it's not eliminate or have more of. to what degree and from home and about what. And so then it gets a little bit more complex. But even using those different lenses, I think it's good to unpack it for anyone who's listening, which is like, okay, Layla said this, so this is not mine. But most times when we're afraid of something, it's not actually like this amorphous crowd that we're afraid of. It's like one or two people's opinion. Like it's your dad or it's your whatever it is, right? And you're worried about what they're gonna think. and they're not even thinking about you, but you think they're thinking about you. They're thinking about their dad. Whatever it is, right? And so she restated this earlier on in Mike, like when we were together five years ago. She was like, and she made me name the person. It wasn't my dad. It was somebody else for this particular thing. She was like, are you gonna let this guy stop us from getting what we want?

Wow.

And it was like when I saw it, it was like looking in front of me. She was like, what if this guy hates you and thinks you're terrible? Is that a worthy enough reason to still keep going? And I was like, yeah, she's like, Let's go. You know what I mean?

And so she was very good with that. What do you need to say to yourself every day to believe you're good enough? If you could say one thing to you that no one else needed to hear, but you needed to hear it from you, what would that be? I don't know if it would be a saying thing.

I don't think it'd be like an affirmation.

I think it's just a belief.

What would the belief be? Yeah, I mean, fundamentally the belief would just have to shift that that.

The.

Doing this is enough validation for me.

Not the results.

Right.

And that's all, I mean fundamentally that's always the goal is that you can detach the doing this from the result. I think what I've been able to do has been to extend the time horizon between the doing this and the result, but not necessarily fully eliminate it. I'm patient in that I can continue to do things for very long periods of time before seeing a payoff, but if I were able to truly eliminate it, I think that would be kind of like a next But then again, it's that borderline on insanity, because if you never get feedback on sometimes you're.

Like, maybe I should change direction. But you'll keep getting feedback though, because you're creating, you're taking action. You'll be, you know, the more you do that, you'll have more businesses you'll be acquiring, you'll be creating more content, and everything will be growing at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right?

100%. I love seeing you, you know, go.

Through this process internally, because I think...

I'm open to it. I just wanna win, you know what I mean? Like, I just wanna be better. What does winning look like? It's achieving the potential. It's taking all this raw potential. The line in the Bible that always scared me the most was to who much is given, much is expected. And so for me, I always felt like I was given a lot. You know what I mean? Like I was born in America right off the bat. I was born as a guy. I have insane genetics. Like from that perspective, I was six back when I was 15. I have a pretty high processing load. Like, I can usually, I do okay with complex problems. I was bilingual at basically at birth because parents talked to me in a different language. So that gave me good language abilities. And so it's like these are all things that were given to me, right? And I was born into like a, you know, from a money standpoint, a decently wealthy family, right? Not, you know, ultra brilliant, but like never worried about food or shelter or anything like that, right? And so these are all the things that were given to me. And so to me, I'm like, man, much is expected.

Right?

And not necessarily that that's, you know, God, whatever. Just I expect a lot of myself because I see so much potential. And I want to train, like, by the time I die, I would like to have nothing left in my potential tank. And it just all have been transformed into my reality.

Yeah.

So that's what winning looks like.

The reality is people think millionaires are trust fund babies, that they inherited everything, or they got lucky or hit the lottery. None of those are true. These are regular everyday men and women that have worked hard over time. And they've been investing 25-28 years. And the way the book is structured, we've got the information from the study, and we've got the information I want people to know about the stories in this book of people that were homeless and turned it around, people that had a million dollars or more in debt and turned it around. And so, Louis, really goes back to a lot of the stuff you talk about. It's the mindset, right? It's the mindset. And when you get the right people with the right information, results can happen.

Yes.

What are, we talk about these myths that millionaires, about millionaires, what are some of the myths that surround millionaires?

Well, we talk about six in the book, but I'll tell you two. Most people believe they inherited it all, right? You see somebody with money, you think, oh, mom or dad handed it to them. The truth is 79 of the millionaires that I talked to, first generation wealth Builders, they didn't come from anything. These are people that focused and built money over time. Next myth. Well, if you're a millionaire, you make high paying job, right? You got big in big income. Yes.

Yeah.

Nope. A third of the millionaires that we talked to never made six figures in a single working year. Really? Think about that for a second. Dual income never made six six figures. So that blows that myth out of the water. A third of the millionaires that we talk to.

Wow.

Right.

Now you think about six figures nowadays, it's more prevalent than it's ever been.

But for people, a lot of people.

With six figure salaries have nothing in the bank.

Thank you.

Because they just spend it all.

That's exactly right.

And they're using credit constantly to buy bigger things. That's right. No, no, you're absolutely right. So what happens is, is people tend to think that income is so important. And I'll tell you, no, it's not. Because I was one of those people. I remember I was making about 30 grand. And I thought, all right, when I get serious, one year out of grad school, making 30, 40 grand, I said, all right, when I make this amount, I'll start to get serious about my money. Well, you know that path, right? Well, when I make this amount, the next thing you know, lifestyle grows and you never end up taking control. But these are regular, everyday people that took control and were focused. It was amazing. So let me tell you Top three positions of the 10,000 millionaires we studied. Number one was engineer, which doesn't surprise you, right? They're good at planning.

Yeah.

Accountants. Organized. Yeah, accountants, same thing. They were number two.

They're good at counting stuff. Number three was teachers.

Teachers. They're not making that much. Exactly. And you think they're the undervalued, underpaid. How are teachers doing this? Well, if you think about what it is, wealth building is a long-term view. Not a quick hit. And so these get rich quick schemes that we see on TV at late night, they get me riled up because they're preying on people. But these people were people that built wealth over time, investing in their 401Ks, their 403Bs. So anyway, the goal of this book is to let people know their American Dream's not dead. It's alive and it's well, and it's available to people.

We just have to take action. Absolutely. What are some of the things that they do on a daily basis, these millionaires? What are some of the steps to take and how do they think differently than non-millionaires?

Great. 97% of the millionaires that we studied feel that they control their own destiny. Now think about that for a minute, because we have a victim mentality issue in America today, where we want to blame somebody for us not achieving something or getting in our way. So these millionaires think differently. 94% of them live on less than they make. So that means if they're making a hundred thousand, they're living on 70 or 80, right?

You can't build wealth if you live.

On more than you make. That's exactly right. And that's where the credit cards people start extending themselves and using credit cards. But 73% of these millionaires never carried.

A dime of credit card debt. They never carried debt. Debt.

Yeah.

Right.

Might use a card, pay it off every month. Pay it off. And so the mindset, and I love to give people an economics and a PhD in economics. Interest that you pay is a penalty.

Right?

If I use someone else's money, they charge me. Yes. Right, that's a penalty. Interest that I earn on my investments is a reward. Yes.

Right?

So why choose to penalize yourself? Don't use debt. Get yourself out of debt and invest.

And grow your money to reward yourself.

Yeah.

Powerful. Yeah.

Now, how have you managed to, through all the stuff you've gone through, I'm assuming the last, you know, 15-20 years, you've gone through some challenges. you told me before off camera that you have a child who has special needs and was told that they wouldn't live past a certain age. You're, you know, I'm assuming you've had challenges in relationships with business partnerships, intimate relationships, family.

Yeah.

The more wealth that I've accumulated and the attention that I've gained, there's more people with handouts.

Yes.

Expecting whatever it may be. How have you personally manage the emotional challenges that have come your way by not letting it affect your mindset around money so that you don't do things emotionally with your money.

Right.

Well, I mean, I've been there. I don't know about you, but I made some mistakes.

Yeah.

Okay. And, you know, a mistake that you make one or two times, you can call it a mistake. But when you keep doing it over and over, it's not a mistake anymore. It's called a choice.

Yeah.

So for me, I'm very. I'm a. of faith. So obviously I'm rooted there. But I got good people around me. I got good friends, people that have known me since my childhood, people that know me for who I am. So I'm not an author and speaker with these people. I'm just Chris. And so those people keep me rooted, right? Mama Hogan is no joke either, okay? She'll keep me rooted. And so I think it's really important to understand what am I trying to accomplish? Like I don't want notoriety. I don't want I want to be famous. I want to be known that I help people think bigger, right? And so staying rooted in that, it helps me to be very, very clear on what I'm doing. People will come up and tell me, oh, Chris, you changed my life financially. And I go, oh, whoa, pump the brakes. I didn't change anything. I gave you some information. You did the changing. And so I think it's really important as we help people that we stay aware of who's doing what and our role.

Yeah, I think there's a story about Marcus Aurelius where he would go around the town and he had someone just walk with him beside him and say, you,'re just a man.

I remember that.

Every time someone would praise him, be like, you,'re just a man.

Can you imagine that? I mean, seriously, isn't that cool? How rooted does that keep you? So, John Wooden's got a quote. He says, Be careful of fame, because fame is man-made. if man giveth, man can take it away.

Absolutely.

And so being aware of that, I think, is really, really important. What's the heart behind what I'm trying to do? And so if I travel and I go speak to 10,000 people, if I get one person whose eyes light up and they start thinking differently, then I've done my mission.

What's the biggest challenge you've gone through in the last 15 years? Oh, personally, emotionally, financially.

Biggest challenge was definitely the diagnosis. this was on my youngest son's case. At age two, they diagnosed him with this rare genetic disorder that could kill him. It could take away his speech, take away the ability to walk, ability to eat, and eventually end up on a feeding tube. That was the scariest moment of my life, sitting in that doctor's office holding that two-year-old boy, listening to that. And went to some dark places over a few two years. Well, you know what us men do when we have challenges? We don't, we're not smart as smart as women. Yeah, women go share.

Yeah, we don't share.

Men don't share. We isolate.

Yeah.

And then we internalize and then we stuff.

Right.

And so you can imagine working through something like that. Isolate. It messes with you.

It does.

It messes with you. It does. And that, that was, that was the biggest challenge. walked through in the last 15 years.

How did you get through that initial few years of stuffing or...

I just stuffed. You know, I didn't do what I should have done. Isn't it amazing how hindsight's 2020. I wish I would have sought out those close friends and they would check on me. And what would I say? I'm good. I'm fine. I'm all right. And I wouldn't. And so that was a learning lesson for me that isolating is dangerous. that it's good to reach out and get help. It's good to have people you can be real with. And I came to this realization, we need four people in our lives. You need a mentor that's somebody that's having some success and can guide you. You need a coach who will push you. You and I know word coach means something to us. Because they will get on you, they will drive you, because what's the goal to try to help you to get better? But you need two more. you need a cheerleader. You need somebody that believes in you. They're not worried about what you achieve, they believe in you. And that's important to have. And then you need a friend. You need somebody you can be real with, that you can just say what's on your head, they're not holding it against you. You can be honest. So if you get a mentor, a coach, a cheerleader, and a friend in your side, that's awesome. But I want to encourage people to do this. Not only find those four, you need to be one of those four for someone someone else.

You need to be four of those things. That we're saying.

That's right.

You need to be a mentor. Yes.

You need to be a coach.

Yes. A friend.

Yes.

And a cheerleader. Absolutely. For someone else. For somebody. And when you do that, now what it does is it takes the focus off of you. You know, one of the things you and I have in common is I firmly believe that if you've ever walked through a mess in your life, that it qualifies you to be a messenger. It does. You know, when you've gone through some stuff, you learn. That's right. And if you're willing enough to be transparent to share it, and you're not worried about people's opinions, the impact you can have on someone else to give them the courage to try or to reach out and talk, that's a big deal, man. This life is hard. It's not meant to be done alone. Yeah.

Wow.

Who is your mentor, coach, cheerleader and friend?

Oh, yeah. Well, mentor is obviously Dave Ramsey.

Yeah.

This man has been an incredible mentor for me, just guiding me. and then over the 13 years of being with him, my coaches, man, I've got a lot. I've got some people with walking with me spiritually. I've got people that are walking with me from a business perspective. I'm constantly reaching out to learn. I'm like a sponge all the time. That's big. Cheerleader, Mama Hogan. I mean, that's my number one fan right there. She's behind me. I've got all kinds of family, uncles and everybody. They're just for me. Friends, I got amazing friends. Childhood friends, people at the office, people that care about me as an individual, not just what I do. They know me.

Not the book.

No, no, no. They'll call me out. Yeah, yeah. You know, they'll call me out. I got a call from a buddy the other day. He goes, Dude, how's the road? He goes, you,'re keeping your head clear, you stay in focus. And he said, Don't believe the hype. And so what he's telling me is, is, Hey, keep helping people. Keep your heart in the right place. You know, And so it's good to have those accountability people to check in with you. It just keeps your heart in the right place.

What would you say is your biggest insecurity, fear, or challenge right now? You've been through different phases of life, and as you grow and expand, I'm assuming there's new challenges that you overcome and then new stuff that maybe you haven't overcome yet.

I think my biggest fear is, am I doing everything that I could be doing? Right. I've got three boys. They're hilarious. 14, 13, and 11. And these boys are my legacy. I grew up with a single mom, so my dad wasn't around. He came around with birthdays and holidays or whatever, but he wasn't there. So when I had started getting ready to have kids, my goal was to try to be the dad that I wish I would have had. And so that puts some weight on you. Right? But I was hanging out with my boys and we were somewhere and I saw a poster of a little boy at a bus stop with a duffel bag, right? And he was just sitting at a bus stop and I can't even remember what was under it. But I saw that little boy and I thought of me, right? Like waiting. And then I realized, man oh man, in my own life, like, you know, somebody somewhere is waiting on me to become what I was destined to be. And so if they're waiting on me to become who I was supposed to be to impact their life, how long am I gonna make them wait? You know? And so what that means is, is that I need to do everything I'm capable of doing and some things some people say I can't do just to be able to help that person somewhere that's waiting to hear an encouraging word or something to impact their life. So that's something that drives me every day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What is it that people say you can't do? Oh, man.

I've had people tell me I couldn't write a book. You know, my first book came out 2016 retire inspired. I told a good buddy of mine, I told him I was working on a book. He goes, man, you can't write a book. Really? Yeah. And we were in church, right? I wanted to punch him in the eye. You can't hit people. Can't hit people in church. I got a feeling that's a sin, right? Somewhere. But, but, but then later on when I did, when I finished the book and at book signing in town. He was one of the people there. And I realized something. What initially he said was that I can't write a book. What he was saying was, it's not something he's ever thought about doing, and it's not something that he could do.

It's his belief.

That was him, right? And so for me, that was a grow up moment. He wasn't putting a limitation on me. He was speaking his own limitation. Wow.

Right?

And so I just remember that, and I go, oh, no, and so that's where I said, I'll accept compliments from anyone, but I ain't accepting limitations from nobody, right? And that's anywhere in my life. You don't get to put a limit on me. That's what I love about, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King. The fact that he had the courage to have a dream, but the courage to share it, you know, that's something I want us all to have that mindset of. Stop thinking about what people say you can't do, you know? I mean, opinions are like yesterday's, everybody's got 'em. What are you deciding in your heart to go do. Now start to go do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow, man. So what do you do now in terms of your own wealth? How are you, you've probably learned a lot again over the last 20 years from the banking world, like selling services, you learned a certain amount to get to one level. And then you realize like, oh, some things work well and some things don't work well. And then you go to another level of your wealth. And then you realize, okay, now I've got more wealth. Some things work and some things don't work. You keep, I'm assuming, expanding. Yes. I'm building my wealth.

I realize, wow, there's always something to learn.

That's exactly right. There's always stuff. Now there's taxes. Now I've got to learn how to invest my money. Now I've got to learn what's the right places and all those things.

So what's the phase you're at right now and what are the biggest lessons you've learned in the last couple of years? Okay, so the phase I'm at right now is obviously continued growth, right? Because with inflation, costs are gonna go up. So you can't hide money in a in a cookie jar and just put it in the ground. It's got to grow. So with me, I'm always looking, but I'm understanding risk more. You know, this, these latest crazes that come out, I just cringe.

Yeah.

You know, cryptocurrency. It's crazy.

Right.

Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Right. Now, there's this thing out there. It's not even real. That's been given a value by somebody that's not regulated.

Yeah.

Right.

And so when you look at this, you would laugh at that, but we've had. people seriously pursue that. Day trading years ago was a big thing. So for me, what I'm doing is I'm trying to be smart with what I do, but I need to be crystal clear on what not to do. Meaning I don't, I don't want to take unnecessary risks. What are the things that are non-negotiable you won't do? I'm not doing that. I am not doing that. So what's that mean for people? That means I don't borrow money. I'm not looking to, to borrow money to leverage. borrowing money from my home to put invest, no leverage schemes. I don't borrow at all and I'm crystal clear on what it is I'm doing, meaning the longer range view. Louis, what I started doing years ago was I started making two-year decisions. I wanted to make a decision today that I look back on in two years and I'm glad that I made it. Now imagine some of those decisions. Oh gosh, well I mean staying allergic to debt. I mean I have people come to me all the time with business opportunities. They're like, Hogan, listen, if you put in this amount, we're going to do boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, and, and, and in looking at that, I have to be smart enough to say no, right. That if it looks too good to be true, we know it is, right. But I think it's more about making the, I think I've made more money by not doing things than I would have by going down a path.

And did you invest in certain things early on where you're like, yeah, that seems like fun and interesting. And you're like, I I never got money.

Oh, yeah.

No, I learned my lesson. I've invested, I think, eight startups over the last eight years. And guess how much money I've made.

How much, Louis?

Zero.

How much did you invest? Give me a ball park.

Probably.

Probably about 250 to 300. Okay.

Okay. That's not as bad. I wasn't going, like, big.

Right.

I was like, let me just dabble.

Yes.

Let me just get in the game, play with it.

It's okay if I lose it. I met the mindset. Like, I'm gambling. Right. Well, and that's. that's exactly what I did. But here's the thing. And you know what? You paid a dollar amount, but you learned some stuff. I learned some stuff. You know what you're not going to do ever again. Exactly. And see, to me, that's valuable.

Yeah.

Because obviously, as things grow and profiles grow, the risks grow.

Yeah.

You know, the bigger things come. So I just want people to take, that's why my website's Chris Hogan 360.com. I want people to take a 360 degree look at a lot of the things they're doing, their business, their life. Like, look at this and make decisions about what you want. Like, I'm crystal clear on what I want, but I'm absolutely certain of what I don't want. I don't want failure. I don't want negative attitudes around me.

Right.

I I I want to make sure that I'm impacting people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Powerful. What are the things that you. So you don't borrow debt. Nope. And so what's that mean? It says you can't start something unless you use sweat equity, unless you have the money.

Pay cash.

Pay cash.

Pay cash. So that means real estate, right? If there's a property that I want to buy, I don't go to a bank. You don't get a loan out.

Nope.

I save up and pay. Now, what does that make me do? It makes me have patience. That means I'm not letting you do everything you want now. That's exact. Well, and that's, they don't, you have kids yet? No kids. Okay. Oh, you got freedom and money. Okay. All right. I'm sending one of my boys to live with you. Exactly. But kids want what they they want and they want it now. Yes, you did.

Right?

Give it to me now. And so if as adults we do that, that's dangerous. That's why the average credit card debt.

Right now is 15 grand.

People have 45,000 in student loans, car payments of $600 or more a month. So for me, I look at debt as a thing that limits me from doing what I want to do, not getting me there faster. Now I'm old school and I did my stupid. I did single stocks. I did all those things and I lost a lot of money. But looking at it, what I was trying to do was to get rich instead of building wealth.

Right?

And there's a difference between getting rich and building. That's right.

What's the difference between getting rich and.

Getting rich is where you want to quickly get money.

Right.

And these are the lottery winners that I've talked to. They got money in really, really quick, but they also lost it really, really quick. So building wealth is a long term view, meaning you can have some fun and enjoy some stuff, but don't get so focused in the enjoying that you forget to plan for the future. What's the YOLO? That's the hipster phrase. You only live once. Well, in my mind, if you have that mentality and you believe that, you.

Broke for a long time.

That's right, 'cause you're doing everything for today. So anyway, I want people to have just awareness. Like, you can have some fun today, but let's also make sure we're doing some things using the 401 s. using CEPS if you're self-employed, put some money aside so we can start to grow for you. Talking to these millionaires, the number one thing they said that caused them to build wealth was employer-sponsored retirement plans. 401ks, 403Bs and Roth IRAs. So people out there that are self-employed, the CEPS, solo 401ks, you've got ways to be able to invest. And that's what I want people to do. And so wealth building is a long-term view.

Getting rich is a quick hit. I don't want a quick quick hit. But from a math perspective, we just have to break down what are the primary actions that result in the output, right? And so if three sales means that I sell one out of three people who want to walk or one out of two people who come for the dog walking, okay, well then I need six appointments a day. Okay, how do I get six appointments a day?