Lies About Money That Keep You Broke | Mastermind

I think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money. It's designed so that we have a few people at the top and a lot of people at the bottom. I think that's part of the reason why it's like employers saying, don't tell your co workers how much you're making because I'm paying you more than I'm paying this one. And I don't want y' all to know.

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Make sure to click the subscribe button below and let's dive into this conversation. Why is it such a taboo topic in general?

Yes.

I think for all classes, all individuals.

I totally agree. It's like, you have. It's so funny because. And I wrote about this in my book, like, for women, we have shame if we don't have enough money, but we also have shame if we have, quote, unquote, too much.

Really?

Yes.

Why?

Because it's like, you know, oh, I have more than them, and let me hide it because people are gonna think I'm showing off or they. They have imposter syndro. Am I worthy of having this much money? I've experienced that myself at different times. Right. Like, you've worked hard for it, but you think that you don't deserve it for some reason. And I think that we just have. I think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money.

Why?

Because I think it's designed so that we have a few people at the top and a lot of people at the bottom. And so now, you know, then of course, the middle class emerged. And we've gone through different things as a middle class, as a collective. Right. But I think it's. I think that's part of the reason why it's like, don't tell, you know, employers saying, don't tell your co workers how much you're making because I'm paying you more than I'm paying this one. And I don't want y' all to know. Right? So it's like it comes from those places, but it's reinforced everywhere, you know?

Right. Everyone's reinforcing it.

Exactly.

Not just corporations.

Yes.

And because there's so much mystery, it's like, I don't, I don't know how much you make. Right. You, you don't know. Maybe you know how much I make because I talk about it all the time. But, but I don't. You know what I mean? So like we, we don't know and we're scared to make assumptions and we're sort of guessing and we're like, well, if I put mine out there, I might be embarrassed because I discovered that, like, I'm actually either making too much related to my peers or too little. And I think it goes back to belonging. We just want to belong to a community, to a group, you know what I mean? And so because of that, it's like we don't want to do anything that's gonna make us not belong. It's such an inherent human need to belong. And so I think that we don't talk about money because we think it's going to affect our ability to belong, whether it means we're too broke or we have too much, you know, or somewhere in the middle.

So what conversations should we be having around money? How consistently should we be having them and with whom?

Yes. Okay, so in terms of the conversations I'm having, I'm telling people, like, if I get a speaking gig, here's how much they paid me, right? And I asked some more and they gave it to me. So make sure you do that too, right? Like, or I negotiated for higher pay or I negotiated for profit sharing or I asked for more vacation days, right? Like, we need to share our money earning strategies with each other, especially with, you know, women and people of color. Right? Like putting more money, like that's what allyship is in my opinion, is putting money in the, in the pockets of the groups who need them. Right. And who. You know, we have this huge wealth chasm in this country. So like, how can we start to change that? And so that's why I share how much I got paid for a book deal. Like all these things you're not supposed to share. I'm like, I'm a tell you this is how much I got this, how I got it, you know, And I think it's important. So I Think sharing money making strategies is very important. I also think one of the things that has been so valuable to me with some of my, my peers especially, I will say, my white guy peers in particular have showed me, like, they have taught me things about like, you know, investing strategies or, you know, like, oh, here's a strategy that I'm doing with my money, or I'm investing in real estate, or I'm doing these different things, like, what are people doing with money? Once you have some, right. Like once you have a little bit more than you need to live off of, what do you do with the excess and sharing those things. Right. Sharing that information. Cause it's usually hidden and it's like there's a small group of people that know and you don't know until you have peers who have done it. And then you find out. Right. In those quiet conversations that aren't on, you know, on Facebook. Right.

Should people be talking with their friends, their family members, their spouses about money?

Yes.

What if someone's really uncomfortable, says, you know what, I don't want to talk about the money I make and how what we should be doing? What conversation can you have to break the wall down?

Well, I think you could say, here's why I want to talk about money, and here's why, like, we have to be. I think if we're willing to be transparent, people will be transparent with us. That's what I found in the conversations that I've had, and that's how I've learned a lot about money, is by having conversations. You know, like the friend that I was spending time with last night, she's an investor and a financial advisor. And so I was asking her, like, okay, well, what are you investing in and how are you thinking about it and what is an investment thesis? Like, I don't even know what that means, Right? Like, you know, we were having conversations and she was teaching me all of this stuff because I was willing to tell her, like, okay, here's how much money I want to invest, but I don't know where to. Where best to put it, you know, that kind of thing. So I think you just got to be willing to put yourself out there first. And I find that people want to talk about it. So when I bring it up and I start sharing, they immediately start sharing because it's like they were like waiting for an opportunity to talk about this.

Yes.

And is what I find. So I think we just gotta start doing it and create more transparency around it. And then, yeah, it creates opportunity for All. And that's the other piece of it is, like, I recognize that, you know, even someone who would be considered a direct competitor, maybe they sell the same thing I sell. I don't believe in competition in that way. I think there's more than enough money to go around. I think there's more than enough opportunity to go around.

Yes.

And I choose to, like, be friendly with and. And support my. My competitors, quote, unquote, and vice versa. And that just means that we all get better at what we're doing. We all can serve our clients better. Right. We all can make more money. But I don't want to be a person who's closed. So I'm just going to. I just got to be me. And it is what it is. Right. Like, there's going to be some occupational hazards when you're being transparent.

Absolutely.

And you just got to navigate that as best you can. But I just choose to be who I want to be in the world instead of who I feel like I need to protect myself.

You know what was harder for you? Making your first hundred thousand dollars in a year or making your first million dollars in a year?

$100,000 for sure.

Why is making 100,000 harder than making a million in a year?

Because it's like, I think we're just figuring it out. I also think we're charging too little for our work at that point.

Is this when you're working as a career or when you had your own business?

I never made 100 grand prior to starting my business. You know, I went from college to, like, I had a job in between college and law school, and then I went to law school, and then I started my own practice.

So you didn't work at a law firm after law school, so you started pretty much right away being an entrepreneur.

Right.

Which is really hard to do.

Yes. My last salary before I became an entrepreneur was $41,000 a year and, like, really good health insurance. And I was thrilled.

I was in between law school or in between school and law schools. Every single.

Yes. No, in between. This was after law school because this was my clerkship.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah. So, you know, you kind of sign on for a year. You. Your paycheck is not that big, but, like. And you're a lawyer, right?

You're wearing the ropes. You're getting reps. You're.

Exactly. And that's kind of why I decided to start my business at that time, because I'm like, I already don't have a lot. Right. Like, I already know how to live off of this amount of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like, if I can live off of this now, let me keep my expenses this way or lower them even more. Like, I sold my car and we owned a house, and we rented it out, moved into a smaller place.

How many kids you have at this time?

I had none. Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, well, actually, that's not true. I had my. My stepdaughter, but she didn't live with us full time.

Okay.

And so that's what I did at that stage is, like, I cut down my expenses as much as I could so that I could build this business.

How old were you then?

I was 27. 9 or. Yeah, 2009 to 2010.

Okay, cool.

Is this was that year. And then I clerked for the judge, and I started my. My practice, and I was like, you know, I made. Like, there were months where I made 500 bucks and months that I made $2,000. And that's why, like, linking together, you know, I was doing. My friend bought a salon. She was a style. A hairstylist. She wanted to buy her first salon. I did the transaction. She was purchasing a existing business, and I charged her 500 bucks for that. I don't think I've actually ever told anybody. And because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that I didn't know what to charge for that and that I undervalued my services so much that I, like, literally have never told anyone. I charge 500 bucks for that. And she's still a good friend of mine, and she.

That's not her fault.

No, it's not her fault. She made bank with that salon, and she since now, sold it.

But you also got experience doing that, you know, doing that transaction, that deal, which you'd probably never done at that level.

Yeah.

Seems like. So you gained confidence from that.

Yes.

So there was a win there for you as well.

It was a win.

And.

But when I saw how many hours.

Of labor you put, like, weeks, probably, Right. Yes.

I'm negotiating with the other side. Dealing with, like, a difficult lawyer.

$500 is a steal.

I mean, for the whole thing.

Can I hire you for that?

I should. I should have charged $5,000 minimum, you know, but it was like. But I learned from that. Oh, I value. I can figure it out. And I have a skill in that. I'm trained in knowing how to figure it out.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And that was kind of like working on the job experience. Like, you weren't totally probably experienced for that yet. It Sounds like. But you learned, Okay, I didn't need to do these 10 hours of calls.

That I did here.

I could have done this in an email or whatever. I don't know how this works. But whatever that was, you learned your process to simplify it, to maximize it, so.

Exactly. And back to that hundred grand question. I think that's why it's like we're figuring it out. Usually we don't know exactly what we sell in those early stages of the business. So we're selling everything.

Everything.

Whatever people come to us with, we're like, yeah, we could do that. We just create a custom offer for that.

Whatever money we can bring in, we'll do it.

We will take it. And so you're very busy. I call this stage busy be. Because you're very busy at this stage. But you're. Nothing's refined, nothing's efficient. Everything is just sort of like your massive labor towards whatever you can make happen. And so that first hundred grand, I think you are hustling for that. But in order to get to a million, or at least to do it in a way that feels sustainable, you need systems, you need process, you need team. Right. And so now you're starting to build a sustainable business. You're not just, you know, by brute force making money.

And you need to clarify your offering and your. Your audience and your niche and what your specialty is.

You're not exactly.

I'm not just a lawyer that can do anything you want me to do, but here's what I really specialize in.

Exactly.

Here's.

Here are my three packages at these different levels.

And. Yes.

And you go all in on marketing that.

Yes. And there's money that you're saying no to.

Absolutely.

You learn that lesson that not all money is good money.

Isn't that crazy?

Yes.

It's. So I say this a lot to people. I go, it's weird that I'll turn down massive checks all the time.

Yep.

But I'm just like, that's not what I want to do. And it doesn't serve my mission.

Yes.

If it's not serving the mission and I don't need the money, then I shouldn't do something just to bring in more money.

For me, it's a distraction at different.

Stages of my life at different season now, to said yes to everything, you know, when I broke. You say yes to all these things.

Yes.

But then when you're like, okay, I'm here for a mission and to serve at the highest level of my skills and abilities, that brings Me the most joy and brings others the most joy and benefits the most number of people. Then you start saying no to money, which is crazy. Yes, it sounds crazy, doesn't it?

It's delightful. I love it. I feel like to me, it lets me know that I'm not. It's like I've not made money my master. Right. Like, it's very important, but it is a tool that's good, you know what I mean? And I'm not beholden to it and I won't trade anything for it. There is plenty of things that I will not do and I don't care how much you pay me, you know, So I think that it's good to remember that. And so when you're turning down opportunities, it's, it's just an example of like, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm doing things right.

Well, I think you got to understand that just because you turn down money over here doesn't mean it's not going to keep coming to you. Like, just because you turn down something that's not right for you doesn't mean abundance of something that is. Right.

Yeah.

Will keep coming to you.

There's so much opportunity. There's always more where that came from.

From.

Absolutely, you know? Absolutely.

That's powerful. Okay, so the first hundred thousand, how long did it take you, how many years until you made a hundred thousand in one year?

Can you remember?

Roughly.

So my first year in business and it was like I started September 1, 2010. And so from that year till like September 2011. I made like 60 grand that first year.

Right.

But I think the first full 12 month calendar year was like year two. So it didn't take too long.

And then how long until you made seven figures in one year?

Yeah, that took me seven years after that.

Yeah. From starting business.

From, from, from September 2010, I think it was maybe it was six. It was like 2016, 2017. Yeah, I think 2017 was my first seven figure year. And I had gotten close but not, you know, like almost there, but not quite and twice. And you know what, it was interesting. What happened is like I had my business, my revenue was doubling. In the beginning it was like I made 100 grand, then I made two or 250. And then, you know, then I made 500. Then that's like I plateaued.

It's like, okay, 560, right. 620.

It started making me mad. Like from 500 to 700,000, I think I was there for like three years and there was all kinds of stuff going on in my life. One, there was a lawsuit that one of my business partners. So like this is one of the things where to trusting too quickly caused some issues. So that was a huge distraction for me at that time. I had two babies back to back.

Wow.

So, you know, I was busy with them. And then there were just a lot of lessons I needed to learn. Like I had all these people working for me, but I didn't have good boundaries and I didn't. I just kind of let them do whatever they wanted and didn't have, you know, like I was learning how to become a boss. I was learning how to become a leader and a manager.

So much more challenging than just doing your skill. Like let me just be good at the law thing, which is what people wanted me for.

Yes.

Now they want my business for that and me. But I've got to train the team and to deliver.

Right? Exactly.

It's a different skill.

It's totally different. And it's, it can be challenging. I think that's why a lot of times we're like, well, I'm just going to go back to doing it myself. And it's like, you can, but it's going to keep you small.

Yeah.

You have to say yes to those challenges and learn that new skill. Right. And I think leadership skills are so valuable for everybody. So. So I had to learn that. And it took me a couple of years to like figure out how to have stronger boundaries, figure out how to stop letting people waste my time, figure out how to charge for what my services are worth. Right. All of those things, those were lessons that I was learning in that time.

Who was wasting your time? Like clients or everybody?

Employees or clients were wasting my time. Team were wasting my time. Even family members. Right. Like my desk was like right in the front door. So like it's like the door is here, my desk is right here. My husband would like be coming in and out. He's a stay at home dad at the time, taking care of the kids and he just ran a tight ship with our household. It was amazing. Like I had so much support in that way. But he would like every time he came through the door, wanted to talk to me.

I gotta focus.

Yes, exactly. Was like I didn't know how to create boundaries around my work time. And I did eventually learn it. I started getting up at 4am because I was like, I'd get up at 6 and these kids would. It's like they could tell like they had a radar the moment I woke up. So then I would get up at 6. Like, I would be like, okay, I'm gonna them, I'm going to get up at 5:30. Nope, still get up with me. 5. Nope. 4:30. No, 4:00am and they stayed in their beds. So I was like, fine, I'm going to be 4am every day.

Then 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, 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, I think that's the way to do it. You know, you start to count, how many weeks can it be a month? Can 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 its 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 can fall by 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%. So 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, or 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 you know, and that resource, the relief it gives you and the power it gives you is so great. So, yes, save it, diversify it.

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I don't remember. It wasn't like it was a ton. 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 was, 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, 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, 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 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. Like 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 on YouTube being wrong sometimes and it's painful. So the stress testing of my opinions gave me an open mindedness to learn a lot and 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 at which things could kill me or whatever in an attempt to have a great upside, a great, 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've 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 could 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 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. Pain plus reflection equals that. And then you write down the principle like a. And that's what the collection of principles came from. That has. So that event, that painful event, was the basis.

Winter is coming. We all know winter's coming to quite a phrase. But that winter is the best time on earth. And I know that's counterintuitive. I don't mean like being a positive thinker. I mean pure facts. So in the book, I take you through 10 facts. I'll give you a couple of them right now. The first fact I give people is why do people not invest? They're afraid of failing. They. 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.

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 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 in debt, dental school.

President Obama just paid off his debt five years ago while he was still president. 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, 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 means a person with money. We know the phrase, the person with the money ends up 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, for the big conference that they do every year. And they went there, MSNBC went there, and everybody's freaking, what's happened? What are we going to do? And they said, let's go. Go ask Ray Dalio. Now, your listeners may or may not know Ray Dalio. As if you're not in the financial business. You've probably never heard of him. You've probably heard of Warren Buffett, but Ray Dalio has done more. You had to have a $5 billion net worth and $100 million to give him or he wouldn't talk to you 10 years ago. Now, he doesn't give a how much money you have. He won't talk to you because he's got a closed fund. But they go and they put Dalio 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 ought to 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 average, the 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 it was 10%, your loss is 1.6, you 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, manning. I was just with President Clinton this last week. He was the Fed chair for him. And I interviewed him for like two hours, you know, or three hours off stage, two hours in front. And I asked him in the very beginning of this thing, I said to him, I said, look, if you could be 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 will free people. So here's what will free you. Everybody's afraid of the crash. So here's what you 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, 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 hundred years. So I use the more recent one. 14% get your attention, right? 14%. You get a little gut check.

Yeah.

But here's 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 and 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 going to go to 8 and some are going to 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, I'd be alive. I'm not going to put Boba at that point. The $80 stocks were 8. 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. And 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 off than to own the bank, right? 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, right? So what you got to know is corrections happen every year. You got another couple months. Got to know it's 14% and you won't lose, because 80% of 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 hundred years, every three to five years, you've gone eight without one. Were way overdue in modern years. Last 30 years is 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 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 coming. I know it doesn't sound like it. This is not positive thinking. 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, right? 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, right? 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 going to 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. When I 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're freaked 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? Like right now, things are too expensive. I want to wait. People have been saying that for eight years. Is there going to be correction? Yes. But when it corrects you just 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 research. 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 J.P. 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 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, 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 miss 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.

Right.

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 it was started Vanguard, you know, three trillion dollar company. He said, we took gorillas a thousand in a room and had them flip coins. And we did. We said, how many times he 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 and see all these gorillas doing it, you look out 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, man.

What a genius.

And it's just, it's just averages and luck at that time.

Yeah. Before the interview continues, if you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset and I think you're going to love this. Through powerful stories, science backed strategies and step by step guidance, the Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video.

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. They're constantly changing. So the statistic I want people to know is if you miss the 20 best trading days, the last 20 years, just 20 days and 20 years. One day you're 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 a bond. 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. Keep spending the same amount every month regardless of prices and somebody stays in cash. Who has the worst return?

The guy trying to time or no cash. The cash.

You get nothing for cash.

Gotcha.

The guy who is the best had the best timing.

Got it.

The guy that was the worst. The guy. The 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.

Right.

So you gotta be there. And I'm not saying put everything in stocks, we teach in the book all these different aspects of diversity, but stocks in the last two centuries have provided the highest return. 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. Right. So it's not about timing and trying to like figure all these things out and when's the best thing or the best fund or 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 it all, they're making money 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, 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 he, at 3 or 4 in the morning, he made a speech where he was somewhat, you know, human and normal and the market got all its money back. And since then we're up 14% in November, December, January, three months, February, you know, three and a half months.

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, now you got 2,000 investing 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, you know, how to study, how to study, how to go there, how to finish, 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? Why?

No, because it was ridiculous. I should have dropped out. Like I knew it was a bad thing. What'd you major in? Accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some, you know, business degree.

Right, but you should have dropped out of it.

I should.

100. Because I, I mean, I would still, I would, still, I would what? I'd have a five year jump on my career but the problem is I was on drugs. So, so, you know, physical, 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, like through, through the basement. And so I'm like, I need to quit college. But everybody around me is, oh, no, you got to finish college. You got to 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. Hire me.

And yeah, 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, 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, that cycle of like, okay, I'm going to keep repeating this activity. I'm going to reinvest some money in myself, go to the workshop or whatever. Monday I got to be hustling again until, okay, Now I got $4,000. Okay, now I got 5,000. Now the income starting to pick up. Income has to pick up in 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. Yeah, I'm to going developing skills. I'm working, I'm earning more.

Yeah.

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, I wouldn't go look for an investment Right now I'm going to spend money on marketing. Now, now, now, now I'm gonna 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 in. 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 spending 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, start studying.

Hey, what. 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. 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. That's when I bought the plane. Wow.

Really?

Yeah.

How old were you when I bought the plane?

I was 50. Maybe 55, the first one. I bought it because. Because I studied what Coca Cola is 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 countries.

Countries.

Wow.

You know, so. 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, and I was, 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, that's when it all clicked for me, you know, 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 hundred, multi hundred billion dollar companies. Crazy, you know. And I walked in, I was like, oh my God, man. I just, 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, went to the 120th floor. And then there was six, six of these elevators, people going up and down. Everybody told me, don't take people's money. Do not let investors invest when 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, I could go to Goldman, I was there, they would give me money and I'm like, I'm not going to get money from them.

I'm going to do what they do for individuals.

Exactly. From my friends, from people that follow me, from people that support me. Okay. 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 tick tock. So I'm going to create a fund where I can tell my audience, hey, Lewis, 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, these guys, you know, it's not that they're doing a bad thing or anything. I'm not saying they're, they're the devil, but they're Close. Okay. Because they're not going to call you up and say, how you doing, man? You know, without saying, hey, you got any money to invest? It's just not, you know, 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, 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, because they scale, right? Because they think, they think big. So they, you know, they're funding everything, Everything that happens on this planet, from media to form pharmaceutical, is going to be funded by those two companies.

Wow.

So it just. When you're, 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 at.

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 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 at 25. Let's just say you had a rich uncle that did what these people did. And you got to witness this.

Yeah.

Do you think that you wouldn't been able to get there faster? Yeah.

1,000.

Or do you feel like money only comes to you when you're ready for it, 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. 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 100 grand a year doing this. My daughter, my, 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 it can't bring me. They're going to be like, hey, if this is, doesn't have a billion dollar possibility that they're going to pick that this is the wealthy, they, they put their kids, the kid, their kids see things differently. If they're not ruined.

Right.

You know, if they're not completely ruined and scathed by having whatever they want, then they'll see, they'll see, they'll see opportunities different.

Yeah.

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

Industries to pick, Top three industries to pick.

Hedge funds. Have to be one of them really. Advertising and marketing has got to be.

A space to pick, be in.

And.

Probably, you know, something to do with healthcare. If I could scale healthcare, if I could scale, scale the organic alternative medicines, you know, so those are three massive spaces. Maybe, maybe financial too, the financial world. You know, in the next 30 years we're probably going to have a, 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 going to 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 got to 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 going to save it all and then I'm going to go do that again and I'm going to feed the bank and I'm going to keep feeding the bank. I don't even know how much money the banks made off of me for 25 years. 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 want to 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. What do you say to someone who's like, you know what? I. I see you're coming from, but maybe I don't feel that comfortable yet.

Well, then. Then keep, you know, money. If you think money's going to save you, you know, you're just. Again, they're stacking. They're stacking information on top of bad information. Okay. You know, the money that you have saved in the last six months has probably dropped 11%. So the money that you have, you got 100 grand. I got to have six months of savings. I need, you know, 4,000. My bills are four or five thousand bucks a month. I got to have 30 grand in the bank. Got to have 30. But they really have 180. So, first of all, I guarantee they have more than six months. 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 that cost you 30 grand in your lifetime. Very few people ever had that emergency. Everybody hears about it. Oh, yeah, my guy got in the bot, 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 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 crazy. 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. 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 replaced it with assets that did 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 because the cup won't pay me. So in December, I had a bunch of money. Boom. I'm like, make a deal. You saw. You were in it.

Yes.

A couple days ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. You bought 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. Those are my criteria for making investments. Right. And it needs to 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 like, are you still. 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 3 million bucks on this deal in cash flow.

And how much you have to put down or you buy the whole.

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

But this is a terrible deal, keeping the cash.

The cash is garbage.

This.

This Malibu house is probably one of the worst investments I ever made.

Okay. But.

But I had a bunch of surplus cash I had already bought. In December, we bought almost 2,000 apartments. If I could have got another apartment deal, I'd have bought another apartment deal with a 40 million. But I couldn't.

You couldn't find one?

I couldn't find another deal. Okay. I still had this money left over into 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, okay. It's not because I'm worried about any more money anymore. I know for sure the money's 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.

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. 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. Because you're not. You're not doing all the math on money. This is why Mike Saylor went and took all that money yet 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 me with more cash, 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. 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 got to go buy something. I'm not going to 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? Because I'm broke, man.

And I got a new house, right? You got it. 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. 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.

What have you found? Are the top places that people should be investing?

Well, I think first you start with what are the most important things that you're closest to? Like, is it your Business first. Calculate how many days, weeks, months or years you can live on your saving. Because when you do that, you'll start to. You'll gain security, you'll gain that. Okay, so look at how much you're spending, okay? And then say, how much do I need? And whatever that number is, you're going to need more than that because it may go down rather than go up. So, okay, now do I have a year spending? Okay, So I think you start there. Then you start to think, what are the things that are most important for me? And then you start with your business or your residents that have a symbiotic relationship and that, you know. Well, let's say if you start with your business, okay, you're closer to that. Investing in yourself with whatever that may end up being, that may be your best investment.

Not real estate, not stocks, not the market.

Well, it depends. If you're not, you know, if you're doing something where you can do it yourself, and that's the thing. But if you're in a job, that's not the thing, right? Because you're in a different position. Okay? But anyway, if you. And then I really think there's something good about your home, a basic thing about your home, because it's nice forced savings. And it also means that you fix it up, you're saving, you find out there's, oh, well, if I add this thing or that thing, and you're enjoying it. So when you're enjoying it and you're controlling it and it's yours and so on, that's pretty good. And if they keep mortgage tax deductions and so on, there might be some benefits to it also. Okay, but that's not a black and white answer. So you could take a short pencil and say, is it better to rent or buy? Okay, that's a different question. Maybe, yes, it. But by and large, am I going to move all of those other questions. So when you start with, okay, what is it that's close to home and how much you need a certain amount that's liquid. In other words, you got it in your house, you got to make a mortgage payment or something, and all of a sudden it's not liquid and you lose your job, well, that can cause you trouble. So how much do I have? That's liquid. How much do I have that's not liquid? Okay. And you start to get those things right, okay, ah, I've got enough liquid. I got enough. Okay, not liquid. And those other things, okay, Pretty soon you're getting yourself in good Shape. You do those things, you know, you're pretty much in good shape. And then you're also having some experiences. And then you go beyond that, you know, and then so you start to, okay, what, you know, okay, what's a stock? What's a bond? And then, you know, you learn through experiences. I learned through my experiences. I started when I was a kid, 12, I used to caddy, and I took my caddying money and I put it in the stock market and I was lucky. What happened to me, by the way, is I took my caddy money and I bought the only company that I ever heard of that was selling for less than $5 a share. And I thought that. That. Well, I was really dumb. I thought, I'll buy more shares, so if it goes up, I'll make more money. And it was the only company. It was a company that was about to go broke, but some other company acquired it and it tripled. And I thought, this is an easy game and I like it easy money. So. But, you know, you experiment and you learn.

You're a very philanthropic individual. You and your wife, your foundation, your company. You give back in a lot of ways. Some might be through donations, like computers. Some might be through financial. Some might be through just your work and your content on LinkedIn, which is amazing. I recommend everyone subscribe to you on LinkedIn. The content there is amazing. You're giving back in lots of ways. I'm curious, what's the greatest gift a rich person or someone with money can give someone who doesn't have money to give?

The knowledge teach a man how to fish is better than to give him a fish. I mean, I think you can give them both. You can give education and you can but ability, the capacity to be productive. Because, you know, if I can give you the capacity to go out in the world, it's like go into a jungle, I give you a knife and can you live in the jungle? Okay, if I give you that capacity, that's the best thing I can give you. That's why I wrote the book and pass it on. I wrote those principles over years and I wrote them down, and that's what I want to pass along. That's the most important thing. But if you've got money, you can help people a lot in a lot of different ways, which is thrilling.

What would you say then are the three greatest skills that people that aren't financially abundant or that are struggling financially should learn to master in order to be in a better position financially? Three skills. What would you Say they should learn.

Well, as I said before, I remember watching the movie, I was young David Copperfield with WC Fields. And he speaks to David Copperfield and he said something like, I'll put it in dollar terms. You earn $100 and you spend $105. That's misery. If you earn $100 and you spend $95, you'll have a good life. I mean, it wasn't exactly like that, but basically, I know so many people who don't earn much, but are there. Because if you start to think about what it is that it costs you to live in terms of, let's say, the basics, give me a bed to sleep and give me the food, let me be educated and so on and so forth. I think most people can get themselves in a position where they're net positive. So if you can be net positive and you could do that, that's number one. As I carry that. So that's number one. Then I guess it was the list that we went to. The second is, what do you do next in terms of what do you need, what do you invest in? And then going beyond it, and then avoid the following mistake. The most common mistake of investing, thinking that the investment that did good is a good investment. People rather more expensive. The things that quite often those markets that did really, really well became more expensive. And everybody, smart money is all the time comparing them and competing. So what happens is the naive money buys the thing that was hot or is hot, the thing that has been terrible, which might be the thing that's beaten down. So I would say also an important element. Okay, so here's another one that's really important. Diversify.

So don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Right? Because what I learned about this is that first of all, all investments compete. And it's not easy to tell whether one investment is better than the other. Because if people could do that, life would be easy and everybody make a ton of money. And this is a competitive game that's very difficult to compete in. So it's very difficult to say which one's better or worse. You could take experts and do all sorts of tests and you'll find out that they can pick that. And you can't tell whether the worst ones are going to be better. So because of that, you understand that even picking the best ones is difficult. And particularly if you're naive. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on research to try to give us an edge. Okay, now you've got to compete with us so competing in the markets is more difficult than competing in the Olympics. You wouldn't go, think I'm going to compete in the Olympics. But there are more people who try harder in order to do that. So it's a zero sum game. But diversification, that they're different, will reduce your risk without reducing your return. So if you know how to diversify, well, so that's critical. So I would say again, get your savings, right? And the reasons I say, I would say have great humility about what you don't know. Don't buy the thing that was hot just because you think it's hot and then know how to diversify.

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 talk 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, big income.

You're.

Yeah, 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 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 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, you never end up taking control. But these are regular, everyday people that took control and were focused. It's amazing. So let me tell you this. 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 undervalued, underpaid. How are teachers doing this? Well, if you think about what it is, wealth building is a long term view. Right. 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 401k, their 403bs. So anyway, the goal of this book is to let people know that 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 100,000, 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 carry debt.

Debt, yeah. Right.

Use a card, pay it off every.

Month, pay it off.

And so the mindset, and I love to give people on economics and a PG and economic 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 as a reward. 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, 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 managed 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've 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 man of faith, so obviously I'm rooted there, but I got good people around me. Yeah. 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 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, 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. 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.

Every time.

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? You know, so, you know, John Wooden's got a quote. He says, you know, be careful of fame because fame is man made, and if man giveth, man can take it away.

Absolutely.

You know, and so being aware of that, I think, is really, really important. What's the heart behind what I'm trying to do? Yeah. And so, you know, 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.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Biggest challenge was definitely the diagnosis of my youngest son. Case at age 2. They diagnosed him with this rare genetic disorder that could kill him, could take away his speech, take away the ability to walk, ability to eat, and eventually end up on a feeding tube business. Scariest moment in 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 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.

Women go share. Yeah.

We don't share.

Men don't share. We all isolate.

Yeah.

And then we internalize and then we stuff. Right. And so you can imagine working through something like that, isolated carry. It messes with you.

It does.

It messes with you. It does. And that, that was, that was the biggest challenge I've 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, I didn't do what I should have done. Isn't it Amazing how hindsight's 20 20? I wish I would have sought out those close friends and they, they would check on me. And what would I, 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, that isolating is dangerous, that it's, 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, you need a mentor. This is somebody that's having some success and can guide you. You need a coach who will push you. Right. You and I know word coach means something to us, right? 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 else.

You need to be four of those things that were saying.

That's right.

You need to be a mentor.

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 worked, walk 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. 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. 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. I've got some people with her, with walking with me spiritually. I've got people that are walking 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. Yeah. I mean, that. That's my. 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 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.

Absolutely.

And it just keeps your heart in the right place. Yeah, yeah.

What would you say is your biggest insecurity, fear, or challenge right now? You've been through different phases of your 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.

Right. I think my. My biggest fear is, am I doing everything that I could be doing? Right. I. I've got three boys. They're hilarious. 14, 13, and 11. And these boys are my legacy. I grew up with 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, 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 going to 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. Or something to impact their lives. So that's, that's something that, 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 because he goes, man, you can't write a book.

Really?

Yeah. We were in church, right? I wanted to punch him in the eye.

Can't hit people.

Can't hit people in church. I got to find feeling. That's a sin, right? Somewhere. But, but, but then later on, when I did, when I finished the book and at the 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. His beliefs, 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, Right? And so I just remember that and I go, oh, no limitations. 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 them. 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 got 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. I'm building my wealth. I realize, wow, there's always something to learn.

That's exactly right.

Always stuff. Now there's taxes. Now I've got to learn how to invest my money. Now I'm going to learn what's the right places and all these 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 going to go up. So you can't hide money in a, in a cookie jar and just put it in the around. It's got to grow. So with me, I'm always looking, but I'm, I'm understanding risk more. You know, this, these latest crazes that come out, I just cringe, you know. Cryptocurrency, 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.

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 debt. I am not doing debt.

So what's that mean for people?

That means I don't borrow money. I'm not looking 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, 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 never got my money? Oh, yeah, no, I learned my lesson.

I've invested, I think, eight startups over the last eight years. Guess how much money I've made.

How much, Louis?

Zero.

How much did you invest? Give me a ballpark. Probably not.

Probably about 250 to 300 grand.

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.

That's right.

It's okay if I lose it.

Right.

I met the mindset like I'm gambling.

Right. Well, and that's exactly what I did. But here's what I learned. And you know what? You, 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.

I invest in my own businesses. I also invest in some startups. Startup investing is very risky. Nine out of ten startups will statistically fail.

So I know that when I invest.

My money into startups, a big chunk of this money will I'll probably never see again.

But my goal is now that a small piece of these startups that I invest in will.