Principles For Dealing With The CHANGING WORLD ORDER! (How To Prepare) | Ray Dalio

There are three most important things that are going on to great extremes that have not existed since the 1930 to 45 period. The first is the greatest problem of mankind, I believe. Wow, that's a big statement. The greatest problem of mankind. And it is an exceptional problem at this moment in time. is people having opinions that they're stuck on that they won't, you know, like I have to have my opinion and that's right and so on because it prevents them from resolving it, from moving forward to finding the best answer, from compromising or doing, you know, so like everybody's arguing over everything and they, you know, and it's almost like they're killing each other. And we're in a society, you know, I have another principle, which is when the causes that you're behind are more important to you and others than the system, the system is in jeopardy. So do you, are you just literally going to go fight? So here we are as we think, will we fight or will we have protocols for having thoughtful disagreements and getting past them?

That's why I love your principles and protocols. In your opinion, how has this last couple of years been in the history of investing for you? In the history of the last 40, 50 years, is this a really, really bad time in your lifetime, or is this just another bad time, but not greater than previous bad times?

You mean in the world?

In the world.

Yeah.

There are three things that are going on now, the three most important things that are going on to great extremes that have not existed since the 1930 to 45 period. And it's important to know those three things and then to understand them well.

Okay.

The first is what is going on with money and credit when you get to something like a zero interest rate and you need buying power, the government needs buying power, but they can't tax it and they can't. So, what we have is the production of a lot of debt that the central bank prints money and buys that debt to spend. And the last time that happened, in the last few years, it happened starting in 2008, interest rates hit zero. They couldn't lower their interest rates, so they had to print a lot of debt and the government went in and bought it. And we're coming to the end of a debt cycle. So this is a big thing, because where does the money come from? And who will get what? The government will now determine that, and then they'll print it and it'll devalue money. Okay, this is, and how money flows, a big deal. So that's number one. The second one are wealth and political gaps that are causing great conflicts. Throughout history, there's always been, the main things that everybody's always fought over is money and power, particularly political power. So, what we have is a situation when you have a large wealth gap and you have an economic downturn, particularly if you put a lot of debt having at the same time, you have a fight. I mean, that's been true through history. And it's reflected in the political gap. So, the political gap is, It's classic political that left, right, okay, capitalist socialist. How do you distribute it? How are you going to deal with that? That becomes the other. And how you fight. So that's the second of the two, this wealth political gap that's causing the conflict. And it's coming at a time where we don't have much money. Because we don't have a good financial position. We're printing and then putting it out.

We're still paying off debt still, right?

Yeah, but with made up money. Meaning what happened, like COVID was such a good example. Okay, you have COVID and a lot of people and companies had falls in their income that would be ruinous.

Mm-.

Okay, if checks didn't go out, we would have had a revolution.

Right.

And so those checks and how do you save everything and so on, okay. So, and it's not like the government had real money. Like they didn't have any money. They already owe a lot.

So they just printed more money to.

Give them- so they made more debt and then the government and the Federal Reserve printed it and the checks went out. which diminishes the value of money and so on and changes things. Yeah. So then the third thing is the rise of a great power to challenge an existing great power. So the rise of China to challenge the United States. In all history, there are world orders. What that means are, you know, they're the dominant power. you know, it's like in nature almost, you know, the big bull or something. Anyway, there's the dominant power. And then what happens is in 1945, we entered the American world order. The United States won the war and it ended. And then in 1945, the winners of the world carved up the world. We had 80% of what was considered money at the time, gold, 80% of the world's money, essentially. We counted for half the world's economy. And the rules were set in the United States, basically. That's why the United Nations is in New York, the World Bank and the IMF are in Washington, DC, because we began the American century. Okay? That's, and then, We are now at a time, we've never had somebody, another power challenges us in the same way. There was the Soviet Union, but they were always a fraction of the size economically, so couldn't compete on that same basis. They had nuclear weapons, but they didn't have the economic power and so on. But now we're dealing with China coming on as a power. I spend a lot of time in China over the last 36 years, by the way, and I admire how they're doing a lot of things. I mean, I know it's controversial to say that, but in terms of like, they're a power. Whoa, since I started going there, their average income has increased by 30 times. So they're a comparable power and they're also growing faster. And so that has an effect. So those three things are things that never happened in my lifetime before, but happened before in history, which led me to do the studies of what happened in history and the lessons I could gain.

What is that? Those three things, money and credit, wealth and political gaps, and the rise of China. What does someone like myself or some 30, 40, 45 year old, 20 year old, what should they do with that information? What should they be aware of? How should they apply it? Does it apply to people in America, General America, or is it only applied to the wealthy? What should we be thinking about?

No, it affects everybody, you know, it affects, like we know, let's start with ourselves. Most importantly, forget about the outside thing. Can we be healthy and strong? And what do we need to do? Like to know that you, You have to be in it together. Like if we can row in the same direction, okay? If we can have thoughtful disagreement and get past that, if we can be in it together, like the wealthy and the poor, and if you figure it out, and I know it sounds so difficult, but at the same time, if you read history and you see what happens when it's not, when you have a Civil war, like we could be on the brink of a civil war. That sounds so crazy, but the truth is, in most countries, and almost every century, there was a civil war or a revolution, some form of civil war or revolution. So it's almost inevitable that we're going to have something, okay? You either resolve it or you start fighting so badly that you damn, you really do talk to each other.

Until you resolve it, yeah.

Well, once you cross a certain line, there's no coming back, okay? Because you do the damage, you demonize, and that person's such an enemy, or that class of people, is such an enemy that the communication's gone and the fight, well, you see this in politics today. In other words, is there a respect for the system and a mutual respect of trying to resolve these types of things, or will they go to any lengths to win? Because a Constitution or law will only carry you to so far, okay? There has to be an element of respect for it, right? You think about the presidential election, it's quite something that we as a country, as a people, when somebody might win the popular vote, somebody else wins the electoral vote, there's not even an argument. Like in other countries, you might say, those who had the popular vote would say, what the hell? I've won the popular vote. I think it matters, and somebody says electoral vote and so on. Okay, there's not a question about that. Okay, now when you start to say, okay, is it this vote or that vote or this thing or that, and how far are you willing to go to fight and does the rules matter? When you start to get across that line and you do harm, you hurt and you alienate, then you go to accelerate this process. People should know what that looks like, how terrible it is. So maybe if they know what it looks like and how terrible it is, and they can empathize a little bit. But I see people don't see it. I'm living in Greenwich, Connecticut. Connecticut has the highest per capita income in the country, and it's got the largest wealth gap. Most of the people in Connecticut are pretty poor.

Really?

I mean, some cases very poor. Oh, I'll give you an example. This is the community my wife works to help, high school students. 22% of the high school students in Connecticut are either disengaged or disconnected. What that means is disengaged means they have an absentee rate which is greater than 25% and they're failing classes.

It'll show up to class.

That's right. They show up, you know, three quarters of the time and they're failing. Or that's disengaged. Disconnected is they don't know where they are. They've dropped out of school, 22%, one in five. So school is not working for them. And they're in desperately poor areas. Like, okay, we had the coronavirus. And so her efforts and our efforts are philanthropic. that's what got her involved. They don't have computers, they don't have connectivity, they have problems getting food, they get food in school, they need the food in school because they don't have adequate food. Okay, and this is Connecticut and it's right up the road. So we had to, we bought these kids, 60,000 kids, computers, and then we're trying to get connectivity. and so on. And you start to see this, okay, this is the same world. Now, so I live in one neighborhood with my community, and then there's the other. They don't understand each other. They haven't lived there, they haven't empathized, and in fact, there are resentments on both sides, right? Like the people in my community, they don't feel that, They're very rich by comparison to those other people, but also to take care of their families, to educate them. They have their own challenges, the work-life balance and so on. They have their financial insecurities and so on. So that's what they're focused on. And then they might think, oh, these other people, they're not taking care of themselves. Why don't they pull themselves up by the bootstraps? Do you know what it's like to be a kid growing up in that neighborhood? and trying to, what are you talking about? You can't pull yourself up from, you know, there's a problem. There's not enough food, there are gangs, they even are walking to school, past neighborhoods that are gang shootings and you can't, and there are not enough police to do it, okay? So these two worlds exist, and then the others say, you know, well, here we are, and you're walking around with your fancy cars and your, fancy clothes and so on. And we're suffering, I mean, come on. And so they don't understand each other and so on. We have to get past this. We have to be in it together, I think, otherwise we're going to kill each other.

How do we, what's the main thing that both sides need, whether that be in Greenwich, Connecticut, or in the USA on different sides? Is it empathy? Is it compassion? Is it awareness? What is that thing that both sides need in any Rich, poor dichotomy.

Well, there's the intellectual thing they need and the emotional thing they need. Okay, intellectually, what they need is, and maybe emotionally, the fear and the understanding that where this will lead will be devastating, okay, if they don't deal with it. If they don't deal with it together, and you look at history, you need the fear. You can't give people necessarily empathy or love. You know, we could say, oh, they should care about the other person. Okay, that's too much to ask. I mean, yeah, you know, that's not realistic. Okay, but realistic is that you If you don't, if we all don't get it together, we're going to have, you know, you like all that stuff you got, well, you ain't going to have it anymore. And all of a sudden, the things that are the most basic in terms of take care of it. And then if you start to realize that it's productive, like if you, if, what do you need to be successful? That's all I had when I grow up was, I had parents who loved me and took care of me. I went to a public school, okay? And I came out to a world in which there was equal opportunity. Those are the only things you need. And, you know, health care, but when you're young, you don't need much of that. So those are the only things you need. Now, even in these communities sometimes you can't get the parents, but you can get people who care about them. They're teachers and so on. But you have to try to strive for equal opportunity.

Do you think we have equal opportunity?

No, of course not. Let me look at any of the statistics. I can give you examples. I studied this issue because first, when populism started to come around, and I thought that was, I needed a study. Donald Trump is a populist. And then it's all around the world. And I needed to study the different quintiles, the top 20%, next 20%, and so on. And I saw what the pictures of the lives of the majority of people are like, the bottom 60%. And equal opportunity, no. Put that in perspective. Those in the top 40% spend on average on their kids' education, five times as much money as those in the bottom 60%. It's a self-perpetuating thing. It's not a bad thing. Those parents care about having their kids well educated. So because they do and they take care of their kids, they're taking care of their kids, they're getting them well educated, and so on. But not being well educated means you're not going to have the equal opportunity. And so as that gets narrower and narrower, you have that phenomenon that you, you know, so there are a lot of ways you can measure whether there's equal opportunity. If we, if, but I don't even know we can agree that we should have equal opportunity. I mean, like, I'd almost take a poll, you know, of the American people and see, could we agree that we should have equal opportunity? Okay, that would be an accomplishment. Okay, then if you could do that, Then we say, can I take measures, metrics by which key performance indicators, by which I could say, how are we doing on the equal opportunity goal? And then monitor that and you say, ah, it's getting better or ah, it's getting worse. If we could do that, we'd accomplish a lot.

Yeah, we got to get to that point first. This is fascinating. I'm curious about the mindset of making money. And there's a massive wealth gap. There are people that who are making money and some that seem to be making more and more money and others that are always seem to be stuck in the ability to make money, to save money, to invest money. They always seem kind of trapped in not making it. What would you say is the mindset that wealthy people have around making it? and growing their money for them versus the mindset of people that stay stuck in not making it.

Well, I want to distinguish there's big differences in opportunities.

Yes.

So let's say supposing you have two people of comparable opportunities.

Yes.

And then they were going to do that. Okay. The marshmallow test.

Yeah.

As you know apparently, is you take a kid and you say, okay, you can have one marshmallow now, or you could have two marshmallows in 15 minutes or so.

If you don't eat the first one, yeah.

If you don't eat the first one, right?

Yep.

Okay, once you start to realize that deferred gratification, is going to make you better and so on. And you start to count and you say something like, how many days, weeks, months or years can I live if I don't have money come in? And you start to focus in on that. That's the first step, okay? Like the marshmallow test. Okay, so I want to save. You got to start there. Then if you do that, you're necessarily going to go save in what? And then you'll start to get exposure to how these things are different. Okay, then you start to care. Well, I can have one of these and one of those and you start to experience. And then you start to learn and basically that's what makes the difference.

That's it. So first having the ability to have delayed gratification, then obviously diving in, researching, testing and trying different things, but the more and more you can say you don't want something now for greater later is the essential key.

Well, and what it does then when it comes to the money, that means money.

Yeah.

Now at that moment that you don't want it, you have savings. That means I want savings. Now you got savings. So the next thing inevitably that's going to come at you is where do I put it? And then you get your choices and then you experience it and you learn, right?

Yeah, because there's lots of places to put it for investments. There's real estate, there's stocks, there's building your own company, there's different places to invest, 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 savings.

Mm-.

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's 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 residence 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. 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? You know, all of those other questions. But 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 you're, you know, 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.

Yeah.

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'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 caddying 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, you know, 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 somebody, some other company acquired it and it tripled. And I thought, ah, this is an easy game. and I like it, easy money. But 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 passed 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 says, he said something like, and I'll put it in dollar terms, you're at $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, you know, give me a bed to sleep in, 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 would 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 you could 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 gonna be better. So because of that, you understand that even picking the best ones is difficult, and particularly if you're naive. Like we spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on research to try to give us an edge. Okay? Now you've gotta 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.

Yeah.

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 well. Those would be the most important things I could convey.

I had this dream of playing professional football. And then I made $250 a week. My dad got in a tragic car accident. He was in a coma for three months. I didn't have a college degree. It was 2008. The economy went down. I was living on my sister's couch. She was feeding me. I was making no money. I was living off three credit cards with student loans. and I didn't have my dad as that kind of financial safety net anymore because he wasn't able to help me and bail me out. So it was more like, what do I do? No one was hiring people with degrees at that time, even master's degrees. I didn't even get a bachelor's degree yet. And I was just like, how do I survive? So it was, I don't think if the worst thing in my life would have happened, I want to be here learning how to be hungry. How did I say, I need to go? survive right now and take chances. I think that perfect storm mentality made me into this survivor creative mindset willing to risk it all. Whereas if I had my father to kind of protect me financially or say, because he was like, you,'re going to take over the business. You're going to come work for me. And that was my mindset when he kind of left emotionally and mentally. He's still alive today. But, not the same from the brain trauma, it made me step up as a human being as a 24-year-old and say, I got to learn some stuff.

And that's why I say to young people today, look at this pandemic, this coronavirus pandemic, you know, it's really tragic because it attacks the old guys. But even worse is that baby boomers had it the easiest of all generations. But now their pensions are gone, their 401 s are gone. Social Security is broke, Medicare is broke. So I say to younger people, this pandemic, this crisis is the best thing that ever happened to you. You think about that iPhone. You have more power in that iPhone than I had with my Sparrow Univac mainframe computer. And then so when I meet people and say, oh, the economy is bad, I said, The only economy is between this year and that year. You know, there's the economy out here, but this is the best time for your generation. Cause you're tech savvy. I'm not tech savvy. You know, you got, this was made for you guys. The old guys like me are being cleaned out by the pandemic.

Unless you have a lot of assets that are bringing you in cash.

The way is clear for you. Now the old guys are gone. They're dead.

Right.

What are you gonna do a bunch? you know, so it's really a great time, but exactly as you're talking about, the bad times are leading to the best times. That's it.

Yeah. If you can see it.

But some, unfortunately, as you know, there's a lot of your generation are younger.

They'll never recover.

Yeah. They're gonna see it as the worst of times.

I know.

And they're gonna, they're gonna reflect back to this in five years and 10 years and say, that's the thing that screwed me up or hurt me and, and be a victim to it, as opposed to saying, okay, this is happening and how can I make the most of it? And what's it going to take for me to learn a new skill or get more creative or be hungrier in this time?

Or more important, who's your teachers?

Who are you listening to?

Well, you know, that's why I keep saying to the young, the millennials, you know, if they're a pack of wimps, you know, I meet millennials who are just horrifyingly weak snowflakes, I call them, you know, you They go to college and it's... Forums. They're taught trigger events or whatever, you know, I don't know what they say today, but they've got to have special rooms where there's no whatever. I'm going, holy mackerel, welcome to the real world, you know? And it's other millennials who are as tough as nails. I mean, this is the biggest opportunity they've ever had.

Huge.

So it just depends upon what's between this year and this year, what's in your heart.

Yeah. What do you think is the next step, the first step or the number one step for the average person with the kind of the normal job that they might be losing, they have some debt, they got some credit card, what's the next step for them to not only survive but thrive in this market, in this time?

Oh, I always say quit your job. But that's not, I don't have a job. I've only had one job and I never wanted a job after that because I had to be hungry. Not to say, you know. But we're all different. We're humans, we're different beings. If I show you this diagram here, you know, it's why I created my cash flow board game. Because we have four different intelligences. We have mental intelligence, we have, I don't know what that one is, physical intelligence. You probably have very good physical to make, you know, football and all that.

Yeah.

Emotional intelligence. But spiritual intelligence. So I went to military school in New York. The first thing is spiritual. You know, I become a marine, it's spiritual.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Because you're putting your life on the fricking line.

Yeah.

You know, so Nazim Taleb, you know, he wrote the book, the Black Swan. He also wrote, Anti Fragile. He says there's three kinds of people in the world. There's fragile, and that's what our school systems are putting out, fragile, wimpy, snowflakes. And that's your choice. You want to be that way? have a good life. The second type is that so a fragile is like a champagne flute. You hit it, it shatters. Then the second one is called robust. And a robust person is like the rock. You know, you can pound on them, dump on them.

Yeah.

They take it, but that's all they do. They take it. And that anti-fragile is somebody like you where they pound the crap out of you. and you get smarter and better because of it. So I love Nouriel Roubini, you know, a lot of people call him Dr. Doom, but the way I look at this whole thing, this economy is we're publicly going into a depression, you know, we're not gonna get out of this one.

Really?

Oh yeah. And so the thing is, is this good for you or bad for you? I'm looking forward to it. You know, the last crash was 2008, and I made more money in 2008 than in my whole life. so this one here, 2000, you know, what is it, 2020? I'm going to get even richer, but.

Other people are going to get poor.

And if they're baby boomers, they're going to blame it on this Coronavirus. Oh, my health, you know, that, hey, hit the road, put on some running shoes, change your diet, get some sunlight, you know, get healthy. Don't get. Don't be a wimp, but, oh, no, I'm so afraid of dying. I'm going, you're already dead. You don't even know it yet. In the Marine Corps, we used to call them corpse people.

Corpse, not corpse. Yeah.

A corpse man. No, a corpse man. A corpse man is a person who's dead but doesn't know it.

Wow.

They're so afraid of dying, they're already dead.

Yeah. It's about taking action, taking control of your life, taking control of your health, your finances, everything.

This is the best time to be alive right now.

I did an interview with Dave Ramsey last week and he said, you know, the last three or four recessions or down economies, whatever you want to call it, crashes. He said, I made more money during those times than I do in good times. So, I'm hearing him say that. I'm hearing you say that. How did you make more money then and how are you planning to turn this into an opportunity to make more money now for you? What are the things, the actual like action steps? Is it investing more in the stock market? Is it real estate? Is it buying other assets? What does that look like for you?

Now the lesson is here, you got to choose your teachers wisely. When the market crashed in 2008, guess how much money I borrowed?

A lot.

300 million.

No way. From investors, the bank or how does that work?

Because interest rates were dropping and real estate prices were going to the toilet. And when I walk into my banker, this is what Rich Dad Poor Dad about, Rich Dad Poor Dad is about a financial statement. Income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flow. It's a book on accounting. People don't even know it's a book on accounting. So I walked into my bank with my partner and had all this property that was floating to the surface. And I say, I'll take them off your hands. I just give me the money to buy the property.

Wow.

That's the honies.

300 million.

Give me the money and I'll buy your properties for you.

That'S crazy.

So it depends. And this is my whole thing. I'm now 700 million, almost a billion in debt.

Really?

You know why? Because I don't pay any taxes. The more debt I have, the less tax I pay. And the average guy goes, how do you do that? Because you have bad teachers. And so it's this whole thing that you got to choose your teachers wisely. That's why I wrote the book, fake. Fake money, fake teachers, fake assets. I don't touch that garbage that Wall Street puts out. I don't have a 401k. I don't have stocks, mutual funds, ETFs. Doesn't mean you shouldn't, but I don't need them. Okay?

Right.

And the other part is, look, for young guys, the best teachers are not in colleges. The best teacher are on YouTube. The best teachers are on YouTube. Wake up. You know, those guys, George Gammon, he's fantastic. Patrick Bet-David, fantastic. You know, he's great. Jim records. The fake teachers are in colleges. They're telling them to get a job, the corporate ladder. Patrick Beck David said it the best, and I love that guy. He says there's two kinds of leaders, wartime and peacetime. And a peacetime leader is a guy like my poor dad. He goes through all the right schools, he has all the pedigrees and credentials, he does all the right things, he climbs the corporate or the government ladder and all that. Well, wartime leader goes to war. So, Jobs, Steve Jobs, a wartime leader. I'm a wartime leader. Difference is, I went to war. I went to war twice on the front lines. And I changed, what happened? So, I joined the Marine Corps, I got a flight pilot in Pensacola, I learned to fly, I went to Camp Pendleton, I strapped on my weapons, I go to advanced weapons in Camp Pendleton, I go to Okinawa, and then they send me into Vietnam. And I came out of Vietnam about four months later, back to re-staging in Okinawa, and I thought everybody had changed. I looked at the fellow Marines and I thought, and it wasn't that there were, I had been to war.

You got tougher. You got jouncier.

It's different when somebody's trying to kill you. Every single mission, I went down three times.

No way.

Yeah. And I came back stronger and tougher. So I come back to Okinawa, I got like a week off, and they're gonna ship me back into Vietnam again. I said, what happened to these guys? And it wasn't that they changed, I changed. So what happens to entrepreneurs who go out and they get their ass handed to them and they survive? If you survive, you see the world differently. So that's what happened to you when you got injured and all this.

Yeah.

You see a different world. Whereas some peacetime, who's climbing the corporate ladder right now, they just lost their job. They're sucking their thumb. You know, this is the worst time for them. Yet for a wartime leader, this.

They're excited. They're excited about it.

Yeah, it's the best at times.

Yeah.

If you're an entrepreneur right now, the world's open to you. You're an employee. Your world's dead to you.

What advice?

Yeah.

An entrepreneur can create their own success.

Yeah.

What advice? Oh, sorry, go ahead.

It's a job. They're a peacetime warrior. Remember, see, watch Patrick Beck David, you know?

He's great.

Later, peacetime later. Which one are you? You know, I mean, no, that's, that's what it comes down to.

Yeah, that's true.

So this is the best of times for the wartime guys. Horrible time for peacetime. Right.

And for the people that are the wartime people, what is the best advice you would give them now for the next year or two years to capitalize on how do they make more money, how do they make their millions during this time? What would you say to them?

Who can't make money now, you should hang it up. I tell all you freaking millennials, man. I don't know where it is. I got this iPhone. If you can't make money with that, hang it up. you know, like we used to say, hang up the jockstrap. You're not the team. You can't make money with an iPhone through social media, through marketing. You have the world at your fingertips and you can't make money. The problem is between this year and this year, it's not out here. It's in here. That's why you've got to choose your teachers wisely.

Yeah.

You know, so let me just say it again. The best teachers are on YouTube. So it's the best porno. Take up your mind, make up your mind what you want to listen to. You know what I mean?

We have a choice.

So, I'm just being real to you.

I hear you, man. I hear you. What's the best investment people can make then to capitalize on this opportunity? Is the investment in education?

Left ear, look, if you're poor right now, it was called look in the mirror. That's what I always said to me. If you're looking in the mirror right now and you see a loser, that's what you are. Can't make money in this economy. You've got to change your thinking. Hindsight is 2020, as I said.

Yes. Yes.

That was, if you're looking, you know, you don't have any money, you don't have a job, your boyfriend or girlfriend has left you. And Cindy goes, well, how did I get here? How did I get here? There was a, there was a great book called Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. So he gets thrown in a concentration camp or a gulag in Siberia and he says, How did I get here? You know how he got there? Because he was a peacetime leader. Didn't fight back. So people are being sold that they'll go to school, get a job, pay taxes, save money, get out of debt, buy a house, the house is an asset, and invest for the long term in a well-defined portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs. And I do none of that.

And why do you recommend the opposite?

Because I don't have to do that crap. That's cool, go to school. Go to school, what do they teach you about money? Nothing. Get a job, you pay the highest taxes. Pay your taxes, I don't pay taxes. Get out of debt, well, debt, money is debt after 1971 if you know your history of money. Your house is not an asset, your house is a liability. And why would it invest for long term in the stock market when I can make my own assets? I don't need the stock market. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I create my own assets, I create my own cash flow.

Every day I can- you- mean through your business, through your, your creativity.

I'm an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Most people are employees. They're looking for jobs. I'm just looking for.

So, like, right now, should entrepreneurs invest in, in the stock market? You think if you're entrepreneurial, you should invest?

Look, find a stupid teacher who's going to tell you what to do.

I'm asking your opinion. I'm curious as a teacher.

I don't give advice. You know, I wouldn't follow Warren Buffett either. You know why? Because he invests the money. Why do I let him invest my money? I want the fun.

So what's the investment you make the most in?

Look, please hear what I'm saying.

Yes.

I made a fortune in 2008, 2020, I'm making more money and paying less taxes. It doesn't mean I don't have problems, but I'm prepared for this. My biggest problem right now is because everybody's taking a vacation. I can't get enough product. I'm selling out, you know, my cash flow game is sold out. It's selling out constantly all over the world. All over the world, I get royalties from my book sales. My book sales are going through the roof right now. So I'm making more money.

That's information, yeah.

There's two kinds of discipline. There's internal or self-discipline. and then there's external discipline. So right now, if the world's kicking your butt, that's external discipline. And if you're self-disciplined, the world's kissing your butt right now. It's up to you. So that's why I love the Marine Corps. That's why I love going to military school and not a university. Because I got my ass kicked every single frickin' day. First word I had to learn at the academy, mission. Mission is spiritual. What's your mission? And my mission has always been to serve people. Most people, all they give a is making money. That's growing people. That's called the Federal Reserve Bank, Wall Street and all that. I want nothing to do with them. So I just don't play their game. But you have to get smarter enough to play their game. So that's why YouTube has the best, best teachers. This guy, George Gammon, man, he's great, great teacher. Patrick Beck, David. Fantastic teacher. Cardone, fantastic teachers. So choose your teachers wisely. That's what I say, because I have to choose between my rich dad and my poor dad. My poor dad, PhD, poor, helpless and desperate. And that's what he wanted me to do when I came back from Vietnam, was get my master's degree, get my PhD, and fly for the airlines. If I had done that, my friends who flew for United, They're broke. You know why they're broke? Because Wall Street stole their pensions. You know, it's called an ESOP, Employee Stock Option Plan. The biggest crisis coming up right now after this pandemic is pensions are gonna crash.

That's right, you got it now.

Yeah.

Thanks, why?

Why are they gonna crash? 'Cause they're empty. Wall Street looted them. My God, wake up. Wake up! you! know, there's a better book than that. It's called the Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. It's a big book, get it on audiobook, and listen to it, you know, a couple of 10 minutes a night or something. The Federal Reserve has only one purpose, is to keep the rich rich. That's their only job. So every time the market crashes, as you notice, Money pumps in, they pump the prices up. The rich exit and the poor and middle class who listen to Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman, and their advice is good for the middle class. Don't get me wrong. They're told to invest for the long term. Okay, so what's happening to the poor and middle class with their 401k and IRA right now are set. That's like saying, okay, put the handcuffs on the Titanic. It's going down. Meanwhile, the rich have got their G5 flying in to pick them up and get off the boat. They're out.

Right.

Because the problem isn't in the stock market, the problems in the repo market, corporate credit market, the commercial paper market. They don't tell you that. They don't teach that in school. So suddenly, voila, you know, In September, the shadow banking, which is corporate credit and the commercial paper and the, I mean, the corporate credit and commercial paper market started to go bad in September. Suddenly, pandemic.

Oh.

That is interesting. Funny how that appeared, you know? So I'm not saying the pandemic isn't real. I'm saying the real crisis, it's a smokescreen for the real crisis going on right now. They're stealing your wealth through your pensions, your 401k, your IRA, through Social Security, through your taxes, through Medicare. That's why we have socialism kicking in right now. We have Bernie Sanders and AOC and Elizabeth Warren, hardcore socialists. If you can see, if you really have a financial education, we're going from capitalist, which I am, and nothing wrong with the socialist. There are some people, 20% of the people need to be given money because they're that unable, whatever reason they're not able to. So we should give some people money, but not everybody. So we're going from capitalism to Bernie Sanders socialism and Hillary and all those guys. And then we're actually going to communism. And you can see it right now, 'cause Boeing is asking for a bailout and all these guys asking for bailouts. But this time, the Fed's gonna take percentage ownership.

Really?

Yes, that's communism, central control of the economy. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's coming. But that's what they should teach us in school. And our school teachers, most of them are socialists, some of them are communists. They want the government to tell us what to do. They're really fascist. You know, they're really fascist. A fascist wants to tell you what to do. So you look at this stuff, what's it called? Social distancing? You know, you're taking away the First Amendment, the right to assemble. PC, political correctness is freedom of speech. That's what's going on. and then they're printing money under all this scheme. So if you study real world PC-ness, we've lost our freedom of speech. That's what Stalin took away. And social distancing is the right to assembly, which is why there was a revolutionary war back in 1776. You know, the. The. The Americans were. Had to go hide in a church because the British would kill them if they were caught assembly. History repeats. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but most people are taught this. That's why I love going to military school versus university.

They teach you a lot of history probably.

We're taught military history. History is bullshit. To the victor goes history. So the person that writes history, wins the war, writes history to justify their position today. Wow. That's called his story. You know, as a loser, doesn't get to tell their story. So anyway, that's where we're at. And yeah, I just leave it to your generation. You guys are in the best position ever, because you're still young, you're tech savvy, which, and the baby boomers aren't. So they're all, a lot of them are feeble. and they're gone. So you guys have the world ahead of you.

And use this time to be creative and take action and be bold. And I think I saw something about in 2008 to 2010, some of the greatest companies or the biggest companies of today were started then, Airbnb, Uber, you know, all these other companies.

Bitcoin.

Bitcoin.

2009.

Wow.

See, I love Bitcoin.

What's your thoughts on cryptocurrency? Why do you love Bitcoin?

Listen, Bitcoin is open source. The Fed can't touch it.

You don't like the Fed?

The creature from Jekyll Island, the Fed. The Fed is not a bank, it's a cartel, by the richest guys on Earth. You guys just wake up, you know. So anyway, the Fed is a cartel, so when I saw Bitcoin come out, it's open source, it's people's money. Gold and silver are God's money. So my whole objective is I go through my system of business, but I'm buying gold and silver. I store it in other countries legally, because you can't just move that stuff. You have to move it legally and declare it. I moved my money illegally. I'm gonna get out of this country. So I keep my wealth outside this country. Not because of my government, it's because there's so many people, you're gonna see lawsuits are gonna go up because people are desperate. They don't have any money. So when the economy gets bad, that's why you've, you know, have you been in an accident? Have you been hurt? Let me, I'll come out, sue them for you. So if you don't have the right corporate entity, like LLCs, C corporations, S corporations, offshore accounts, you're gonna, money is gonna be stolen. It's the real game. Okay, your pensions, you watched in a few years, oh, he did tell us our pensions are gone. You know what's going to happen? They're gonna bail them out again. Because if you read this book here, a creature, it says, bailout is the name of the game. You know, back in the 80s, there was a guy named Neil Bush. Let's see, the Bush family. George, George, Silverado Savings, when Neil Bush got in trouble, George and George bailed them out.

But why do you think people are afraid to just talk about money, to make decisions on investing money? They're scared to go earn more. Why are people afraid of money in general, do you think?

Well, yeah, I can tell you, for me, I was always scared of money, and I was terrified of it. So if you look at still today, like I look at the bill of everything.

It's a bill of everything.

If something costs something, I want to know how much it was. And so, like, how much is it? Like, I'm going to ask that question, whether it matters or not. It doesn't matter where I get in my life. I don't think I'm ever going to be free of how much was that? How much was the dinner? How much was the dinner?

How much was the tip?

How much was the coat? How much was the jacket? What did the, you know, me and Elena, like, Elena's like, Hey, it's going to be fine. Look at what you've done. We cannot spend this. And I'm like, how much was it? I want to know how much it was because when I grew up, you had to know what things cost. And so the point, your question about money is a terrifying thing because it's the one thing in life that the NFL is not going to give me the ball. And I'm never going to get a chance to golf. I can't win in those environments, but with money, everybody gets money. It's the one place where everybody gets it, and now what do I do? And I can lose it now. So it's a terrifying concept, like power. Very few of us ever get any kind of influence or power, right? Once you get it, you're like, hey, what do I do with this? Am I going to do it? Am I going to do the right things with it? And so I think people withhold themselves because they don't, we're not educated about money. We don't know where it comes from. We have a lot of misinformation about it. Our parents terrified us. You know, money doesn't grow on trees. Save your money, it'll save you. All these things our parents told us because they were enamored or encumbered with the same kind of liabilities around money. I don't know how to get it. I don't know how to keep it. And the third, the worst part that we're all at is I don't know how to invest it. So what I'll do is I'll Some people get good at getting it. Very few actually. Fewer people at keeping it, but probably more than getting it. There's probably a big group in America that have learned how to keep money. Because they're afraid to lose it.

They don't want to invest it.

They don't want to use it. They don't want to, you know. You know, Kanye talks about this, how white people, how white people save all their money and they just keep it. They just store it. Like I had an uncle, he buried everything he ever made. It went in the vacuum.

Wow.

The other uncle was, he was a guy that bought, he worked hard, very, very frugal, Italian descent, and he would buy real estate, but it was always buy low and sell high. He actually never sold anything, but that was a concept, buy low, buy the cheapest, lowest, get everything on a deal. If there's food stamps to be gotten, you go get those food stamps. If there's a government deal, get it. If it's Section 8, and the government will pay you to pay it. So both these guys, different kind of mentalities, were extremely frugal. My other uncle worked in a refinery. He basically saved all his money, paid everything off, got out of debt. That was their lifestyle. My dad died when I was 10. So he paid all his debt off, had everything paid. And so that's all I had, right? Everybody around me was like, Get money.

Keep it.

Keep it. Don't use it, you know, but you should invest, but nobody ever learns that third one. And so I think we're just a bunch of people walking around terrified of this apparent apparency of it's scarce, and it's not. And, you know, there's nothing scarce about it.

Didn't they just print more in the last year?

We printed more I think we printed more money since the last time I was with you than they printed in the last hundred years.

That's crazy.

Since I saw you last.

That's nuts.

So everybody should have got a pay raise. And I know people are scared of the bubble right now. They're like, oh my God, man, things have to... Real estate's too much and stocks are too much. None of this stuff has gone up equal to the amount of money printing. So if the print is this high, you know, if the print is that high and inflation that we're hearing about all the time is this high, you'd have to assume it would have at least this far to go. But that's only because people don't understand when you print this much money, you need to multiply times nine. Because money, when money's printed, when you take your money to the bank, When I take the money that you're gonna give me for this great interview today.

And I take it to the bank.

As soon as it goes into the bank, the bank gets notified, and the bank now has the ability to loan that money out nine times. Nine times.

Nine times.

So they don't keep money, okay? So if you put a million dollars with the bank today, they're gonna go make $9 million worth of loans tomorrow. How do they make that?

How do they do it?

Well, that's what they're allowed to do by by their regulations.

They can take a million dollars that you give them. That's why they want deposits so much. And then they can go give $9 million in loans on that one million. That's right.

Within a year, two years, and within six months.

In one day they can loan out $9 million.

When you, this is what people don't understand. And this is what our parents didn't understand, okay? So Bob goes out, Bob or Betty goes out and they work and they do really well and they make $200 grand a year. Maybe they're online doing online sales. Hustle, hustle, hustle, trading their most valuable thing. This is what I did for 25 years, from 25 to 51 years old. Spent my most valuable asset time to get money terrified, terrified every second of every day. That's really what's driven me the whole time was Tara. Like when you don't know, you're gonna be scared. So I'm going out to get money. I won't spend any of it. Because I'm terrified if I can't, I don't know how to get more. I'm worried I can't keep getting more. So then I get the money and then I rush off and spend my most valuable asset time again to bring it to the bank.

And then they go multiply it.

Dude, they're telling me to save it and they don't. And so when I quit listening to every, everybody that's got an opinion about money online, or my neighbors or my uncles. And I started saying, what are they doing? When I quit studying the influencers and started studying the banks, Goldman, JP Morgan, KKR, there's just an endless list of these guys. You start studying those guys, Elon, study Elon. Elon doesn't keep any cash. He thinks the whole thing's a joke, which is probably right. So, so what does he do? He reinvests everything. He's not paying debt off. He's accumulating debt. But Apple has debt, Google has debt, Facebook has debt, and they have cash reserves that are the biggest cash reserves on planet Earth. They could pay cash for everything.

Why do they don't? Why do they get debt when they have all that money? Exactly.

Why do they do that? Because, because if I take, if I take, man, you got a little white boy God dang, okay? So if I take, Apple just did this, okay? I want to make a $90 billion purchase. I want to make a 90 and they're like, yeah, we got the cash for that. In fact, we have cash plus another 50%. We got plenty of cash to do this.

Okay?

And then one of their people says, okay, bro, you do that, that is not a tax deductible event. What we should do is we should go, keep this and go borrow 90 billion. Really? At like 0.005%. Like they're gonna pay a half of 1% for this debt. Maybe they pay 1%. Who cares? They're like, I don't care. It's a tax deduction anyway.

Interesting.

So now they have the best of both worlds. They have their cash and they have debt. Now back in, when I was growing up, this debt would cost 10, 12, 15, 18%.

It's so cheap now.

This debt, 'cause we print money. Money is not scarce, like our parents told us. Like, well, I was growing up, I bet you I heard at least from my mother from the age of 10 to 15, if I didn't hear this 500 or a thousand times, I never heard it once. We don't own the electric company. Turn those lights out, boy. I still have that going on today. My dad, my mom told me my dad would, because he worked so hard, dude. He was so like, oh, I finally got it. I finally made it. Now I gotta protect it. He got stuck in the second piece keeping it. It's an emotional keep. And so it's not a rational thing, 'cause you're hoarding now. Still today, man, it's tough for me to buy blue jeans if they're not on sale. I'm like, this is stupid, man. I'm just gonna wait. Right. You know, so you know what I'm saying, but it's really stupid that I even worry about it.

Right.

And I'm not saying on the come up, I think you should worry about it.

Right.

But there needs to be where you.

Can turn that switch off.

Mm-. If you could give, you said there's a lot of misinformation and people just aren't educated on money in general when they're growing up, or there's just a lot of information out there.

Misinformation, I think the misinformation is more, it's not a financial illiteracy, it's a financial It's almost like we've been hypnotized with the wrong set of rules.

So if you could only share three pieces of information to your kids or the younger generation or anyone stuck on hoarding and keeping money, what would you say would be those three things that you would share to change the philosophy and mindset around the fear of money?

Well, I think number one is there's.

A bigger.

Problem with hoarding in this country than there is with spenders. But what we see is, what we.

Hear is all the spenders who are getting into debt.

Yeah.

Oh my God, you know, he did this and he's overspending. But really, really you have more of a hoarding issue than you have a spender issue. Number one, I think people err more on saving and not knowing how to use money than they do on buying Richard's and Lambos, even though you see all that around LA. And I know that's, I know these people are, I walk into Vegas and I sit down at a table in Vegas and I know the three guys playing, they're playing 10 times more than I am. Like they're playing $2,000 a hand, I'm playing $25. I'm like, I know they, I know I'm in a better position to play what they're playing for, but I can't do it. So what the advice I would give people is like, I would just assume that everything you know about money is incorrect.

Everything.

Every single thing you know.

Just assume it so you can get back to where.

So that you can actually have a white, you can have a clean board to operate from. Because if you go out right now and try to stack new information, financial literacy on top of, you know, a toxic foundation, it's all going to get all That's why when I tell people, don't go buy a house, everybody freaks out. They're like, that can't be right. That can't be right.

Why?

Because that's what you've been told to buy a house your whole life, because the banks want you to buy a house. Now, everybody just heard that's gonna say, I just saw you buy a house in Malibu. I can do anything I want now. Right here comes the arrogance. So, but I mean, I'm in a position now, like if I want to buy that house in Malibu, I can. But on the come up, buying a house is not what you should do. You should want One, I would scrape off that you don't know anything. Two, I would invest everything you can in you. It's tax deductible. You never lose it. A person's personal appreciation will always be bigger than any other asset class.

I love that.

Bitcoin can't match it. Real estate can't match it. My personal asset appreciation will always, it is infinite. You know, who knows? I could be the next male Oprah.

Right.

Or somebody watching could be the next Rock or whatever, right? Like that. What is that appreciation value? It's straight up.

Yeah.

So the first thing people should invest money in, even use debt on, is their personal improvement. If you told me you had to go borrow $1,000 to go to one of your classes to become great, and it had any potential at all, like even a 1% chance, of make putting you on the road to greatness. I'd be like, dude, go. You go give Amex or Visa one thousand dollars right now. I don't even care what the rate is.

Right.

Because the infinite return, infinite beats 18%.

Okay.

So number one, invest in yourself. Number two, I would invest in your business, whatever your business is or your department, your division is like the first 30 years of my career. I didn't have, I didn't own a company, but, but I did invest in my department. Even though I worked for a company, I had a secretary. I didn't have the company pay for my secretary. I paid for that. I wanted her to work for me. It was my mom, by the way. And so invest in yourself, you know, like invest in yourself, then invest in your business or your department, your skill set. If it's your company, then invest in your company, even down to zero. Like I wouldn't keep money around. I wouldn't save for a rainy day. I wouldn't have an emergency account. I did all that.

Why not?

Because you don't need it. You don't, you need, you need, what you need is you need hustle. You need other people's money. You need to go knock on another door, make another contact. You don't need reserves of money. So what you need is cash flow.

Okay, so how do we get cash flow?

So you by making investments, that's the third. And other things, other things that don't require my skill set. So that would be the third piece of advice is start investing in real assets. That cash flow, number two, that or B, they can appreciate three that are provide tax shelters. And if you look at those three criteria, Bitcoin doesn't cover it. Stocks probably don't cover it. Gambling doesn't.

Right.

That one gold doesn't, silver doesn't.

Real estate.

Real estate. NFTs don't. NFTs don't, 'cause they don't cash flow. That's why when you invested in NFTs and you're like, okay, they're cool, you're crossing your fingers hoping, but you don't see a check. With the real estate, I'm sending you.

A check every month.

You're like, okay, I just got another check. I just got another check. I just got, like, you don't have to be in mystery. But the most important thing is that people need to, like, you got, you gotta, you gotta know that if you're, and you live in America, and you're having a money problem, it is not because you're stupid and it's not because you're lazy.

What is this?

It's because you have the wrong information.

The wrong information.

If you're losing at the table and there's other people winning there, okay, you just have the wrong data. And I believe that Americans, particularly Americans, have the wrong data about money. That they're financially, they have like, there's medical misinformation, There is financial misinformation in the marketplace that is perpetuated by the banks and the institutions because every time you operate under their hypnotism, you benefit them, not your family.

So if someone's got between a thousand and ten thousand and they're trying to multiply it to a hundred thousand, what would be the steps they would take? How long do you think it would take them to go from a thousand or ten thousand to multiply. And would you say put that all in your own personal investment? Would you put it, invest in the business that you're in? Would you invest it in other things like cash flow, appreciate and provide tax shelters? What would you do?

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

Okay.

And then invest in yourself. You know, now you got 2,000 investing. You go, go, go. You should start making money faster.

Mm-.

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.

Mm-.

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. 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. I knew it was a bad thing.

What'd you major in?

Majoring in accounting. It's a good degree. It's not like just some business degree.

But you should have dropped out of it.

100%? Because I would still, 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. 'Cause I would have had enough confidence in myself. When you're on drugs, you can't have confidence. 'Cause you know you're drugged. 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's, 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, then I gotta hire me.

I didn't even worry about any of.

That, 'cause 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 gotta keep investing in you until like, oh, now I'm making $3,000. 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 the 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. Yeah. I'm 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 a, I wouldn't go look for for an investment right now. I'm gonna 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?

I was 50. I was 51 when we started playing the social media game, and, 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 people started making money.

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 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 blank. 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. 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's everywhere. You can't go any place in Nazi 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. And then that goes back to that thing about the financial misinformation, right? It's like, who am I studying? And that's when we started to open up the funds for I went to New York City to go walk in Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan's offices. I wanted to walk in and see what it was like. These are multi hundred billion dollar companies.

Why is it hard for a lot of people to make more money, do you think? Why is it a challenge? Is it just because they weren't built for it? Is it because they're not ready for it? They don't have the mindset, they don't have the skills, the resources, the people in their life, the network.

Yes, I just want to say yes to all of that because I think it's so many things. This is where we're getting into, I'm not equipped to answer that question and I fear I'll throw some biases in there but I'd have to give that one some pause.

Okay, here's a different question for you. For those entrepreneurs that you guys work with that all of a sudden start to make more, they implement this system, they start bringing in more revenue than they've probably ever made in their life.

Right?

And then paying themselves more than they probably ever paid in their lives. What do they need to prepare for if they start doubling their income, tripling their income, giving them a big bonus check at the end of the year? How can they prepare themselves for the abundance of wealth coming in?

That's a good one.

Where they don't, yeah, self-sabotage, mess it up, then deal with all the people in their life saying, Give me, give me, give me. and hurting all their relationships, which I've heard that happens a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

So this one I feel a little bit equipped to answer. You're prompting two or three points here. So the first is, you know, I have been broke three times in my life.

Yes.

Okay, so 21, 25, and 31. I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. I achieved that goal by 31, so I missed it by a year, but what I left out of the goal I want to be a millionaire by 30, I forgot to say and keep the money. I lost everything by 32. So I went from being a millionaire to $200,000 in debt. So I know this pain all too well. And so that's point one. Point two is, you know, for our EOS implementers, we have over 450 as I talked about, these people earn a lot of money. It's a good gig that we do. We are transforming companies, making a lot of money. And so what I do for them is the ones that reach a certain at a certain level and beyond is I do a special full-day session for them called a Freedom Forum. And my sole purpose is to get them to not piss it all away.

Freedom Forum.

It's called the Freedom Forum. But this is strictly for EOS implementers. This is for our inner sanctum, our love-in that is EOS worldwide. And the reason I do it is because I have the givers, the teachers, the helpers of the world most die-broke because we don't know We're all trying to fill a hole and so we just keep giving it, giving it, giving it, giving it, giving it.

We don't serve that.

So I've watched so many of the thought leaders die broke and so I just really, oh, but I can't disclose a lot of them. So in that, I'm teaching them how to keep the money, okay? And so it's all about, I jokingly like to say, it's not time to buy boats and cars, cars and planes. And so it's this mental shift. And for me, it starts with the end game that just says, Do you want to retire someday? And most people are going to say yes, which means you can live off your money and not have to work. So most people are going to say yes to that. Okay. And so what kind of a lifestyle do you want to have? And let's hypothetically you say $100,000 your lifestyle. Okay. Simple math. So then that means you need $2 million sitting in account on that retirement day paying you 5% and you can live off that and then you need to factor in sit with a financial advisor, they'll teach you this, I don't take my word for all the math, but the point is most people don't get that and they think that for some reason the money machine continues forever and it just doesn't. And so it's a day of reprogramming their brains and teaching them and so once they understand the math then they realize this extra 100, 200, 300 $400,000 they have in their account, the urge to go buy a bigger house, buy a boat, buy a car, buy a this, they realize, Whoa, I can put that toward the 2 million. And so, just a mental shift because most people are conditioned to spend that money for whatever reason and think that the money is going to keep coming in and it just doesn't always. Things change. So, does that answer the question?

-Of course. -I hope it does. -Don't spend it all when you're making it.

-Oh, Oh my God. Yeah, sock it away, sock it away, sock it away. That's the best book I've ever read on the psychology behind it. The people that you don't think are millionaires are millionaires and the people that you think are millionaires are not millionaires. That's true.

Yeah.

Who wrote that book?

Is that a... Two gentlemen and I.

Cannot remember their names. Millionaire Next Door, a masterpiece.

It's kind of like the Millionaire Next Door that has like a 20-year-old car and, you know, changed my life in.

My late 20s for sure.

My dad never bought a new car. He always bought used and had like this, you know, old, oldsmobile that he would drive. Yeah. Yeah. He was just always kind of reinvesting his money. So in properties or whatever it might be. So I love this. What else do we, what else do entrepreneurs need to know? Yeah.

Well, so let's, so we're going down these five pieces of content we've been talking about.

Right.

So entrepreneur, leap. Rocket Fuel Traction slash EOS, EOS Life. Now, the fifth is like the aha, wahla moment, the icing on the cake, and it's called 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing youg Energy. And this is actually in the EOS Life book. So I decided to do something very weird, and that's add a free mini book to the back of a book. It's the last 30 pages. And the way I describe it is there's nothing else you need to do with what we talked about. Again, as an entrepreneur or any being all the way up to living your ideal life. But then I call this one living your optimal life because if now you want to take it to a whole 'nother level, I believe we are all balls of energy, okay? And we are pure energy. That's just my belief and I believe that we are all connected. And so, life will be pretty damn good if you just do everything we talked about. But to add this last little piece, What happened with this is going back to the EOS conference that fourth year, I didn't want to teach EOS life anymore and I got very vulnerable. And so this only goes back two or three years ago. This is not very, maybe two years ago. And I decided I am going to teach the 10 disciplines I have lived by in my life for two to three decades that magnify my energy 10x. And so in addition to living this great life, then there's this way to boom, explode your energy to a whole other level. And so that's what it is. It's teaching 10 very specific disciplines to live by every single day that will take your energy to a whole another level.

I love it. You've got a lot of great disciplines here. Knowing yourself 100%, learning to say no often, all these different things. Prepare every night. I think a lot of people talk about the morning routine, but the evening routine is something that I focus on a lot, which is what am I going into? Well, first I reflect on the day and I share three things I'm grateful for with my girlfriend and she shares as well. So we really focus on gratitude and appreciation. I think when we focus on appreciation, we appreciate into something greater. We focus on all the good, even if it was a stressful day, it's a man, but there's three powerful things that happened. And that brings us into a peaceful night of sleep. And then I start to really prepare of like, what's the main thing I want to take on the next day? I look at what am I, who am I interviewing, what's happening, and I get myself ready to be focused for those 24 hours, for those 18 hours or whatever. And I think that is something a lot of people miss out on. They just go to bed. You know, they don't reflect another day, they don't think about tomorrow, and I'm not sure your specific Preparation strategy.

You nailed it.

Yeah, so if we could just go a little bit deep into it for about two minutes. As I go into these, the way I look at it is for your audience, they're driven people. These are successful people. And so this makes an assumption that you've got the basics down. In other words, you're eating right, you're exercising, you're sleeping well, and you have work ethic. Then we're gonna take and magnify all of that. So you're a racehorse, as I like to describe it, and I'm going to help you run faster and longer. So this discipline that you're on, which is discipline number eight, is prepare every night. And so my business mentor taught me this at 25 years old. I've been doing it every night for now almost 30 years. And you're exactly right. It is before your head hits the pillow, somewhere between five o'clock and your head hitting the bed, whenever your day ends, you have to sit down for 15 to 30 minutes and prepare for the next day and just lay out in a sequential and a linear fashion your day, time blocking your meetings, your appointments, your calls, your projects. And so you're just laying out the whole day so that when your head hits the pillow, you took the words out of your mouth. Those words are in the book right there. You will sleep better.

Yes.

So what does that do for your energy? You will literally wake up with ideas and solutions solutions to projects you're working on the next day because your subconscious is going to work on them because you prepared so well and your energy will go through and your creativity will go through the roof because what happens is you wake up the next day and you hit the ground running. And there are people that say, oh no, I'd like to wake up and let the day come at me. So if you wake up and you start checking emails or you walk into the office, you have lost all control of your day. And so this is you taking control of your day. and managing your energy and you will be, I want to say twice as productive. But who knows the math, but you'll be much more productive.

This is an interesting one right here. You know, and you're, I won't go through all these, but number one, you say 10-year thinking, it's really getting clear on the next 10 years and kind of where you want to be in 10 years and reverse engineering in a process that you talk about in here, which I think is really cool.

But let me say one thing to that, okay? Because it's a little more robust than that. And I learned this at 35. So, I've only been practicing this one for 19 years. But oh my God, was it transformative. And so, the whole idea is to shift your thinking from now, now, now. This year, got to have it now. Got to get it done now. This most driven people. Most people listening, we're so impatient. We want everything now. If you can shift your thinking to 10-year thinking, not as much 10-year goals. But I urge when I'm doing this talk you to write down a 10-year goal to get your brain to shift to that. But it's thinking about everything in your life in 10-year time frames. There's thinking out there that says 25-year thinking. There's thinking that says 100-year thinking. I just want you to start with 10 right now and if you will do that, all I can tell you is what happened for me. And what happened for me is this peace and calm came over me. I felt less urgent. I started making better decisions. and ironically, I got there faster. When you're in that now, now, now mentality, you're making bad decisions. And so when every decision in your life is now a 10-year decision, oh, it's just so, so much better. I can't even explain it to you. And so obviously, I go into more detail in the book.

Yeah, I love that.

Everyone that can hear my voice knows how to do better than they're doing. And they may wonder, why don't I do it?

It's because you're programmed to do what you're doing.

And until you change the program, nothing's going to change.