Lessons on Bitcoin, Money, and more with Mark Moss
A long-form interview (Nicole Benham interviewing Mark Moss) that explains why Bitcoin matters—framing money as stored human energy, the history from barter→gold→fiat, problems with fiat (inflation, censorship, seizure) and why Bitcoin (fixed supply, permissionless, neutral commodity-like properties) is positioned as a new reserve/store-of-value. The conversation also covers valuation framing (total store-of-value assets ÷ 21M → potential long-term price), ETFs and institutional adoption, practical personal-finance advice (three capitals: mental, relational, financial; using debt strategically), Mark’s 2008 wipeout lessons, and broader topics about value, relationships, faith, and societal change.
Chapters
Mark Moss, best selling author, host of the Mark Moss show and the bitcoin guy. Yeah, I feel like we're gonna talk about a lot today.
We had a lot of ground to cover.
Yeah, we got a lot of ground to cover and a lot that we've already covered.
Yeah.
Before the cameras went on too much.
We should have been recording.
I know. We should have been recording. I want to start with bitcoin because we hit 70k today.
Amazing.
And this is the all time high.
It is the all time high. 69 was the previous. So we broke it.
Yeah. Okay. There we go. So I guess I want to start with why bitcoin? Because there are still people that are not convinced who aren't buying bitcoin. Why is it so important that they do?
How deep you want to go?
I want to go deep and if I don't understand something, I'm going to just stop.
I can go deep and I can make it where there's no doubt in your mind. It's the only way possible. Or we could just start and talk about the price.
The second one.
Okay, just start talking about the price.
No, no, no. You want like, oh, was that all one thing?
No, I was going to give you two options. We're going to talk about the price and why it's a 70 grand or I can tell you.
No, no, no. I want, I want like the one where you said where you have no doubt in your mind. That's what I want.
Let's spend a few minutes. I'll build this up for you.
Okay.
Okay. So first, all these people lately are saying, explain bitcoin to me. Like I'm five years old and in five minutes. No, like five year olds can't grasp this concept. So like, unfortunately the TikTok generation today has a short attention span and they want to just read a headline and they want to get all the information from a headline. I do YouTube videos and they're typically about 20 minutes and I get comments all the time. Oh, it's get to the point. It's too long. And I'm like, dude, just read the title. Then like I'm taking a topic that you would go take a six month course in. I'm breaking down in 20 minutes. If you can't have 20 minutes, then go just read the headline.
Yeah.
Read the summary. Like, you know, I mean, so let me give you the shorter version. I'm not gonna give the whole long version. But first of all, you have to understand multiple disciplines to understand what's going on here. Most People. People way smarter than me in the financial system or whatever. But they only understand one piece, and so their head is down. They can't see the forest for the trees, as we'd say. And so you have to understand multiple disciplines to understand Bitcoin. So one would be history, one be monetary policy, one be economics, won't be philosophy, won't be human incentives, won't be game theory. I mean, you have to understand all these things to understand what's going on. Not going to go that deep. So let's just first understand. I make a shocking statement. Nobody wants money.
What do we want?
We want the goods and services that money buys us. Okay? Goods and services is wealth. You see, money is only a tool that gets us what we want, which is the goods and services. So money is a medium of exchange. So in the old days, we'd have a barter system. Hey, I'll trade you this cow for this goat. Well, three goats for a cow or something like that. The problem is what we call the coincidence of once to find the exact person that wants the exact same. So barter doesn't work. So we created what's a medium of exchange? Would you take my phone? No, I don't want the phone. How about 10 bottles of water? So now the bottle of water becomes a medium exchange. All right, so that's the first thing. And so the money is what we use to get what we want. And specifically, it's what we use to store our value until I'm ready to get what I want. Imagine. Let's just go philosophically for a minute. I don't want to go too deep here, but let's just talk philosophically. In the world, in Thermod, the law of energy, energy cannot be created. Energy is only transferred, right? So sun creates energy into the ground. Grass grows, cows eat the grass. I eat the cow. A calorie is a unit of a measure of energy. I eat the energy, I eat the calorie, and then I expend energy to do tasks. Thinking uses a lot of energy. Henry Ford said, thinking is such hard work. That's why so few people do it. Our body doesn't like to spend energy, so we try to build habits instead of using that time to think. But imagine if I had, like, this rare form of diabetes where I couldn't store fat on my body. I'd have to just eat 24, 7 to keep enough calories coming in. If you think about it that way, fat is like a battery. So I don't have to eat for A couple days, I could live off my battery, my fat. As I store more energy, more battery, I could live a longer time. So using that framework, if I'm working for four hours a day, expending energy, digging a hole, and I earn enough to live off for that day, let's say I decided to work an extra four hours that day, I expended an extra four hours of energy. I would store that energy in money. Right. So tomorrow I don't have to expend energy. I use the stored. Does that make sense?
Yes.
Okay. So literally, I'm expending my life's energy and money as a way to store that. So we think of energy storage today. Like my iPhone has a battery and it stores that. If your phone gets too old, the battery dies pretty quickly. But a new phone, man, it lasts a long time. We like that better. So wouldn't we want our life's energy to be stored in a battery that doesn't lose its energy?
Correct. Yeah.
Because when my car battery doesn't hold the charge, I replace that. If this doesn't hold the charge, I replace that. But we want our money, our life's energy battery to hold its energy as well. So right now we use a fiat currency, the US Dollar, or depending on what country you're in, but the fiat currency loses value. As a matter of fact, the Fed continues to tell us that they want it to lose 2% of its value per year, but it's really losing about 10% of its value.
Do they tell us that?
Yeah, that's their goal. That's. They don't do that word. They say. They say their goal is to have 2% inflation. Okay, that's what they, they do say that.
They say that, yeah, of course.
That's the goal. So the. Right now we're on the precipice of the Fed pivoting. They've been in this tightening monetary policy, and now they're going to go into a easing policy, which would be to lower. They've been raising rates. Now they're going to start lowering rates. Right. But they say they're not going to do that. And because their goal is to get inflation back to 2%, it got up to 9% in their official numbers. It was like 20% really, but in their official numbers, 9%. And their goal is to get it back to 2%. And so that's sort of where we're at. So they're telling you that 2% inflation is our target. But if you understand what inflation is, that means their goal is to. To steal 2% of your wealth, or that means your wealth battery. Your. Your. Your life's battery is losing 2% of its value every single year. That means in five years, you've lost 10%. Right. And so I would want my life's energy to be stored in a battery that doesn't lose value. Okay? So throughout thousands of years of history, there's been lots of things that have been used as a medium of exchange. So we've had feathers, rocks, seashells. Gold became that 5,000 years, it was gold. Now, money is an evolutionary path. It's not something the government creates. It's something that you and I choose. What is money? So it starts as a collectible. Oh, this is a really cool feather, really cool rock. I'm going to collect it. If maybe a collectible has the right attributes and it has enough demand, it could become a store of value. You know, a lot of very wealthy people, they store their wealth, their value in old cars, fine art, all types of collectibles. Right. Now maybe if that has the right attributes, it could evolve from a collectible to a medium of exchange. But it has to have money attributes. Those would be. Has to be portable, durable, divisible, fungible. So, for example, money, bananas would be a horrible medium of exchange because they're not durable. They last a week and they go bad.
Yeah.
A cow is a horrible medium of exchange because it's not divisible. And even if I divided the cow, it's not fungible. A rib eye is worth more than the liver. Right. So we want it to be portable, durable, divisible, all these things fungible. So gold had the best attributes, and it became the medium of exchange. Then maybe if it continues on that path, it could become what's called a unit of account. So gold was money for 5,000 years. How much is this piece of land? It's 3 ounces of gold. How much is this, you know, this oil? It's 2 ounces of gold. Right. And so everything was measured in gold. Well, then we got the US Dollar, and then the dollar became the unit of account. And so gold was US$20 equaled 1 ounce of gold for 100 years. So then what we had is all the dollars in circulation divided by all the gold, because gold is too slow to be used. So, like, what happens is we had transactions time sped up. So I could now order something from a merchant. I'm in California. I could order from New York. So that got quicker. But how do I pay you in New York? I have to send gold from California to New York, that takes a long time. So the gold goes into a bank, and the bank uses a ledger. And the bank says, well, instead of sending gold from New York to California or vice versa, what we'll do is I'm just going to go on the ledger and say 1 ounce off of Mark's ledger and 1 ounce onto Nicole's ledger.
Okay, got it, got it.
So that's how money works. So what happened is, in order to get money settlement to move faster, we went to a ledger. Somebody controls the ledger and said, off of marks onto Nicole's. Okay, so what happens is those dollars are debt instruments, meaning that that dollar is representative of the gold that somebody's holding. For me, it's an IOU, right? So at some point, I could take 20 of those IOU claims and go get the gold if I wanted, but I don't really need to. And so dollars are debt. You following me so far?
Okay, yeah, I'm calling you.
The problem is, who controls the ledger? That introduces what we call counterparty risk. Do they really have the gold? Can I trust them to not take more gold off my account and not give it to you? Can I trust them to give it to you when I want them to? Can I trust them not to say they have more gold than they actually do? And the answer is none of those things yet. The answer to all of those things is no. So what happened is, through the early 1900s, the US federal government or the Fed started printing too many of these paper claims to gold, but they didn't have gold.
Okay.
They started artificially increasing the amount of money in the system, but they didn't have the underlying gold. And so what happened in 1933, the government got themselves into trouble, and they owed a lot of gold. And so what'd they do? Article 6102, they declared a bank holiday. All the banks shut down for a week. No one can get their money out of the bank. When the banks open back up. Gold's illegal. You're not allowed to own it, and you can't get your gold out of the bank. Don't worry, though. We're going to give you your $20 per ounce. Here you go. These debt instruments, we're going to give them to you, but they're not redeemable for gold anymore. And, oh, by the way, it's not $20 per ounce or more now it's $35 per ounce. So you just lost 60% of your wealth instantly.
Oh, my gosh.
So we Know that we can't trust them because they fail over and over and over. Then. Now gold is $35 per ounce. So that continued on to the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, by we get to the 50s and the 60s, all these nations around the world are like, wait a minute, what is going on? You're printing way too many dollars. We don't want these paper certificates. We want the gold. So they start collecting their gold from the U.S. france sends their warships over to the U.S. to collect the gold. And President Richard Nixon in 1971 said, Nope, we default on our obligations. We will not pay out the gold. The gold window is closed, and the dollar is no longer pegged to gold. Now this was a really big deal because in 1944, under what's called the Bretton Woods Agreement, the entire world agreed collectively that the dollar would be pegged to gold and all the currencies would be pegged to the dollar. But the US lied the whole time. They printed too many dollars. And when that severed, not just dollar get disconnected from gold, all currencies did. So we're 52 years or now 53 years into this fiat money experiment that the world has never seen before. For all of humanity, it's been tied to an actual commodity. Now we're 53 years into this experiment. So that's the first thing we're getting to, Bitcoin. So we understand that. Now let's just go back to one thing. Let me make this case real quick. So what we had was all the dollars divided by all the gold, right? Okay, now we're at the end of this fiat experiment. Fiat's crashing. Lebanon, Turkey, Argentina. Just two days ago, the Egyptian pound lost 50% of its value to the dollar in one day.
How does that happen?
They print too much of the dollars. That's what happens every single time. Zimbabwe, right? Zimbabwe was one to one with a dollar, and then it was a quadrillion to one to the dollar because they printed too many. Because everything's a ratio, everything's a trade, Right? Right. Okay, so now what's happening? We're at the end of this fiat currency experiment. We have central banks around the world. Japan, China, all the central banks, the BRICS nations, they're all buying more gold than any time in history. Some people think that they'll go try and go back to a gold standard. Look, FIAT doesn't work. We have to go back to something like gold. We need a reserve asset that we can peg to. So how would that work to go back to gold? Well, you would go, well, shoot. We printed actually, let me give you an example. I have a story for that. Let me give you an example. At the end of World War I, Germany was at war with France and England. England had printed way too much currency to go to war. At the end of the war, Winston Churchill met with John Maynard Keynes, who set the economic policy. The father of Keynesian economics is what we have today. And Keynes told Churchill, hey, you printed way too many dollars. You now have to move the price of gold up. You have to revalue gold. Instead of 30, it needs to be like $60 an ounce. Churchill said, no, we're not going to do that. We're just going to go back to the old gold price. He said, you can't do that. You printed too many of these paper certificates. I don't care. We're going to do it. That's what led to the Great Depression. Oh, okay. That's what caused this. So you can't do that. So if we go back to the gold standard today, we'd go, well, we. This is how much currency we have, 80 trillion divided by all the gold, 8,000 tons. Divide that up, that's $77,000 an ounce. That's the new gold price right now it's a 2000. We just made a new all time high. It's 2100.
Should we be investing in gold?
No, and I'll tell you why. Okay, okay. So I just want you to understand the mechanics of this. Because we don't want money or currency we're talking about. We don't want that. We want the goods and services money buys us. Right? So if we were go back to gold. That's how it work. Okay? Now keep that frame of mind. Now gold won't work in the future because it didn't work in the past. We live in a world today of instant transaction time. I can literally open my phone, click a button and have Amazon show up in my house in a couple of hours. And I need instant settlement with instant transactions right now if I have a merchant account, it takes me three days to get money in my bank. Right? I take a credit card, whatever. So we can't go back to gold because how do we pay each other? Like we're in the Internet age today, right? And so that's a problem. So now we have bitcoin. All right, so let's introduce bitcoin. So bitcoin is a neutral reserve asset. It's a commodity. What's the difference of bitcoin versus crypto? So Bitcoin is a commodity. What does a commodity mean? Commodity means that there's one, no common issuer. Anyone anywhere in the world can start digging in the ground and find gold or find oil or grow wheat. Right? I can grow wheat in China, Africa, whatever. Right. One, no common issue. Two, you can get it anywhere in the world. Three, no matter where you get it, it's fungible. Gold is gold, wheat is wheat, right? So Bitcoin, anyone 10 years ago or today can plug in a computer and mine bitcoin. And no matter if you do it in China or Africa or the US Bitcoin is Bitcoin, Ethereum and the other 50,000 cryptocurrencies aren't like that because they were all pre mined. They were commonly issued. So 70% of the Ethereum tokens were pre mined and then released into the ecosystem. Okay, right. So it's not like anybody can just go get them and grab them. You can't mine, you can't mine them. Right? So they're not, there's securities. When I start a company, I create an entity and we create shares and we issue those shares like tokens. Tokens, shares, stocks, whatever you want to call them. Same thing, right? It's a representation of ownership of that. So bitcoin is a commodity. The difference of also that is because there's no common issuer, there's no control over the network. So the Ethereum network just this week is talking about change in monetary policy again. They changed it I think three times in the last couple of years. It's kind of like the Federal Reserve does. They're always changing the supply of dollars. We don't know what they're debating. Are they going to lower rates, is going to be money more expensive, more cheap? So instead of a bunch of finance Wall Street Bros. Changing the money supply, now we have a bunch of computer nerds changing the money supply on Ethereum and fill in the blank with xyz. So that's the big difference. So what the world needs is we need a neutral reserve asset, a commodity like gold was. And we need to go back to that. Okay, so let's think about this. So the fiat currency is dying. We need to find a new neutral reserve asset. Now the world really got put on notice when the truckers in Canada got their bank account seized. Do you remember that a couple years ago the truckers in Canada were protesting the lockdowns. They were protected under the constitution of Free Assembly. They were peaceful, but yet their accounts got seized. And people who had even like teachers and mothers sent $20 to Go Fund me and got their account seized. Right. Or shut down.
I didn't know that part.
Yeah, it was really bad. And so the whole world got put on notice, like, shoot, I guess the money in my bank isn't my money. And as a matter of fact, we don't actually own anything. So for example, you might own Tesla stock or Apple stock or something like that. You don't actually own that, it's owed to you. E trader Charles Schwab owes that stock to you. You don't own it. It's a big difference. Legally, money in the bank is not your money, it's owed to you. And legally that's a big deal. Right. Legally, if you owe it to me, but you go bankrupt, I don't get it. I have no ownership. That's why when you go to the bank and you try to send money to a crypto exchange, they say, nope, we're not going to send money because it's not your money. They decide what to do with it. Right. Okay. So now then, the world really got put on notice when Russia had their bank account seized. There's three superpowers in the world that have nuclear weapons. Russia, China and the U.S. when the Russia Ukraine border dispute broke open, $650 billion of Russia's assets got seized. So the whole world was just notified instantly if they didn't already know. If you're one of three superpowers with nuclear weapons, that money is still not your money. And so the world goes, well, shoot, if it can happen to Russia, it can happen to anybody. So now all of the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, but now all the other nations that are joining Argentina, potentially Egypt, Iran, etcetera, they're all like, well, shoot, we don't want to buy US Treasuries, we're going to buy gold instead. So they're all trying to figure out what they can buy that can't be manipulated like US dollars. So this is what the world's going through right now. So you can understand the problem. So we have lots of problems in the world. One, unlimited money printing. Two, censorship. So they just seize your money whenever they want. Three, permission. So you have to have permission to join the banking system. Russia lost their permission. 1.5 billion adults in the world today, right now have no access to banking because they don't have permission. Are you from Iran or your family? Yeah, yeah. So if you're a 14 year old kid from Iran, you don't get to join the banking System. Sorry, no banking for you. I mean this phone is like the great equalizer, right? I can learn anything, meet anybody, do anything. We were just talking about earlier, people making millions of dollars just off Instagram alone. Not if you can't join the financial system.
Wait, so if they can't join the banking system, where do they store their money?
Well, they have to use a different system. That's a great point. So when Russia gets kicked out of the US dollar financial system, what do they do? They just go die? No, they start using a different system. Okay, so if we're all having a party here and I start kicking you out, and I kick you out, and I kick you out, eventually I'm the only one left in the party and I have no control over you guys. So everyone's been. All these people have been kicked out of the financial system. They're all trying to find a different financial. And this is part of, part of this. So now we have. It's. They print too much money. That's a problem. So we probably need something with like a fixed supply. We have a problem that you need permission to join it. So we need something that's probably permissionless. We need something that has instant settlement. So we need something that can transfer instantly, like bitcoin. We also have a problem that now the global cooperation by the US led order is falling apart. And now every nation is sort of on their own. And now we have all these different currencies competing. Like most of these third world countries depend on money being remittances being sent back to them. Like in El Salvador, for example, 30% of their gross domestic product, their GDP is from remittances. And about 20% of that goes to fees to people sending money, like GDP.
Fees that they're being charged.
Right. So we kind of need something that's borderless, right? And most importantly, in a world where trust is gone, we need something that's trustless. Right? And so then enter bitcoin, right? And then we have bitcoin. So now where, where is bitcoin fit into this? Now there's a lot of skeptics here and I understand that a lot of people say, but, but bitcoin's not a good. Bitcoin's not. Peter Schiff would say it's not a medium exchange. Show me where you can go into downtown L. A and use bitcoin. Bro, it's been like 15 years. Like remember I said it's an evolutionary path, like give it some time. We Fiat is really good for spending bitcoin is really good for savings. So right now it's taking this, this store of value or the savings role. However, a lot of people today still think it's like stupid Internet money, it's a scam, why would I hold it? But the largest asset manager in the world, blackrock, a quasi arm of the government, the head of that, Larry Fink, they opened up a Bitcoin etf. He went on CNBC and said it's a flight to safety. If he's saying that, I hate to break it, but none of us are smarter than he is when it comes to money. So we should probably listen to him. Right. And so now the Bitcoin ETFs are seeing more inflows than any ETF has ever seen in history.
Can you explain what it an ETF is?
Yeah, an ETF is a way that you can buy something as like a financial equity, as a security, as a stock. So ETFs, there's tons. It's an exchange traded fund ETF and so like for example, typically it's been for a basket. So like I could create my own etf, for example, I could create Mark's ETF and I would put in, let's say that I have this end of world scenario. So everybody, every company that I think is building into like prepping for example, and I have a prepping etf. So I just, it's a bundle of a bunch of different assets. I can, whether that's one or two, it's for things that I can't really have. Like I think like nuclear is the future. I don't just think that the, the World Energy association said that the goal is to triple nuclear production in the next 20 years or so. And so uranium is the fuel for nuclear. Well, that's probably a pretty good asset to own. I like to own that, but I can't store that. I can't hold uranium at my house. But I could have an ETF that gives me access to the price of it. Right. I can own gold through an etf, things like that. So Bitcoin is allowing people to buy it as less stock. And the reason why that's important is a lot of people that have 401ks and mutual funds and even, even major corporations that have Treasuries have savings. They're not allowed to buy bitcoin, but they can buy stocks. So now they can buy Bitcoin as a stock. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
The other big thing is that about 50% of people in the US don't manage their own money. It's passively managed, meaning their 401k manager manages it for. Right. And so now they're starting to allocate towards bitcoin and all these people are going to own bitcoin and they won't even know it because they don't even know what they own now. Okay, so that's happening. Where was I in this story? Okay, so bitcoin just made a new all time high. We're at $70,000, which is a, which is a pretty big deal.
Huge.
And as it starts to gain momentum, it starts to suck more people in. Right. It starts to be bigger and bigger and bigger. As it starts to get bigger and bigger and bigger, more money can come into it. So it's really hard for like a trillion dollars to come into bitcoin at the price level. So we need to get bigger and bigger and bigger and it can absorb more money. Where can it go into the future? Let me, let me paint to where it'll go into the future and then we'll dig in wherever you want to there. Okay, so this is evolutionary path. It's already gone from a collectible, it's already gone to a store value and now it's moving to a medium exchange. Now in El Salvador, it's a medium exchange. I've been down there several times. You can go into the bodega and buy your coffee and bagel with it.
Wasn't that announced at like bitcoin Miami?
Like 21, I think.
Yeah, I think I was there when. Yeah.
21. 80% of bitcoin transactions under a thousand dollars are being done in Africa. So it's, it's happening, but it's not rampant yet. But we do know it's a store of value. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs said it's going to overtake gold. So if we look at what bitcoin is, it's lots of things, but one thing we know for sure, it's a store of value. Back to the energy storing my battery, right. So if I look at all the things I can put my, my energy into as a battery and I compare them, dollars lost 95% of their purchasing power. Right. They're losing 2% a year as the Fed's targets. Really about 10% a year I could put into real estate. So most people store their wealth in real estate, but I'm losing 1 to 3% a year just on taxes alone, depending on what state I'm in. Plus I have maintenance costs. Right. I could put it into equities but you have no edge into equities and they're diluting you. And, you know, they're barely keeping up with inflation, if you will. Gold has been the best store of value, but that's even inflating at about 1.5% a year, meaning new gold is enter the ecosystem because they're continuing to actively mine it. And if the gold price went to 5,000 or 10,000, they would mine more of it and bring even more into it. Right. Plus, there's nowhere in the world you could have put gold 100 years ago and still had it today. Yeah, the US seized it 1933. All of Europe's been through war, right? So it's like. So when you look at it like, bitcoin is the only thing that's not losing value. I can take it anywhere I want. It's portable, it's durable. I don't have to trust anybody. It's open. So it's honest. It's an honest ledger.
One question, though.
Yeah.
What do you say to people who think, well, you know, this is really volatile? I mean, I've seen it go up, I've seen it go down. Like, what do you say to them?
Yeah, I say that's. We say it's a feature, not a bug. Volatility, you said, and you're right, goes both ways. It goes up and down. So how do you go from one penny valuation to a 70,000 valuation without volatility? Everything's volatile. The price of gas changes every day.
True.
Right. Everything's volatile. So, yes, as it gets bigger, the volatility has gone down, down, down, down. So at a 1 trillion market cap, we're here at a 50 trillion market cap, the volatility much lower. So it'll go down over time, but let's just go back to where it is. So what? Bitcoin will be a lot of things, but one thing we know is it's a store of value today. So bitcoin is not a new technology that's competing against other technologies. It's not competing against other businesses. It's competing against value itself. Store of value. So how do we value that? How do we know how much Bitcoin could be worth at some point? Well, if. If we were in Silicon Valley 15 years ago and we're venture capital investors, and I say, hey, Nicole, I have this idea for this, this new business. Do you want to invest in it? Okay, what is it? Maybe it's your friend naval. He probably got in on this deal and you're like, what is It. I'm like, well, it's. It's like this app where you could like, call for like a ride. It'll pick you up. Like, oh, like I can call a taxi. Yeah, it's kind of like that, but it's like, easier. And it's like an app. And you're like, okay, how much is it worth? I'm like 100 million. Like what? 100 million. Where do you get the number? Well, taxi industry is this big, van is this big, limos is this big. If we get 5% of all that, it's worth that. Right? You understand that? Okay, so let's think about this. So if Bitcoin is competing against value itself, what are the store of value assets? So, gold. We store our wealth in gold. We store our wealth in offshore bank accounts. 30 to 40 trillion in offshore bank accounts. We store our wealth in bonds. 80 trillion. We store our wealth in real estate. Now, obviously some are homes, but then the rest are investments. Our store of wealth is 350 trillion. If we add up all the store of value assets, we get to about $900 trillion.
I have a question. You mentioned offshore bank accounts, but not just. Not bank accounts.
Sure. Currency itself too, right? We hold money. That's a store of value as well. So we have about 80 trillion in currency. Okay, yeah, so we have about $900 trillion of store of value assets. Now, remember the gold to currency ratio, it's all the gold divided by all the currency. Okay? So what we have is we have all gold was the store value. We have all the store value divided by all the Bitcoin.
Right.
900 trillion divided by 21 million equals 43 million per Bitcoin.
43 million per Bitcoin.
That's if or when Bitcoin makes the full evolution all the way to becoming a unit of account. You see right now, how much is oil? $80 a barrel. How much is the median home price in the US? 350,000. How much do you get paid? $32 an hour. Everything in $$$. But eventually I believe, and many people believe, that bitcoin will reprice everything and will become the new unit of account. And then you divide the wealth by the currency. Just like if we went back to the gold standard today.
Okay, wow. So what do you think Bitcoin is going to be worth in like a year, five years, 10 years? You know what I mean? Because you talked about the evolution of it.
Yeah. So the evolution. So the evolutionary path. So we don't know. And first of all, I would just say anybody who's tracking their wealth in months and quarters and years is never going to make it okay. The other thing I would say is that you need to learn to think about it differently. So whenever somebody asks me, mark, at what price will you sell your Bitcoin? You have no idea the game that we're playing. The goal is not to get more dollars. The goal is to buy assets. The goal is to earn dollars and turn dollars into assets. And the goal is for me to look at my balance sheet or my scorecard every month and see my assets going up and to train my kids to take over my assets and build on top of those and on and on and on. That's the goal. Not to sell assets for dollars. So the goal isn't to sell assets. The goal is to buy assets. So we create wealth by providing value. And this is a conversation I want to have with you. We talked earlier about creating value and different ways that we can think about creating value. But we solve problems in the world, we create value, we earn money, and then we save that money back to the battery. So I like to think of my. I like to think of it as creating wealth through my business. And then I don't invest money. I save money. I save it in real estate. I save it in bitcoin, I save it in some gold. It's not investing in real estate, it's saving.
It makes sense. But it's funny, because I always hear people say, you don't want to save, you want to invest.
No, it's semantics. I mean, it's saying the same thing. The reason why I like to think of it as savings is because I'm actively trying to make money, or I'm actively am making money in my businesses. Nobody invested their way to wealth. Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time, still goes to work every day at a business called Berkshire Hathaway. Ray Dalio went to work every day at a company called Bridgewater Capital. Right? Nobody invested the way to wealth. Now, obviously, there's a couple VCs, but even those guys made their wealth first, right?
And then invested.
And then invested. And they run it as a business. So we need to think about our wealth in two parts. One, I have to create wealth by solving problems, putting value into the world, and then I live on what I need, hopefully less than I earn, and then I save the rest in things that will continue to increase my purchasing power into the future.
Okay, got it.
That's the investment part, because I want my stored value to Buy me more goods and services in the future instead of less. If I store $100,000 in the bank today, in five years from now, it buys me $50,000 worth of goods. If I put 100,000 in Bitcoin today, it'll probably buy me $5 million worth of goods in the future. Right. So that's like the difference. So I think, if I, if I had to say, I think, you know, we're going into the having right now. So that means the new bitcoin will never have more than 21 million, but there it's still being issued. So we have about 900 new bitcoin per day come into the ecosystem. That's the inflation rate and it caps at 21 million. It's about 100 years from now. Every four years the new amount of bitcoin being released gets cut in half. So that's happening next month in April. So we'll go from 900 a day to 450 a day and then we'll keep going half, half, half, half. So historically of the last halving cycles we've had, we've reached a new all time high. 18 months from the halving point. So that puts us about 18 months from now. Bitcoin should have a top. So you asked in a year. Let's just go out to the year and a half and I would say we're probably in the 150,000 range. A lot of people think we'll be a lot higher than that. 250, 300, we don't really know. None of us have a crystal ball. What you can do is you can look at, you know, sort of the patterns that it's had in this, in the, in the, in the previous having cycles and you can sort of chart it out. But, but you know, the volatility was less on the last one. Some people think it'll be more on this one. So we don't really know. I think 150 is pretty conservative. Which today we're, you know, we cross 70. So it's still a double from here. Right. I think by the end of the decade I think we could be at a million per bitcoin. Yeah.
Wow.
Which is like six, seven years from now. Right. So I think, I think we could be there and back to the repricing assets. That's probably not in my lifetime. That's probably 60 to 80 years out.
But I have no crystal ball repricing assets.
Right. Where, where it becomes the unit of account.
Okay, got it.
Right. Where instead of like pricing things and, well, how many pesos and how many yuan and how many yen and how many dollars? It's just like, just in bitcoin, where.
Do you think it's going to like, what country is going to start adopting? I know.
Well, they already have, right, so.
Yeah, yeah, so.
So, I mean, I think there's a lot of countries that are probably doing it that aren't talking about it, but obviously El Salvador was the first one that publicly came out and said that. They were of course ridiculed and mocked, but they have completely turned the country around. They've attracted massive amount of, not just tourism, but now investment capital businesses. They're blowing up. They're now selling their own bonds, they're raising money, Their credit went through the roof. They bought a bunch of bitcoin, which they were ridiculed for. And now they've made a ton of money on their bitcoin. And bukele, the president there, man, what a legend he is. He's just trolling. He's like Elon Musk just trolling people on Twitter. So good. And now he's going to. All the, not all, but several other nations are like, hey, come on, show us what to do. So just this week he was in, I think in the UAE and he was showing them what to do with their sovereign wealth fund. He's been talking to all these different nations, Mexico, Argentina, et cetera. And I'm guessing they're all doing it. You know, they just haven't all come and formally made the announcement. But we do know like Qatar and some of these nations are mining bitcoin. We know that.
Right?
We know Saudi Arabia is working on setting up bitcoin mines. So if they're working on bitcoin mining, I'm guessing they're putting that into their treasury. We just don't know the official numbers. So I, I think it's, it's happening a lot more than most people realize at this point. The United States owns a ton of bitcoin through seizures and things like that, that they've got the bitcoin, they've talked about selling it off. You know, we'll see where they're at. I think a lot of nations probably own it and haven't talked about. I'm guessing China probably owes a whole bunch. Owns a bunch as well. The thing is, and I said you have to know all these different disciplines. One is game theory. So game theory is whoever gets in first, like the game of musical chairs. Whoever gets in first has the, has the advantage. And so you Know, hopefully, you know, the US is. Is doing something about it. You know, the US has the ability to print the dollar, so they could print a bunch of dollars and buy a bunch of Bitcoin if they wanted. But, yeah, we'll see how that shakes out.
Wow. I want to go back to value.
Yeah.
Let's talk about value, how you create it, what it is.
Yeah, Value is a big word, right? It's like, what does it mean? There's a lot of definitions of that, but I think of value as, am I providing value? Am I helping somebody? Am I solving a need? Right. So we had talked about it earlier in a sense of, like, relationships and how we can provide value through a relationship. So, for example, you're my friend. I come and help you move. I provided value to you, or you had a bad breakup, and I give you a shoulder to cry on, or you're sick, and I bring you a meal. Right.
You literally did give me a shoulder to cry on the day we met.
I did, Yeah, I did. I did. So those would be all ways that you can provide value. Right. But it's like, I'm solving a problem, I'm serving a need. That's really what it comes down to. Right. And so the bigger the problem that you solve, the bigger the need, the more value provide, the more that you make. And this is the number one thing that kids have to learn, high schoolers need to learn. The more value provide is the more money you can make. If you work at McDonald's and you help one person place an order, you've provided very little value. As a matter of fact, that person would probably rather just deal with an. I bet if I do brain surgery and I save somebody's life, I've provided way more value. So I can make $1,000 an hour instead of, whatever, $20 an hour. The difference is, even though I'm making $1,000 an hour, I'm only giving value to one person. Now, if I create a platform where people can buy and sell goods and millions of people become millionaires on my platform, like Jeff Bezos, I can become enormously rich like Jeff Bezos, because he provided enormous value to a lot of people. So a big problem to a lot of people. So that's kind of where I think about value. So if people would just train their brain, specifically, like I said, high schoolers. But anyone that needs this is like, just think about it. If you want to make more money, you have to provide more value. Great. How do I do that? Well, you do that by Having skills and mental, I call it mental capital. This is a topic that I'd like to get into. I think there's three types of capital. I wrote a book, best selling book called the Uncommunist Manifesto. And it was sort of a rebuttal. It wasn't a tit for tat, but it was just a different, a better version of a Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. And in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto he got a lot of things wrong. And I give him credit because of where he was at that point of history and whatnot. But one of the things that he says is that the poor people have no capital, all they have is their labor. But he's just so wrong. We have three types of capital. There's mental capital, that's my emotional intelligence, that's my skill set, that's my mental capital. Two, I have relational capital. There's one that we talked about earlier. And then the third one is finally financial capital, which is what he said. They don't have financial capital, all they have is their labor. No, they still have mental and financial capital. And here's the thing about this, that while everybody's focusing on I need more financial capital, I need more money. Takes money to make money, I ain't got no money, what do I do? Woe is me. So they're all trying to figure out how to make more money. That's actually the least important one of the three.
What's the most important one?
The most important one is probably relational capital. It's a, it's maybe a toss up because it's really, it's financial capital plus. I'm sorry, it's, it's, it's a mental capital plus relationship capital equals financial capital. So let me give you an example. I came out of high school, I started buying bank owned repos right down here, downtown Los Angeles. I didn't even know what I was doing. I was too dumb to know otherwise. I started the bank was given to me at $0. We were rehabbing them, we were selling them. Made a bunch of money building from the ground up. I built two different businesses, had big exits, had a Fortune 500 exit. I crushed it. 2008 came along and wiped me out. So I went. Completely? Yeah, completely. I was young and dumb. I grew up racing dirt bikes. I still race dirt bikes. I, I've, I've had eight major surgeries. I have metal in all my limbs. So I, I'm very risk adverse or risk tolerant, I should say. And I had just known this boom and Bust. Everything I touched had done very, very well. And I, you know, I didn't know what I know now. And I just, yeah, I got, I got wiped out in 2008. Right. We can get into that if you want. But the point of the story is I had to. Not only did I lose an eight figure portfolio, now I'm millions of dollars in the hole. And even worse than that, I had sold all my rental properties, I had sold my businesses, so I had no income. So now here I am, I have no money, I'm major in debt, I'm married, I got a kid, and I don't know what to do, and I have no income. What do I do? Well, I had no financial capital, but what I did have is I still had the mental capital and I still had my relationship capital. So one of my friends that had a mortgage company said, hey, we make a few thousand dollars in every mortgage deal. If you could help me generate leads and I close them, I'll share the revenue with you. So I had mental capital to know how to generate leads, and I had the relationship with him, and I was able to start printing money immediately. I didn't need the money, I didn't need the financial capital.
Yeah.
And so I think everyone's chasing money, but they don't realize that the money is the byproduct of the relationships and the skills that I have.
So much more important.
So much more important. So then one question might be, well, how do I get relationship capital and I get mental capital and what skill set should I learn?
That's. That's a big question.
Yeah.
That people have no idea.
What skill set should I learn?
Yeah.
A mutual friend of ours, Cody Sanchez, she said when people ask me what type of business should I buy, she helps people buy businesses. For those that don't know, she says, when people ask me what type of business to buy, I say, that's the wrong question. The right question is, how can I get enough information to where the point of knowing what business to buy is obvious to me. So I'd say the same about skills. Skills. It's not. What skill set should I learn? You need to go learn all the different skill sets until the one becomes obvious to you. Because we're all different. We all have different DNA. Right. I particularly to help people kind of narrow this down, I would say that I want to be the closest I can to the money supply. Okay. Okay. So that means typically skills around sales and marketing.
Okay.
So if I, if I said, nicole, if I bring you a million Dollars. Before the end of the year, Would you give me 100 grand of it?
Yeah.
Of course you would.
Of course I would.
Everybody would.
Anyone would.
Anyone would.
Yeah.
And how could I do that? Well, if I had skills around sales and marketing. Hey, Nicole, check it out. I'm gonna launch a new product for you. I'll create the whole digital course. It's gonna be about how to start a podcast and how to build relationships, and I'm gonna build a course around it. And maybe this is a good idea for you. I'll build the funnels, I'll build the course, I'll run the Facebook ads, and I'm gonna. I think I do a million dollars and just give me a hundred grand. Would you do that? Deal.
Absolutely.
Great. I could do that. Because that's what I do. I've generated $30 million in the last couple years doing that exact thing.
Eight million? No. How much on your YouTube channel?
Well, that was just in one year.
That's crazy.
But, like. But so skills around sales and marketing, so I've developed lots of skills. Copywriting. Copywriting is a great skill.
That's a great skill. I actually have that.
If you know how to write copy, you can always. You'll always make money. You'll never go broke. If you want me copy. Video editing, storytelling, Facebook ads, funnel building, Right? So all of these skills are around sales and marketing, and they're all like pieces in a toolbox, right? And so first, when I first started, back to when I had to rebuild after 2008, I had never actually built a lead capture page before, but my buddy knew that I had built websites and I was in the web business. I had done e commerce before, so he knew I did that. But I had never actually built a lead capture page, but I had enough skills to figure it out, and I was able to do that. And so. But each one of those. Cause then I had to run paid ads. So then I had to go learn about Google pay per click ads, right? But, like, turns out Google pay per click wants you to use their services, so turns out they have lots of help and training for you to do that. Surprise, surprise. Turns out, like, Click Funnels or LeadPages wants you to use their services, so it turns out they have lots of training to help you do that. Turns out Facebook ads wants you to run ads, so they have lots of training to help you run Facebook ads.
So we have all the resources.
We have all the resources. Boom. So, you know, you want to start learning those skills now, which one applies to You? Well, I don't know. If you like writing, then you should probably learn copywriting. For me, I used to like writing. Now I prefer video and audio better. So now I do podcasting and YouTubing. Right. And so it's like you have to learn different skills, but ultimately these have to stack. Let me give you a little better example. When I was a kid, I didn't have a silver spoon. My dad was a contractor, construction worker and I wanted a new bike. And I'm probably 10 years old and it's like, well, I need money. So what skills do I have? As a 10 year old, I got no skills. I had one skill that I can remember. I knew how to mow lawns.
Did you do that?
So I had one skill set that was mowing lawns. And I had a market. What was my market? It was my neighborhood. I didn't have a car, but I could walk around my neighborhood. So I took my skill to my neighborhood. I knocked on my neighbor's doors and I mowed their lawns. Right. And that's just a small example. And that's been my life, is just adding more skills. So maybe I'm very good at fitness and exercise. Maybe I'm really good at diet. Maybe I'm super into biohacking. Maybe I'm really dialed in on macros and diet. And I could help you do the same thing. I could provide value to you by giving you something that I've developed a skill set in. Now I might need to take that skill set of biohacking or whatever and then I might need to develop marketing skills around that. So that's why I typically start there, start with sales and marketing.
Okay. Yeah. If you know sales and marketing, like that's, that's already such a good base.
Yeah. Because if I said the way I look at it, as a business, as a P and L, you have the revenue, the profit, the revenue, and then you have the expenses. I always want to come in on the revenue side, not the expense side. So if I said, nicole, if I bring you a million dollars, give me 100 grand. You already said you would. If I said, nicole, I'll come in here and help you reorganize this office for ten grand a month, what would you say?
No, no.
Cuz it's an expense and you don't need it, but you do need a million dollars.
Yeah, right.
So I want to be on the revenue side. And that's why. That's why if I was going to learn skills, which I do, I would Want to be on the sales and marketing side.
I mean, no brainer, no brainer, no brainer. I want to talk about when you lost everything. What happened?
Yeah, so what happened? Let's talk about, where do we start? So I started, I came right out of high school, started buying bank owned properties, fixing, flipping, like I said, started a couple businesses and I was the benefit of a bull run, a bull market, right? We had 10 years of just like booming markets. And you know, Warren Buffett says a rising tide rises all boats. And so, you know, I was hard working, I was smart for sure. There's plenty of people that didn't make any money during that period. But I also had the benefit of that bull market. So it papered over a lot of mistakes. And a saying that I say a lot now is that smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.
I love that.
The opposite of that is that success is a horrible teacher, right? And so we have successes, but we're not learning because like, even when I make mistakes, it doesn't really matter. Like I went over budget on this project, but it didn't matter because the price appreciated so much, you know, that it just papered over that. And so, you know, you start running very fast, very loose, you know, you start running and gunning and then, you know, you get overconfident. And basically what happened is I had built up. My goal was when I was 20 years old, I'm like, by the time I'm 30, I'm going to be retired. And my friends are like, how dude, you didn't even go to college. And I'm like, well, because I'm doing these real estate and I make like a thousand dollars a month on rents. And if I just get 10 of them, I have 10 grand a month, like I'm good. And I know over the next six, seven years I could get ten of those, right? And so I started building those up and then I started getting apartment buildings and I started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But then, and then I started building businesses. I had a medical equipment business, high tech medical equipment business that I sold off. And then I had an E commerce business. And as things were getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then, I don't know, call it ambition, call it greed, call it naive, whatever it is, I just want to do bigger and bigger projects. And so instead of $100,000 homes in South Central, I'm now building $10 million projects down on the beach in south Orange County.
Money.
And in order to do those types of projects, I need A lot of capital. So let me just sell these rental properties and let me sell this apartment building and let me just take all this money from these businesses and let me just push it into here. And so it's sort of like sitting at the, at the blackjack table or the poker table and just like, let's just go all in. And unfortunately, then 2008 came along. Now, I'm a student of history, I already gave you a history lesson on money and the Fed and I'm a student of history and I realized that California real estate had only ever dropped one time from 89 to 92. And during that time, that four year period, it dropped about 30%. The worst, the worst 12 month drop in history was 6%. So I'm like, what if it's double the worst 12%? What if it's triple the worst 18? What if it's four times the worst 24%? I'm good. I'm sitting on, you know, multiple eight figures of real estate at a 60% loan to value. If it drops 25%, no big deal, it drops 60% in a year. And ultimately what it came down to is I just couldn't afford to carry because I sold all my revenue producing assets and I just had a bunch of debt and I couldn't carry. You know, I had several hundred thousand dollars a month of obligations to pay and I couldn't afford it. And so, you know, we had to start just kind of clearing out properties. I sold what I could, you know, some foreclosures, some short sales, things like that. I was determined to fight my way out of it and not declare bankruptcy. So I didn't. In hindsight, I probably should have. It would have been much quicker and easier, but I fought my way out of it. And that's why I had millions of dollars of debt I had to climb out of at that point. So the lessons to take away from that are a couple of things. I didn't need to go all in. I didn't need to be that aggressive, right? I was diversified. I had rental properties across the United States. I had businesses that produced income in medical that were recession resistant, right. And I didn't need to go all in on that. So that's number one, don't go all in. And so even with bitcoin, we laid that down already. I'm pretty confident that that's where that's going to go. But I'm not going all in. No way the, the, the getting that right or that I should say the risk of Getting it wrong is worse than getting it right. Yeah, that's what I. And I had to learn that the hard way back to smooth seas. Never made a skill sailor. I've gone through the rough seas and now I've learned. And so for me, that those are lessons. One, I didn't need to go all in. I should have stayed diversified, number one. Number two, when you use leverage or debt in this scenario, which you have to use, this is another topic we can get into if you want. We live in a debt based monetary system that means money is created through debt issuance. So if we want to build wealth, we have to use debt. Like Donald Trump, he was called the king of debt. But debt is like fire. It can warm up your house and it can burn your house down. Little kids should never use fire because they don't know how to control fire. Just like most people should never use debt because they've never learned how.
How do you use debt?
Yeah, I'll tell you how. But let me. So that's what got me in trouble. So I used leverage to build my empire up, but I didn't structure it proper properly. And so it burned my house down. I didn't know how to manage it. And the big thing was I couldn't carry it, so I couldn't meet the debt obligations. And part of it's because I took bad debt, I had bad loan agreements, I was using hard money, so it was very expensive and things like that. So that's kind of what happened. Now how do you use debt properly? It's a good question. We use debt properly a couple of ways. So I don't know if it was while we were recording or maybe before, but I, I said when people ask me at what price I'd sell my bitcoin, I say, you have no idea the game that we're playing. So if we think about the game, if I showed up at your house and I and I brought a board game and I'm like, hey, Nicole, let's play this board game. You're like, cool, I'll play, but I don't know what it is. What is it? Okay, what is the game? What's the objective of the game? What are the rules of the game? Who are the other players of the game? And once I know those things, I can create a strategy. Right? Now if I've played the game for 10 years, you've never played it. It. I've probably developed lots of strategies to win quicker than you. Right? Just like the billionaires have developed strategies to make wealth faster than we have. Right. Okay, so we think of the game of money. And I'm not, I just want to say, I'm certainly not saying wealth is our number one goal on this earth. But in the game of money, we have to understand that the goal, the objective is to buy, to build assets, not dollars. We use dollars to get the assets. That's number one. Number two, we have to understand there's in game characters. So like if I'm playing Monopoly, there's the bank, there's the gel. Right. Or something like that. And there's in game characters. So we have, we have the banks, we have Wall street, we have the irs. Right. So those are in game characters. Now while we're trying to build wealth, there's two mechanisms in the game that take our wealth so we have to work against. One is inflation and 2 is taxes. Right, right. So inflation and taxes are stealing our wealth as fast as we're trying to build it. So we're trying to work against the game. All right, so let's think about debt, for example. So there's two ways that we can really use debt. So the first way we can use debt. Debt is by leveraging it to build wealth faster. Because remember, debt, money is created through debt issuance. So we hear like, oh, the Fed's printing money. Let the printers go burr. It's not really how it happens. The banks create money. When I go get a loan from the bank, the money is created into existence. So I get a house, a car, a boat, a business loan, that money's created into existence. So when I was a kid, you know, I'd hear my parents go, I wish we had a money tree in the backyard or what do you think we have a money tree in the backyard? Well, we do. We, we all have money to tree. Cody going back to Cody, she talks about all the time. She goes and gets loans to buy the business. If I want a million dollar business or a million dollar house and I don't have the million dollars, I just go to the money tree the bank and they give me the million dollars. So we do have a money tree. But we have to understand that debt, there's two types of debt. There's good debt and bad debt. Productive debt, non productive debt. So debt on credit cards to go shopping and on vacation and out to dinner, that's horrible debt. Buying a car, horrible debt. Debt, right. Even maybe for some people, buying a house, horrible debt. Because those things take money from you. But if I'm using debt to get more Money, that's good debt. For example, I could, Cody helps people do this. I could go buy a million dollar business that's making $300,000 of cash flow per year. I would borrow the million dollars and it would probably cost me 150,000 of debt service. And that means I'm left over with $150,000 of profit.
Got it.
Okay. And I didn't have the million dollars. I got it from the bank. But just for me putting the deal together, I have $150,000 a year coming in just because I use debt. Right. That's an example. So that's a good way. We can use debt one to build that empire. But number two in the game, the other thing that steals our wealth. Well, one is inflation. So by using debt to build assets, we're offsetting inflation. But the second way is taxes. So if I buy bitcoin, if I bought bitcoin, as I was telling my camera guy over here, to buy it at 15,000, now it's at 70. If I bought it at 50 and then I want to sell it at 100, I could sell it at 100. We're in California, I'm in the top tax bracket. 50% of my profit goes to tax. So I bought it at 50, I sell it 100, I sell it, I end up with 25,000, goes to the government and they use it for things I don't approve of. And I have 75k in the bank. Bank, or what I could do, use debt. So I could go buy at 50, sell at 100, and instead of selling to get the 50k, I could borrow 50k against it.
Oh wow.
Okay. Now the 50k that I've pulled out is now tax free because it's debt, it's not profit. And I still have the hundred thousand dollars of bitcoin that's appreciating at 200% a year. Year. You see, in scenario one, I sold the 100k, I have 70, I paid 25k in taxes and I have no more bitcoin. So when bitcoin goes from 100 to 200, I didn't participate in that. But scenario two, I use debt, I get the 50k, I pay no taxes and I still have the 100k to go to 200k.
Perfect.
So that's how we use debt. Right. We use it to beat inflation and, and, and avoid taxes. The two in game mechanisms that are stealing our wealth.
I remember we talked about this a few months ago, but they don't teach any of this to young kids in school or even high school or college. Yeah, they don't teach any of it.
If I brought the game over to your house, usually the games have, like, a basic set of instructions, and they tell you what the rules are of the game, and they tell you the characters and they tell you how to play it, but they don't give you any strategies. Sometimes the game will say, like, here's one or two strategies. But really, it's through playing the game over and over and over that you learn different ways to play the game. And I think that's sort of how we have. Certainly. You're absolutely right. They don't teach you any of this. Henry Ford, father of the automobile assembly line, he said, whatever, 1908, that if the American people knew how the banking system worked, there'd be a revolution before the morning, not tomorrow. Like right now. Right now. When I explained to my daughter when she was like, 11, how this all worked, she. She told me we were driving, and she looks over me, she's like. Like, why do people allow that to happen? You know, And. And they purposely don't teach you this because they don't want you to understand what this game is, because the game is rigged against you. The good news is, though, is that we can just play the same game that they play. So, for example, we talked about inflation steals your wealth. Why? Why does the government want inflation? Why are they stealing our wealth? Well, the reason why is because they're inflating away their debt. So through inflation, the government's debt gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. They're basically stealing from you to pay off their debt. But guess what? It also pays off my debt. So I can just play the same game as them. I can also take on debt, and I can let them inflate it away for me. So they don't teach us all of these things. They don't want us to play this game. But a lot of these strategies just come from playing the game game. It also comes down to relationship capital. So I didn't just magically wake up one day and know this stuff. I've spent a lot of time and decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars traveling, meeting, talking, joining mastermind programs, hiring consultants to learn this stuff. So it takes time. You got to play the game, and you have to invest into your own mental capital and relationship capital to learn these things, to get more financial capital.
Right. You're friends with Robert Kiyosaki, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I knew that. So what was your relationship with him? How'd that start.
So back to relationship capital. We're always taught, most people are taught that it's not who you are, it's who you know.
Yeah.
I found that to be untrue. It's not who you know, it's who knows you.
Wow. Yes.
Right.
Yes.
Think about that. There's a lot of people that know you. You, but if they called you, would you do anything for them? Do you know them? Have they built goodwill with you? There's a lot of people that know you. Right. So it's not who. It's not who you know, it's who knows you. Right. So I think about it like that. And I was at. I was at a Funnel Hacking Live event. Russell Brunson does clickfunnels. And I was at the Funnel Hacking Live event. And he's on stage and he's talking about. He's invited some big influencer. I think it was like Prince EA or something to come. And he was like, showing his phone on stage and he's like in his Instagram DMS and he's like. Like, he's looked like I DMed him. And I asked him if you want to come speak, and he's like, what is this, Russell? No way. I'm a big fan. He's like, what? I'm a big fan. And I remember sitting there in the audience and going, how would anyone ever be a big fan of mine if I never put out any content? The answer is, obviously they couldn't.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was sort of like this turning point for me where I'm like, I need to start creating content. And Russell Brunson would always say, and I think he still says, if you make content every single day for a year, you'll never need money again. Again. And so, anyway, I started making content, and I'll get to the Robert Kiyosaki part, but I read Robert Kiyosaki's books when they came out decades ago. He's been my mentor. I've read all his books. If you look, if you watch my content, I'm basically just kind of recycling a lot of what I've learned from him. But I started creating content years later. Now, a couple of years ago, I think it was 2020, he was watching my videos and he liked the content I was putting out. And he asked me to come to Phoenix, Arizona, and record Rich Dad Radio with them. And so I did. And since then, we've developed a relationship. And I've been out there many times. We've gone to many events together. We Text on the phone, back and forth, like a, you know, weekly almost. But it was only because I had put the information out there. I shot. I shined the light out and attracted the right boat. So that, that's. That's one thing. But as far as the relationship, it's certainly like a mentor relationship. He's. He's. He's sort of like my grandfather, if you will. You know, he tells me the way it is, and I just take it. You know, there's. There's no. There's no debating or arguing with him. You know, there's like. I like to call it, like, verbal sparring. Like, let's just kind of figure this out. It's like he just kind of tells me. I take it as a. As a mentor student type of example. But, yeah, he's great. He's. He's certainly gotten older, for sure, but, man, he's still so sharp. And the one thing I would say about him is that he really, really, really cares. I mean, he's a billionaire. He does not need to do anything. But yet he just set up a. A new, new house in D.C. to do lobbying, and he put a general there, and he's, like, trying to lobby for education in D.C. like, he's working with colleges and bring. And working with college students to set up education at Caught. Like, he's still doing that for financial literacy. Yeah, but for what? Like, he doesn't. He doesn't need the money. He's not doing it for money, but he still really cares. He's a Marine, and he always talks about, like, values and purpose and like, he's living the mission. The mission. He's living the mission. Right. So there's certainly a lot to take away from that. I mean, I mean, you know, people have a lot of different misconceptions about him or their own opinions about him, I would guess. And I think one problem that I see with people today is that people have lost all nuance. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is linear. There's things I like and things I don't like about everything, like the Republican Party or Democrat candidate or inflation. Inflation is both good and bad. Like, I love Rob Kiyosaki, and there's things I don't. You know what I mean? It's like, so you don't have to be all in on something. So anyway, that's kind of my relationship with Robert Kiyosaki, but for you as well, sort of similar. Right? I mean, you've developed relationships with a lot of people because of content you've put out and positions you've put yourself into.
Oh, absolutely. I like what you said about nuance, though, that we've lost all nuance. Because I think not only have we lost all nuance, as I'm watching these, like, pod, you know, these podcast clips are going viral every day. Everyone's starting a podcast. Everyone has an opinion. And I'm starting to realize, like, you know, a lot of people have great advice, but it may not be for you. There is no one size fits all, you know, so when I. When I watch these things, I always keep in mind, I'm like, you know what? Even if, like, I see 100,000 people liked it and, you know, tons of people are commenting, I've learned to train myself to think, you know what? Maybe this advice isn't right for me.
Yeah.
You just don't know. It's crazy, because the way people talk as if it is black and white. White. As if everything that they think and believe and worship is something you have to think and believe and worship, too.
Yeah. Well, one, everything is relative, so everything is a comparison for humans. So what's heavy?
True?
Heavy compared to what?
Yeah, heavy compared to heavy for you.
Is this heavy?
No.
Well, I mean, it's heavier than a. Than a pencil.
True.
Right. And so, like, we have to kind of think about, like, that. So when someone says, like, what's good? Is this a good investment? What's the best investment? The best for who? Like, the one thing I say all the time is that the quality of your questions determine the quality of your life. And most people ask horrible questions. They're way too broad and way too vague.
What's one terrible question that you feel like a lot of people are asking?
Well, for me, because I talk about investing in finance, the question I get all the time that drives me crazy is, what's the best investment I should make right now? Or what's the best asset that I should buy?
And what's the better question that you wish people would ask?
The better question would be in my situation, being 72 years old and on a pension, making $60,000 a year, what's the best way that I could preserve my capital but still have a little bit of income to survive for the next 20 years?
Specific.
Specific. I'm 24 years old. I make $300,000 a month. What's the best asset I could make to do a certain job, to increase my purchasing power, to protect myself from lawsuits, to, like, what are you trying to do? Alex Ramosi says, what's the problem you're trying to solve. So what's the problem you're trying to solve? So people say, what's the best asset I should buy? I don't know. What are the problem? What's the problem you're trying to solve? Right. Think about chat gbt, for example, or I've been using Google Gemini lately, which I think is way better for sort of like market research and writing. But Everybody thinks that ChatGPT is going to change the world and it's going to make all these smart people, but it's not. What it does is it makes very smart people smarter and it makes dumb people, I think, dumber. And the reason why is because the quality of the questions they ask. So most people are like, I heard that I could just create content. So chatgpt, write me a book. What are you going to get if you say to write you a book? Book?
Who even knows? Yeah, I didn't even think about it.
So, okay, write me a book on dogs. Write me a book on training dogs, right? And think about how much more detail you can add to that. And they think about that, right? So like I've been writing, I've been starting to write my, these prompts, as they say, right? And I'm doing like market research. So I might say something like, you are a financial copywriter. This is the role I want you to be in. Your job is to write financial copy for a website. That's the job that you're doing. The purpose of the website is to sell a financial product that talks about using debt and using inflation to defeat the game and blah, blah, blah. Now what's the purpose you're writing to? And then I'll put the avatar 30 to 50 years old in the middle part. And I have this long detailed avatar, right? So I'll put all this in and then I'll say, now give me three headlines that would attract this person, that would create curiosity, use sensational words, use specificity in the title. And then it gives that to me. But that's very, very specific. I have to know that I need a headline that needs to be specific and curiosity invoking and sensational. But most people don't even know they need that in a headline.
I'm going to get these prompts from you.
Yeah. And then I say, and then that's not even the full problem. And then I'll say, once I have the, once you give me the headline, give me the top three questions that that avatar would have as soon as they see the headline. And then Write me one sentence statements that address the question but create even more curiosity, and then it just pits it off.
Wow.
But, like, that's a very detailed question, and so I get a very good answer back. Most people would never know to ask that question. They'd never get an answer back. So it just depends on what you're trying to do. But I would just go back to make more simple, what's the problem you're trying to solve? And the more specific you can be about it, the better question you're going to get.
Mark, what's the problem you're trying to solve?
I'm trying to solve lots of problems in different areas. So then you'd have to ask a much more specific question than that.
Right.
So it depends. I mean, I'm trying to solve all kinds of problems.
Okay, how about this? Earlier in the conversation, you stopped yourself while you were saying something, you said, and I'm not trying to say, say that wealth is the most important thing we should be chasing.
Yeah.
So what do you think is more important than that?
Good question. That's a much more specific question. You know, people would ask, I've been asked many times, like, how much is enough? Like, what's your number? Like, how much do you need? How much do I need for what? Is, Is there a limit to how many people's lives I can change? Is there a limit to how many churches I can donate to. To. Is there a limit to how many people in poor countries I can help? Is there a limit to how many houses I can help my church build in Tijuana? Like, no, there's no limit to that. So I think the answer for me is different than most people because most people are only thinking about themselves. How much money do you need? I got enough money. I'm past that. Right. So for me, that's why I said wealth isn't the. Isn't the primary game. I talk about wealth, but that's not the primary game for me. It's about making an impact. So one with my kids, right? So start locally. Start with my kids and then my extended family and then my community and then hopefully the world. Right? Hopefully the world. I'm trying to impact the world. I do mission trips to Mexico with my family, and we, you know, build things and donate things, and we go to the hospital and do like, you know, serving ministries at the hospital. We help buy medicine for people that are there. There's just. There's just no, you know, there's an orphanage in Mexico down in. Outside of Ensenada. Every, we do a fundraiser for her. We raised about. Last year, we raised about 400,000 for them. It's a, it's an orphanage that just does kids with special needs, which are basically throwaway kids in Mexico. I don't want to sit here and talk about all the charity stuff I do. I don't need credit for that. But I think that's, I think, the much bigger goal, I think, about money. What's the purpose of even having money? And for me, it's so I can have options and freedom for my family and I can help other people. People.
That's beautiful.
Yeah.
You mentioned church. Do you have a strong relationship with faith and what is it?
Yeah, definitely, I do. Yeah, I definitely do. I, I don't like labels. I don't like labels because I believe that we have a problem with like definitions and semantics of that. In my book, the Uncommunist Manifesto, we opened up the book, me, me and my, we had, I had a co author, Alex Fetzky, and we open up the book with definitions. A lot of times you have a glossary at the end. But like, we want to get the words straight before we even got into the text. And so I like to be clear on that. And I think I don't like labels. I can't say I'm a Republican, I'm not a libertarian. I don't know what I am.
I don't like labels either.
I'm pro freedom, you know, whatever that is, right. So I could say I'm a freedom maximalist, maybe. And so when it comes to religion, the way I look at religion is that to me, religion means act. Acts, service, acts of service. So if I'm Catholic, I have to pray the rosary. I have to go to confession, I have to pray for somebody to come out of purgatory, right? If I'm Muslim, I have to, you know, get on my knees and pray at noon every day or whatever. Each of these religions have acts, right? But the teachings of Jesus are not acts at all. So Jesus says that it's given by grace. There's nothing that you can do to earn it. So when I think of religion, I think about like all these things I have to do, do. And so I wouldn't use the word religious or religion. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the teachings that he gave us in the Bible. He said that the most important commandment is to love God and love others more than yourself. And I think if the world did that, I think the world would be a much better place.
I mean, as a Jew, I agree.
Yeah. So I think, you know, I have a lot of friends that are Mormons, and I. I don't necessarily believe in that religion, but they live by a code, a moral code, and I mean, they're good people because of it. Right. So I think even an atheist would probably recognize that if we live by a moral code would be beneficial. The other thing I would say is back to atheism, actually. I just saw this rant of Joe Rogan the other day, I don't know, and it's been going viral. And at the end he said, I guess we need Jesus. Did you see that rant of Joe Rogan?
No, I didn't. I would love to see it, man.
He went on this rant and. But he was saying, saying, everyone has a religion. If you're atheist, that is a religion. Today we have the climate, people. The climate is a religion for them. Everybody has a God. It could be yourself. And that's what, like, atheism is sort of a thing. I just choose to believe that this world wasn't an accident. I think there was a divine creator. And I think part of that worldview is super important, especially today more than ever, because you have, like, Bill Gates going on TV saying that it's time to upgrade the human immune system. He. Bill Gates needs to upgrade the human immune system. And I'm like, no, my immune system is. Everything needs to be now. I need to make sure I don't damage it. I need to make sure I keep my immune system healthy. But who are you? You're not God. You can't make the immune system better. Bill Gates is trying to darken the sky to make the world cooler. You think you can control the weather. And so what happens is when we have complex systems, the body's a complex system, the economy is a complex system. The world's a complex system. In a complex system, you can't start adjusting things because then we have unintended consequences. For me, we all put our faith in something. And for me, it just brings me, I think, more peace knowing that I'm not. Not. I don't have total control everything, nor do I have to pretend like I can or do and that there's something bigger going on. And, you know, I think. I think that I look at, like today there's this interesting parallel. I was just talking with someone yesterday outside of Mexico City. I'm going down there in a week to go speak at this mastermind of Sovereign Man. Sovereign Man. So cool. He's really Influential in my life. But outside of Mexico City, about 45 minutes. Are these pyramids? Some of the best pyramids in the world because they were abandoned and they were covered with dirt, and they uncovered them in their, like, perfect condition. And I love history. So we went there and, like, why were they abandoned and why are they in such perfect condition? Well, back then, it was the priests and the warrior class that ruled everything. And back then, just like most of history, they believed that when they had drought, they should sacrifice animals or humans to the weather gods to get rain. Right. I mean, that's a common story, right? Sacrifice a virgin, sacrifice a cow, whatever it is. And they were. And they were sacrificing children. They did animals. They couldn't get the rain. They started sacrificing children, couldn't get the rain. They killed all the children. They started getting villagers, children ran out of children. The priests finally said, hey, warriors, give us your children. And the warriors are like, hell, no. They killed all the priests and the whole thing fell apart. Right. But think about how ridiculous that seems to us today that people back then would sacrifice animals to the weather gods to get it to rain. So what they were doing is sacrificing animals or people to change the weather. Right.
Insane.
So that's insane. Is it insane that in the Netherlands and in New Zealand they're killing hundreds of thousands of cows today to change the weather?
Is that what they're doing?
Yeah. What do you mean, is that what they're doing? Of course not. And they're in the United States, too. They're killing hundreds of thousands of cows to change the weather. Now they say it's because they're farts, and their farts leak into this, and it's global warming, whatever you want to call it, the outcome is the same. Just like civilizations in the past sacrificed animals or people to the weather, that's what we're doing today. We're still worshiping a God either way, so.
Yeah. So everyone's worshiping something is what you're saying.
Yeah. Okay, so you're a Jew.
I'm a Jew.
Jewish as a religion, yeah. So you don't believe in Jesus. You believe Jesus was a teacher, but he wasn't the messiah?
Correct. However, because I have so many different friends from different religions, including Christianity, I appreciate the values and the things that Jesus taught. And I mean, I have so many friends who say they were saved by Jesus and this and that. And to me, while I don't. I don't think of that in my own life, like, oh, I was saved by Jesus when this thing happened or that thing happened. I just appreciate that that's what they went through and that's what they believe.
Yeah.
So what's your.
Well, you, you weren't. And you, and you can't say that because you don't believe in Jesus.
True. But. But they believe in it and that's their reality.
So.
And I'm okay with that. I, I don't, I don't think that they're wrong and I'm right. I just think, like, that's their religion and that, and I have my own beliefs, but it was also passed down to me.
Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, there's a whole lot we can go into there. I'm not, I'm no theologian. I'm not a pastor. I'm not like a expert in this. So, like, I'm probably not the best person to have this, like, debate or. I don't think it's not, it's not a debate or conversation about. The way I look at it is Jews believe that Jesus was like a good teacher. Right. But they. Not the Messiah.
I didn't even know that that's what they believe. All we, we, we were just taught that Jesus was Jewish.
Yeah. So, you know, you believe in the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. Right. But the whole Old Testament is full of prophecies saying that he would come. So it's like when you line it all up, it's like one long story. I want to, I'm just going to read this real quick for everybody listening. This is, this is a little bit off the track, but I was just, I was out in Utah. I had changed my appointment yesterday with you till today because I went into another podcast in Utah. Sorry about that. But I was talking to him and we were talking about just the Bible and he was saying how the Bible's been rewritten so many times and how we even know it's accurate and blah, blah. Well, the way that you know an accuracy is you look at these ancient manuscripts and they look at how many manuscripts did we find? More importantly, the first question is how long after the actual events was the manuscript written? That's the first thing. So from the time how, how many generations was the story passed before they actually wrote it down? Number one, because obviously as it gets passed, it gets changed. So how long after the events did it get written? Number two, how many manuscripts were there? And then obviously before the printing press in the 1400s, books were just hand transcribed. So how many copies do we find and what was the accuracy between them? Okay, okay. So that's how you find, how valid, how valid a book is an ancient book, an antiquity. The Bible is the most most read book in history. It's the oldest manuscript in history. Okay, so Jordan Peterson says that the Bible isn't just true, it's truth itself. And the reason why he says it's truth itself is because back to everything is a comparison to something else. And since it's the oldest form of text that we have, have every text that we've in humanity came from that text anyway, listen to Jordan Peters and he can tell you more about that than I did. But just to put this home. So the Bible is the oldest manuscript, the oldest book that we found. The New Testament specifically was written about 30 to 50 years after the death of Jesus. So everybody was still alive when it was written. Written. The second oldest book in history was homewards Iliad, which was written 900 BC and it was written 500 years after the supposed stories had happened. Now the second oldest book there was 643 copies of that, of that Homer's Iliad. Odyssey found 643. Not, not, not a small number. It's a lot that were hand transcribed. The Bible, there's 5,600. And that's just in the original language in Greek. People transcribed them to other languages. Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Aramaic. So there's over 20,000 total, total copies. When they looked at all the copies, it was 99.5% accuracy. The only inaccuracies were like punctuation marks. So like, like if it, it, it seems pretty legit. And what they did is they wrote it in a way where it was written in a very, the way they used to write down history. So they'd say this person, the son of this person from this family, the son of this person. Right. So it was written very chronologically and written as like a historical artifact. And they would say there was this witness and this witness and this was, they, they try to put all that down. And so they back to Jesus they would say like there was only over this person saw and this person saw. They named every Single one, over 500 witnesses on this date, at this time, at this place. And there's no books that refute that. And it was written during their lifetime.
That's crazy.
Yeah, so anyway, I didn't even know.
That about the Iliad.
Yeah, second oldest book in history. So anyway, that's a whole different rabbit hole. But I think, I think you know, that's why I, I think that worldview is we all have our own worldview. And I think that's, you know, what makes our decisions and the way that we interpret things. And so for me, going back to wealth isn't the biggest thing. For me, it's like, what do I do with the wealth? What's the point of it, right? And the point is, so I can go make a difference and I can help other people, but that becomes. That's because of my worldview. And this is a good point. And I think this is actually a big divide in ideologies. I don't want to say politics, but certainly ideologies. I was on a plane. It was maybe two years ago. I was sitting first class. Once you fly first class, it's really hard to go in the back of the plane anymore. And part of the reason I spend the extra money because I need to work, I need my laptop. But also, you meet very interesting people. And so I'm sitting there and I'm kind of glancing over this guy's laptop, and I have my laptop out, and I could see he was doing some sort of work similar to mine. And I was like, are you like a consultant? He's like, yeah. So we started talking about finance and stuff like that. And I forget how we got down this rabbit hole. But then we get into, like, the government and the authoritarian government, the overreach and freedom, and then we get into taxes, right? And he's. He's like, but if the government, you know, if the government were to lower taxes and cut social programs, like, who's going to take care of all these people? And I said, let me ask you just a personal question real quick, and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. Let me just ask you a personal question. What percentage of your wealth do you give away Way, like, do you donate? Whatever? And he's like, none. I said, and that's why you think the government has to steal our money to help other people? You see, I live in a world where everybody I know and hang out donates. It's the churches that have always taken care of people. We give money. What do you mean, the government? No, no, we give it. And so it's just, my worldview is like, I don't need the government to steal my money to redistribute to somebody else. Only a greedy person who's never been generous and given to else would have that worldview.
That is fascinating. And. And I mean, they talk about projection all the time. That is projection.
It's projection. So think about it like this. You're not going to like. Well, you will like it. Some listeners may not like this. Let me say it in a Cody Sanchez clip worthy style. If you're broke, it shows how selfish you are. What do I mean by that? If you think about world in a barter economy, if I came over to your house and I helped you move, that's a pretty big, big deal. That's a lot of value provided to you. And you might feel like you owe me a favor. If I helped you move one day you might introduce me to somebody or take me to dinner or something, right? You owe me a favor. But that's a barter. What if I don't want a favor from you? Right. Then, well, maybe you'll give me an iou. Like, hey, Mark, Nicole owes Mark a favor. So now I have this IOU certificate for a favor. But that's still a barter economy coincidence of once. What if I don't want a favor from you? Well, what if there was a market where I could trade those IOU's so I could get an IOU for somebody else and then I can give them a cool iou. That's what dollars are.
Yeah.
So if I spent every weekend going and helping two friends move per weekend and I was just stacking up IOUs. Nicole, look at all these people I've helped move. Look at all these IOUs. Would you think I'm a generous person? I've helped all?
Not if you're doing it for the IOUs.
Okay, let's take out the incentives. But my point is, is like, man, why is Mark, Mark just all the time helping all these people moving, painting fences, Like, I mean, I would think you're generous, right? Look. Wow, look at, he's doing all that, right? And you could see it because I have all these favors, all this goodwill that I've put into the world, right? And I've, and I've consumed less goodwill than I've earned, right? I haven't used all the IUs. These are the IOUs I have left over. I'm helping everybody move and no one's helping me move. I don't need it. I'm just giving. Okay? But that's what dollars are. You see, when I solve your problem, if I paint your fence, you don't give me an iou, you give me dollars. If I help you move, you give me dollars. You don't owe me an iou. Right? And so you think about it that way. Dollars are the Certificates for an iou. And that's why I say that if you're broke, it shows how selfish you are. You're not putting any value into the world. You're at McDonald's pushing buttons for one person to check out. There's no value you're putting into the world world. If you create a platform as we already talked about, like Amazon and make millions of people millionaires, that's creating value and you get rewarded that way. And most people look at the opposite. They think that being rich is greedy. It's the opposite. That's true. Being rich means you're generous.
Because you put so much value into the world. And then you get to help more people, the more money you have too.
You could. Now some people are, now some people are Scrooge McDug or whatever. They don't want to. And that's a whole another rabbit hole that we can dig into. But that's the way that I look at it, right? It's like, what is the point of it? And it's, it's, it's very self. Part of it's cuz I'm a father and one day you'll find that out. I think everyone needs to have kids because it makes you less selfish. All of a sudden you realize it's not about you anymore.
I have a different take on that.
Yeah, please. On that.
Everyone needs to have kids.
Okay.
This is a really popular subject on, on so many podcasts. I think most people need to have kids. I don't think everyone is qualified to have kids. I don't think everyone has the emotional maturity to have kids. I think, you know, we see so much, I guess what they call generational trauma. I don't mean to put it in quotes, but just have heard it so much and so many people that are trying to recover from their child that I'm just like, this is so much pain. Do you know what I'm saying?
So, so let's unpack, let's unpack that though.
Okay?
So first of all, I'm a Freedom Maximus, so everybody do what you want. You don't want to have kids, cool, whatever. But let's, let's just unpack the statements that you made. So not everyone should have kids because not everyone's emotionally intelligent enough to have that or in an emotional place or they have hurts or traumas from their past. Right?
Not just that, that pass on stuff.
Let's, let's break, let's break down a couple. So the first thing you said was most people, a lot of people shouldn't because they're not, not emotionally old enough or intelligent or mature enough to have kids. You said that. Okay, well that's a non starter for me. If you're growing up, you're supposed to becoming more mature. Right. Like I tell my kids as they're growing up, like, look, you're not supposed to be having fits like this. You have to learn how to control your emotions. You have to, as you're growing up, you're supposed to learn those things. So that's a problem with society, that they don't learn that stuff. That people are still, they're, they're, they're full grown adult kids today. That's a big problem. So I would, while I would, while I would agree. Yes. There's lots of full grown adults that are worse than teenage kids and they should probably not have kids. The problem is we shouldn't have adults that are kids.
Oh, absolutely.
Right.
I would rather fix the root problem so that more people can do so. So I do. And absolutely.
Oh yeah. Trust me, Trust me. I see. Trust me. I see. I see plenty of people that have kids. They say you should probably not have kids.
That's, that's my point.
So I would agree with you on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so there are. But then we need to fix that problem. And that's why back to this complex system. You can't just go solve one thing. Everything's like connected to something else.
Yeah.
Which a lot of it goes back to morality. And this is where the government playing God tries to step in. They're trying to legislate morality. So now the state of California wants to tell you how you can raise your kids.
Oh yeah.
Because they don't think that parents are good parents. So they have to now legally tell you how to be a kid. Right. Versus if I subscribe to some religion or some sort of morality that taught me to be a good parent. I don't need the state to tell me that. And there's no way to legislate morality. It can't be done. They basically have to lock us in a box. Right. And we can't hurt anybody that way. So anyway. Yes, I concede that point too. I agree. But it's a deeper issue.
It is? Yeah. I mean, it's funny, the first thing you said when we started talking about how everyone tells you, just give me the five minute version.
Yeah.
Tell it to me like I'm five also. It's like any of these subjects, there's, there's so much complexity and so much that ties, you know, so many dots to connect.
Yeah.
That you can't really do that.
Yeah, not at all.
You cannot oversimplify, buy anything because it's complex.
You can, and you can live in your parents basement and watch Netflix and go to Domino's every day. I mean, seriously.
Yeah.
I mean, you're, you're friends with some very high level people. They're thinkers. Right. They're readers.
Yeah, Those are my favorite kinds of people. Right.
They're readers. They're thinkers. Like, you don't get successful without putting the time in. Once in a while, I suppose you get lucky, but 75% of lottery winners lose their wealth within five years. So like, sure, you could get lucky, you could happen to get the right NFT and make a million dollars, but you're going to lose that million dollars instead of instantly because you don't have the mental capital to back that up. Right. So there, there really is no shortcut. There are shortcuts, but at the end of the day, you'll still end up at the same place. And so, yeah, if you want to be 5 years old and have stuff explained to you and just read headlines, I mean, that's just where your life is. Back to the quality of your questions equal the outcome of your life.
Yeah. How old were you when you got married?
28.
You were 28?
Yeah. I wanted to be a young father because. Because I grew up in Southern California doing action sports and I still do action sports. And I wanted to be young enough to do those with my kids. And both my daughters are snowboarders and surfers. My daughter both were competitive surfers. My daughter was like top 25 in the nation at one point. Both of them are really good snowboarders. Tomorrow we're gonna go up to Tahoe and spend a couple days in the back country doing that. And I'll still go to the snowboard park and I'll still hit all the big jumps and my kids are like, what? So I wanted to have kids when I was younger to do that. That I think nobody's ready for it. And, and as a matter of fact, I was married and we had talked about when we want to have kids and then we decided to wait and then they accidentally came early. Then we wanted them and I was like, oh my God, I can't believe it's. I don't want this. Not ready, you know? But yeah, ready or not, here you come. We're never ready. We're never ready. But yeah, 28. 28. When I got married 30 when I had my first kid.
How did you meet your wife?
That was, that was pre iPhone days. There was no, no dating apps. That was just through network. Right. That was just, was just friends of friends, you know? Yeah. Honestly, I, I could see the, the jealousy there. Because we know from marketing studies that the more choices someone's given, the less likely are to decide. And in today's day and age, we have too many choices. And I've been thinking a lot lately. I've seen many of my wife's girlfriends, like, never end up married. They're with some guy for six, seven years, and then they break up, and next thing you know, they're 34 years old. And like, you know, and I know many girls in their late 30s and 40s who want to get married and have kids, but it's like, dude, you're 40 now, you know, or whatever. And I, I, I thought, and this is, you tell me what you think about this. It's, it's a little bit far out there, but. And maybe with your culture, it might be not so far out there, but like, almost like, maybe, like arranged marriages wouldn't be such a bad thing because if people treat, if a big if, if people were to treat each other with respect, people can learn to love each other.
I hear you. And I know that statistics show that, that people with arranged marriages are actually happier in general than people who did not come from arranged marriages, who, you know, they liked someone and whatever. Maybe there was lust or chemistry. I think that because in America there's such an emphasis on feelings and love and romance and things like that.
It.
Would be really hard for people because they would feel like they didn't really have a choice in the matter. So in that way, I don't think it would work. And also, like, but you just said.
Statistically they were happier.
I know that, but I'm saying in the beginning, at least, I think sexually, it would be hard for people to. I mean, you don't just want to sleep with everyone. You know, it's like, right, so you.
Meet a guy and you typically are going to go out for a long period of time and you're going to start to know each other and you're gonna, I mean.
I have so many male friends that I've known for a long time, and I'm, I, I love them as people. I'm still not attracted to them.
Yeah, you just said statistically, though, people are happier that way. I know. Let me ask you another question. What, what is love to you?
Love to me.
You said, you said people think it's feelings and emotions. Is that what you think it is?
I don't think it's that.
So what do you think it is?
So when I was younger, I think when I would have a crush on someone and it would grow and we would start dating, I thought I loved all my boyfriends. Now when I look back, I don't think I was ever in love and I don't think I love them in the way that a married couple loves each other. And the definition I think would be that you are sacrificing for someone else every day consistently. You know, with a promise to make the future better together as a team. Something more like that.
Right? So love is not a feeling, Love is a verb, it's an action.
Right?
So The Bible says, First Corinthians 13 says love is patient, love is kind, love is not self serving. It keeps no records of wrongs, right? So those are actions. So if I was, if I treated you lovingly, if I treated you with kindness, right, Love is patient. I was patient with you. I didn't snap on you, right. I didn't keep records of wrong. I didn't always. Well, last week you did this, this, this, this, right? So those are actions that I would do. It's not a feeling. Now what you just said is if people would do those things, they could start to build those feelings. So the feelings come from the actions. So if you're treating me lovingly, if you're patient with me, if you're kind with me, if you don't keep records of wrong. Now I have a feeling towards you because of the actions that you've done. So now going back to this, you've had friends, boyfriends that you didn't have feelings for, but you maybe weren't treating each other lovingly. So like one, you said that it was actions. I'm putting your words more into depth. But if you agree with that, then would you say that if two parties, and I know this a big if, cuz culture is so messed up today, but if both people would act that way to each other, how would that work? With loveness, with kindness, with the patience?
I think again that's a hard one because I feel like the way that we date now even people are thinking of different things. Like I mean I talk to so many men who say to me like, oh, she's got to be a 10. Unfortunately that's what they're leading with.
That's because of the select, because too much, too much Selection right there on Instagram, looking at a thousand girls. And now, oh, she's got to be a 10. Like, bro, you're like a six. Like, what are you talking about, right? Or whatever.
Yeah, but if the six. If the six is, you know, worth a lot of money or really funny or really something, then. Then they feel like, okay, well, I deserve that.
Yeah, a lot of it. So one, it goes back to, like, having too much selection, right? Instagram, all the dating apps, whatever. I think one, as I said, right. Statistically, we know more choices someone's given less likely are to decide. So in marketing, you're always trying to. Like, that's the whole point of a sales funnel, going back to sales funnels and marketing. But on a sales funnel, the whole point is on the landing page, there's one option I don't have, like, an about us and services and contact. There's not. Like, there's one thing that's. That's what a funnel is. When you land on the page, the whole object is for you to put your email. Because if I give you too many choices, you won't do that. And so that's the. That's the. That's the one problem. Then the other problem is back to people don't know how to act. They think there's feelings, there's emotions. The other thing that's made it very difficult is just the Internet itself. Not because of the dating apps, but when I was a kid, we all grew up listening to the same music, watching the same movies. Like what? Like, we didn't. Without the Internet, we didn't have itunes that was streaming a gazillion songs. It was like you had the top 10. You listened to Michael Jackson. Like, that was it. Right? And everybody did. So everybody had a lot of shared commonality. And also the United States had a core set of values that people shared. And, you know, it was mostly a Christian nation, so we sort of had that as well. And the Internet has allowed everyone to go chase these weird little niches. And so now everyone's so diverse, and there's a million interests and niches that you can go down. So you might like indie rock, but there might be a thousand divisions just within indie rock or something like that. Even, like, electric electronic music, Right? Think about how many different little subcategories there are of that. Right? And so I think that's awesome. A big, big category. But going back to. I don't know, let's go back to the statement. Do you. I mean, it almost seems like maybe like arranged marriages, if big. If both parties could treat each other with actions of love, maybe, statistically, you said it's working.
Do you think an arranged marriage would have worked for you?
I don't know. Maybe. I mean, it would be hard to say, right? Because like, I mean, man, if my wife was really ugly, I don't know, like that would be. I.
Well, okay, how about.
You know what I mean?
How about this?
I don't have the answer. I was just throwing out a conversation.
When you met her, what was the thing that drew you to her and what was the thing that led you to believe this is a person that I want to be married to?
So I think when I think back, first of all, it was a long time ago, so I don't know how clear my thinking is. But when I think back, like I had a really big network and I was doing a lot of. I told you, I used to come up to Hollywood a lot and I was a club promoter. So I was promoting a lot of, a lot of night clubs up here in Los Angeles and Orange County. So my network was pretty big from being at nightclubs every night and kind of running them. So like kind of having a lot of attention there, even though there was no Internet back then. But I remember at one point thinking like I had been in a couple relationships that were kind of long term, like two, three years kind of thing. And I remember at that point just going, I don't need to be in any more long term relationships if I don't see it's going somewhere. And that's sort of like the life, the lifestyle of. Or my, my life has been like, you either win or learn. I talk about this all the time. Like if, if I lose on a business deal or like learning a skill, I didn't really lose because I learned something that helps make a better decision later. And so thinking about those relations, if I'm in a business that's not leading to where I want to go eventually, then I'm wasting my time. And so it's sort of like a relationship. If I don't see it even has potential, I'm just wasting my time. So like, sure, maybe we'll date, we'll hang out, but like, what's the point of being in two years if I don't see it going somewhere? So I remember kind of getting to that point. Point. And then I'm big on understanding what your core values are. I think everyone has to figure this out as soon as possible because it's what it is, is It's a filter that I can filter the world out instantly. So I get now with, you know, with my audiences and so forth, and being in business and investing, I have opportunities just come at me every day, and I'm able to just understand what my core values are, and I can quickly just start to filter them out. But also you can filter out people as well. So I understood, like, what are my core values are? So then I started identified what were the values I'd want in a. A girl. And then, you know, like, for me, it was like I wanted her parents to still be married because my parents were still married. And I thought that maybe if their parents are still married, that would mean that we're. We were sort of modeled that we would fight more for a marriage, for example. Right. So there was things like that. So I kind of had this, like, fitness litmus test. And then back to the question of, like, when I met her, we were just friends, and we had like, a big friend group that we would do a lot of things with. And she had boyfriends and I had girlfriends, but we became good friends through that. And one thing that was interesting, it was probably the first girl that really knew me for who I was, as opposed to, like a facade that I would put up for a girl. And then we were both single, and then we. Then we got together. And so then it was like knowing each other very well and sort of accepting each other for who we are. And. And yeah, we just kind of hit it off. And, you know, she's beautiful and she's super fun, and she was, you know, she's. She's definitely a ride or die for sure. And, yeah, I don't know. It worked, but it sounds point. I mean, you know, I don't know if she's gonna listen to this, but, I mean, I had, you know, plenty of pretty girlfriends. I mean, I wasn't going out with ugly girls, right? But, yeah, I don't know, at some point you just have to pick and you just gotta stick with it because at the end of the day, there's no such thing as perfect. I'm certainly not perfect. And there's certainly things in my wife that I wish I could fix, but all I would do is just trade them off for another set of things that I don't even know on the next one. Right? And so at the end of the day, if the grass is greener on the other side, water your own damn lawn, right? And try to make the best out of it. And. And yeah, you know, nothing's perfect. And, you know, this kind of goes back to even a bigger thing, which is like, man, without. Without sadness. You don't even know what happiness is.
Yes.
And so everyone's trying to mask this. Oh, I'm depressed all the time. I need whatever. It's like, dude, like, that's just part of life. And so, like, relationships are like that as well. Right. And so it's like, my wife and I, we don't always agree, and we might get mad at each other sometimes, and, like, that's just the way it is, and, like, that's cool. But we treat each other with respect and. And we love each other, and it works Good.
Yeah. And you're both committed to the relationship and have this.
I mean. And honestly, I. I mean, I. I've had friends that have gotten divorced, and, like, man, I do not want that. I do not. One of my friends, just several months ago, he got divorced. It was hell for him. And now he's on these dating apps, you know? And I remember we're driving in the car, and he's, like, telling me about, oh, this chick. And I went and meet this chick, and he's telling me all these stories, and. And he's like, here, you want to see the girls I'm talking to? And I'm, like, going through his thing, and I'm like. I'm like, no. And I went home. I told my wife, I'm like, babe, I don't ever want to get divorced. Oh, my God, don't make me go do that. Like, I was, like, looking at his phone. I'm like, I would not talk to any of those girls. Like, no.
Like, so, by the way, I'm sure there's a lot of, like, beautiful girls on apps. It's not. I don't think it's that. I think it's, like, just the fact that you have to, like, go through and do all.
It's.
Well, there's so different than how it was when.
Yeah, there's that. The other thing I would say is that it's probably the most important decision you'll make. Obviously, it's your life partner. But, you know, for me, you know, I'm running multiple businesses. I got my. My fund, the bitcoin fund, my multi businesses, all the content I do. I'm traveling, you know, at least once or twice a month, speaking. So I'm busy, and I'm trying to do a lot of things, and, like, I need a good support network. Network, like, really, really good support network. And, like, there's no way I could do what I could do without my wife because like, who's holding it down, right? And so like that's, that's like a super important piece. And so like, I would think, like, if I was single and like, I gotta go out at night to like, meet people and I gotta like go on all these dates. I remember talking to my friend. I'm like, I could only imagine, like every time you go on a new date, it's like Groundhog's Day all over again. Like, here's who I am and here's my interest. And he's like, oh yeah. He's like, he's like, I just recite it. He's like, I even know where to interject the fake laughs. I'm just like, like, oh, it's just like so exhausting. And so it's like by. That's like very what I would consider very low value tasks, right. So I've eliminated all that so I can just focus on high value tasks. Why would I want to trade that? Like, what, what gain could I have that would be worth it for me to have to one give up half my wealth but have to start over back to low value tasks? That would just drive me crazy and take away from my product activity. Like, I can't just swallow my pride and just like, admit I was wrong in this circumstance. I would rather like be selfish and then have to go subject myself to living back that life again. Very short term thinking.
Very short term thinking. Well, good. I hope a lot of people are listening to this.
And by the way, I'm no marriage counselor. I don't know anything about that.
But no, but still, you don't have to be a marriage counselor. I think you know that. That quote, that's like never take advice from someone who's, who's never been where you're going.
Yeah, 100%.
So it's like, I mean, 100%. Anyone who has a good marriage open to talking to them.
Yeah, I'd love to hear about what works. Always ask yourself that question. If someone tries to give you advice. Say, if I take your advice, will I end up like you?
Yeah.
And if you don't like that answer, then certainly don't take advice.
Don't take advice from. At least not in that arena. That's another thing that I learned is that not everyone is qualified to give you advice about everything. You know what I'm saying? Like I, I would go to naval for advice about investing or, I don't know, happiness and all that. Stuff. All the stuff that he talks about. Yeah, but I would go to someone else for advice about something else. And so I've learned that not everyone is going to have. Just because you think so highly of them and you look up to them. Like, they're not going to have advice about every single thing.
Well, they can't have. One is their opinion, is their worldview. Two, they can't have all the information on you to make the decision for you. Right. So they don't even know all the background. And three, you know, you need to have multiple counselors, right? So you want people that can pour into you from multiple places. And ultimately you have to be able to decide that for yourself. But yeah, it's a, A, it's a, it's a tricky game that we're playing. And, and there's like, as I said earlier, there's no shortcut. Like, you have to build that. That in. I would start with. I made my, my, My daughter read it when she was younger. Start with reading how to Win Friends and Influence People. Like, read that book. Like, if.
How old was she when you gave it to her?
12, you know, probably. Like, I remember years ago, I was with this teacher and we were having this debate about going to college, and I think it's a waste of time. She thinks they need to go to colleges and that. And she's like. She said, but everybody needs education, don't they? She recited a cliche, right? She hadn't even thought through it. And I said, yeah, they do. What do you think they should be educated in?
There we go.
And she could not answer the question, which was crazy because she's a teacher.
Yeah, that is crazy.
She's like, well, because I have the.
Answer on the top.
She's like, well, what do you think they should be educated in? I was like, well, I can tell you right now, I think they should learn how to do time management. They should learn. Learn health and fitness. They should learn how to do. Manage relationships. They should learn, like.
And I, I think that too.
And I read all this, which is why I have my daughter read those books, right? So I had her read how to Win. So start there. Emotional intelligence. And then more importantly, like, a lot of things you can learn in that book, like never paint someone in a corner. Like, always give somebody a way out, right? Like, there's a lot of things that we could just learn if we would learn how to manage relationships and people. You're a master at it because obviously your relationship game is point.
I mean, not master. But, But, I mean, I. The people that are in my network, I'm very blessed to have. Yeah, yeah, okay. There's a question I ask at the end of every single podcast.
All right.
Okay. And it's a scenario, a hypothetical situation. And the reason I ask it is because I find that people have such a hard time prioritizing the important messages that they want to share to the world. So I came up with this scenario so people can figure out the one that's the most important to them. Because everyone's like, oh, I don't know. All right, here's the scenario. So you're at the Oscars and you're nominated for a documentary about bitcoin. And they announce all the nominees. Finally, it's time to announce the winner. It's you. And you walk up to the stage, you say thank you to everyone who helped with you, who helped you with the documentary, your family, probably God. And right after you thank Everybody, there's that 45 second to a minute window where you can say whatever you want. It's going to go viral. There are going to be headlines. What are you going to say?
I mean, the message would obviously be related to the Oscar that I'm receiving regarding bitcoin, but I think it would be about the same no matter what. It would be, because it's is a message that I try to put out in the world all the time, which is that no one's coming to save you. It's up to us to build into our own skills, to put in our own time, our own effort. And ultimately the world is depending on you to do that. Because right now we have a big problem in the world today, and that is that most people have abdicated all responsibility and tyrants have stepped in to fill that void. And we now have a situation where we have central planners that are trying to control every minutiae, detail in our. In our life, but they're not the ones that set the rules. They're not the ones that build the world that we want. There's a saying that says most people, either people either build the world that they want or they get hired by somebody else to build their world. And I believe that it's up to me and you as the doers, the builders, the dreamers, as the men in the arena, the entrepreneurs, to vision the world that we want and go build it. And our job is to outpace the central planners that are leeching off of us. And so if we want a more productive, a more prosperous and a more free world, in the future, then it's up to us. And I think it's at an inflection point where we need to realize the stakes that we're at and be willing to sacrifice our time, effort, energy, focus, and even our money in order to build that world for the future.
Beautiful. Mark Moss, thanks for coming on.
Yep. Thank you.
