Do You Have What It Takes To GET RICH in 3 Years? | Garrett Gunderson

That scarcity consumed my mind.

Yeah.

And I wasn't thinking about adding value or serving others or solving problems. I think about what I could eliminate, what I could cut, what I could reduce. And that reductionist thinking doesn't lead to production. And production is your way to wealth.

I want to come straight out of the gate because I love your, absolutely love your content. The audience, if they have not already discovered you, they need to. You Can Garrett Gunderson YouTube GarrettGunderson.com I'm telling you right now, you need to, you need to be studying this, dude. One of the things that I love that you say is you can either work a three year plan for your financial independence or you can work a 35 or 60 year plan for your financial independence. We have got to break that down and shatter it apart, man. Because I see far too many people struggling simply because they don't know any better. How can we change that?

All right, there's five levers, because I think we create leverage when we have the right modality and methodology. And so these five levers will create economic independence so much faster. The very first thing is, rather than scrimping, saving and budgeting, plug your financial leaks. People are overpaying on their taxes, they're overpaying on interest, they're overpaying on non performing investment fees, they're overpaying on their insurances. And that's 10% of our income going to financial institutions that could stay in our own pocket. So that's the first step. Plug financial leaks. Second thing is we have to engineer wealth, which simply means know what your monthly expenses are and create a plan to build cash flow to cover that without your daily involvement. Everybody's setting money aside and waiting for 30 years, hoping compound interest will save them. It saves the banks, not necessarily them. So find that number. And then the third step is accelerate your investment income rather than reinvesting it. Create cash flow that covers your expenses. So we're not trying to save 10% of our income to earn 10% on it. We now have enough cash flow to cover all of our basic expenses, which means we can reinvest 100% of our active income. Then the fourth step is to scale revenue. So whether you're an entrepreneur in an organization or an entrepreneur that runs an organization, find ways to increase your profitability, either by improving margin if you're a business owner, or by looking at the one thing that will make the biggest difference if you do it today to add revenue and invest back in yourself. And then the fifth thing is to take care of yourself as your greatest asset. Not some stock, bond, or piece of real estate, but your ability to provide more value will directly relate to how much more money you have. And that's going to get you economically independent, where you have enough cash flow to cover your expenses in three years. I mean, as long as you work, it's not easy, but it's better than waiting for 35 years and finding out, hey, it didn't work and you tried.

Yeah, no kidding. You know, it's funny, you know, I think if we grow up, you know, especially my generation, like, I'm. I'm. I'm mid-40s, so, you know, I got a little age on me a little bit. Just a little. And as I'm doing that, you know, I was taught, work hard, save a lot, and hope it works out. And then my first mentor, Steve Myrick's, like, no, it doesn't work that way. It's work hard, invest smart, and put things in the right perspective, which is when he kind of dabbled in taxes a little bit. And I want to pivot on taxes just for a minute, because, again, listening to your content, specifically as it relates to taxes and the tax strategies and things that you bring up, or what I would refer to them as secrets. Legal secrets. Legal secrets where I'm not. Right.

So as an entrepreneur, secrets, not the secrets that, you know. Yeah.

They get you in. They get you in prison.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's important because, you know, I. So I own several businesses. I employed several hundred people, which is fantastic.

But to be honest, every time that there's a tax increase in the marketplace, I'm being honest, I get a little scary. And one thing I know about you is you don't get as scared as I do because you handle your taxes differently than I do a little bit. So I want to learn from you right now in the tax strategies.

All right, so this is my tax framework. And it's really about three. It's about five different things with three categories. So the first thing is you've got to get the right team. So an entrepreneur like you, you obviously need, you know, at your level, like a cfo, because you got employees, right? Yeah. But then you need a tax strategist. A tax strategist might not be your average cpa. They might be more of a historian telling you what you owe after the fact. Great tax strategist is actually proactively helping you maximize your tax deductions.

Yeah.

The third thing is you need a tax attorney. A tax attorney can Help you navigate things in the tax code and how you reclassify your income in ways other people don't. And if you own a commercial building, you need a engineer, a cost segregation engineer. So the three main people on anyone's team is someone to make sure you have timely data, someone to make sure you maximize your deductions, and someone to make sure you reclassify your income. So the second bucket then is the deductions. There's two things as a business owner to do with deductions. Every time you spend money, I want you to ask the question, could this potentially relate to my business? If the answer is maybe or yes, you document it. And then every three months you meet with your tax team and say, like, I bought a can am a few years ago, right? Yeah, just parked down below me. And I was like, I want to write part of that off. And my tax team laughed. I'm like, no, no. At the beginning of my podcast, I'm driving in it. When people come up to the podcast studio, we go for rides in it and they're like, oh, actually we can write a percentage of it off, right? So we create a connection and a story. So you want to list what it is and then. And document that and then meet every quarter to find out what you can write off and what you can't. Now if they tell you you can't write it off, just say, are there other businesses that could. Like, I was buying some clothes and I was like, can I write these off? They're like, no, it's not really a uniform. I'm like, wait, but I'm on video and what I'm wearing on video, like, aren't they writing off the clothes they buy in Hollywood? They're like, well, yeah, but they have a production company. I'm like, great, I now have a production company. I've got three cameras right over here and I've got a screen. I got a whole, like, I've got a whole room for it, like. So I found a way because of the conversation. Now, the third bucket is classifying your income, which. There's four ways to reclassify active income to passive income. Like if you take a distribution or dividend from your business that might not be hit with self employment tax, which could save you up to 15.3% or ordinary income into capital gains. Maybe as a business owner, you sell a portion of business that's a capital gain or you sell a piece of real estate stock. Those are capital gains versus ordinary income. And as of the time of we're doing this. Ordinary income is higher than capital gains, but that could change based upon the current trajectory. You mean depends on what's going on. The third thing is tax free. Whether you learn about donor advice funds or charitable remainder trusts, there's things you can do when you have capital gain assets to absolutely, completely legally avoid tax because you have a charitable interest involved in it. And the fourth one is tax arbitrage. Most people make a mistake, and I know that sounds fancy. It's not that fancy. Or smart is simply most people spend a dollar to save 30 cents. I don't like to spend a dollar to save 30 cents. That means I lost the use of.

60 cents, 70 cents.

Yeah.

So your math is better than mine.

Yeah, that's all right, man. It's good. So I want you to spend a dollar and get more than a dollar back. So I've bought artwork, and then after displaying it for three years, I donated it and got $2 back for every dollar I spent because I bought a massive collection at a deep discount. Or I've had property that I don't want developed. So I did a conservation easement and I got back more money than what I spent on the land because of the value of the land going up. So there's things like that that are tax arbitrage. So we want our deductions, we want our reclassification, and we want our team. And then we want to go back three years to see if you've missed any returns or any benefits because you could get things like R and D credits if you built software or an app or a customer CRM. Or maybe you had a year where you had a lot of expenses in your business, but you can only write off 80% of your operating expense year. But now you had another year, you had more profit. There's a way to do net operating loss where you mix and match your years and get more deduction. So that's where you might go back. So every three months, you. You're meeting with your team. Every three years, you get a different set of eyes on your taxes. The three buckets are team deductions and reclassification. And that's the basic tax framework. Now, there's a lot of strategy inside of that, and I talked fairly fast, but the reality is, once you know how the framework works, it starts to have you think more clearly. And you're an entrepreneur, that's a great thinker. So you can just meet with your tax team and say, hey, I'm going to brainstorm some ideas. Let's see if they're legal or not. It's brainstorming. You're not going to move forward with.

Anything that's no crime has been committed.

But you might come up with ideas where like, well, actually you can't do it that way, but you can do it this way. I mean, that's what you're looking for is you got to think very proactively in this.

Well, I mean, it's safe to say that most entrepreneurs and business owners, they're getting so lost in the day to day, they're not actively looking. So we get stuck in this mentality of, well, I got to, I just got to increase revenue. I just got to increase revenue. I got to increase revenue. I got to increase revenue. And what, what I've heard you talk so much about is increasing revenue is great, but not if your cost and your taxes and everything are rising, rising with it.

Right, right. You probably, in your life, you probably have no other single larger line than your tax bill in a given year. True. It's a huge expense.

Yeah. We're talking close to a million bucks a year easy.

Right. So imagine if I could spend an hour with you and cut that down to $700,000 instead of a million. That's a $300,000 rate of return or 30% return.

Yeah.

That could be year in and year out. You might still have impact of that for coming years once the strategy is implemented. It's just that we don't wake up and go, you know what I want to do today? I want to talk tax. I want to just think about tax. No, no, we think about it when it's too late and all of a sudden we're like, oh, my God, what.

How much does it, where's this bill come from?

Or like the worst is when your accountant goes, hey, congratulations, man, you had a great year. Struck a check, a bunch of money. Right. You know, that's coming.

It's like I've had that conversation more times than I want to admit.

This is my feeling about tax. Like, I like to tip, but I don't like to tip the government. You know, tipping is a great way to say thank you, job well done. Not something I'm typically thinking about the government and saying, like tipping. The government's like tipping a waiter who ate 39% of your meal and peed in your soup. Right. Not something I want to do. So I want to pay them what I have to, but not more than I have to. And most people pay more than they have to because of the ignorance tax. They just don't know any better.

And it really comes down to answering those two questions, like, can I. Can I use this for my business? And if not, how can I use it for my business?

Yep.

I love that. I love that because it's such a different spin on things. You know, I. I'm one of those people that likes. What's the easiest way to say this? I start businesses out of necessity. Like, I've tried to go to the marketplace and I'm like, you know, hey, I need a great video team. Hey, I need a great social media team. Hey, I need a great graphics team. And you try to subcontract it all out. I'm like, I'm not getting what I expect. So then I just start buying stuff and start building it myself. And I'm literally, I got lights here, lights there, lights there, microphones here, obviously camera here, et cetera. And I've got that throughout the building. And I hadn't thought about, hey, maybe I already have a production company. I'm just not classifying it as a production company 100%.

You're putting out videos, you.

Oh, yeah.

Equipment for it. Like. Yeah. And so, you know, like, I believe in only doing things that I. If I'm in an audit, I feel are, like, totally going to hold up.

Yeah.

That I know exactly where I do it. And so I've been audited twice. I haven't owed any extra money because of those audits. I didn't go to the audits. Like, I hear about a lot, lot of tax strategies, like, hey, you could do this thing and you get to avoid all your tax. Or, hey, you do this thing offshore. I don't do any of those things. I've been in this business 21 years, and I've only had twice where people owed more tax because I didn't tell them something that I should have told them. And I just wrote a check for that. And I'm not the cpa. So now I just make sure the CPA is doing all that work and implementing it while I help them with the strategy. And I haven't had people getting audits that are tough audit situations. Like, I'm not doing the things that are way out in the gray. I'm not doing anything that I'm like, well, we have a private letter saying, this is okay. This is just simple and straightforward. It's just that most people don't want to read thousands of pages of tax code. So to figure out how to navigate things tax free because you enjoyed Building a business, and that's good. And you don't want this distraction and this burden. And so I'm just trying to simplify it for people.

No, and I think, and I think it's needed, too, because, you know, unfortunately, the, the marketplace continues to be tax funded, not government funded. And I wish people could fully understand that nothing is, quote, unquote, government funding. The governor does not have Rep. The government does not have revenue streams of income. Your revenue stream of incomes comes directly from those that pay taxes on a consistent basis. And let's just say that they do a great job of being great stewards with that money.

Right now. One of the things that I also love about your story is how authentic this is. I know you grew up in a coal miner family, and I love the contrast because it's funny how I was listening to your story and I was like, this reminds me of myself, my father, and my first mentor, Steve. I would love for everybody to understand a little bit about kind of where your backstory is and where you come from and why you're so passionate about helping people actually break free financially.

Look, my great grandfather was a coal miner. Both my grandfathers and my dad, they all were in Carbon County, Utah, where the coal mines are. And I never stepped foot in a coal mine. My mom and my dad were like, no, we're going to help you out. We want you to do something different. I started a business when I was 15 detailing cars. Won $5,000 for being the young entrepreneur of the year with that, when I was a teenager, wanted to invest that money. My mom didn't want to sign off as a custodian because our money management method was coffee cans and the cellar. Everything felt risky. So I just was going out and asking, like, where should I invest this money? And I was just using my young age to meet with people who want to pay it forward for young kids. And they're like, someone's like, hey, you know what? My dad's in finance. You should meet with him. Drove up to meet with him. He's like, you should do an internship. Which was mostly just, you know, bringing my friends and family to buy mutual funds and life insurance. But at the same time, I kind of learned a little bit about finance. And then when I. When the market went down in the year 2000, my family and friends were losing money, and I didn't know what to tell them. So I got them out of the market. And I went on a 26 month, like every single month, flew somewhere, met with someone, and really Tried to figure out this financial world. And I decided rather than teaching people to take risk, I'm going to show them how to keep more of what they make through efficiency. And so I wanted to bring what the big wealthy families were doing to the rest of the population, because I grew up in a town that wasn't wealthy and there wasn't a lot of wealthy people. And so I was like, well, it's unfair. They're getting all these really good financial teams and really good financial advice, and the rest of us are kind of stuck being peddled mutual funds. And so that became a big part of my mission. And now what I really feel is finance is intimidating. Nobody really wants to learn. They want the solution, but they don't want the process.

Yeah, well, they think it's cumbersome, right? They think it's complicated. And one of the things I love about you is that you make it simple.

Well, now I'm like, I'm gonna make it even simpler. I'm gonna do comedy around the topic of money. And look, man, I get it. Like most people, like, oh, money's nothing to joke about, but I assure you it is. And, like, can you make it funny? Well, look, my manager is Barry Katz. He's actually. He's actually managed Chappelle and a bunch of people over time. I got Marty Kahn. There's my executive producer. He was. George Carlin was his best man. He won an Emmy with Seinfeld. I've got these amazing people in comedy around me because they all get it. Like, this is more than just making people laugh. They'll laugh, but they'll actually learn and be left with something that leaves them in a better place around their money. And I feel like that I'm excited about it. I'm having fun with it, and it's been. It's been one hell of a ride so far.

Dude, I love it. You know, it's crazy. You know, if I'm not mistaken, you named it the American Ream. Right, Right, the American Ream. Because, you know, let's be honest, I would dare say that most Americans around the US Would say that they feel like from a financial perspective, they're actually getting ringed in some way, shape, or form.

Right.

So where did you come up with a name for the fort?

So I was. I'm up here at my cabin right now because we just bought a new house, and it's a little chaotic there. So I'm up here where it's a little bit more peace and quiet. So I was actually Writing jokes one day out on the back deck, looking out at the trees in the river, and I took a picture, sent it to my. My manager, and he goes, you're living the American dream. And then we started going back and forth. I'm like, yeah, most. I like side. Somehow, whether it was him or me, it was like, yeah, most people are stuck in the American ream. And it was like, oh, my God, that's the name of the special. And so we address Wall street and inflation and taxes and retirement concepts and all things in with my family. And look, I mean, I can feel people like, can this be funny? Right? So. So, like, let's just. Let's just try a couple jokes out for people.

Yeah, let's go. Let's go. All right, you're on the spot. Now perform, perform.

Let's go. Here we go. Money. Like, you know, whoever thought 6 inches could be so destructive? No girl I ever dated. Yeah, I mean, it could be more Canadian.

I think my Internet just went out because I told the Canadian joke. I think the Canadian.

Well, you can do it again. Let's go.

All right. So money's a lot like sex. You spend a lot of. A lot of time chasing it. It's gotten minutes. You always think your friends have more of it than you.

Oh, my gosh.

And, you know, if you're not very skilled at getting it, it's going to be pretty tough life. So that's. That's just my intro of the whole comedy special.

Well, and I know there's more where that came from, for sure. You know, it's crazy.

You know, one of the things I.

Think I love about kind of what you've been doing and kind of the approach that you've. Is you've always kept it very intelligent but very lighthearted. And I think that, like you mentioned earlier, people are scared of money. They. While they do want the result, they are scared of taking the action because they're scared of making a big mistake. You know, we've. We've all heard about the entrepreneurs that made it big and then lost it all. Or you're, you know, you're a bootstrap kind of guy like myself. You know, you build your business with literally nothing, and. And you're so scared of losing it, you know, kind of thing like, what is. How did comedy. What have you just seen about comedy specifically shake that loose to help people out?

Look, man, like, when. When people are laughing, they're not, like, worried about what's happened in the past and suffering that they're not scared about what's going on in the future. It's like. It's like a moment of relief where we feel connected.

Yeah.

And they say that you remember things three times more when you're laughing than when you're not. Like. Like, if you think a lot of the peak experiences in life. And so when, when it comes to money, the people have their, their preconceived notions, their defenses. And so when I'm joking about it, it's almost like the court jester of finance, right? The jester could tell the truth in front of the king and the queen without getting killed. And yet it was what kind of created that, that progress. And so I feel like people will remember things a little bit more. They can laugh at it and then be like, oh, and it's. It's not so hurtful when we're joking about it than when it's like someone feels bad because they made a bad financial decision and that. And that we can address things that just have yet to be addressed. So that's.

No, I dig it because, you know, I know a lot of folks that unfortunately, they're, you know, they thought that their financial mistake was going to define the rest of their life. And one of the things I've seen about people that, that perform really well, call it the 1%, call it whatever you want, is they all have a consistency to try again. Like, they don't let one moment define them. As a rule of thumb, I know you mentioned, you know, weathering the downturn, and then obviously a lot of the funds that you were managing were friends and family and stuff like that. Is it safe to say that that event taught you something massive about the importance of stewarding money? Well, for other people, dude.

I mean, first, it taught me it sucks to tell someone you don't know what you're doing. And it sucks to be honest with them that, like, hey, I don't know how long this is going to go down and how this really works. I just was selling you on my salesmanship, not on my actual expertise. And so. But by addressing that, I didn't prolong the pain. Most people hide in those moments. They don't say what's happening. They just try to hope that it goes away. And it just creates this festering issue that becomes so problematic. So it taught me, like, actually being honest about it set me free. It actually set me in a different motion. And I told him, I said, hey, I'm going to go research and figure out a better way to do this and invested in myself and figured out a better way. And so if I hadn't done that, I don't know where I would have been or what would have happened. I would have probably been less liked. I probably would have lost people a lot more money. That definitely would have happened. And I wouldn't have learned lessons. Because a lot of people, when they tell me they have 30 years experience, I'm like, well, do you have 30 years experience or just the same experience for 30 years? Like reinforcing old beliefs, beliefs, not making any progress, justifying your existence. Like, that's because I think that the world's afraid of change. They want to hold on like the coal miners are afraid of change. What if there's a cleaner way to provide energy? What if that means they lose their job? What if that's where their skill set is? So they hold on to what they've got because they're playing not to lose. They're stuck in that. It limits their expression, it limits their joy, it limits their value creation. And dollars follow value. So we have to learn how to be better value creators. And that experience taught me what value was and how to create it, even when it's difficult.

Well, you know, when it comes down to it, you know, we opened the show up a little bit with, you know, some strategies as it as it really reflects to entrepreneurs or business owners. Can the everyday person who maybe works for someone else who doesn't have an entrepreneurial dream learn the strategies and methodologies they need to also be financially independent? Or is what your curriculum and your frameworks teach, is it mainly just for entrepreneurs and business owners?

We definitely have put an emphasis on entrepreneurs at the firm wealth Factory that I was a founder of and a content provider for. But as time's gone on, we've really been encouraging people to be intrapreneurial, work inside of an organization, have the conversations where they get up. Some ways entrepreneurs are a little bit more reckless. They end up losing money.

That kind of stuff. Where someone that's an intrapreneur can have a conversation of what if I add to the bottom line, can I get upside potential without all that downside risk? And yes, they can still improve their skill sets, they can still invest in themselves. They just have less options on how to save tax, they have less options on how to make the decision that moment and see if that grows in the business. So it is still completely possible. And the reality is it just might mean a side hustle a little bit. It might mean on conversations they've yet to have and it might mean having a move up in the world and in their job by increasing their skill sets. It's. It's just a different path.

Yeah, no, I. And I wanted you to mention that because, you know, we. So I don't know if he's more of a mutual friend. I know we have a. We have someone that I'm. I have a friendship with. Not at a very deep level that I know that you're. You have differing opinions on how he performs, which is Mr. Ramsey. Right. Help. Help people understand some of the important, maybe differences between some of the theology that you, that you use versus some of the theology that Ramsey uses from time to time as it relates to actually wealth management, creating wealth earning, all that kind of stuff.

The first time I heard Dave Ramsey speak, I was really impressed with what he was saying, but I really saw it as like helping train wrecks get on track. It was very much like these five really fundamental things. And then like a year or two ago, someone started sending me YouTube videos where he was, like, really angry, calling people idiots and wrong and stupid. And I feel like. I feel there's a bit of bitterness that he's grown into over time of, like, people questioning his thought process. A huge proponent of mutual funds, yet, you know, have they really performed at the level that he's talking?

Not from the data that I've seen recently for the last five years.

Me either. And so that's starting to crash.

Great.

When you get out of debt, then what is my next question? Right. And also I feel like if you follow his advice so closely, I once got a package of his books as a joke for Christmas from someone, and some of the books were like, hey, my daughter's following your advice so much, but now she won't spend any money. And so he's what I would call not politically a conservative, but financially conservative that plays the game of accumulation. Work hard selling, save a lot, and one day someday, you can finally enjoy life. My problem is that one day someday notion. I don't really believe in budgeting. What I believe in is you pay yourself first by automatically setting money aside into an account. You live off. What's the rest? But as soon as you get into a budgetary mindset, you get into such a finite game of eliminating. See, look, if most people have heard the notion, live within your means. Yeah, but there's three ways to live within it. One is to budget and cut back and reduce, which is limited in its. In its ability.

Yeah.

Second is what I've been talking about. Be more Efficient within your means, plug your financial leaks. But the game changer is to expand your means. Mr. Ramsey has built a massive business that he continues to reach more people. And he's made his wealth through business, not through budgeting, maybe voting budgeting. But he's not wealthy because he budgeted. He's wealthy because he built a business that has reached a lot of people. And if we don't understand that, we're playing by the wrong set of rules.

Yeah, no, I think it's an important indicator or a difference as well. I would agree with you on budgeting as a framework to get yourself out of, you know, if you are bad at handling your money to begin, you.

Got to do it.

Yeah, exactly. I grew up in an environment where people in my environment were bad at handling money. I had to have a mentor begin to teach me and show me different ways. Right there did become a opportunity about five or six years after I started my business and I went back and paid all the people I owed money to because I owed a bunch that I was like, okay, now I have resource coming in. Now what do I do with this resource?

Do I go real estate? Do I go mutual fund? Do I go money market? You know, just. I mean, all the. I mean, we kind of giggle about money market because the return is so low. But you know what, one of the things that I've seen is when it comes down to paying yourself first is you can totally ach your way, direct draft your way, where that automatically accumulates and comes out of somewhere. So you're not thinking about it. Right. So how would someone. Again, let's go back to the everyday person. Like, people that watch this show and listen to the show are one of two people. Either they're entrepreneurs already or they're aspiring leaders or developing leaders. Right. That means they've. They're maybe probably making 40, $50,000 a year, but they want a better life. And they're doing all the budgeting. They're doing the budgeting, they're doing the saving. They've got their 401k and their Roth kind of like maxed out, you know, but they're. That they're not doing the living side. And I'm a big believer that you should live Right. You don't want to get to 80 years old, you know, and basically not have lived.

Right. Totally. So I believe I call it living wealthy, enjoying life along the way. If you paid yourself first.

Then one day, someday. My business partners died when they were 35 years old in the plane crash. What if they had deferred life to one day someday they don't get to enjoy their life. So like when I was in scarcity, living like a miser, where it was all about pinching pennies and scrimping and a penny stage is a penny earned. Like my father in law said, hey, you can live in our basement for free. And I told my wife, I'm like, we can live in the basement rent free. She goes, sex free too, if that's where you're trying to take me. And I was like, okay, well let's.

Go ahead and choose a different path. Choose a different path.

But like that scarcity consumed my mind and I wasn't thinking about adding value or serving others or solving problems. I think about what I could eliminate, what I could cut, what I could reduce. And that reductionist thinking doesn't lead to production. And production is your way to wealth. No one shrinks their way to wealth. That's not the game. You expand your way to wealth, you impact more people, you more deeply impact people. You invest in yourself so that you have more value to offer. You understand that value and you expand that value over time. And if all of our life is consumed with how do we save money? How do we double coupon clip? How do we go to Black Friday, how do we just, you know, go borrow something and take three hours to return it? Like all these kind of things consume our lives if we're stuck in scarcity. And scarcity is, you know, no, no amount of discipline or rate of return or financial advisor or savings are going to save you. If you're in scarcity, you have to be more abundant. That's about innovation and exchange and value and service and that kind of thing. And that's the game.

Yeah. No, I love it and you say this differently than I do, but I've always believed that the greatest way to wealth is by solving somebody else's problem, right? Maybe, maybe you got it, maybe you got a great lawnmower, go cut somebody's grass. Maybe you've got a dependable car, maybe you can do a doordash for a little while, right? There's an element of surrendering to the sacrifice. And I'm a big believer that a 24 month sacrifice, just commit to 24 months, it'll fly by like that. And if you do the little things well, big things happen.

Like commit to value creation, right? Commit to, commit to doing the work. Like I call it hard, easy versus easy, hard. It's easy to just kind of coast through and life Gets harder as you're not prepared and you don't have the skill set. It's hard to get up and work out in the morning and to, you know, listen to something that's, that's super insightful and, you know, to learn something new and try something that you haven't tried before. But then life gets easier because now you've got skill sets, now you're more prepared. So hard. Easy versus easy. Hard.

No, I love that. You know, I've always said that principles govern promises. And I'm a big believer that I'm where I'm at in my life because I followed specific principles. Principles handling my money, principles handling my relationships, principles handling my emotional state, principles handling my team leadership, et cetera. And if you want to make a different shift, all you do is you apply a different principle. Which is another one of the things I love. Why your frameworks that you have, because it literally is like a step by step by step, like, do this first, do the second, do this third, do this fourth. You know, you can't do step four first. You have to do step one first. Right. And I love that. I love that.

I wrote a book called the Money Tree that's super foundational, but it's about the roots and fruits of prosperity and scarcity. So it's like, you know, it's talking about like the soil, it's talking about the weeds, it's. And it talks about how principles govern. Yeah. So like everything you're saying, they're just so aligned with what I wrote in that.

Well, and I think that goes to show that it's a, it's a life truth. It's a truth. Truth, meaning it's not something that's subjective to opinion. It's like if you do this, this has happened in the digital world. They would say if this, then that, like, if this happens, then that happens. If this happens, then that happens. And a lot of people get so stuck. Business owners, entrepreneurs, everyday, ordinary people that have, you know, occupations and professions get stuck in doing the wrong. If this, then that, you know, they're, they're, they get their paycheck and they see a TV and they're like, oh, the new tv. My buddies will come over and watch tv. You know, I'll have more community. If I have a bigger tv, we buy the bigger tv. Not realizing we could sacrifice for a short window of time to put that money in a better vehicle and actually replenish that tenfold. How did you discover that on your own? Like, how. What was the mental Shift that you had from a scarcity mindset into a more of abundance mindset.

I was at this event called mdrt, which is for life insurance sales, when I was in my. In my early 20s and I just gotten married. It was in my first year of marriage. I'm living in a crappy apartment because, as you know, I'm a miser. At the time, I'm talking to this woman, Nancy, and she's like, oh, I can't wait till you get to the next level within this group. You're going to see people view money differently. I'm like, how? She's like, well, let me ask you some questions. And so she starts asking me these questions. I'm like, oh, when we have this much money, then we'll think about that. We're living here until this. And it's all about, like, Dave Ramsey kind of like, you know, like one day someday. And she goes, I wonder what it's like to live in the financial prison that you've built for your wife.

And the crazy thing is, we're. I. We bought a house a few months later, and my income went up exponentially. I started hosting people for study groups over. I just felt more abundant. It was like I had a physical manifestation that came with that abundance where it wasn't just about eliminating, it was about creating. And that was one of the shifts I've had other times in my life as well. Like, I remember the first time I asked the question, what would I do with a billion dollars? And that put me into scarcity, because I was like, I don't know. And I was like, oh, my vision's not compelling or great enough to be worthy of a billion dollars because I'm not thinking about enough value. And that added another level of abundance to shift my focus to others versus just myself. And so there's these little moments where things click, right? Even recently, I was up here. I'm up in my cabin right now, and I had a friend that was coming into town, and she was coming into town for something specific to. For, like, for a breakthrough. And the person was facilitating got sick. And I'm like, well, I know how to do those kind of breakthroughs. Why don't I take you through it? And me helping her had a major breakthrough for me. It was like I was in service. I was getting something here, but it gave back to me. And it was. It's those moments that bring out abundance.

No, I love that. You know, it said, there's nothing. There's nothing. It's what is it, it says you, you can't out give the giver something along those lines. Right? You can't really you, if you do enough acts of service in the service of other add enough value resources always follows. It always follows. I do have an interesting question because I've heard mixed signals about this and I see different thought leaders talking about it. And you're somebody in whom I trust with this particular subject. And that's the subject of this infinite banking concept. Is that a wealth generation tool or is that something that people should stay away from?

I interviewed the guy that created it, Nelson Nash, a couple times about food 15, 17 years ago, and there's some good pieces to it and there's some things to be aware of. His final analysis is that you could put that you should put 100% of your income into this. I am not a believer of putting 100% of your income into it because then he says you put money in there and then you just borrow from it to pay for things and pay yourself back. 100% of your income into one vehicle feels like concerning to me now putting my a place to put my midterm cash where there's cash value that's high cash, low commission, low commission, I like. And then I use that money like I bought this cabin with that money and then I can put it back in when I want. I bought some more land close by, so it's not earning a huge rate of return, maybe 5% with tax advantages, but I have access to it before 59 and a half. So as a midterm strategy, as a way to reduce taxes, protect from liability and enhance your savings account so it's not just earning 1% or less. Great as a only strategy that you ever do. Problematic. So infinite banking concept has some good pieces and other pieces I don't love.

Well, I think that's why it's good to actually have the conversation because I don't know that anybody else. There are typically even folks I've had on the show that are great thought leaders. People that I admire in the work that they've done are either one or the other. I like your approach in that it's more of a balanced approach. It's like, look, if you have the liquidity, it's a midterm strategy. Yeah, it makes sense. If it's 100% cash all in, then not so much. And pivoting off of that, if someone was to put, you know, 80% and 75% high, in other words, a high rate in, how would they actually Transition that wealth to later generations behind them, like their children. Maybe they've done a good job of teaching their children how to manage money because most people blow it after. After, you know, I'm hoping my. My grandkids won't blow what I've. What I've earned, let's put it that way.

Right? Yeah, we have. We've done a lot of research and work in legacy. So passing money onto the next generation tax free, not difficult. Having that money sustained for generations, much more complicated. So there's three main factors that help that generational wealth. One is a family office, which is having a financial firm that's cohesive, comprehensive, and communicating. The Rockefellers kind of invented that, where they had a fam. Their family had an office that worked just for them. Now most people don't have that kind of wealth, so it's just having a comprehensive financial team. The second thing is a family retreat structure. Having rituals in your family which are. Which are your regular daily things that you do to really bond and connect traditions, which are maybe like monthly or semi, annually or annually that bring the family together in a really profound way. And then symbols. Every major organization in the world has a symbol. Most families don't. So there's logos and businesses. What about having something that your family has? We have a family heirloom and an entire logo that's a crest above our fireplace here. So it's pretty sweet. And then having, like, family meetings and having things that you do as a family because you have meetings in business, why wouldn't you do that inside of your family? So you're starting to prepare and having family mission statements and family values, and then ultimately a family constitution, which is your distilled values, philosophies and principles that actually govern the traditional trust that you send to them. So they're not just getting money, they're inheriting contribution, they're inheriting ideas. They're inheriting, like, a structure that supports them. So they're left with signposts rather than being reckless because they just get a bunch of money dumped on them when their parents die. And they're like, here, here you go. Good luck.

Yeah, Here comes the Lambo.

Yeah. Yeah. The millionaire next door is talking about these families with a lot of money, but nobody knows about it. The problem is, when they die, their kids then just blow through that money because there's never a conversation about what to do with it. So it's really about all the things we learn in business that make businesses work. We can run inside of families to make families work. And I tell my kids, you don't get an inheritance, but we do have a family bank. And if you want to borrow from that bank for a house, you can pay back a better interest rate to us than you'd pay to a bank. And if you want to start a business, we'll give you part of the money to help you out, but we're not giving you all the money. And so there is an inheritance, there's opportunity, and if they want to be good stewards of that, they get to tap into it. If they don't, they don't get any of it. It's not an entitlement. It's a privilege and a stewardship.

Dude, that is so good. I've been telling my kids, you know, two of them just graduated high school, one of them just started college, One's now working for one of my businesses, trying to learn from the inside out. And I've been telling both of them along the way, it's like, I know you enjoy the lifestyle, and, you know, we're not showboaty by any stretch of the means. We do have a nice lifestyle. And said, if you want to have the lifestyle that we've managed to have and serve the amount of people that we get to serve and bless those we get to bless and go through these things that obviously bring a lot of great joy, then you have to do what I do, or you have to follow the principles that I follow, and you do these things. I have already told them both. Specifically, in the event that you're not a good steward of what you've already been given, you will get nothing else. I'll donate to charity first, and I'm very firm about that. And I was sitting down with a friend of mine, and they were like, man, that's really harsh. I'm like, look, it's taken me 23 years to get to where I'm at today. I had to sacrifice or bust through homelessness. I had to bust through limiting beliefs. I had to go through all these different challenges to get to this stage in the game. And all I want them to do is take the lessons learned. They don't have to experience the pain necessarily, but take the lessons learned anyway. Right? So I so love that you said that, because I think that that is the strategy of legacy. I think that's the strategy of building strategic wealth over lifetimes, not just our lifetime. Right? So I love that. I got one final question for you. If we get. If you. If you got a couple more minutes and you know, there's a lot of talk if, you know, I consume a lot of YouTube myself personally and I'm getting served up. The world is ending or the world is about to break loose and be exciting and cool. Who the heck really knows from my perspective, fct leaves. But I'm curious to know, do you see an economic challenge coming up or not even necessarily collapse? Maybe it's a collapse. What do you see on the horizon? How can someone prepare?

Well, look, we have these cycles of economic challenges and the more we have this interference where we're printing money and they're not even printing, they added computer screens and when we're handing out checks and people can get paid more sitting at home than going to, to work. Like we're, we're on borrowed time for that.

Yeah.

And there will be the natural forces in the market that will make us reckon, you know, but that doesn't mean everybody's going to go through travesty or everybody's going to lose everything. It means that we can no longer sit idly and hope for the best. We have to take action.

Yeah.

When you have this much money being flooded into economy and you're sitting in cash, your cash is becoming worth less. And if you're not increasing your skillset to add more value and you earn the same amount of money, it will buy less. So we don't get to be, you know, we don't get to be lazy about it. We don't get to say we're too busy for it. Like in the next 10 years, half of the wealth is going to transfer into new hands. Half of the businesses in the United States alone are going to be sold. So it is important to acquire assets that create cash flow, to create or to find assets that are more inflation proof and to really make sure you know how to navigate adding value regardless of what's happening in the economy. Because if your job is completely reliant upon a very robust economy, you might be in danger. But if you're irreplaceable because you absolutely add so much value, you serve so many people, you build what I call mental capital, which is your ideas, knowledge, wisdom, insights and strategies and relationship capital, which is people, networks, organizations, mentors, family and friends. And when we multiply our mental and relationship capital by building a bridge of value and service, we'll be fine financially. But if we're reliant upon everybody else and hoping for the best, it's going to be bumpy in the next few years for sure. It has to be. There are consequences to these kinds of actions. I'm not buying bunkers. I'm not worried and buying, you know, bullets. I'm simply going, yeah, it's going to get a little crazy at times. But I have friends that, you know, did documentaries on bugging out and on, you know, and that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's been a narrative we've heard over and over again. And, you know, things get better and things get worse, and they kind of keep cycling like this.

Yeah. And I think that's. That's so good because it comes down to perspective. Right. You should always be a good steward. And part of being a good steward is nothing more than constantly be learning and growing and being prepared. So those that are prepared to go through weather downturns or not, you know, spending all their cash, they have zero cash reserves. They have zero. They have nothing. Then you're. Yeah, it's gonna be a problem. If you're balanced, you have a balanced approach, which I know that. Which I know you do. Your content does a great job of teaching people those frameworks. Then you're gonna do much better. Now, one of the cool things about your website specifically has this really cool quiz on it, and I think everybody should go there and check it out. Talk to us about the quiz and what it does.

Look, once you know which of these four Personas you are, it'll tell you why you make the financial decisions in the way that you do. Once you understand the positive side of that, you can make better decisions. And once you understand the shadow side of that, you can avoid some of the pitfalls when times get difficult. So, and it's especially important if you're married so that you know the money Persona of who you're married to so you can see what those conflicts are. Because the universe has this sick joke where you never marry or say money Persona.

No, no, never, never. See two Scrooges together. You get one Scrooge and one like, let's spend money.

Yeah. And so I think this is ridiculously helpful for that and understanding which of those Personas are again, you'll know what your magnets are that help you, and you'll know what your pitfalls are that hurt you. And once you understand that, I'm telling you, it's been a game changer. My wife and I have not fought about money for over 13 years now. Dude. And our first year in marriage, it was our number one fight. The whole year. She was like, why did I marry this guy?

That's what it was. The hair. It was the Flowing hair.

It was. It was the flowing hair. Um, so. So basically, like, it's that useful, it's that impactful, and I think it's the. It's been a culmination of my 21 years of work, and this quiz is brand new, man. It's. It's been something we've been working on for a couple of years.

Well, and I know how much time and energy went into it. That's one of the reasons I wanted to bring it up. Um, I'm a big. I'm a big believer in giving the audience tools and resources that they can take action on today. I'm a big believer of that because I think the average person is looking for an idea, but they're also looking for a strategy, because of the idea without the strategy does absolutely nothing for them, you know, other than causes more dreams of sugar plums. Right, so now I'm curious. What is your first stop on your. On your comedy tour? What's the. What's the first place you're hitting?

Phoenix, Arizona. So the Tempe Improv heading there, and then we go straight from there to La Jolla Comedy Store there in San Diego. And yeah, man, 15 cities is crazy.

Well, and if I can. If I can do anything with it, we're going to try to add a 16th. I just. Guys, I need you guys to come out and represent Raleigh, North Carolina. You guys didn't see this because we were off air, but I asked Garrett said, look, if I. If I. If I have people to come watch you come do it, right? He said, yeah, I'm down. So it's on the way. Like, you can totally go from New York right on through North Carolina, right on down to Florida.

Dude, man, I've had a blast hanging out with you again. Your experience shows the fact that you've studied as hard as you have, you've served as much as you have. You know, it's good knowing that the heart behind the effort, you know, and it's. And that's super important. So, dude, thank you so much for hanging out with me today on the show, dude.

Well, dude, it was good to hear from you and, like, just a very easy conversation back and forth and love your smile and your energy and all that you're doing. So I really appreciate you for featuring me and having me, man.

Yeah, absolutely, dude. Anytime. No, seriously, one final thing. Where can anybody else find you?

All right, so GarrettGunderson.com and then click on the three lines and go to the American Ream. Go look at the comedy tour. And I mean, when else? I've never done something for only 47 bucks. I'm a lot more expensive. Yeah, a lot more expensive, but.

So pick up your tickets and come and see me. We'll have a good time.

Rock and roll. I do have a good one. See you, buddy.

Amen. Take care.

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