How to Become a Value Creator to Create a Life Worth Living

Hey, it's Mark Pulitolski, the land geek with niche real estate website the landgeek.com and on this week's Art of Passive Income podcast. I'm gonna put on my anchorman voice. He's a big deal. Gary Gunderson is our guest. He is the author of nine books. Not eight, not 10, nine, including multiple wall Street Journal bestsellers with Killing Sacred Cows hitting number one and making the New York Times bestsellers list. And his book what Would the Rockefellers do, which was actually gifted to me before I knew anything about Infinite Banking, had been consistently among the top five titles in Amazon's wealth management category since its publication. Garrett is a speaker who uses entertainment to educate, and his theatrical keynote illustrates the principles in his most recent book, Money Unmasked, using humor, storytelling, and music. I actually got the privilege, the honor of hearing Garrett stand up and rap at a event at a mastermind group. It's amazing. Garrett's comedy special, the American Ream, produced by Emmy winner Marty Kelner, breaks down all the myths about money through an original standup show. He performs for corporate events. Garrett enjoys time at his cabin, especially one on one immersions with clients where he teaches them how to create their richest life. Garrett, welcome.

Hey, you said it was a privilege to hear me rap. I mean, I'm sure people are like, what are you talking about? Privilege to hear a 45 year old white man rap? I don't know. You know, I'll tell you. Credibility, Mark. We might have lost all credibility.

We lost our credibility. I agree. But the people who listen to this podcast know I'm a huge real rap fan. And so I get some of that street cred back.

Like 90s hip hop or what? Like, what are you into?

Well, you know, look, I like old Kanye.

My kids are the biggest Kanye fans on the planet. We have every Kanye on vinyl. Other than Watch the Throne, that's the only one that we don't have. Hard to get that one. But yeah, like, dude, Kanye is. Yeah, next level.

Yeah, yeah, J. Cole, we can go on and on.

No Role Models is a top five song for me of all time. That is just.

Yeah, it's a classic. It's classic. But what was interesting about your rap was you were rapping about money.

Yeah.

And. And some of the. And it was just, it was just really well done. It actually made you think. But I want to rewind the tape a bit. And how did you get into what you do and. Which is hard to sort of describe. I mean, I think you help People become wealthy. Is that the pithy way of saying it?

Yeah, I mean, like you mentioned in my bio, I like to go do these one on one immersions at my cabin. I just got back from that this morning, had this couple up there and we go from A to Z. But it's crazy because not only are we talking about their money and finances, we get deep into like where they have these belief systems and emotions that are holding them back and where kind of the subconscious things that make it, where they don't enjoy life along the way and, and redesign kind of how they live. It's a lot of fun. I don't know exactly how I figured all that out other than I think that I started at 15 with a business, won some money, wanted to invest that money, made some mistakes when I was 18 with that money, but then got offered an internship when I was 19 and just was aggressively curious, like asked as many questions as I could, use my young age to be able to meet with people that were very successful. And I just always had this philosophy, I don't care who's right, I just care what's right when it comes to money. And so that included me, which at times was hard to be like, oh, I don't have the right philosophy here, this is too risky. And I have to adopt a different belief system in order to serve people better. And because of that, I feel like from 1998 when I started till today, I've learned a lot and made some mistakes, but admitted those mistakes. And it's really helped me to kind of frame a place where people can be really vulnerable with me because I lead with that vulnerability and create a sense of trust because it's really about them and the questions I ask them, not some process that always produces the same cliched result that might not have anything to do with their life. And because I ask so many questions and because I've been around so many great people, as you know, we've just been around amazing people. I've been able to kind of formulate a unique philosophy that's really about the individual being the greatest asset and a new way to view portfolios that has to do with real estate, IP and businesses more than stocks, bonds and trusts. So it's just a, you know, I look at the individual as the greatest asset, not just like some product that gets peddled.

I love that. So this is very, you know, individualized. This isn't a one size fits all type of philosophy. But then that's going to make it hard to write A book. Right. Let's talk about the new book Money Unmasked. And what are we going to learn about in that philosophy?

Well, that book is really about money Personas to begin with. What's your money Persona and what's the shadow side of that and what's the winning side of that? Because it becomes very predictable behavior when you're in the shadow side of the limited results. But it's also exponential when people can embrace their winning Persona. But it's hard because we have these pre programmed things. So it begins with that, but then it moves into how do we profit from our ideas up front without having to borrow a cent? And where do we recover cash and put that money back into our pocket without having to budget and how do we recover time by designing a life that we love and creating a life we don't want to retire from. And then ultimately poses this question of the, the very first line of the book is what would you do with a billion dollars? And for a lot of people that's super confronting. It sure was for me the first time I asked myself that. Cause I had no freaking idea. Because I wasn't able to create that level of value or think about that level of value. And a billion's probably more than most people know how to spend. Maybe there's a few out there that know how to do it. I'm not one of them. So it was about this completely transformational viewpoint of how do we become the greatest value creator that we were meant to be and live in the world of co creation and collaboration rather than competition and jealousy. And, and how does that unlock a better life? But when it really comes down to it, the book comes down to one core concept. How do you create a game that's worth playing? How do you create a life that's worth living? And once you've designed it, you basically abolish scarcity instead of getting stuck in playing not to lose and playing to win, which is never about enjoying the present. You've already won when you create the right life. So it's not just about incomes, it's about the win is in the work. And, and that concept of win first and then play is what the book's all about at the core.

Yeah, that's a lot to unpack. Garrett.

I just gave you my whole book in two minutes. So I've obviously thought about it a few times.

Yeah, I mean there's a lot there, there's a, there's a. You know, because you're sort of bringing in this, these Other philosophies, when most people talk about money, let's just take a financial advisor. They're looking at, okay, here's how I'm going to get the best return on my investment. And it's up to you as the individual to figure out what are you going to do with that return? And you're sort of reversing it. You're saying, what's a great life to you? If you had a billion dollars, what would you do with it? And then let's reverse engineer, well, how do we get you to that great life, which is. And, and live in the present, which.

Doesn'T require a billion dollars, ironically, which doesn't. Doesn't.

Doesn't require a million dollars at all. And it's a really interesting thought exercise. I'd be curious, how difficult do you find it, and what are some of the questions you ask your clients who have scarcity mentality? I grew up with scarcity mentality. I talk about it. You know, my parents, my dad was a wholesale grocer. I knew the prices of everything. I went to a restaurant, and I still do this today. I'll order water and I'll lie to you and I'll say, oh, why don't you order a drink? It's healthy to order water. No, I don't want to spend 329 on a drink.

In my play, there's this moment where I talk about going on date night with my wife, and she wanted to order some wine, and I gave her this lecture like, babe, have you never heard of the Massachusetts Investor Trust Fund? The first ever mutual fund created. If we invest a dollar, just $1 at its inception, it's worth $1,207.33 today. How could you ever think about this $6 glass of wine? It's going to cost our family $228.04 over the next 40 years. Like, I was that guy, because that's one of the shadow Personas. And look, I grew up in a family that taught me to be a miser because my great grandfather was separated from his wife for seven years when he came to America to try to earn enough money to, to get a home and be able to provide for the family. So that kind of creates this scarcity that's at a cellular level where you're like, oh, we gotta hold onto what we got. And it becomes this playing not to lose. And so my family knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, because everything was about what you could scrimp, save, sacrifice, Delay, defer versus what you could create, add value, deliver service, and solve problems. And that mindset is really in a place where people try to shrink their way to wealth, and that's not possible because scarcity is the greatest destroyer of wealth. So, yeah, I mean, I write this book and I learn a lot while I wrote it. It took me seven years, and I said, how do I make this simple enough yet profound enough at the same time? How do I come from a place where I am compassionate enough about the emotions people truly feel and the fear that comes up when we confront some of these things, especially around the very charged topic of money? And so that's why it was writing and rewriting and writing and rewriting and even going through the experience myself. I mean, writing the book, I was like, wait, I have to sell my business because I'm not playing. I'm not in a winning game anymore. It doesn't embrace the artist that I want to be with comedy and with the way that I create content in an entertaining way. So it's time to sell so that they could grow the way that they're meant to grow, and I can grow the way I'm meant to grow. And so writing these things are never easy. I wrote Killing Sacred Cows and said, well, maybe net worth's not the greatest indicator of wealth. And watch my net worth get decimated in 2008 and be like, oh, damn, like, we're testing this out in real life time, right? And that's kind of what happens here. And it lets me understand to some degree what people are really going through and what's held them captive and harming them from living the life that they want. And the more we unpack it, it really comes down to this. We're taught in society that if we'll just sacrifice one day we'll be happy. But we become the sacrifice. And happiness is always elusive. So if you look up, you have to sacrifice to succeed. It is all going to validate that. If you look up anything else around you know, can sacrifice, it's always like a positive thing, but I'm saying it's a negative thing. When we sacrifice who we are, when we sacrifice the moments along the way, when we sacrifice our best work for the name of money, and we trade time for dollars, and we. And we trade moments for these monuments of some award in the future, and when we live only by outcomes, not the process, along the way, we. We lose. And there's not really anything I can find really written about that in detail. So that's why I'm excited to put this book out there, you know.

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're like a Zen monk and, you know, a financial wizard combined and a rapper and a comedian all in one sort of interesting and weird and unique ball of wisdom. So if we, you know, I have so many questions. What the question that kind of comes up, what do you think is normal that most people in the financial industry would consider crazy?

I think it's normal to invest in yourself to create financial independence where you're creating cash flow along the way, to never invest in a retirement plan because it locks your money away. I think it's normal to not invest in the stock market at all and instead invest in intellectual property, real estate that you could touch and benefit from, or businesses that you have control or influence over. I think it's normal to take less risk in order to get return. I think it's normal to have a shorter time horizon to see results rather than 30 years. I think it's like, I have a very big departure from the financial world because the financial world is about waiting for compound interest to kick in, deferring for something to happen over 30 years, and ultimately shirking responsibility because they neglect cash flow. If it's not going to cash flow or be something I'm directly related to, I'm not interested. So if they're like, oh, have a diversified portfolio, I believe in focus more than diversification. Most people diversify when they get wealthy. If you diversify because you start spreading yourself thin too early, you, you minimize your returns, get too many things you can't control, and ultimately that creates a lot of chaos financially. So, like, because again, I ask a lot of questions. I just don't really believe in retirement plans. I don't even believe in retirement. I mean, I get it. If you're a blue collar worker and your body's breaking down, retirement's probably a really good idea. But if you find the type of career that you enjoy and continually seek to find purpose that's profitable, then you might not ever want to retire from that. Because I find it very risky to retire from the world of value creation and then be reliant upon institutions. And if interest rates change, my retirement could change. If taxes go up, my retirement income can go down, or if inflation's high, my purchasing power is lost. And that's where a lot of retirees have found themselves for the last 20 years. 18 of the last 20 years. Interest rates are really low for retirees. Last two years they're high. But Inflation is even higher. So that's really scary for them. And, and so I don't understand not being in the world of value. And so I'm just. It's a very different perspective. That's not for everybody but for the people that resonates with. That's who I like to design life with.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the people who are listening to this podcast, they're listening to it. It's the Art of Passive Income podcast. I think passive income is the antidote to financial anxiety. I'd rather have 200, 300% passive income above my fixed expenses so I can move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs in the self actualization and not just solve my money problems, but solve my time problems. And yeah, you're, you're really like, we're, we're definitely aligned with that. Usually I like to argue with my guests, but no, I, I mean like.

The greatest rap album I believe is probably illmatic. So we'll have to see what you have to say about that.

Well, that's, that's incorrect. But that's, but look, but everyone's, you know, entitled to an incorrect opinion. But I'll have to look it up though. So let's talk about the, the stand up comedy. The One man show.

Yeah.

And it's, it's an. Because I've never seen a comedian talk about money. I've seen people make jokes about Dave Ramsey, but I've never seen anybody actually go on stage and in a very intellectual way have lines that are funny about money. How did this happen?

I think when I was five, I got introduced to comedy because both sides of my family were hilarious. My dad had got a good sense of humor, my uncles on both sides were super funny. And so that always felt like love. That always felt exciting. And so I was always trying to learn jokes and repeat jokes. And by the time I was in college, I could repeat these. I kind of formulated jokes that I modified from what people would tell my family always wanted me to tell them. And so it was always fun. And then it wasn't until I took like a summer where I was in Italy and I had time, like downtime. I was like, you know, what do I really want to do? That's just for quality of life. Because my business was doing well with me in Italy and I was like, this is pretty amazing. Like, this is going to give me some freedom. And I came back and decided to do standup comedy. And because I had been on stage for a really long time, I loved to Tell stories when I was with my friends that were pretty funny. And I liked to use jokes in my speeches. I had some chops, but now it was about really refining that. And I just wrote a 4 minute and 20 second comedy bit about looking like Jesus when my hair was down, but not having his powers. And I did an open mic and it went well enough that someone was like, hey, you should open for us. You're really funny. And so I just. They were local comedians that I was just opening for them all the time and working on jokes that I was writing with them to refine them. And when they filmed something in 2019, a manager was there and he was like, dude, I think nobody's doing this in finance. I think you've got something here. And I filmed a comedy special which was a dedicated five months of just writing, rehearsing, and working to be able to film a special with eight Emmy winners on the crew. And, you know, we did two shows that had a. It was two levels with the balcony, a beautiful stage and set design and made this major investment. And I've. I've signed deal terms to get that distributed. So hopefully we'll see that out in 2024 sometime. But the key was I just love doing it. And I'd been writing about finance for a very long time, so I'd always ask, like, what's something that's funny that people think about in finance? That's just a dumb idea, but we, like, buy into it anyway. And I mean, think about how many dumb ideas are with taxes and the government and Wall street and even crypto and, you know, insurance. And it was like, I just sat there and thought through all of these things from like in property and casualty insurance. I just thought of all the dumb commercials. So I was like, I wrote like 10 minutes just on the commercials and I ended up keeping about three or four minutes in the special. So I just think about what's funny about the world of finance. And I mean, I just thought like, hey, man, nobody trusts Wall Street. Like, you'd never trust Wall street with a different brand than money. Like, oh, Wall street daycare, you're gonna take your kids there? Of course not. But like, why are we trusting them with money? And like, think of every Wall street movie. It's always something about something bad, yet that's where we send our money. So I just would always ask those questions and thought of all my content and killing sacred cows. And I'm like, there's nine myths. Why are those myths? Probably because people think a certain Way, how can we joke about that? And so I just really had spent a lot of time, you know, and a lot of it was real experiences with my kids or real experiences from stage or whatever. And you know, it's a fun process. It's just something I really enjoy doing. It is easier to do comedy that's not money related sometimes, but there's comedians much funnier than I am, but not money comedians. So I just, I'd rather, you know, be at the top. So I decided to take it down the money road. And there's some messaging there that matters. Like even if they get one insight from that, you know, comedy versus just going to a club, having a good time and going back to life. I'm like, what if I can just plant a seed that helps them out? Their financial life, that was exciting to me.

No, and I think you hit the nail on the head. I think that's where, when we come back to your, your value about what, hey, what's a great life? What's a wealthy life? It's value creation. And when you marry something that you love to do with, something that's really difficult to do, which is, and everyone can talk, it's really hard to get up in front of with a microphone. The people have paid for it, are, you know, you're listening to, listening to this too, right? Entertainment, that's really, really difficult. One of the most difficult things to do. But then you're, you're meeting us at our, at our most vulnerable core, which for a lot of people is money. There's so much tied up in money and identity. There's, we're so inundated with all these messages about, you know, what's rich, what's wealthy, what's, where should we put our money? What's wrong in this and that. And then to have somebody just cut through it with comedy where we can laugh at it, right? I mean, it immediately resonates. You wouldn't send your kids to Wall street daycare, but we'll certainly put our money into Wall street without thinking twice about it. And there's, it's, it's, it really creates so much value very quickly when people can, can do that. And there's so many great comedians that when they do social commentary, I'm thinking of George Carlin. It just cuts to the core of it. It's like, oh, and it really makes you think. And you're, because you're laughing, your defenses are down. Where if you just met with a financial advisor that looks like Jesus, your defenses might Be up. Right, but so it's going to take it, take some time. I could talk to you all day. I want to be respectful of time. But I wanted to ask about just your philosophy of helping people with a scarcity mentality get to abundance mentality. And how do we do that?

It's the questions I ask first and foremost. What's their first memory of money? When's the first time that they felt afraid or fear around it? When did the first time they feel like they couldn't count on someone? You get to their childhood and you realize when something happens there, a lot of times they go, I'm never going to let this happen again. And they don't mature in that area of their life and they hold on to that and money is just like a mirror that pushes back of how they feel about themselves. Like money Unmasked. My book is about, you know, our relationship to money, is the relationship we have with ourselves. So if I can get to the point where I can ask the questions to find out where they feel this level of scarcity, fear, or they have unresolved emotions and pain and then just have them process that, they can start to get to the other side. So it's a myriad of questions and it's the question behind the question and it's creating a safe space where they're willing to share and then really they could start to heal. And I mean, it's that simple and that hard at the same time because we're dealing with people that have promised to never face this or that, don't have the courage to face it or, you know, that, you know, confront some shadow part of their money Persona. But on the other side of that is a true level of freedom and expression that is so exciting to be part of and watch. Like that's one of my favorite things to do.

I love it. I love it. Last question before we get to your tip of the week. What is the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise of creating wealth?

I just saw some really bad advice where I had a client that has done an immersion and before he did the immersion, I had this four day event that he was at and I was talking about just risk in general. And he's like, man, ever since I've sold my business, I feel like I'm in so much risk that I don't, I can't sleep well at night. And so he decided to call his, you know, stock, like stock, mutual fund, whatever you call it, planner and cash out. Because this guy had him refinance his house after he sold his business, which there was no reason to, and pull all the equity out to put it in the market. I'm like, well, he just got $20 million. Why are you refinancing a house? It was already paid off. Had him cancel an insurance contract that had a minimum guaranteed rate on the money that was in there of four and a half percent. You can't even get that anymore. And had him put it on the market, which he'd lost $600,000 over a few months and was losing sleep. So when he called to say he was going to cash out, that advisor said, you're making the worst financial decision of your life. And see, the biggest thing is when people have a product they think is going to be the end all, be all. There's no magic product, just like there's no magic pill. And they put their philosophy ahead of the peace of mind of the person they're working with. They actually start to destroy lives. Even if money's made because what if the market would have went the opposite way, which it could have just done and gone up? That person still doesn't have ease because there wasn't consistent cash flow. And when there's not consistent cash flow, there is so much anxiety. So for me, when everything's about financial accumulation rather than financial independence or you're assets create enough cash flow to cover expenses, anytime you don't have your assets covering your expenses with cash flow, that's passive or recurring revenue is what I would call it then are going to have a degree of scarcity and they're going to do things where they're trading time for money overworking over freight. And so I find this whole notion of retirement 30 years from today so destructive because there's no consideration for cash flow. And the consideration was you're your greatest asset. Automate your savings, deliberately invest and create cash flow with your assets. It's a completely different world and viewpoint that opens people up so they can swing for the fences. And what they do, knowing their financial house is in order and the cash flows coming in, whether they open a laptop or get on a phone that day or go to an office. And I just don't understand why we're still in this world of 30 years from today is when you're finally going to get to enjoy life that gets so destructive.

No, absolutely. We know why, because the incentives are, are there incentives are messed up.

$22 trillion in mutual funds and I just despise mutual funds. I don't think Mutual funds are good investments. There's no cash flow. There's tons of volatility. There's a lot of fees. You add up to a retirement plan. There's lack of liquidity, there's a 10% penalty. There's additional layers of fees. Again, no cash flow. It's like, it's, you know, and, and look it, I get some people that are just working, trading time for money. It's better than nothing, probably, but it's. It isn't the best because it's not creating cash flow 100%.

Well, Garrett, this has been so enlightening. Your mentorship has been invaluable. But now I'm going to put you on the spot one more time and ask you for your tip of the Week, a website and resource, another book besides Money on Masks that will help our passive income listeners improve their businesses, improve their lives. What do you got?

You know, someone once said, what are your favorite books? And I listed three of my books because I'm vain like that, I guess. I mean, I Killing Sacred Cows and what Would the Rockefellers Do Are two really instrumental books in what we talked about today. And people can have them for free@garrettgunderson.com offer and just the first chapter of Killing Sacred Cows, of identifying where we're stuck in scarcity and the impact that has on someone's philosophy and their actions is so instrumental to how we view money that that's. I think that that would be critical for anyone. I love it.

Well, my tip of the week is Learn more about Garrett. Go to GarrettGunderson.com and also if what are you saying? And you'd be like, oh my, I've got a lot of fear. I've got a lot of scarcity with money. Go to an immersion with Garrett. Learn more about that. How do we learn more about that, Garrett?

Yeah, Basically it's@garrettgunderson.com I mean, it's a little bit. It's a process to learn about it because it's an invite only. And I usually do a discovery session with someone first to make sure it's really a fit. But if they subscribe, we every now and again will tell people about it. Maybe every quarter we'll have a little something where I might do an ask me anything to our database. We don't really email that often because I only do 24 of them a year. But yeah, definitely. I mean, if it's something that you're really, really interested in, you can email garrettgarett freeflow f r e e f l o w.group not.com group garrettreeflow.group and we can have an exchange back and forth and see what it looks like and what it is. And I have a really cool video that kind of shows highlights of people's immersions and what they talk about afterwards. We're building it for a reality show so it's kind of a fun 10 minute watch because it's done really well. Awesome.

I can't wait, I can't wait to watch the standup. I'm excited about the one man show. I'm excited about introducing you some really good rap. And this is, this is amazing. So I want to thank the listeners and remind you the only way, the only way I'm going to be able to get Garrett to come back is if you do three little favors. Follow rate review the podcast and a screenshot of that review. Support thelangic.com and I'll send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich, which you know is not going to be as good as money on masts, but look, it's still good. Get money on masks and Dirt Rich. And Dirt Rich will be free. So check it out. Garrett, are we good?

Yeah, man. It's so good to be with you today. You're a lot of fun. Love the interview. So glad that we did this.

Thanks, brother. All right, thanks everybody. Let's Freedom Ring.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com training. Let freedom ring.