Learn How an Investor at 16 Became a Successful Entrepreneur

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com and today's guest. I'm really excited about somebody new, someone different. Interesting all this crazy information. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, the brain, the professor. Your flights go Sherpa. Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd how are you?

Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

Pulse is still normal. Respiration is fine. I'm excited about our guest. So our guest today is Lior Gantz. He is the editor of wealthresearchgroup.com he's been called the thrill seeking entrepreneur by his team. He's built and run numerous successful businesses and he's traveled over 30 countries in the past decade in pursuit of thrills and opportunities, gaining valuable knowledge and experience with wealth. Research group LIOR allows readers access into the world of the few who beat the markets consistently for decades, thus leveling the playing field of the investment industry. So he's been doing this since he was 16. His research is relentless and he delivers a unique perspective to investors. We are going to dig deep into that. Lior Gantz, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So Lior, let's, let's just rewind the tape a little bit. So you're 16. How do you get involved in wanting to invest?

Yeah, I'm actually 13 when my father's business goes under and it's just a point, you know, 13 when you start having some individual needs, you want to go out, you want to do this and that. If your parents can't afford to give you any allowance, you're also old enough to start looking for stuff to do in the neighborhood to make money. So what happened with me was I started babysitting and then I upsold the parents that I can also coach basketball to the boys that I was babysitting. So I started doing both of these and I actually saved the money. I put it into a bank account and that was like the main thing that happened to me. That doesn't happen to a lot of teens that work and they just go out and spend it. By the time I'm 16, I'm babysitting, coaching basketballs, painting decks and then starting deliveries on the scooter. And I have like 20 grand. 20, $20,000 because there's no expenses, obviously, living at home and whatnot. And you're able to save. Every day after school, I go and work for five, six hours. So the guy at the bank says, why don't you have your money work for you? Which obviously I didn't understand what he's saying. So he said, you need to invest it. You have to put it. You have to buy something that grows in value. And why not? Starting to, like, tell me everything about investing, like five minutes. Anyways, what he tells me is, look, you have $20,000. Get your parents here, get them to sign a waiver so you're a minor. Get them to sign a waiver. You can. So you can buy mutual funds and whatever was popular in the year 2000. But he also told me, go and read books about investing. And I went and bought Peter lynch book and Warren Buffett book. And you know, in high school I was like that kid inside of the history. I have a Warren Buffett book that I'm reading and highlighting. So I started investing in June 2000. So that's literally three months after the dot com bubble bursts, which in hindsight is a great time to start buying. And the one good thing that banker told me was China is looking like it's starting to work here. So I was literally buying China in the year 2000, which was also very lucky and profitable. And then what happened with my father? He started again in business. And when I was 18, his second business also failed. And then I became really insane about risk and entrepreneurship. So all those two years where I spent reading like 100 investment books, I went and bought entrepreneurship books and started reading all of them for the next few years. And that's how I got into business and investing. And a few years ago I said, look, I think I know. I think I've read so many books that if I summarize these into bits, I can put five minute reads or six minute reads and people will appreciate them. And that's how the free newsletter wealthresearch.com was formed. It's basically a way for me to, three times a week, wrap up what I see in current events, but also give more of a bird's eye view of principles and investing, et cetera. Then if I see something interesting, I also highlight that in a specific way.

Interesting.

Scott.

Ty, what are your thoughts?

All right, so me, I'm all. I'm all about, like the business books, whatever, right? Like whenever I go to a bookstore, like, that's the section I go to. I don't read fiction. Rarely I go to the business section. And having worked in a Business career, you know, like, I find a big disconnect, and I have always found a big disconnect between the books. Execution in real life, right? Like, it's the old Mike Tyson quote. Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face. And a lot of these business books, they're all great in theory, but then on the street, they don't really age well. And the same thing I found in running my own business is that the theory is way different from the actual execution. And, like, how do you close that gap? Like, how do you bring it in and say, here's what the book says, but this is the reality, or do you just not do that? Do you just, like, summarize the books, like. Because there is a big difference.

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the best questions I've ever been asked in, like, four years of doing interviews. Initially, when I was reading a book, I was like, wow, everything is new. And you learn a lot of the things that your competition that's actually in business already knows and already is executing. So then you get to a point where you're reading a book and you have maybe a nugget every 10 pages, you have something of value. And then you get to a point where every 30 pages or 40 pages, you might get something of value. So that's my answer regarding business books. For people that are in the business and are living the world of businesses, many of the things are very redundant and they already know them. And it comes down to two things on whether or not they execute them. One is personal capability. So with many things in business, it comes down to whether or not you're strong enough to make a decision and carry it out. And secondly, whether or not you're strong enough to carry it out and convince the other people that you need to convince that that's the right path to do it. So if you have both of those qualities, you're more equipped for business. In other words, in my opinion, great principles are good, but many people can never apply them because they don't have the personality traits to make sure that they actually are able to implement this as a culture in their business. It just doesn't happen. It becomes a great idea that never materializes, a great principle that nobody does something about or otherwise. So in business, I would say the most important thing is leadership. And everyone develops their own style of leadership. And you can see a leader by just the results and not by him, by somebody saying, I'm a leader. I read many books on leadership. I know all the Principles of leadership. It's either it is or it isn't. So I think that's with regards to execution. The second thing is that not all the principals you specifically will be able to execute. And therefore what I found in business is that the most important part of our success in business is partnership. If somebody is trying to do it alone, in my opinion, or at least in my experience, everything that I try to do without partners has not worked out. So to me, the power of partnerships has been the most important thing in business. And that's where I think a lot of these books, they don't even try to cover it. If I would have written a business book, the first chapter would be find a suitable partner first and then find a business to carry it out to build whatever you want to build.

Yeah, you know, very interesting, Very interesting for sure. So lior, looking at the website wealthresearchgroup.com you've got coronavirus, critical riots and looting, wealth stocks, special reports, dividend mania. So there's a lot going on there and there's a lot of predicting of the future. Correct.

There's what the website tries to to do is to give you enough information where you use the past to make decisions in the present that will impact your future without predicting a certain script of the future that may be totally wrong. So one of the first lessons I've learned in business was that in 1890, the world's smartest people in Oxford University, which was like the Mecca back then of academics, they, they told them write a prediction of how the world would look like in 100 years and literally Oxford University will open those letters up in 1990, 100 years later. And this is a true story. So 1890 they write that London would be inhabitable in, in about 20 years because of horseshit and other disease that will come from mass population. Little did they know that 12 years later Henry Ford would come and change the entire horse and boogie world. And then Edison and whatever happened in those 20 marvelous years where aviation was invented, et cetera. So we literally do no predicting. What we try and do is we look at what has worked under any president, any interest rate, environment, any type of situation that has to do with politics, with economics, with demographics, with anything else, what works in general and therefore can reliably continue to work. And that's basically the idea of the newsletter, the website, etc. Give you information that's not good just today, but it's good in general.

So it's basically the history repeats itself. We see these trends here's information that you should be thinking about and then go out and make your own wise investment decision based on things that, you know, we've been able to see essentially based on the past.

Is that. Yes. Yeah, that is. That is much more in line with everything. My thinking, Mark, is that in the way that we're brought up, if I wasn't exposed to this tragedy at age 13 where my father says I just don't have $25 to give you so you can do this or that, you either get it or you're going to stay home and not be with your friends and whatnot, I wouldn't have been exposed to all this golden information that is just literally sitting there and I wouldn't be able to develop my personality and my skill set and all that in an early age, which I think also age was important. If you're 18 or 21 and you don't know how to write a check for 21 years, no one's bothered to tell you how to, you know, what's the savings account. All these basic things that you kind of learn in a short period of time as an adult, you have a disadvantage. And then I don't have to tell you what happens if you're from a lesser, not from a good background, from lower qualitaris of society where the parents don't have the information to give to their parents, even to their children, even. So to me, that is what the website is all about. If you care to take the time, if you care to take a few hours a week and read, then you will have a huge advantage over everybody else. And I'll tell you where that adventure, in my opinion, comes Most into play. March 2020. What happens to the stock market in 16 days? It goes down minus 35%. Why did it happen? Because $30 trillion worth of stocks and bonds were sold and put into cash. The system froze completely. What did you do when that happens? That is the main question in life, right? What did you do when that happened? If you were part of the sellers then, and you're not even in until now, you're still sitting in cash, you've lost a ton of equity. If on the flip side, you bought equities at the bottom, you're doing very well. If you sold before the pandemic started to rocket and you sold at full price and then you got in again, then you're in the best situation. And so what we try and do is we try and tell you that here's one time that a 16 day, 35% drop. Here's what history tells you about these drops so that when it happens, you do not panic and you do not sell your retirement portfolio at a 35% discount compared to last week. If you have a million dollars, you just lost $350,000. If you have 2 million, you lost $700,000, and you're 62, you're 63. If you're out in the markets, you lost real money, you lost the years of your life that could have been much more comfortable. So I think, Mark, that is where the value is. If you read our work before this thing hit, you would have not done that. You would have not panic, sold with the rest of the world. You would have been a contrarian. You would have known what the word contrarian even means. And that's where I think the value comes, because I went through 2008, I went through all the bear markets between 2008 and 2020. I've learned about the past 150 years worth of problems. And I've read the books the Triumph of the Optimists, which anyone who's read it is. There's no way that he's out of equities, that he's not investing, and that he's not a net buyer of assets throughout his prime years in life. So I think that's where the real value is.

Scott Todd.

All right, I didn't sell any equities. I didn't buy any equities. I just kept buying the asset that I know, which is land. Like, how does what you're gonna help me do, like, gonna help me with the asset that I'm buying?

Well, in the newsletter, we focus a lot about not doing anything that you're not an expert on. So. Or I should say this, I was in the idf. I'm Israeli, so we have to do three years mandatory idf. And one of the slogans of the IDF is when in doubt, there is no doubt. In other words, when. When you feel that you don't know enough about something, just let it go, let it, leave it alone. It's not your. In your circle of competence, and you shouldn't be doing it because there's enough opportunity in what you do know. So if you know land, then I think you knew enough about land, like you said, to know that land is not going away. Coronavirus is not going to change land. And so you were buying land because it was probably, I don't know how much cheaper it was. I am invested as an equatorial investor in a fund that does only agriculture, land and Sells basically the land to, leases the land to the farmer and leases the equipment and whatnot. So I also invested in that fund between March and now.

We know that guy. We had him on podcast. That's funny. Yeah, but, but so, so, Liora, what would you say is the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

Well, first of all, what you said, where somebody comes on the podcast and predicts the future, gives, gives people a script, all scripts look, especially if the guy's convincing, all scripts look, look amazing. And then you think, okay, the dollar is going to hyperinflation. I'm gonna, everything is gonna go berserk. The national debt is going to kill us all in one on one night. And if you listen to those forecasters, I think from what, from 1971, it's been said that, you know, it's every time that, that you hear a forecast, know this. The forecasts tell you more about the forecaster than about the future. You would know a lot about his personality, but it tells you nothing about the future. And that's important to understand. The way you offset this is diversification. So if you, if you're not sure what's going to happen, diversify. That obviously de risks your scenario for the future, but when you hear about the future, just listen out of courtesy and politeness. You don't have to buy that prediction at all. So that's one thing. And the second thing that I hear, a lot of people, in my opinion, current bad advice. So something that people are saying now that I think is bad advice is that a lot of people are in cash and waiting for either the markets to go back to the March lows or much below those. They're looking for PE ratios, which is what everybody thinks is overvalued today. They look for it to go back down to what it was historically. And historically, you buy companies on the stock market for about 15 times earnings. And I, I think whoever's waiting for those days to return is making the worst mistake of his life because those days are not returning. They're just not coming back. Under present conditions, under present interest rates, companies are not going to trade for 15 times earnings as a basket and you're just going to lose on. You're just going to sit there in cash and do nothing. So I think that's the worst advice that I currently hear because there's so many people that are fearing equities right now because they think they're in a bubble.

Yeah, yeah. Scott Tyler, your thoughts?

You know, I think that the best advice is this. You don't have to race out and do anything.

Okay?

Like, you know, that's where people get into trouble is they hear advice like, oh, if you're not buying stocks right now, you're missing out. I think that you gotta be wise in what you do. You gotta keep your money moving. Sitting in the bank is not an option. It's, it's a negative option. So you gotta, you gotta be wise in what you're, you're doing and you gotta be open to learning new things. Right? Like, you gotta be open to trying something, even if it's little bets. You know, make some little bets somewhere and then once you start to learn more about it, you can go make bigger bets. But don't, don't. I think that a lot of times people get in trouble where they try to make bigger bets right off the bat without knowing everything about the investment. Make some little bets, see what happens, and then add to it as time goes on.

Actually, if I may just add to that, we wrote a special report called wealthleasership.com bear and in that, there's 11 strategies that are really fitting to what Scott is saying. Because what he's saying is, look, how can you act when you feel like you're not equipped to act? And that's basically what that report is all about. And I agree with him that if you take little steps, nobody has ever died of small profits, in other words. So that's really important. And I agree with him.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite authors is Nassim Nicholas to lead. And in his investment philosophies and those types of things, are you a fan or do you think he's just too contrarian?

First of all, if anything, when you read his books, you start to obsess about risk, which is not a bad thing to do. But it's important to make sure that you really get his message. His message is not that you should lock yourself in a shelter and not live your life, but that there's risks that are unforeseeable. Obviously with the black swans. Yeah. Or the turkey. Eat the turkey for a thousand days, then who's gone? But I think, okay, Nassim Taleb is not a billionaire investor though. So that's what I'm saying about investments. Here's a guy from academia, comes in, explains about risks. Amazing. Now how do you make money from that advice? So you need to. That book is, is for entertainment and for really understanding risk. Okay. But it's not a wealth generating book. Read Also wealth generating books. So I am a fan of. The thoughts are very provoking and very deep and I can spend an hour on the book and then I have to focus on how to make money. That book doesn't tell you how to make money or anything that is specific. I know your podcast is about specific.

No, no. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Which leads us to that point in the podcast where we're going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something else actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives with the organs. What do you got?

What changed my life is any book by Ernest Holmes. He's deceased for almost half a century, but if you read his books, I think it will increase your life tenfold.

How do I. Ernest Holmes.

Yep.

E R, N E S T. Yep. All right, so is there a specific book?

Any book? Any book?

Any of them. Any of them.

The seminal piece is called Science of the Mind. But that's like his most famous book.

Science of the Mind is philosophy. Look at this. I'm on.

I would say if you want to start with something, start with this thing called you.

This thing called you. Okay. Because I'm, I'm on Amazon right now. I'll find it. Scott Todd, have you ever heard of this guy? Ernest Holmes?

No.

1887.

That's.

I love it. I love when you learn something new.

I brought you that nugget that you asked for.

I appreciate it. So before we get to Scott Todd's tip of the week, I just want to remind the listeners that today's podcast is sponsored by flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. So start building that passive income machine. Go up that mount of land investing with someone who's done it thousands of times. Scott Todd, go up there quickly, safely and efficiently. Learn more. Schedule call. Go to thelandgeek.com training thelandgeek.com training Get a free consultation, see if this model is right for you. Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week mark?

So this week I needed to send somebody a large file, like a large file. And I didn't want to put in a Dropbox. I wanted to make sure it was secured and everything. So check out connected use. Use connected.com. check it out if you ever need to send big files securely or request big files securely or. It doesn't have to be big, it can just be. If you want to do something securely, you can use this because it's not. It's better than send it through email. It's safer. It's encrypted. All this other stuff, file security, secured messages. You know, you can actually have a page where you request it. They just drop it right into your file here.

This is cool.

This is really cool. I usually use WeTransfer.com to send those big. Those big files because I think it's like free for like up to two gig. But this is cool.

And this is free, too.

And this is free too. Are you sure it's free?

If you hit pricing and you go look at the pricing. Yeah, the it is. There's a free plan up to 100 megabytes.

Okay.

And you can, let's see, upload one gig files in one month.

10 gigabyte data bonus in first month bonus for you.

Okay.

Not bad.

Pretty cool.

All right, well, look, that's a great tip, but that's not going to make you any real money. Real wealth. My tip of the week is going to make you real money in real wealth. Go to wealthresearchgroup.com wealthresearchgroup.com learn more. There is a plethora of financial information in there. Just one nugget could really move the needle. And learn more. And I just want to thank the listeners and just remind them that the only way, the only way we're going to get quality of guests like Lior Gantz from wealthresourcegroup.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 course how to double your money 30 days or less. That wholetailing course. So please do it. Lior Gantz, are we good?

Yeah. Thank you very much. And I really like the questions from.

Both of you todot robot. Thank you so much for being here. Scott, Todd, are we good?

Good, mark.

All right, you ready to do this? One, two, three. Let's freedom ring. Leo's like, I would never have gone on if I knew this is how you guys are gonna end it. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you guys.